Truth is, my agenda from the beginning of this blog was to inform, to explain what I think D&D “is” … its measure, its potential, the fundamental methodology that underlies how it is run and how it is played.
Unquestionably, it was presumptuous of me to believe that I knew the answers to those questions. People said that I was flogging the "one true way" and that my whole approach was that I was right, and they were all wrong.
That's almost true. They're all wrong ... but so am I.
Which is why I keep trying to figure out how to be more right tomorrow than I am today. It doesn't do any good to offer another subjective opinion on the substance of role-playing. We've been offering that since the days of the Dragon Magazine and it hasn't moved the conversation forward in 35 years. When I have a discussion about alignment today, I hear the same arguments, the same evasions, the same half-baked definitions that I heard when Boy George was singing Karma Chameleon. The conversation is stuck in the Dark Ages and all the rationally considered personal rhetoric I can offer isn't going to change that.
That is why, increasingly, I've been trying to approach the game from established precepts outside the D&D community ... and trying to build a consensus among those actually playing, rather than those who want to profit from having us play. Or from those who are turning liveplay into a business, so that film companies and celebrities who have never offered a thing to enhance the game can pollute the agenda and the format for at least a generation. Whatever approach I'm here to offer now is on the verge of being completely washed away by sponsored louts in a way that will make the min-maxing of powergamers look like an appreciated characteristic of RPG's Golden Age.
Make no mistake, we are definitely moving into role-playing's Silver Age and it is going to be ... an unholy mess. Those readers who talk about playing D&D until they live in a retirement home are going to find themselves increasingly isolated and made into dinosaurs by the wave of fanboys and girls who don't play, don't understand why anyone would play, when the liveplaying by their heroes is so ... much ... better.
But then, there are so few of us around anyway, who would care?
I have no wish to watch my active game be transformed into a passive experience, where I watch others play, no matter how charismatic. We've seen the process before. Where once we had shows that taught how to cook, now we have shows where cooking has been transformed into a sport, where the actual cooking is never explained or even reasonably demonstrated, in order to make room for infantilised adults to express their anxieties and ultimately their blubbering tears when they fail to "win" ... as though knowing how to cook isn't itself an achievement. Where once we had shows that explained how to make furniture or rebuild your house, now we watch people argue with each other in houses that are being remodeled in the background and off camera, presumedly by a crew of someones who come in when the main personalities stop arguing and go to bed. Because while tens of thousands might be interested in cooking and renovation, millions are interested in watching people they will never be fight arguments they will never have, during experiences that they will never experience, because it is easier than rising to the bar of having to do something.
For a lot of people ~ a hundred times more than those who have ever DM'd or played in an RPG ~ the Silver Age is going to be a wonderful thing. They're going to love their personalities, their favorite shows, their most cherished moments and their re-enactments of episodes and adventures, spotted with actual attempts at role-playing but mostly their attempts at producing their own liveplay theatres, which have already exploded across the web. What they won't like is the inevitable Bronze Age that follows ~ and more quickly than it did for comic books ~ when efforts to create more and more interesting liveplay events drift into the "dark age" of attention-seeking. But I won't have to write about that for a few years.
My only refuge ~ the only one I can see ~ is to drift myself into academia. There's a chance that actual role-playing can be preserved ... but I admit, not much of a chance. I see no chance at all if it isn't grounded in some kind of legitimacy; an examination that will stand the test of time and the shattering of gameplay as "doing it like the heroes on our game channel" becomes more important than playing the game. Sometimes I feel like a monk in Ireland, glad to have a hovel near the coast where it's quiet and we can think clearly about things that really matter.
Of course, that's my presumption again. Who says I'm good enough to be a monk? I'm probably what they say I am: just a boring guy who doesn't understand that the game is just about having fun.
My plan is to produce 36 classes in the RPG 201 course, if I can. I do plan to present a mid-term exam, and then a final exam, though I'll be surprised if more than a handful try either. I intend to grade the exams, just as though I were a professor, and I intend to be quite clear on what the exams will be graded upon, so that I can demonstrate after the fact to anyone why this effort got a 'D' and why this effort got an 'A.' I've been trying to come up with some meaningful artifact that can be gained by those who pass the course (a C- will be sufficient), as proof and for "bragging rights," but I can't think of anything that satisfies my standards ~ meaning, something I would be proud of having if I participated and someone else was grading.
Once I've finished the full course, I intend to reproduce the work as a book, with expanded passages, more examples, fixed passages and a better construction for the overall work. Afterwards, if I can think of a 300-level course that would follow, I will work on that. And so on until I choke on my bedsheets at the age of 90+, if I can manage to live that long.
I expect to do most of this in obscurity, watching millions get thrilled as they pay $75 to have their picture taken next to the celebrity of their choice, who can't seem to remember their spell list and needs to read it over again every time it is their turn to cast magic. Or perhaps I'll watch a movie with the smug bastard who, after preening through nine years of being a DMing celebrity, will finally be given the lead role in a Rom-Com.
It'll probably win an Oscar.
I sympathize with the sentiment and I can see the progression from one state of things to another. However . . .
ReplyDeleteIt's been my experience over this past year that people are approaching the subject from an academic point of view. Not necessarily from the position you're advocating ~ starting with a foundation, defining what we know vs what we think, etc. ~ but there are university professors and students who engage role-playing in an academic sense; who've done research on self-identified gamers; who lead discussions about games and RPGs; and so on.
For my money, I worry that the focus in academic fields will shift because of popular depictions of the game. That we're going to continue discussing the game in terms of traditional media analysis, ignoring the fact that it's an entirely different medium/genre/whatever.
I don't think you'll be alone in examining and writing about RPGs. I think you'll be part of a small group that does so, and that your perspective will be advocated by an even smaller group.
. . . not much help, am I?
Here's another thought: there are educational videos on YouTube along the lines you cited, which do very well with views. Maybe a sign that enough people actually do care about that sort of thing...?
ReplyDeleteRespectfully Tao I'm going to have to disagree with your assessment of a silver age starting now. D&D has already gone though a silver age. There was a huge cultural shift of D&D players away from the table into video games, and later into the horrible acronym MMORPGs. TSR died in the late 90's and WoTC's 3.0 was a firm break from the previous lineage in a softer more player focused way. Perhaps it's the time for all of that to have their silver age? :)
ReplyDeleteI had quite seriously considered that argument, Behold. There is a lot of merit in it. But while D&D certainly spawned other games, and editions of course, the fundamental structure of DM/Player Party/Single Table had not substantially changed from 1975 to 2005.
ReplyDeleteThere were Cons, yes, and tournaments, and mass events of different kinds, but the participants would then return to their own tables and play their own games, whatever source material they happened to use.
We're looking at a much bigger adjustment: where the perception of the game, where the fans are moving from active participant to passive audience. This begins with Youtube (2005); but it is culminating in liveplay. In the last three years of meeting people offline, there has been a drastic increase in people who self-identify as "role-players" who have never actually played an RPG ... but they have watched hundreds of hours of liveplay, so they feel "involved."
That's a HUGE change, rather than the micro-changes that you and I, Behold, have watched go by. An "age" for me denotes a vast, sudden shift in the type of rock strata encountered; where grey-pink rock is suddenly overlaid with glittering white calcite crystals. I don't think we've seek that kind of stark change yet in role-playing. But I predict we're about to ~ and that the change will threaten table playing all at once.
This trend certainly isn't unique to North America; "replays" have been popular in Japan for at least a decade. Though I admit that I have little personal knowledge of such, I'd imagine that they've started shifting onto YouTube in a similar fashion (or will soon).
ReplyDeleteNor is it a trend unique to tabletop role-playing; people are now making careers out of other people watching them play video games. Not reviewing them as one would review a movie, just playing the game. I can sort of understand this when considering that video games (and the consoles on which to play them - or, if you like, the beefy water-cooled PCs required for most AAA releases) have been getting steadily more expensive; for a story-game with little direct user interaction, it definitely makes more economic sense to watch someone else make those "choices". But in an age where even the newest sets of RPG rules are available online for free (not to mention all of the retroclones and such), why settle?
Maybe such people have trouble finding sufficiently motivated peers with whom to play. As much as I rail against spectator culture, this is a problem I'm currently facing myself, even living in a fairly decent-sized college town with groups of people who claim to love Dungeons & Dragons.
This is so...damn...depressing.
ReplyDeleteThen again, so are all the shootings in my country. *sigh*