Paul Czege on the wild energy of the itch.io ttrpg scene, or, "My Life With Itch"

[pemerton]

I also found this on the twitter thread linked by the OP:

An important thread on Twitter.

22/ Is it clear what I mean by incitement? Games that are products in the way gamers are used to are fun ways to use your energy. The best small games, if you know how to use them, create energy. Incitement is a game creating energy.

I think that's pretty consistent with what I posted upthread - the arousal to action comes from within, a sort of self-actualisation.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Well, in Czege's conception, I think it would depend upon the RPG in question.

Like someone might see poetry as, or as aspiring to, incitement in much the same sense but different poems and different poets would incite to different sorts of things.

I also think we would need to consider that Czege almost certainly regards action as encompassing the exercise and manifestation of creativity. I don't think he's working with a classical empiricist conception of the mind as all ideas and impressions! He's closer to an idealist/romantic conception of creativity as expressing and constituting the self.

I had asked you what you thought, as I would never expect you to imagine what someone else might think.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I also found this on the twitter thread linked by the OP:


22/ Is it clear what I mean by incitement? Games that are products in the way gamers are used to are fun ways to use your energy. The best small games, if you know how to use them, create energy. Incitement is a game creating energy.

I think that's pretty consistent with what I posted upthread - the arousal to action comes from within, a sort of self-actualisation.

Rouse and arousal are different things. Also, if the rousing to action comes from within, hiw does that work with the games being a call to action?

Incitement is a bad choice, here. Especially given the connotation of the word.

 

[pemerton]

What can I say? It caused me no confusion at all. If someone described a poem or an essay or a piece of music or whatever as an incitement, I would know what they meant. Czege is using the word in the same sort of way. It seems a fairly standard piece of terminology for a certain sort of anti- or at least non-rationalist criticism.

 

[Morrus]

The OED gives two definitions:

1. The action of inciting or rousing to action; an urging, spurring, or setting on; instigation, stimulation.

2. That which incites or rouses to action; an inciting cause or motive; stimulus, incentive, ‘spur’.

So RPGs have always been incitement = RPGs have always been spurs to action.

The designers of small games on itchio are yearning and striving to spark your incitement = those designers are yearning and striving to spark within you an arousal to action.

I think Czege's view is that a genuine arousal to action, that comes from within the aroused person, must be sincere and flow from the self even though another has sparked it. Self-doubt will hinder that flow. That's what believing in yourself means in this context.

You can see this also in his comment on The Mermaid Spell that I posted just upthread.

I’ve no idea what that means, either. Could you translate for an idiot who doesn’t speak art?

 

[pemerton]

I’ve no idea what that means, either. Could you translate for an idiot who doesn’t speak art?

Taking you at your word (if you're taking the p*ss I'm sorryfor being po-faced, but I didn't pick it up . . .):

Elevator music is meant to make you feel calm and undisturbed. It's meant to be familiar, and to evoke the familiar. Now think of some music that's the opposite of that (say, Stravinsky's Firebird, or to use a more rock/pop example say Pink Floyd's Saucerful of Secrets) - that would count as an incitement in the musical context. It's meant to provoke a response from you that (i) you wouldn't expect or anticipate, but that (ii) comes from in you - the music is the prompt to a response but not the response itself.

The same contrast in visual art might be a "chocolate box" illustration compared to The Raft of the Medusa.

(Of course over time things that were once incitements become assimilated and part of the familiar. Eg most of the impressionists' work. Much of Wagner. I hope my examples are sufficiently non-assimilated to do their work!)

Czege is saying that these RPGs are incitements like that. They won't make you feel comfortable or safe in any straightforward sense. They'll make you have to confront yourself - what do I like? what do I think about this? what do I want out of this? - and to get them to work - that is, to play them - you'll have to answer those questions and engage with the games by bringing your creative self to bear in ways you didn't expect. It's the stuff in the previous sentence that is the believing in yourself, and that Czege is contrasting with (what he sees as) typical RPGer consumption.

I don't know how well you know Czege's RPGs. I've never payed My Life With Master, but know it by reputation. I've read Nicotine Girls and been influenced by it although I can't imagine playing it. And I've read The World, the Flesh and the Devil but again have not played it. These games are all attempts to break away from "mainstream" or "traditional" RPGing - for instance, My Life With Master and Nicotine Girls are distinctive for having a thematic/story trajectory built into them.

So it's not surprising to me to see him enthusing about these RPGs, nor to see him doing it in the way that he is. I think he's pretty self-consciously in the avant-garde of RPGing, in the full sense of that term: ie not just at the forefront in terms of technical design, but at the forefront also in terms of the cultural experience and cultural values that RPGing can be associated with.

 

[Morrus]

Taking you at your word (if you're taking the p*ss I'm sorryfor being po-faced, but I didn't pick it up . . .):

Not at all. The entire post was just word salad to me! I reread it a bunch of times. I guess I'm not the target audience.

I don't know how well you know Czege's RPGs.

First I've heard of them!

 

[Umbran]

I’ve no idea what that means, either. Could you translate for an idiot who doesn’t speak art?

I dunno if it is about speaking art. It looks more about... being a bit pretentious. I mean, "the future paradigms of RPGs are being discovered on itchio" is a pretty lofty, self-important statement.

 

[pemerton]

I dunno if it is about speaking art. It looks more about... being a bit pretentious. I mean, "the future paradigms of RPGs are being discovered on itchio" is a pretty lofty, self-important statement.

It might be true, it might be false - but since when has it become illegitimate or improper for an important creative figure in a field to exprss an opinion about where the future of that field is to be found?

 

[dragoner]

I‘m struggling to understand what that means.

Me and English half the time.