Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 5643344" data-attributes="member: 3887">It's this question that got me to reverse my stance on RPG play creating art. Well that and seeing some contemporary art installations built around the notion of art as play. But therein lies the rub: gamers are sitting down to play a game in which they create fictional characters, explore fictional worlds, and often perform in the manner of (awful, hammy, sub-Shatneresque) actors.  In my my (new-ish) view, RPG's are art because the activities undertaken during the course of play strongly resemble what occurs in more traditional art forms like fiction writing and theater. Because Monopoly play itself doesn't resemble any form of narrative art. There are no characters. Sure, you could write a short story about people playing Monopoly, but that's a different animal (or, I suppose, you could write a pomo piece, a la A. A. Ammons, where you anthropomorphize Monopoly piece into people, but that's something more than a description of the normal scope of play) However, when people play RPG's, they do create fictional characters, who go on and do things in a fictional setting (even if it's a rather narrow one containing mainly subterranean rooms full of monsters). You can easily write the story of what occurs in-game, but it already strongly resembles a traditional narrative. In fact, if you try to write fiction about playing an RPG, you get this double narrative, two sets of characters, one in the in-game fiction and the other without.  As an aside, there are enough artists still aping Warhol to get the job done! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />As another aside, while it ain't no Louvre, the Philadelphia Art museum ha a good collection of beautiful arms and armor, including some lovely antique firearms. I'd like to end with a something I rarely do on this board: quote EGG.Bolding mine. So during a typical game you're supposed to create a PC, name them after one of the great characters in Western literature, go off and have a rather full-sounding imaginary life, complete with conversations with made-up people and even simulations of other recreational activities (because, apparently all work and no play make Falstaff a dull PC), all in addition to the more goal-oriented activities like treasure-finding and monster-slaying, while you become a better amateur actor. How is this not, at the very least, some form of --as I believe Umbran termed it-- folk art?</blockquote>

Verification