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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wrecan" data-source="post: 5641488" data-attributes="member: 64825">I think roleplaying game absolutely involve a conscious effort to create art.  While the primary effort is to have fun, a secondary effort of any roleplaying is to entertain the other members at the table.  You play a character to get a positive reaction from the other players and the DM.  You are trying to evoke an emotional response, whether it's kudos on a clever solution to an obstacle, laughs from a particularly funny antic, or even expressions of sympathy when something tragic occurs.The DM, particularly, is attempting to evoke an emotional response from the players because that's how a DM involves players in the story.  The players are being induced to feel concern for their own characters or the NPCs, fear of what may happen next, surprise when it happens, tension as the conflict is resolved, and release when it is over.  These are the classic elements of art according to Aristotle, and I think it applies to D&D and any other role-playing game.Art does not need to endure.  I don't think anybody thinks that drama is not an artform.  Yet, I have no remnant of a show after the curtain closes.Art does not need an audience outside the artists.  Improvisational theater often involves a type of theater in which everybody attending the performance participates in the performance.  It is art.Art does not need to be exclusively about making art.  Artists are artists even if they are primarily interested in making money.  (We call such people "commercial artists" or "professionals".)  So the fact that the primary goal of RPGs is gaming does not render it ineligible to be art.Role-Playing is an artform, a subset of drama.  Games are not.  But a role-playing game is both drama and game.  Like theater games, it is an artform, and, likewise, produces art.  Art of questionable quality to be sure, but art nonetheless.</blockquote>

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