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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5640907" data-attributes="member: 42582">In my view this presupposes a contentious view of what the mechanical elements are, and what they are for.For elaboration, see the 900+ posts on the currently active "Dissociated mechanics" thread!I don't think the cliche issue is that relevant. Most TV dramas, for example, depend heavily on cliche and stereotype to make their plots work within the rather tight production constraints by which they're governed (mass audience, limited timeframe, people are watching around ads and while doing other things like cooking, eating etc). But they're still art (in the relevant sense).I think the question of conscious focus is relevant. But complicated. Part of the point of narrativistly-oriented mechanics is that, if the GM uses them properly at the stage of sceneframing, and if the players have built their PCs correctly in accordance with them, then application of the action resolution rules at the stage of scene resolution will produce satisfying drama, provided that the players are prepared to play their PCs to the hilt. (See <a href="http://isabout.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/the-pitfalls-of-narrative-technique-in-rpg-play/" target="_blank">this blog</a> for elaboration.)So narrativist RPGs are designed so that, by playing the game of advocating their PCs rather than consciously thinking about aesthetic priorities, the players produce art (or, at least, story). If aesthetic consciousness was a prerequisite for successful creation of art, then narrativist RPG design would be incoherent by definition. I'm prepared to treat this as a reductio on the requirement of concsious aesthetic priorities.(An unflattering comparison - to do colour-by-numbers, a child doesn't have to have conscius aesthetic priorities. That's part of the point. But what is produced is still (low-grade) art.)I don't play in a fully No Myth fashion, but for me this sort of GM worldbuilding is the least interesting respect in which D&D might be art. In part, because it's not anything particularly special about RPGing - it's something like planning for, or rough drafting, a novel.This doesn't really fit with my conception of "D&D as art either" - because this seems to me to not really be "playing D&D as art" but rather "retelling the playing of D&D as art".This is closer to why I voted yes - its the play itself that is the art - although personally for my group it's not the theatrical dimension (we're not actors, even amateur ones) but the narrative dimension that is engaging (for the participants, at least).I like my D&D art to be created by all the participants in the course of play. I think that the play of RPGs, as art, has only the participants as its audience. It's not (or typically not) "performance art" analogous to theatrics or even a happening. It's closer, in my view, to spontaneous (although structured) creative writing, with the participant authors also the sole audience.Agreed with all this.I don't create for anyone else but my fellow participants in the game. But I don't think this is an obstacle to it being art (private drawings, or singing or playing an instrument for one's own amusement, is still art - the pleasure is pleasure in the creation of something with aesthetic value).I think the fact that it's the participants who are the audience goes a long way to ameliorating the awfulness of RPG art. For many of us at least, even our mediocre creations are fun and inspiring for us, although they would have no worth for anyone else. (Even people who can't sing a note can get a lot of pleasure from bellowing out a tune!)</blockquote>

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