Monday, July 13, 2020

Warning: Contains Abusive Language

"This is a role-playing game. It takes place entirely in our collective imagination. I tell a story and you make choices in the story. Let's begin. You are all standing on a country road. Legend has it, the evil dragon Draconis dwells nearby, guarding a massive pile of treasure.  Working as a team, your goal is to track down the dragon, kill him, and then claim the treasure as your own.  Jeff, your turn."
Abed Nadir, Community S02 E14

Community was an infantile, facile, poorly written angst fest for miserable people desperately seeking a program that depicted characters more pathetic than themselves.  I did not watch it past, I think, about halfway through the second episode.  I just wanted to be sure we understood my perspective on the show.

On July 7th, Netflix and Hulu pulled the episode quoted above.  I could give a shit, both for the loss and for the reasons they pulled it.  The brief snippets I've seen of the show make it appear a deliberate civilization-wrecking shit-show, using approximately the same logics regarding free speech that made Larry Flynt's Hustler so prominent and profitable.  The fact that society has chosen to arbitrarily die on the hill of stopping one or two particular egregious improprieties the taste of the month does not justify the hundreds of other sickening degeneracies present in this and many other present shows that pass unnoticed.

However, the linked article above turned up on my feed, and as it was about Dungeons and Dragons (and yes, I had previously heard of the "infamous, beloved" episode), I chose to read it.  It is the first time I've seen a piece of this episode and ... well, it was obviously a post waiting to be written.  Since I am bored enough to be reading shit off my feed, I might as well write it now, though I am not scheduled to write a post on this blog until the 20th.

I've seen a lot of stuff over the years take a dump on my passion, but this steamed.

"Your turn"?  Huh?  That's not even accurate to the way the word is used in the game.  It is never anybody's fucking turn.  The DM does not turn to a particular player and say, "your turn."  Not in any game I've ever seen or heard about.  Jeebus.

"Working as a team," I am now going to give you a job, because I'm your employer here.  I am offering you pay in the form of a make-believe dragon horde.  Now do as I tell you because my version of "collective imagination" is that you're a bunch of pawns and I'm your gawddamned master.

The reader might have noticed, I'm pretty angry just now.

It would probably be best if I deleted everything I've written so far and started again.  I have no doubt I've offended people (since Community was so-so popular, in the way that television shows would have been taken off the air for piss-poor ratings when television had social relevance, like in the 1990s).  No doubt, there are those who will argue that the show "gets better" following this obscene introduction to the game.  This is the kind of post I keep saying I'm going to stop writing, because it's extremely negative and obverse to the process of teaching people how to expand and improve their D&D games.

Here's a clue.  Don't tell your players what to do.  Tell them where they are and pick something more interesting than a crossroads.

D&D does not "take place in our collective imagination."  If you believe that, then you don't know a damn thing about preparing for a game, managing your skills or your equipment, using a character sheet or reading the emotional state of other people in the room who are real and NOT imaginary.  What we choose to talk about may be imaginary, but the process of talking and playing the game is concrete and definitely real.  No doubt, however, some readers here don't know what I'm talking about.

"Our collective imagination" is a bullshit phrase that doesn't actually mean anything.  Try writing 300 words defining the concept without talking about any fixed game element, and without descending into meaningless purple prose that isn't just more of the same manure.  How is our imagination "collective"?  Discourse and planning are collective, but those things aren't done with our imagination, they are done according to established rules which the game defines.  Or, at least, that a game prior to 5e defines.  For our imagination to be "collective," we'd all need to be telepathic and we'd have to not be individuals.  The words sound fun and coercive, but that's just because you're a dumb human.  You're easily distracted by things that sound like they ought to be possible.

As an aside, I'm finding "cancel culture" very interesting.  I'm old, so my perspective is a little different from the younger folks.  Long, long ago, when the world was new and I was very young, if I wanted to see porn I had to go to a bookstore and ask quietly to see what was "under the counter."  This would enable me to buy a video from a choice of two options.  Anti-porn legislation, and all the legislation in existence that banned virtually everything considered a "vice" in the late 1970s and early 80s, that was a "cancel culture" far more rigorous and absolute than this one.

Only things that aren't worth hiding under a counter truly get cancelled.

18 comments:

  1. Would you object to the term "shared imaginary space" being used in lieu of "collective imagination?" Just curious.

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  2. Collaborative narration is closer to the fact, as it depicts the game as a matter of communication. Multi-person creativity is a constant, shifting intellectual negotiation, not a touchy-feely religious experience.

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  3. What irks me the most about these depictions is not that they portray an utterly false view of what D&D is. It's that they offer this...thing which doesn't resemble the game at all (but to which is applied the same name), and which in turn is used as a blueprint by people who for some reason find whatever that Thing is desirable.

    So the parody replaces the original.

    The funniest thing to me about that episode was that the "guy playing the game wrong" was the only one doing what HE wanted to do instead of following a rigid script. He lashes out because its the only way to get any attention while the "DM" is playing out his own power fantasy.

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  4. I've always used individual initiative, so I've been turning to my players and saying "your turn" since 1984. So now you have heard a game that does that.

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  5. They eventually did a second D&D episode where a character points these things out, and maligns the mischaracterization of the game for the purposes of heavy-handed moral mission that the show uses it for. "Paint-by-numbers adventure" they called it.

    The game in this episode was an excuse to make someone feel loved and included when the characters had wronged them, and not for it's own sake. Both episodes which feature the game are explicit about this.

    None of this matters in the context of D&D being portrayed incorrectly in media, since even if they acknowledge their wrongdoing they are still perpetuating a bad, boring game.

    I'm on board for a more accurate portrayal of the game in media, but I can't help but feel like this post could have used an extra half an hour of research. I know you've got the chops to do a better tear-down than this.

    How would you do this episode? The excerpt from your book was really good, how would you translate that into a tv show? What does a good portrayal of this game look like?

    As for the cancel culture aside, I can't help but feel people who get upset about it are probably part of the problem. It's not legislation, it's just boycotting. It's literally the only way for consumers to apply pressure to producers. Plenty of artists have survived "cancellation", so frankly I have no sympathy for anyone who doesn't. If you're good enough at what you do you can buy forgiveness and if you're not, good riddance.

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    Replies
    1. Correct, that episode was previewing the game to people who'd never heard of it (in under 30 minutes), for the benefit of a veteran player on the brink of suicide. I think it does a good job of explaining D&D to the uninitiated.

      As for cancel culture, neither of you has a firm grasp of the problem... destroying someone's life because of an inappropriate tweet or political viewpoint or Halloween costume? That's ok to you? Cancel culture is a cancer on our culture.

      Delete
    2. Venger would certainly know a bit about cancel culture, wouldn't he . . . ?

      Delete
    3. @ Ozy:

      Now that’s just piling on.

      Delete
    4. @JB:

      too true. I have some issues to work through, I think.

      Delete
  6. Well, you're right Pandred. I could have found and watched the whole show. I could have learned about and found the other episode. I could have watched the whole series and somehow learned why people invested themselves in the show.

    I was just so ... angry.

    Still am.

    But it is a good lesson to do your preparation.

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  7. If it explains the game WRONGLY, then it does a SHITTY job of explaining the game to the uninitiated. What the FUCK?

    Let's teach some little children how to add numbers. And let's teach them that 2+3 equal 6. Why not? It teaches them that numbers can be added together! That's the basic point of mathematics, right? That numbers can be manipulated? Who gives a fuck that it is a totally erroneous, utter dumbfuck failure at teaching accuracy. That's not what's important! What's important is that kids fail at getting the right answer to 2+3 for the rest of their fucking lives because the gawddamn teacher thinks that self-esteem and goody-good feeling are all the fucking matters.

    I think I've finally figured out what profession you're in, Venger. You teach grade 1, don't you?

    Venger, the only new thing about cancel culture is the name.

    Incidentally, I've let this one comment through because I am still angry and you're an easy kick-toy. But lately I've been getting constant reports regarding racist attacks and links to the alt-right. Your answer regarding cancel culture would seem to support that. I don't suppose you have a comment you'd like to make that would suggest you're not what I'm being told. Try to be politic; impoliteness won't make you look good.

    Yes, that's right. We're all subject to cancel culture. We always have been. I don't know why people in this generation don't understand that human beings have Always excluded human beings, and it is Always been for the stupidest of reasons.

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  8. Venger, destroying someone's life is a bit of a stretch. Destroying their access to a given speech platform maybe, but they can still get a job at Walmart. If they didn't want to get thrown out by their audience, they probably should have been smarter about what their audience wanted.

    But I can see how not being held accountable for shitty behavior would appeal to shitheads.

    As far as I'm concerned, every Terf or Nazi or just regular asshole who gets deplatformed just leaves room for another person to take their place. There is an endless stream of people looking to make their voice heard. Nobody "deserves" to keep their spotlight if the audience doesn't like it.

    If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

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  9. I wonder about this "destroy someone's life because of an inappropriate tweet." The internet rained shit on a whole lot of Women in the 2010s for a long time; I'll pick Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn as examples. I didn't see or hear a whole lot of incel males rising up to defend these two for having their lives "destroyed" by doxing and swatting, which go a whole lot further than cancel culture seeks to do.

    Zoe Quinn's life isn't destroyed. She suffered considerably, but came through considerably better than quite a lot of people actually suffering in places like Zaire and Myanmar/Burma. Quinn is working, she has an Internet presence, when she speaks she is listened to, she has a successful webcomic in production and unless I'm sorely mistaken, I doubt very much that she is either hungry or homeless right now.

    Anita Sarkeesian may be the most hated woman in the world, but I don't think that really matters much. Her parents were Armenians from Iraq who emigrated to Canada, so I'm sure that they and Sarkeesian understand perfectly that 10 solid years of dorfs bitching on the internet quite likely pales in their imaginations to what those last ten years would have been like if they'd been stuck in Iraq. Sarkeesian has turned her experiences into an industry now; perhaps not the industry she intended, but at the same time she's fighting to force the world to understand why regulation and reason has to run the day, and not shit head incel gamerboys. When bad stuff happens to smart people, they roll with it.

    Pandred's point, then, is proved. If your personality is so weak that you have to identify being told not to wear a tasteless Halloween costume as "your life is being destroyed" and that it's "a cancer on society," then you're pretty fragile to begin with. Personally, I've done everything I could in the last 12 years to kick the internet bear in the balls, including posts like this one, but I can't have my life "destroyed" for love nor money. Shit. I could use a little negative publicity. I could use ANY publicity.

    There is still no such thing as "bad" publicity.

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  10. Notwithstanding the fact that, for once, the way Abed botched his intro to the game was at least coherent with the mock-autism of that character, the rest of the montage was pretty innocuous IIRC. So I'm curious : had you been paid for a last pass at the episode's script, what would you have changed?

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  11. There's a trap, ViP. I can tell you that I'd have a more than a few hours to do it and I'd have an incentive to watch the show so I knew the characters. But I'm not going to watch the show without pay, just to answer your question.

    I find it appalling that "innocuous" passes for acceptable on television these days.

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  12. "Your turn"? Huh? That's not even accurate to the way the word is used in the game. It is never anybody's fucking turn. The DM does not turn to a particular player and say, "your turn." Not in any game I've ever seen or heard about. Jeebus.

    Add me to the roster of DMs who use turn-taking, even when off initiative. I go around the table, asking each player what-if-anything their character does/says. It reduces interruption, makes sure that everyone has a chance to be heard, and party decisions don't get reduced (as much) to giving the loudest voices what they want.

    "Working as a team," I am now going to give you a job, because I'm your employer here. I am offering you pay in the form of a make-believe dragon horde. Now do as I tell you because my version of "collective imagination" is that you're a bunch of pawns and I'm your gawddamned master.

    I don't like that playstyle, and you clearly don't like it either, but it's a big part of the D&D market--a lot of Pathfinder revenue is from railroad Adventure Paths. I'm pretty sure the Dragonlance modules ran the same way. Scroll through tenfootpole.org and you'll find a lot of it today.

    The funniest thing to me about that episode was that the "guy playing the game wrong" was the only one doing what HE wanted to do instead of following a rigid script. He lashes out because its the only way to get any attention while the "DM" is playing out his own power fantasy.

    That's because none of the main cast actually wanted to play D&D (Abed as possible exception). They wanted to reach out to Fat Neil, who had been displaying suicidal tendencies (giving away his possessions-D&D books). And all they really knew about him was that he played D&D. They could have used Settlers of Catan, and thrown the game to make Neil feel better, but that would have been a truly crap episode.

    And Neil complimented Pierce on his gameplay. (Pierce provided Neil with a challenge, which had been lacking lately).

    ReplyDelete

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