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Is RPGing a *literary* endeavour?
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7617976" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>The thread doesn't ask <em>does, or can, RPGing have a literary aspect?</em> It asks whether it is a literary endeavour. That is: does RPGing aim at possessing the virtues and exhibitng the qualities of literature? (Note that - because in this thread it seems to need to be repeated - something can have an aim that it does not maximally achieve. For instance, when high school students write stories they often aim at possessing the virtues and exhibiting the qualities of literature, but this doesn't mean that the stories they've written are good literature or "high art".)</p><p></p><p>Suppose we ask whether <em>running for a bus</em> is a <em>sporting</em> endeavour. Clearly it shares some aspects with sport - exertion, running, sweating - but nevertheless seems to me not to be a sporting endeavour. It is not competitive, it doesn't really have a notion of <em>personal best</em> or excellence, etc. Unlike sport, it is a primiarlliy instrumental actitivy. And it has some virtues that don't look relevant to sport at all, like not colliding with other pedestrians.</p><p></p><p>Now we can set up borderline cases. Maybe somene asserts that parkour is, or can be, a sport, and that one of the virtues in parkour is not colliding with other people. And then they point to some cinematic depiction of running for a bus - I'm thining of some variant of Matthew Broderick's run home at the end of Ferris Bueller - and argue that it's really parkour. That would be interesting, and might take the conversation in a new direction, but as someone who has run for a lot of buses in his life it wouldn't change my mind that those were not sporting endeavouors!</p><p></p><p>Now RPGing is not purely or primarily instrumental - like literary endeavours it has an aesthetic purpose (at least outside of its original dungeoncrawling form). The OP asserts that that purpose, and hence the means to realise it, are different from the literary case.</p><p></p><p>In my own experience, when this occurs it's very often due to weak situation, weak framing, little or no call to action.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7617976, member: 42582"] The thread doesn't ask [i]does, or can, RPGing have a literary aspect?[/i] It asks whether it is a literary endeavour. That is: does RPGing aim at possessing the virtues and exhibitng the qualities of literature? (Note that - because in this thread it seems to need to be repeated - something can have an aim that it does not maximally achieve. For instance, when high school students write stories they often aim at possessing the virtues and exhibiting the qualities of literature, but this doesn't mean that the stories they've written are good literature or "high art".) Suppose we ask whether [i]running for a bus[/i] is a [i]sporting[/i] endeavour. Clearly it shares some aspects with sport - exertion, running, sweating - but nevertheless seems to me not to be a sporting endeavour. It is not competitive, it doesn't really have a notion of [i]personal best[/i] or excellence, etc. Unlike sport, it is a primiarlliy instrumental actitivy. And it has some virtues that don't look relevant to sport at all, like not colliding with other pedestrians. Now we can set up borderline cases. Maybe somene asserts that parkour is, or can be, a sport, and that one of the virtues in parkour is not colliding with other people. And then they point to some cinematic depiction of running for a bus - I'm thining of some variant of Matthew Broderick's run home at the end of Ferris Bueller - and argue that it's really parkour. That would be interesting, and might take the conversation in a new direction, but as someone who has run for a lot of buses in his life it wouldn't change my mind that those were not sporting endeavouors! Now RPGing is not purely or primarily instrumental - like literary endeavours it has an aesthetic purpose (at least outside of its original dungeoncrawling form). The OP asserts that that purpose, and hence the means to realise it, are different from the literary case. In my own experience, when this occurs it's very often due to weak situation, weak framing, little or no call to action. [/QUOTE]
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