You agree that the DM has to narrate the situation, but, claim that the quality of that narration doesn't matter, but, at it's root, that's demonstrably false. A narration that is confusing, for example, matters. So, the quality DOES matter. You claim that performance doesn't matter, but, again, that's demonstrably false. Someone who speaks too quietly to be heard, as an extreme example, is obviously going to make the session not enjoyable.
Clarity is not an element of
literary quality. Adequate volume to be audible is not something that goes to the
artistic quality of a performance.
I don't read as much criticism as I probably should, but when I read a review of a novel or a film or a performance of a play I learn (among other things) what the reviewer thought of the cleverness of the composition, the emotions conveyed, the feelings induced in the audience, etc. I don't read much about whether the narration was sufficiently
clear. Clarity isn't even a particularly literary virtue - imagery, symbolism, multiple meanings, etc are the stuff of clever composition, especially poetic composition. When I read reviews of theatre and cinema, the issue of *whispering* does not seem to come up. The only exception in the neighbourhood that I can think of is the prominent Australian critic David Stratton, who is well-known for his dislike of films that have shaky hand-held camera work. But even he recognises that this is somewhat idiosyncratic to him, and hence expressly calls it out when it informs his commentary on a film. Whereas eg he doesn't see any need to call out the roles played by (say) the composition of frames, or editing, or visual contrasts, in his critical judgements.
Frankly I'm surprised that this notion of "literary quality" is found so contentious or so puzzling. Have you never looked through reviews in the New Yorker or Times Literary Supplement or the Village Voice or other literary/critical journal of your choice? Assuming that you have, then the stuff that they talk about, that they focus on: that's what
literary quality consists in. A literary endeavour is one which aims at producing that sort of quality in virtue of caring about that stuff as part of the process of composition.
Clearly one can narrate and describe without caring about that stuff, and therefore without aiming at literary quality. People do it all the time, when they talk about what happened in their day, or a person they met; or when they speculate about how they would like to spend tomorrow, or what sort of person they would like to meet. It's not just that looking at an everyday conversation, or an IKEA instruction manual, through the lens of a New Yorker critic would lead to an unflattering review - it would be a category error, because those things aren't intended to be works of art, not even amateur or kitsch ones.
RPGing of course differs from those things in that it has crucial aesthetic and creative dimensions, but I assert that it resemble them in that
the literary quality of the words used is not where the action is. The aesthetic is about
situation and
creative participation, not about beauty in composition.
Teaching language to an ESL student shares virtually nothing with playing in an RPG. But, funnily enough, it doesn't actually take too long before an ESL student is advanced enough to go beyond simple, basic conversation and into higher level communication. And one of the primary sources for teaching that is literature.
But
teaching literature to ESL students is typically not, itself, a literary endeavour. I've read plenty of English and ESL texts. They're generally not works of literature. They're instructional and academic texts.
Of course some literary criticism is itself literature. (Consider eg TS Eliot as a famous example.) But those are hardly typical teaching texts, and my guess is that the number of ESL classes that use this sort of literary criticism to try and teach English is pretty small.
lacking any literary effort on the part of the DM, all these things are are bags of game stats. There's nothing distinguishing them.
Or, to put it another way, what's the difference between a 5 hp orc and a 5 hp goblin?
If I'm using the AD&D MM, one is brown and one is yellow. If I'm using DDG, one worships Gruumsh and one worships Maglubiyet.
A person can describe and explain things without aiming at literary beauty.
despite REPEATED requests that you clarify what "literary", "literary quality" and "wordcraft" and various other words you've tried to toss into the mix, you've never actually sat down and defined what you mean by these terms in a way that folks in the thread understand what you're on about.
Clearly plenty of folks do - everyone but you, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] as far as I can tell. And frankly even Imaro seems to understand the point, despite protesting that it's unclear. He just disagrees with it - that is, he thinks that RPGing
is a literary endeavour, and would find a game boring in which the GM didn't aim at literary quality in his/her narration.
It seems worth mentioning at this point that not all disagreement is a result of unclear usage or uncertainty over definitions. Aesthetic debates aren't much like mathematics, in that respect at least.
Anyway, to aim at
literary quality is to try and produce pleasing, beautiful, evocative writing. Most poets do this. Most novelists do this. Fewer instructional writers do this - I've read recipe books that seem to aspire to literary quality, but never stereo or furniture assembly instructions. I've read a lot of academic papers over the years - these tend to aim at clarity, but many clearly do not aim at literary quality. Statutes, regulations, contracts and other legal instruments - of which I've also read many - haven't aimed at literary quality since (I would say) the 18th century (eg the US Constitution clearly does aim at literary quality, in places at least; so does the preamble to the Statute of Elizabeth that is the foundation of modern charities law in common law countries; but no modern constitution or statute that I'm familiar with does so).
I think it's obvious that not all writing is
literary writing; that not every composition or act of human communication is undertaken keeping in mind the stuff that would earn it a good review in the pages of the New Yorker.
Some people - [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], for example, and as best I can tell you - think that RPGing
should be undertaken in this sort of fashion (while obviously keeping in mind that, in practice, few tables will probably actually achieve literary greatness). That participants who produce mundane or unevocative prose aren't doing the best that they should.
It's not the case that I agree with you about this and am adopting some obscure meaning of "literary quality" to say that what you're advocating doesn't go to the issue of literary quality.
I disagree with you about what is at the heart of RPGing/ It's not an issue about word meaning. It's a difference, perhaps a deep difference, of aesthetic judgement in relation to RPGing.
