Is D&D Art?

[Dannyalcatraz]

That was not the question that was asked, and to me it's a decidedly different question. Mechanics to me are not art, but the fiction is. I want to say that Golarion is art, but perhaps that's too nebulous to be art. The books describing Golarion are art to me, just like the novels set in that world.

The fiction as in the fluff? Sure, one could consider some of it akin to short stories.

The fiction as in the playing of the game? Not to me, not absent the intent to create art, which is above and beyond the mere intent to play the game.

Which is why I find it so puzzling that Dannyalcatraz can insist that art is undefinable and that D&D definitely isn't art.

Look, I've provided a Wiki link with a serviceable definition that will probably do a good job of resolving most "Is it art?" questions. Read it or don't, but I'm saying that for all the delineation it provides, their definition will still be insufficient. It breaks down at its edges.

If it helps, think of it- and pretty much any definition of art you can find on the web- as the "Newtonian" understanding of art, and we're not yet to the point of uncovering the "Quantum" theory of art, and unknowably distant from finding art's "Grand Unified Theory."

However, one thing that pops up repeatedly in definitions of art is the concept that it requires intent. Another thing that pops up repeatedly is that art is inherently subjective. If you polled the world, you'd find someone out there who didn't think the works of Warhol, Duchamp, Mapplethorpe, Pollock or any other artist you can name qualified as art.

The intent to play a game of pretend- of which D&D is a codified version- is not the same as the intent to create art. If both exist contemporaneously, however, you can create art by playing D&D.

Or, to put it differently: the conscious intent to play a game- even one of cooperative fiction- is not generally recognized as intrinsically artistic, but under the right circumstances (IOW, in conjunction with the intent to make an artistic statement), D&D is a perfectly fine artistic medium.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Then I don't think you can logically declare something to fall outside your undefinable concept.

Sure I can. I use the working definitions drafted by others whose field is the study of art. Or are you insisting that a human being cannot use definitions drafted by others, but must use their own creations?

What "forms" constitute such concious thoughts that don't involve me using the actual word "art"?

Read a working definition, such as is found in the wiki link or a book on art history.

How do I determine if a given activity is "intrinsically artistic"?

Read a working definition, such as is found in the wiki link or a book on art history.

So, must an activity be universally recognized as an artform to be considered art?

Nope, which is one reason I said that all of the working definitions fail at the edges. The other reason is that- as has been pointed out- it is possible under many working definitions of art to include nearly everything humans do.

When Duchamp offered up his Urinal (a.k.a. Fountain) in 1917, it created a shockwave in the art world. The overwhelming consensus of the day was, "Surely, this cannot be art!"

As time has passed, more and more have accepted this work not only as art, but as one of the great foundational pieces of an art form. And still, many if not most people, would not consider it art all these decades later.

Read the wiki link. The discussion of the subjectivity of art may help you with this issue.

If you think something is art, then to you, it is art. To me, though, the playing of D&D fails to clear at least one crucial hurdle: the specific intent to create a work of art.

 

[Odhanan]

That was not the question that was asked, and to me it's a decidedly different question.

I was answering the title of the thread, i.e. "is D&D art?" which can mean "is D&D, the published game book(s), art?" or "is D&D, the process of play itself using the books as tools, art?" My post addresses both questions.

If you are talking about the question appearing on the poll itself, "When you play D&D, are you creating art?" Then it is a completely different question. I had not noticed the question of the poll was very different. When I play D&D, I am playing a game, first and foremost, but some of its components, and some of my feelings towards it, can have me feeling like it is art, or have others look upon the game as a work of art.

Is there meaning to it reflected by certain aesthetics? Is there meaning to it for the people who enjoy/consume/look upon the process of play? Do I think of this process as an artistic endeavor itself? Does it involve techniques and skill I learn to master to better express myself? Is there a soul to this at all?

These are the kind of questions that I would ask. This will tell you whether D&D is art or not, for yourself and the people you play with. To me, yes, it's a form of entertainment that I approach as an art, more often than not, but it's my personal perspective. It's not something I would claim D&D "ought to be."

 

[Ahnehnois]

Can't vote. It's not a yes/no thing. Asking whether a manual to play a role playing game is art is like asking if the toolkit to build a chair is art.
...
So for some people D&D will be a work of art, and for others it'll never be.
...

I was answering the title of the thread, i.e. "is D&D art?" which can mean "is D&D, the published game book(s), art?" or "is D&D, the process of play itself using the books as tools, art?" My post addresses both questions.

On one hand, I agree with your point (as stated when I talked about rpgs as an artistic medium upthread. On the other hand, that's not the question I asked. The poll question specifies the playing of the game itself, not the rulebooks, and it specifies your game and your style. I'm defining D&D as the actual gameplay, not the source material or prep work (see below).

Obviously, D&D as played is art for some people and not for others, as evidenced by the roughly 60/40 split against in the poll. I'm asking which category you would put your own experience with D&D into (which I see was answered in the latter post).

Of course, yes/no is still oversimplifying the issue, but it makes for a better poll, and that's why there's a discussion thread attached.

These are the kind of questions that I would ask. This will tell you whether D&D is art or not, for yourself and the people you play with. To me, yes, it's a form of entertainment that I approach as an art, more often than not, but it's my personal perspective. It's not something I would claim D&D "ought to be."

I don't think anyone in this thread has really advocated the position that anyone else's D&D game "should" be held to particular artistic standards. So let me just say that if you (anyone) play D&D in a way that you don't think is artistic (or you define art in such a way that the notion of playing D&D is completely incompatible with it) that's fine. Enjoy your game.

On a side note though about making maps. And designing adventures in general. Is that playing D&D though? If I paint a mini, am I playing D&D? A painted mini certainly can be a work of art, I think most people would agree. But, is painting minis part of playing the game of D&D? In the same way, is drawing a map part of playing the game? Where does "playing the game" stop? Does it mean that the DM is an artist but the players generally aren't since they aren't typically creating but rather reacting?

I would not include preparation as "playing D&D". I think you are playing D&D when you have a group of people in a room and you are describing the actions of your characters and rolling dice. Obviously, D&D preparation may involve the creation of artistic works (character illustations, backstories, DM's maps, etc.), but that's kind of a separate issue.

You can play D&D with little or no preparatory work, so I don't think it's inherently part of D&D.

 

[Odhanan]

Mechanics to me are not art, but the fiction is. I want to say that Golarion is art, but perhaps that's too nebulous to be art. The books describing Golarion are art to me, just like the novels set in that world.

Role playing games to me are not novels. They're not movies. They're not comics. They're not MMOs. They're not "something else" to be judged by "something else's" standards.

Can a rule be art? That's an interesting question. I would say "yes", because a rule represents something in the context of what the game tries to emulate through its system. The corpus of rules, therefore, may represent something that may carry a message, a value, a point of view that is shared through the way the system itself is built. Therefore, it can carry emotions, sensibilities, POVs, etc etc that can be reacted to, and further than this, used by the end users of the game, in a way that helps them express their own imaginations, their own POVs, their own aesthetics of the make-believe they want to play in. So they can be considered art, though not automatically, from the viewer's point of view, like the designer's.

The question of whether the written rules book is art or not to me takes into consideration the whole of the work: what process of play it wants to convey, what aesthetics (world, setting, organization of the make believe etc) it uses to further that goal, how all the components combine to create a defined whole with its perceived usefulness and value from the viewer/user's standpoint, like the maker's.

It's actually really interesting, because role playing games have something that novels, comics, movies etc. don't have. That it is the user who, in the end, becomes the maker. So from an artistic point of view it's a very interesting medium in which basically you can deliver a painting that each individual viewer can pick up to then create his or her own painting from there. It's really cool.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Extra Long Post

Or, to put it differently: the conscious intent to play a game- even one of cooperative fiction- is not generally recognized as intrinsically artistic, but under the right circumstances (IOW, in conjunction with the intent to make an artistic statement), D&D is a perfectly fine artistic medium.

So many posts in this thread have been devoted to defining art, I think it's time to look at defining D&D.

I'd like to posit two scenarios:

#1: A group of people who have never met before walk into a room at a gaming convention. The DM hands the players a set of pregenerated character sheets, and after a few introductions, they begin playing D&D. The DM takes the players through a preselected published adventure that is based on a simple, fairly linear dungeon. The players fight several battles against miscellaneous monsters, occasionally stopping for simple dialogue relevant to their quest, or for random chatter and snacks. At the end of the four-hour session, the players fight a BBEG, kill it, and high-five each other. They thank the DM for a good time and move on to shopping and seminars.

#2: A group of people who've known each other for years convene at one of the players' home. The DM asks to see their character sheets, checks them for accuracy and comments on their choices, and returns them. He begins desceibing a scenario for one player, and gradually introduces the other two, intercutting between them as appropriate. The players meander through a complex set of dialogue scenes establoshing their characters' personal lives, punctuated by a small battle for one of the PCs, used as a plot device to introduce an NPC. The DM layers allusions to his favorite fictional works throughout the session, and begins foreshadowing the skeleton of the epic plot he has constructed to appeal to the tastes of his friends and obliquely reflect details of their real lives. At the climax, the DM creates a seemingly unwinnable situation, deftly adding new challenges at the exact moments the players seem least ready to hear them. When the session ends, the intercutting stops and the players' characters are almost in contact, and the DM concludes the night by describing a mystic omen. Four hours have passed, and the players say their goodbyes while the DM returns home to begin narrativizing the session before he prepares for next week.

***

I'd say example #2 is pretty definitely a form of dramatic art, and example #1 probably isn't by most people's definitions. Which group is playing D&D? Obviously they both are, but their experiences are very different. In some sense, the poll question is asking whether your individual game has more in common with the first example or the second (obviously these two examples don't describe everyone's experiences with D&D-that's beyond what I can do).

Hopefully, I haven't reaching artistic levels of pretentiousness in attempting to generically describe the first session of my last campaign in example #2.

When I think of playing D&D, I think of playing with people you know, and creating a game that is inspired by their personalities and your interactions with them, while including enough different elements to avoid allegory (see Tolkien's comments on allegory). I think of both a DM and players making decisions during the game to elicit particular emotional reactions from the other participants. I think of the result as being something like the first draft of a collaboratively created novel.

*To me*, this is the normal baseline, and anything less intimate or less dramatic is a lost opportunity. I make choices to intercut between characters the same way an editors cuts film. I make references to books, movies, and fairytales, as so many artists reference each other. I design a campaign with a conclusion in mind, and I use that conclusion to say something about life.

Example #1 is something I've never experienced, but is my attempt to describe experiences of D&D that others on the boards have posted about. A dungeon crawl. To me, that type of game is completely foreign, and it's not at all what I think of when I think of D&D. Others, however, might see my example as equally foreign.

There isn't really a question here; I'm just trying to articulate points of view of the "yes" and "no" responders to this poll in the hopes that each can see where the other is coming from. Playing D&D means different things to different people. If anyone would like to supplement (or criticize) my examples, feel free.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

#2 sounds like some of the better games in which I was a participants. Heck, it sounds a LOT like the best campaign I ever ran.

But if, like me and my players, the players in #2 had just decided to sit down and play D&D without the conscious intent to create art, I'd be inclined to stand by my statement & vote: not art. It is a volitional act.

Before someone raises the "circular definition" assertion again, regard this statement: I also believe it is impossible to play NFL Football without consciously and intentionally deciding to play NFL football.

Now just substitute "create art" for "play NFL Football."

Notice: I'm not putting forth a definition (of "art" or "NFL Football"; that exists elsewhere, outside of my statement, formulated by those whose job it is to do so. I'm looking at one small aspect of the definition- one of its conditions- and evaluating whether it is present.

 

[Ahnehnois]

But if, like me and my players, the players in #2 had just decided to sit down and play D&D without the conscious intent to create art, I'd be inclined to stand by my statement & vote: not art. It is a volitional act.

If you had asked me what the goal of playing D&D was when I first started as a kid, I would have said "telling stories". At no point until fairly recently would I have used the word "art" on answered yes to this poll. However, I would say that a fictional story is a work of art, so I would say the artistic intent is present. I think storytelling around the campfire is art (conscious intent included), and I think certain D&D games are just a variant thereof, sans fire (unless someone gets mad at their books).

The point I'm making is that you've stated that D&D could be used to create art but that a vanishingly small number of people actually do it. I think that the number of people with conscious artistic intent, while not an overwhelming majority, is not insignificant either (as evidenced by this nonscientific poll). That's all, really.

 

[wrecan]

Sure I can. I use the working definitions drafted by others whose field is the study of art. Or are you insisting that a human being cannot use definitions drafted by others, but must use their own creations?

No, I'm insisting that a person who uses such definitions should be able to explain why he is using them in a specific way. What, exactly, must be intended to form an intent to create art? You never explain this. You simply pronounce that the intent needed to play D&D is not the intent to create art. When pushed you retreat behind other people's defintiions, which don't discuss whether D&D should or should not be included.

Read a working definition, such as is found in the wiki link or a book on art history.

Okay...
Here are some definitions from the wiki article you linked:
"Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items (often with symbolic significance) in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect."

D&D is a process of deliberately arranging items of symbolic significance in a wa that influences the players' senses, emotions, and intellect. Under this definition, D&D is art.

"Leo Tolstoy identified art as a use of indirect means to communicate from one person to another"
Under this definition, D&D -- a game of shared storytelling -- is certainly art.

"Benedetto Croce and R.G. Collingwood advanced the idealist view that art expresses emotions"
Under this definition, D&D is art.

"Britannica Online defines art as 'the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others.'"
Under this definition, D&D is art.

Under all the definitions provided in the wiki article to which you linked, D&D qualifies as art. The only definition under which it does not qualify is the one you've provided, which relies on the "intent to create art", a requirement that is not found in the Wiki article at all.

If we go to the wiki on Theories of art classification, we see four theories:
Undefinable: Art cannot be defined, so anything can be art. It's just subjective. You don't appear to adhere to this view, as you categorically deny D&D is art.

Institutional: Anything that the "art world" accepts as art is art. Under this definition, D&D is not art, but there's nothing preventing it from eventually being recognized as art. (Under this definition, I don't know that improvisational theater is considered art either.)

Functionalist: Any creative activity that emotionally affects the audience is art. (This is closest to the definition I use.) D&D is certainly art under this definition.

Proceduralist: The intent of the putative artist determines whether something is art. This appears to the the definition you use. However, if it is, you're not using it in the way that other proceduralists use it. Thomas Dewey, who first coined this definition, required only that the artist be aesthetically satisfied with the activity. So if a man writes words thinking it to be poetic, then it is art, even if the same man could write those same words simply as notes to remind him of stuff he needs to do today. In the former, the words are emotionally resonant with him -- it is poetry, and thus art. In the latter, they are clinical and solely practical. there is no emotional connection with the creator, and thus, not art.

Even under the proceduralist definition, then, D&D is art as long as the creators (DM and players) are emotionally engaged in the process.

I can't find any basis in any of the wiki articles on art for your definition (or the definition you claim to have borrowed from others), which requires the "artist" to intend his creation "to be art". The closest I can get is this paragraph:

The second, more narrow, more recent sense of the word “art” is roughly as an abbreviation for creative art or “fine art.” Here we mean that skill is being used to express the artist’s creativity, or to engage the audience’s aesthetic sensibilities. Often, if the skill is being used in a lowbrow or practical way, people will consider it as craft rather than art. Likewise, if the skill is being used in a commercial or industrial way, it will be considered design instead of art. On the other hand, crafts and design are sometimes considered applied art. Some thinkers have argued that the difference between fine art and applied art has more to do with value judgments made about the art than any clear definitional difference (Novitz, 1992).

However, even under this definition, D&D is a creative art. It does express the DM and players' creativity and engages their aesthetic sensibilities. It's not practical (though it might be "lowbrow). It's neither commercial nor industrial. It's not an applied art. So, at worst, it is a "craft" (also known as "folk art" or "arts and crafts"), but it just as easily fits in the category of creative art.

Read a working definition, such as is found in the wiki link or a book on art history.

I have. I remember all these debates from my own art history classes in college. And I still do not see where you get the notion that either 1) an intent to create art is a necessary component of art, and 2) the intent to create art cannot include the intent to play D&D.

The discussion of the subjectivity of art may help you with this issue.

No, you need to read the link, as your insistence that D&D is not art closely resembles the arguments of those who insisted that Duchamp's Fountain could not be art.

 

[nedjer]

There's a bit of a problem with the whole intent thing. We process our decisions well before we are consciously aware of making them, i.e. our conscious experience is pretty much a video replay of what's already done. Yeah, it takes a minute to wrap your head around it, but a dude called Libet and many other since have it down.

So all art is created subconsciously. How subconscious intent forms is, perhaps, comparable to a snowball (yeah everything's comparable to a snowball in this thread - got them on my mind after getting childishly over-excited at including shakeable snowdomes as magic items in new game), So snowball ideas and concepts cluster and firm-up under some conditions; and melt away or snap-off under other conditions.

So an artist has to have a basis for their production or performance that's consistent with a frosty day, a steep slope, motion, and cluster favourable snow. This is tricky given the whole 'in Canada they've twenty types of snow' aspect. But gets a tad more problematic when allowing for a metaphorical child walking up, picking up the snowball and hurling it as a projectile . . .