Is RPGing a *literary* endeavour?

pemerton said:

@Hriston - I'm glad at least one poster found my OP clear enough!

To elaborate - and I see what I'm saying in this post as consistent with the OP, and hopefully you will also - I don't see RPGing as primarily performance (in the artistic sense). Not for the GM - of course a melifluous GM can provide entertainment, but I don't see that as core. And likewise on the player side - thespianism is (in my view) secondary, whereas engaging the fiction from the position/perspective of the character is absolutely central.

And here's one way I would make this more concrete in terms of advice: if a new(-ish) GM asked me what is the one thing to do to make his/her game better, I would recommend working on managing framing and consequences to maintain player engagement, rather than (say) working on the portrayal/characterisation of NPCs.

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Hussar said:

Considering we're 50ish pages down this rabbit hole and you have multiple posters obviously not understanding the point, including myself, I'd argue that it wasn't quite as clear as maybe you think.

As I said, if the OP had simply stated, "Is RPGing high art", then this thread would be 2 posts long. As it is, it was a total waste of time and energy because everyone kept flailing around trying to figure out just what the hell the OP actually meant.

Which, if we're going to apply this to gaming advice, could be stated as thus: "Just because you understand your own words doesn't mean that you are actually communicating what you think you are communicating. Listen to the responses you are getting and if they are not matching what you think they should be, then RESTATE YOUR PREMISE IN SUCH A WAY AS TO BE CLEAR."

Or, in other words, keep it simple, direct and apply your internal editor to cut away the cruft words like "melifluous" and whatnot and actually make your frigging point.

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Looking at his post that I quoted above now, would you say it’s unclear?

Like I said, I wasn’t entirely on board after the OP either. But when he clarified, I took notice and adjusted my responses accordingly.

I think that his point has been clearly stated and restated at different points throughout the thread, but a lot of posters (not excluding myself, either) got more hung up on the definition of “literary” and “core” than on speaking about the actual point. Which is fine, right? It’s the internet and we’re all taking part because we want to discuss this hobby we enjoy, and every discussion spawns tangents and so on.

But we all participate by choice.

Hussar said:

Nope [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. I 100% agree with you.

Any earlier disagreement was because of the misleading and vagueness of the OP. If you had simply said, Is RPGing high art?” This thread would be three posts long.

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That's not what the OP is about. REH isn't high art either, but clearly Tower of the Elephant and The Scarlet Citadel are literary endeavours.

Read the recent posts from @hakweyefan or [MENTION=8495]uzirath[/MENTION]. Those engage with the theme of the thread.

Here a quote from you from a way upthread:

Hussar said:

Frankly, I see the “performance “ side of dming as just as important as the “framing” side. One without the other leads to bad games.

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Assuming that you haven't changed your mind, then this is something that we disagree about. And it's something that, in the OP, I am denying.

Nope. Still agreeing [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. You made your point. RPGing isn’t high art. Well done you.

pemerton said:

That's not what the OP is about. REH isn't high art either, but clearly Tower of the Elephant and The Scarlet Citadel are literary endeavours.

Read the recent posts from @hakweyefan or [MENTION=8495]uzirath[/MENTION]. Those engage with the theme of the thread.

Here a quote from you from a way upthread:

Assuming that you haven't changed your mind, then this is something that we disagree about. And it's something that, in the OP, I am denying.

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ROTFLMAO.

Oh, goodie, we're right back to swirling around the rabbit hole of what does "literary" mean. Yay. See, folks, this is why this thread is 50 pages long, and you can talk about [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] being clear with what he meant all you like, but, this is about as clear as mud.

REH is "literary"? Seriously? A minor genre author who wasn't good enough to actually publish a novel and is virtually unheard of outside of genre circles is "literary"? CONAN qualifies as literature?

So, until you actually define what you mean by literary, there's no point in this discussion. [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] or [MENTION=8495]uzirath[/MENTION] only "engage with the theme of the thread" because they apparently agree with you. Granted, I have no idea what they are agreeing to, since apparently, literary encompasses everything from Dickens or Melville to pulp fiction writers, so, umm... yeah?

I'll stick to the one definition that [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION] seems to be consistently using - literary=high art stuff like Shakespeare or whatnot. Which, fair enough, if that's our definition, certainly RPGing is not a literary endeavour. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], when you can actually clearly write what you are on about in an unambiguous way that uses clear English, I'll engage with you. Until then, it's goalposts on rollerskates and I've got far too little patience to bother anymore.

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] I don’t necessarily agree with pemerton. I simply understand what he is saying.

I think RPGs can contain literary quality. They can important and meaningful...although it’s usually only so for a handful of people.

But that’s not really the point.

Let’s say a new GM came to you for advice, and said “gimme the ONE THING that I need to know about GMing a game” what would you offer?

Always narrate with a mind toward evocative language?

Always try to put the players’ characters into interesting situations where meaningful decisions are needed?

Always have pizza?

What would you tell this new GM?

pemerton said:

I only quote these to make the point - obvious I think to everyone in this thread except apparently you - that there is a usage of literary in which not all communicative acts, not all uses of words, constitute literary works. That is the usage that occurs in the OP of this thread, which asserts that the narration and description in an RPG performs its function largely independently of its literary quality.

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Not according to the definition you just quoted. It says, "Concerning the writing, study, or content of literature, especially of the kind valued for quality of form." That definition makes ALL literature the set of what is literary. What it does do, is create a subset of literature that is more highly valued, but does not exclude any literature. The OED definition of literature is, "Written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit." So again, all written works, from my wife's grocery list to Shakespeare, are literature, and all literature is literary. You can be among those who prefer the higher quality literature, but there isn't a usage of definition #1 which excludes the grocery list.

hawkeyefan said:

So you consider everything written or spoken to be literature, but here you indicate concern about the quality of the description given by the GM.

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Concern in that I assume the DM doesn't want to give boring descriptions and drive away his players. I don't actually sit and think about using this word over that one, but neither do I say, "You see a room." and leave it at that.

If so, do you assume that if major focus is not given to this element, then the game will be bland and unenjoyable? Does literary quality have to be the primary focus in order for a game to be playable to you?

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I've already answered that. It's not a major focus, but it can't be non-existent, either. Giving better descriptions than, "You see a room." is the standard of game play. At least in every RPG I've ever played in. Not everyone was equal in their ability to describe things, but they all made the attempt to at least tell the players what the PCs are looking at.

If it is, would you then assume that the content of your game would by default be bland and banal since it is not the primary focus?

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No, because it's not a dichotomy. It's not a matter of boring or primary focus.

You seem to imply that only that which is the primary focus of the game will be of worthwhile quality. Is that truly your contention?

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I haven't implied that.

Aldarc said:

The question seems beside the point of whether we should equate these things.

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You didn't answer his question.

A literary endeavour is one which aims at having the virtues of literature. An artistic endeavour is one which aims at having the virtues of art. An intellectual endeavour is one which aims to contribute to knowledge. Etc. One can interrogate each of these in more detail, obviously, but the basic notion is pretty clear.

REH in writing the Conan stories is engaged in a literary endeavour. He's trying to produce good writing.

Is that what RPGing is concerned with? My claim is no. [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s is - as best I can tell - yes, that part of what makes for success in RPGing is good wordcraft and deft performance. That's what we're disagreeing about. Not about whether REH succeeded in creating literature by some standard whereby Shakespeare is clearly in and (say) The Hardy Boys are clearly out.

Some posters point to desiderata like the GM has to be clear. Sure - so do instruction manuals. But clearly those are not literary endeavours - they don't aspire to have the qualities of literature, that's not the aspect of human creative affairs that they belong to.

Some point to desiderata like the GM has to evoke emotion. Sure - but so does conversation. And conversation doesn't aim at creating literary works. Or in other words, there are other pathways from communication to emotion than literary skill.

Some point to inherent features like it involves authorship of a shared fiction. Sure - but so do children's playground games. And those clearly aren't literary endeavours.

Here's a parallel discussion, imagined as taking place a century or so ago: is painting, as an art form, fundamentally representational? As I understand it, Schopenhauer 's answer was "yes". He thought that music was the only non-representational art form. On the other hand, many proponents of 20th century avant garde art presumably will argue that the answer is "no", and that painting can be non-representational.

It would be mostly orthogonal to that particular discussion to debate whether or not a 5 year old's stick figure sketch counts as art. That's not where the real action is.

So likewise in this thread. Debating what the boundaries of literature are, and whether the boxed text in X2 or the monster descriptions in the 5e Monster Manual count as literature, is fun enough but doesn't really get to the point.

Whereas discussing whether the functions of a GM include putting on an entertaining performance is dead on topic. Likewise discussing whether the players' emotional engagement is better thought of as a response to an appealing presentation - ie externally generated - or as a result of imagination, projection and "self-deception" - ie internally generated.

I appreciate that different posters answer these questions differently. That's the point of having a thread about it! The fact that some of us disagree doesn't necessarily mean that there's confusion or abuse of language. It's OK to have different opinions about what's at the heart of an aesthetically-oriented activity.

Maxperson said:

You didn't answer his question.

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Yes, because the question was beside the point.