Is RPGing a literary endeavour?

Bedrockgames · May 23, 2019

Hussar said:
Now, think about this 1st person argument for a second. You will, presumably, choose to speak in a certain way and use certain words in an attempt to "portray a character", right? You wouldn't proclaim, in character, in a fantasy game, "Hey, that looks like the critter at the end of Men in Black!" That would be considered out of character, no?

So, as soon as you add in that criteria - what I say should be in keeping with the character that I'm playing - you have left the realm of conversation and gone into the literary. You would never think, "Hrm, given what I think about me, I think I should say X and not Y" in a conversation. You aren't trying to portray yourself.

Thus, play always is a literary endeavor. You are using literary criteria to judge and control what you say during the game and people's enjoyment of the game will be affected by that judgement.

You make a very strong argument for something, but not for games being literary. Just because there is this concept in gaming of playing a character in a setting, where your character doesn't know thing you know, that doesn't make it a literary endeavor. Maybe an acting endeavor, but even then I don't think so because you can still just be playing yourself, you can be playing with the character without acting, or even in third person. So even if I accepted the implication of your post (that players and GMS always must speak in first person), I don't have to accept your conclusion that it is literary. But what is more, plenty of people don't engage RPGs in the first person. And further, lots of people allow for all kinds of anachronisms in play and dialogue. You might not like it, but I've definitely been in groups where characters did things like reference modern movies even though we were in a fantasy setting.

Also your post does just reinforce the main point I made there which is this thread is about playstyle more than anything else.

Hriston · May 23, 2019

Imaro said:
To a certain extent I would say yes. I certainly don't add all kinds of words to my description of a situation without any regard for its formal quality, especially when speaking to colleagues at work, explaining something to others and so on. Very rarely am I wholly unaware of the formal quality of my everyday speech as I know many people are apt to judge you by it.

A work environment might be more or less formal, but that doesn’t make being at work a literary endeavor. Likewise, an awareness of how best to effectively communicate when speaking with others can be useful, but it doesn’t make conversation a literary endeavor. Personally, such a controlled approach to communication doesn’t really work for me because I’m naturally careful in choosing what I say and need to make a real effort to be spontaneous. Maybe this accounts for some of the differences in the way we see literary as opposed to normal speech.

Maxperson · May 23, 2019

Hriston said:
Material of low literary quality is clearly not what the OP is talking about when asking whether RPGing is a literary endeavor.

He brought up narrative quality. Low quality is quality. It applies to his argument.

This isn't in dispute. My contention is that the act of describing content is not a literary endeavor in the sense used by the OP. For it to be a literary endeavor in that sense would require that the quality of form, i.e. word choice, phrase and sentence structure, use of meter, rhyme, and repetition, and other formal properties that set the language used apart from normal everyday language, is a major focus of the activity.

As I pointed out above, conversational dialogue is a literary technique, so you don't need the above requirements. Further, from personal experience, I have spoken on behalf of NPCs and came up with some really crappy dialogue on the spot. That would be low literary quality dialogue. Other times I've come up with responses that were so awesome I got "oohs" from the players. That would be higher literary quality dialogue. What I never did was sit and come up with what words would sound better. I'm not focused on what sort of dialogue to engage in. It's just conversational dialogue.

Hriston · May 23, 2019

Imaro said:
This makes no sense. I would think improvement of the narrative, generation of content and nearly everything else we've discussed is ultimately done first and foremost for the purpose of running the game. I mean I'm not creating content for the purpose of just having good content, I'm generating it to better my game.

That’s because imagining, exploring, and engaging with good content is what’s at the heart of RPGing. The literary quality with which that content is described runs orthogonally to that.

Hriston · May 23, 2019

Maxperson said:
He brought up narrative quality. Low quality is quality. It applies to his argument.

The OP stated the opinion that the literary quality of narration is unimportant, so, sure, it doesn’t matter whether the literary quality is low or high. Unimportant is unimportant. What I’m not following is that you seemed to have been making the argument up thread that someone who thinks the literary quality of narration is unimportant is somehow asking for dull narration. You also seem to be making the argument that someone could think the literary quality of narration is important and want that narration to have low literary quality. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Maxperson said:
As I pointed out above, conversational dialogue is a literary technique, so you don't need the above requirements. Further, from personal experience, I have spoken on behalf of NPCs and came up with some really crappy dialogue on the spot. That would be low literary quality dialogue. Other times I've come up with responses that were so awesome I got "oohs" from the players. That would be higher literary quality dialogue. What I never did was sit and come up with what words would sound better. I'm not focused on what sort of dialogue to engage in. It's just conversational dialogue.

To me, this sounds like you don’t think the literary quality of your dialogue is very important.

uzirath · May 23, 2019

Hussar said:
So, as soon as you add in that criteria - what I say should be in keeping with the character that I'm playing - you have left the realm of conversation and gone into the literary.

This sounds more theatrical than literary to me. It may be worth considering how role-playing can be used outside of gaming. At school, for example, we (the teachers) use role-playing activities with students to help build empathy. I don't think of this as a literary endeavor. It's about considering the perspective of another person and how they might feel about a given situation. As modern, literate people, of course, we write down our lesson plans and communicate via email and whatnot, but the role-playing activities themselves are not primarily about invoking the techniques of literature. They are activities about imagination and perspective, about paying attention to other people, about considering how a different context might change the way you behave. Many literary techniques, of course, exist to achieve similar goals (immersion in a fiction, identification with characters, etc.) but those goals can exist outside of the literary realm.

Ultimately, though, this is all rather pedantic. The interesting element of this thread, to me, is the notion that helping new GMs craft compelling situations may be more important than helping them craft evocative descriptions or memorable NPCs. I'm not as hung up on figuring out exactly how important, or the rankings of importance, or what's core and what's not. (That, as evidenced by the back-and-forth in this thread, requires far more patience than I have.) Personally, I like evocative descriptions, whether or not they're "core" and whether or not they are "literary" by various definitions. I'm better at helping someone come up with better adjectives or more interesting costumes or neat NPC quirks than I am at helping them with the fundamentals of designing great situations to engage their players. I feel like I approach the idea when I talk to young GMs about the importance of keeping the game fun for everyone. I always focus on that as job #1 for the GM. But I don't know that I provide much specific advice on how to actually do that beyond the basics (spread the spotlight around, keep things moving, give hints when things stall, don't get too hung up on the rules, don't get too hung up on your vision of how the game ought to go, avoid TPK, etc.).

I assume most of us agree that creating compelling situations for the players is somewhat important, regardless of where this importance ranks in relation to other aspects of the game. If we accept that, then I wonder what the top tips are to help people accomplish that?

Imaro · May 23, 2019

Hriston said:
That’s because imagining, exploring, and engaging with good content is what’s at the heart of RPGing. The literary quality with which that content is described runs orthogonally to that.

For you...maybe, I've yet to be convinced, but for some/many/most the other things you mention aren't attainable or fun without a certain quality to the literary aspects and descriptions, the presentation and performance...

Hussar · May 23, 2019

uzirath said:
This sounds more theatrical than literary to me. It may be worth considering how role-playing can be used outside of gaming. At school, for example, we (the teachers) use role-playing activities with students to help build empathy. I don't think of this as a literary endeavor. It's about considering the perspective of another person and how they might feel about a given situation. As modern, literate people, of course, we write down our lesson plans and communicate via email and whatnot, but the role-playing activities themselves are not primarily about invoking the techniques of literature. They are activities about imagination and perspective, about paying attention to other people, about considering how a different context might change the way you behave. Many literary techniques, of course, exist to achieve similar goals (immersion in a fiction, identification with characters, etc.) but those goals can exist outside of the literary realm.

Ultimately, though, this is all rather pedantic. The interesting element of this thread, to me, is the notion that helping new GMs craft compelling situations may be more important than helping them craft evocative descriptions or memorable NPCs. I'm not as hung up on figuring out exactly how important, or the rankings of importance, or what's core and what's not. (That, as evidenced by the back-and-forth in this thread, requires far more patience than I have.) Personally, I like evocative descriptions, whether or not they're "core" and whether or not they are "literary" by various definitions. I'm better at helping someone come up with better adjectives or more interesting costumes or neat NPC quirks than I am at helping them with the fundamentals of designing great situations to engage their players. I feel like I approach the idea when I talk to young GMs about the importance of keeping the game fun for everyone. I always focus on that as job #1 for the GM. But I don't know that I provide much specific advice on how to actually do that beyond the basics (spread the spotlight around, keep things moving, give hints when things stall, don't get too hung up on the rules, don't get too hung up on your vision of how the game ought to go, avoid TPK, etc.).

I assume most of us agree that creating compelling situations for the players is somewhat important, regardless of where this importance ranks in relation to other aspects of the game. If we accept that, then I wonder what the top tips are to help people accomplish that?

No one is disagreeing with this. Not a single person. What's being disagreed with is the notion that content is all that matters. That regardless of the language used to present that situation or content, it will be interesting to the players solely on its own merits as content.

To me, this is flatly false. You can have the most fascinating situation ever written, but, if it's presented poorly, without any literary technique whatsoever, it will fall flat every single time because, at it's heart, yes, RPGing is a literary endevour. You, as a GM, need to be aware of literary techniques and how to apply them or you will simply never reach your intended audience.

Hussar · May 23, 2019

Bedrockgames said:
You make a very strong argument for something, but not for games being literary. Just because there is this concept in gaming of playing a character in a setting, where your character doesn't know thing you know, that doesn't make it a literary endeavor. Maybe an acting endeavor, but even then I don't think so because you can still just be playing yourself, you can be playing with the character without acting, or even in third person. So even if I accepted the implication of your post (that players and GMS always must speak in first person), I don't have to accept your conclusion that it is literary. But what is more, plenty of people don't engage RPGs in the first person. And further, lots of people allow for all kinds of anachronisms in play and dialogue. You might not like it, but I've definitely been in groups where characters did things like reference modern movies even though we were in a fantasy setting.

Also your post does just reinforce the main point I made there which is this thread is about playstyle more than anything else.

Wow. That's what you got from what I wrote?

Where did I even remotely suggest that 1st person or 3rd person is preferable? Heck, I mostly play in 3rd person personally, so, I really have no idea where you are getting this.

Are you seriously saying that "Hey that looks like the critter from Men in Black" is an in character speech? That your NPC's would "get" the joke and react to it as a joke rather than as the complete gibberish it is from their point of view?

Ok. Now, since you keep insisting on "lots of people" to support your argument, would you argue that completely anachronistic comments being taken as in character role play is commonly accepted? That your DM/GM, upon hearing you state something 100% outside of genre and the game, would automatically assume that you made these comments in character?

You have a really weird table if so.

pemerton · May 23, 2019

Bedrockgames said:
My argument is I don't want to describe things in a literary style. You are now making the argument that word choice matters in a literary style and becasuse I objected to the addition of certain words, it proves your point. You are suggesting with that post that this concern is in fact a literary consideration of sorts. I will admit, I am still trying to find the hole in this argument. But I know there is a hole because it feels like sophistry to me (since it runs completely against my point).

There's an approach to cultural studies and the study of communication which make the point that all communication involves word choice, choice of tone, etc, and hence that - when considered through that lens - there is no distinctive contrast between (say) EM Forster's novels and the instructions you give your kid when sending him/her to the shops.

That may be true as far as it goes, but it is sophistry - and a sort of equivocation of the sort you've pointed to upthread - to infer from (1) the fact that all communication is shaped by expectations and choices around tone, register, etc to (2) all communication is literary in the sense of governed by concerns about, and expected to live up to, certain standards of formal quality/excellence of wordcraft.