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General Tabletop Discussion
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Is RPGing a *literary* endeavour?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7609898" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>A literary endeavour is one which aims at having the virtues of literature. An artistic endeavour is one which aims at having the virtues of art. An intellectual endeavour is one which aims to contribute to knowledge. Etc. One can interrogate each of these in more detail, obviously, but the basic notion is pretty clear.</p><p></p><p>REH in writing the Conan stories is engaged in a literary endeavour. He's trying to produce good writing.</p><p></p><p>Is that what RPGing is concerned with? My claim is <em>no</em>. [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s is - as best I can tell - <em>yes</em>, that part of what makes for success in RPGing is good wordcraft and deft performance. That's what we're disagreeing about. Not about whether REH succeeded in creating literature by some standard whereby Shakespeare is clearly in and (say) The Hardy Boys are clearly out.</p><p></p><p>Some posters point to desiderata like <em>the GM has to be clear</em>. Sure - so do instruction manuals. But clearly those are not literary endeavours - they don't aspire to have the qualities of literature, that's not the aspect of human creative affairs that they belong to.</p><p></p><p>Some point to desiderata like <em>the GM has to evoke emotion</em>. Sure - but so does conversation. And conversation doesn't aim at creating literary works. Or in other words, there are other pathways from <em>communication</em> to <em>emotion</em> than literary skill.</p><p></p><p>Some point to inherent features like <em>it involves authorship of a shared fiction</em>. Sure - but so do children's playground games. And those clearly aren't literary endeavours.</p><p></p><p>Here's a parallel discussion, imagined as taking place a century or so ago: <em>is painting, as an art form, fundamentally representational?</em> As I understand it, Schopenhauer 's answer was "yes". He thought that <em>music</em> was the only non-representational art form. On the other hand, many proponents of 20th century avant garde art presumably will argue that the answer is "no", and that painting can be non-representational.</p><p></p><p>It would be mostly orthogonal to that particular discussion to debate whether or not a 5 year old's stick figure sketch counts as art. That's not where the real action is.</p><p></p><p>So likewise in this thread. Debating what the boundaries of literature are, and whether the boxed text in X2 or the monster descriptions in the 5e Monster Manual count as literature, is fun enough but doesn't really get to the point.</p><p></p><p>Whereas discussing whether the functions of a GM include <em>putting on an entertaining performance</em> is dead on topic. Likewise discussing whether the players' emotional engagement is better thought of as <em>a response to an appealing presentation</em> - ie externally generated - or as <em>a result of imagination, projection and "self-deception"</em> - ie internally generated.</p><p></p><p>I appreciate that different posters answer these questions differently. That's the point of having a thread about it! The fact that some of us disagree doesn't necessarily mean that there's confusion or abuse of language. It's OK to have different opinions about what's at the heart of an aesthetically-oriented activity.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7609898, member: 42582"] A literary endeavour is one which aims at having the virtues of literature. An artistic endeavour is one which aims at having the virtues of art. An intellectual endeavour is one which aims to contribute to knowledge. Etc. One can interrogate each of these in more detail, obviously, but the basic notion is pretty clear. REH in writing the Conan stories is engaged in a literary endeavour. He's trying to produce good writing. Is that what RPGing is concerned with? My claim is [I]no[/I]. [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s is - as best I can tell - [I]yes[/I], that part of what makes for success in RPGing is good wordcraft and deft performance. That's what we're disagreeing about. Not about whether REH succeeded in creating literature by some standard whereby Shakespeare is clearly in and (say) The Hardy Boys are clearly out. Some posters point to desiderata like [I]the GM has to be clear[/I]. Sure - so do instruction manuals. But clearly those are not literary endeavours - they don't aspire to have the qualities of literature, that's not the aspect of human creative affairs that they belong to. Some point to desiderata like [I]the GM has to evoke emotion[/I]. Sure - but so does conversation. And conversation doesn't aim at creating literary works. Or in other words, there are other pathways from [I]communication[/I] to [I]emotion[/I] than literary skill. Some point to inherent features like [I]it involves authorship of a shared fiction[/I]. Sure - but so do children's playground games. And those clearly aren't literary endeavours. Here's a parallel discussion, imagined as taking place a century or so ago: [i]is painting, as an art form, fundamentally representational?[/i] As I understand it, Schopenhauer 's answer was "yes". He thought that [i]music[/i] was the only non-representational art form. On the other hand, many proponents of 20th century avant garde art presumably will argue that the answer is "no", and that painting can be non-representational. It would be mostly orthogonal to that particular discussion to debate whether or not a 5 year old's stick figure sketch counts as art. That's not where the real action is. So likewise in this thread. Debating what the boundaries of literature are, and whether the boxed text in X2 or the monster descriptions in the 5e Monster Manual count as literature, is fun enough but doesn't really get to the point. Whereas discussing whether the functions of a GM include [i]putting on an entertaining performance[/i] is dead on topic. Likewise discussing whether the players' emotional engagement is better thought of as [i]a response to an appealing presentation[/i] - ie externally generated - or as [i]a result of imagination, projection and "self-deception"[/i] - ie internally generated. I appreciate that different posters answer these questions differently. That's the point of having a thread about it! The fact that some of us disagree doesn't necessarily mean that there's confusion or abuse of language. It's OK to have different opinions about what's at the heart of an aesthetically-oriented activity. [/QUOTE]
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