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Judgement calls vs "railroading"
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7091304" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Suppose you learn that the cake was made by your partner. Or your child. For some people that <em>does</em> change the experience. It overlays it with a different significance.</p><p></p><p>That's why I have pictures on my office door that have little aesthetic value in themselves, but were drawn by my children.</p><p></p><p>The origin of things - particularly if that origin has some very intimate connection to oneself - is not always irrelevant to the experience of them. But it doesn't even have to be intimate: part of what I find so dramatic about the train-derailment scene in Lawrence of Arabia is that it was filmed by <em>derailing a train[/io] (and they only had one go at it, and so had to get it right the first time). The same scene in CGI wouldn't have the same force.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>(One of the great literary treatments of this sort of thing is Brave New World. The famous philosophical example is Nozick's "pleasure machine". They both raise the same issue: is the origin of pleasure really irrelevant to its significance as a human experience?)</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>This is flat-out wrong, and I'm actually becoming a little frustrated that it keeps recurring in this (and other) threads.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Sometimes I sit down and listen to a CD. Sometimes I sit down and get out my guitar and play a song. My reasons for doing the second aren't that I don't trust my CDs or my sound system. It's because I want something different.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em><em>Because</em> I want to have the experience of discovering a story, a gameworld, a fiction, and <em>because</em> I want the dramatic and thematic potential to be there at every moment of play, and <em>because</em> I know the people I play with are up for this, <em>therefore</em> I run a game which is not driven by GM pre-authorship and pre-conception (of setting, of events, of alliances between characters, of choices that players will make for their PCs).</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>The only role that trust plays in the above is that it is present; not that it is absent.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>As I've already posted in this thread (I think), the reason I was able to recruit players to my game, back in university days, is that they were looking for an alternative to GM-driven, follow-the-breadcrumbs-to-find-the-plot RPGing. Only one member of my group started RPGing in our group, and he took it for granted from the outset that, as a player, he would be contributing (via backstory, via action declarations and their resolution) to the creation of the fiction and (thereby) the story.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>Trust has nothing to do with it. It's about aspirations for the experience of RPGing.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>As I said in my post upthread, and in response to which [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] replied "that is very much the sort of distinction I am trying to make", the contrast is between a "curated" experience and what might (by way of contrast) be called a "spontaneous" or "unprepared" experience - an experience unmediated by curation.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>What are the benefits of curation? The experience is ordered. The curator structures it in such a way as to try to ensure that the experience will have a certain, intended, character. Perhaps something becomes available to an audience who wouldn't otherwise know how to find it, or how to make sense of it.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>What does curation preclude? It precludes spontaneity. It puts a burden on a certain sort of discovery.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>What is Duchamp doing with his "Fountain"? One thing he's doing is mocking curation, and the sorts of expectations it creates. Why were the early twentieth century avant-garde European artists so fascinated by African masks and other "tribal" artefacts? Because (rightly or wrongly) they saw in them a certain sort of authenticity, or unmediated character, that they felt was absent from the received traditions of European visual art.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>The political and aesthetic questions raised by this desire for authenticity are challenging. The political ones, obviously, are off-limits for this board. The aesthetic ones aren't, but naturally they're going to be matters of contention.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>But I don't think we can easily ignore them. Look at the OSR, and its rejection of the Dragonlance/AP-model of adventure design, and its self-described "DIY" ethos. Look at The Forge, and its animating mantra of designer-published games as an alternative to RPG publication as the business of selling "supplements" that are barely-disguised works of fiction. What are these but expressions of the desire for a certain sort of authenticity?</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7091304, member: 42582"] Suppose you learn that the cake was made by your partner. Or your child. For some people that [I]does[/I] change the experience. It overlays it with a different significance. That's why I have pictures on my office door that have little aesthetic value in themselves, but were drawn by my children. The origin of things - particularly if that origin has some very intimate connection to oneself - is not always irrelevant to the experience of them. But it doesn't even have to be intimate: part of what I find so dramatic about the train-derailment scene in Lawrence of Arabia is that it was filmed by [i]derailing a train[/io] (and they only had one go at it, and so had to get it right the first time). The same scene in CGI wouldn't have the same force. (One of the great literary treatments of this sort of thing is Brave New World. The famous philosophical example is Nozick's "pleasure machine". They both raise the same issue: is the origin of pleasure really irrelevant to its significance as a human experience?) This is flat-out wrong, and I'm actually becoming a little frustrated that it keeps recurring in this (and other) threads. Sometimes I sit down and listen to a CD. Sometimes I sit down and get out my guitar and play a song. My reasons for doing the second aren't that I don't trust my CDs or my sound system. It's because I want something different. [i]Because[/i] I want to have the experience of discovering a story, a gameworld, a fiction, and [i]because[/i] I want the dramatic and thematic potential to be there at every moment of play, and [i]because[/i] I know the people I play with are up for this, [i]therefore[/i] I run a game which is not driven by GM pre-authorship and pre-conception (of setting, of events, of alliances between characters, of choices that players will make for their PCs). The only role that trust plays in the above is that it is present; not that it is absent. As I've already posted in this thread (I think), the reason I was able to recruit players to my game, back in university days, is that they were looking for an alternative to GM-driven, follow-the-breadcrumbs-to-find-the-plot RPGing. Only one member of my group started RPGing in our group, and he took it for granted from the outset that, as a player, he would be contributing (via backstory, via action declarations and their resolution) to the creation of the fiction and (thereby) the story. Trust has nothing to do with it. It's about aspirations for the experience of RPGing. As I said in my post upthread, and in response to which [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] replied "that is very much the sort of distinction I am trying to make", the contrast is between a "curated" experience and what might (by way of contrast) be called a "spontaneous" or "unprepared" experience - an experience unmediated by curation. What are the benefits of curation? The experience is ordered. The curator structures it in such a way as to try to ensure that the experience will have a certain, intended, character. Perhaps something becomes available to an audience who wouldn't otherwise know how to find it, or how to make sense of it. What does curation preclude? It precludes spontaneity. It puts a burden on a certain sort of discovery. What is Duchamp doing with his "Fountain"? One thing he's doing is mocking curation, and the sorts of expectations it creates. Why were the early twentieth century avant-garde European artists so fascinated by African masks and other "tribal" artefacts? Because (rightly or wrongly) they saw in them a certain sort of authenticity, or unmediated character, that they felt was absent from the received traditions of European visual art. The political and aesthetic questions raised by this desire for authenticity are challenging. The political ones, obviously, are off-limits for this board. The aesthetic ones aren't, but naturally they're going to be matters of contention. But I don't think we can easily ignore them. Look at the OSR, and its rejection of the Dragonlance/AP-model of adventure design, and its self-described "DIY" ethos. Look at The Forge, and its animating mantra of designer-published games as an alternative to RPG publication as the business of selling "supplements" that are barely-disguised works of fiction. What are these but expressions of the desire for a certain sort of authenticity?[/i] [/QUOTE]
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