Modernist and Postmodernist RPGs?

[Korgoth]

Dude, René Descartes died in 1650. I have a hard time considering the thoughts of a guy who died more than a century before the American Revolution as "modern".

Depends on which lingo you're using, I suppose. In history it is common to recognize three distinct periods: Ancient vs. Medieval vs. Modern; some people want to distinguish the Renaissance as a distinct period as well but it's not universal.

If you're looking at a different type of analysis, like lit crit, they may have a different, more restricted use of "modern" or "modernism" (amusingly, theologians in the 13th century called themselves "moderns" too). But I wasn't talking lit crit. Art crit is probably similar. I can see how it would be confusing: Cubism is usually called "Modern Art", and it is in the Modern Period. But Rossetti (Pre-Raphaelite) is in the Modern Period, but probably nobody calls his work "Modern Art", etc.

 

[Wayside]

I just wanted to point out that Descartes is one of the principal culprits in terms of shifting the focus onto the individual in abstraction from the real.

Is he? He solved to his own satisfaction some issues that never troubled Plato, but I don't really see him as inaugurating an era of emphasis on the individual; but even if he had, Augustine beat him to the punch pretty handily. At any rate, by modern standards Descartes does little more than play on a tautology of language: not so much 'I think, therefore I am' as 'there is an I, therefore an I is.' Kant's the one who ushered in the era of the individual, first by transferring the conditions for knowledge and experience from God or the Good to you and me, and then by recognizing our capacity to create new conditions, that is to work from particulars to universals, and not only the other way around. Europe did a collective backflip when Kant said that genius gives the rule to art.

On the other hand, I also see the postmodern critique of history as self-refuting. Couldn't hit "submit reply" without throwing that in.

It very often is. Postmodernism isn't so much a position as it is a methodology, but it's a methodology that's led to some high profile positions. Unfortunately, you get a lot of people taking up these positions without the methodological tools or rigor to back them up. It's not a little bit ironic that postmodern interpretive practices are supposedly known for their rejection of totalizing narratives, yet their readings almost invariably reduce texts to allegories of postmodernist positions. Hence Frank Lentricchia's parting shot when he left Duke's English Department: "Tell me your theory and I'll tell you in advance what you'll say about any work of literature, especially those you haven't read." A lot of critics just have no common sense when it comes to philosophy. Common sense tells you to be careful with that saw, otherwise you may take off your own arm, you know? People make mistakes with logic that they'd never make with power tools...

 

[Korgoth]

Is he? He solved to his own satisfaction some issues that never troubled Plato, but I don't really see him as inaugurating an era of emphasis on the individual; but even if he had, Augustine beat him to the punch pretty handily. At any rate, by modern standards Descartes does little more than play on a tautology of language: not so much 'I think, therefore I am' as 'there is an I, therefore an I is.' Kant's the one who ushered in the era of the individual, first by transferring the conditions for knowledge and experience from God or the Good to you and me, and then by recognizing our capacity to create new conditions, that is to work from particulars to universals, and not only the other way around. Europe did a collective backflip when Kant said that genius gives the rule to art.

Kant is definitely a figure to be considered side by side with Descartes as a titan of modern philosophy... especially in light of his emphasis on "autonomy" (which means to be a law unto oneself... and what theist would accept that notion?!). But I think Descartes gets the ball rolling, and here I think he's much different from Augustine as well (though he cribbed a lot from the dear old saint): epistemology. Medievals (and ancients; I would argue that this even applies to Plato) start with the senses and build philosophy up from that (Plato eventually decides that the sensory is rather unreal, but he still starts there). Descartes starts with his own consciousness and tries to infer the external.

A lot of critics just have no common sense when it comes to philosophy. Common sense tells you to be careful with that saw, otherwise you may take off your own arm, you know? People make mistakes with logic that they'd never make with power tools...

At least, mistakes they'd never get to make twice with power tools.

 

[Wayside]

But I think Descartes gets the ball rolling, and here I think he's much different from Augustine as well (though he cribbed a lot from the dear old saint): epistemology. Medievals (and ancients; I would argue that this even applies to Plato) start with the senses and build philosophy up from that (Plato eventually decides that the sensory is rather unreal, but he still starts there). Descartes starts with his own consciousness and tries to infer the external.

Ah, now I see where we're split. I'd actually say that Kant's refutation of idealism (Cartesianism specifically, really) in the first Critique, and his explicit rejection of the possibility of mind-body dualism, is what starts him down the path to modernity. Now, bearing that in mind, there are people who don't see Descartes as really advancing that sort of idealism or dualism at all, but rather simply relying on it to make his point about the self-evidency of the thinking being. It's a less established reading, but it's out there.

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Thinking more about potentially postmodern games, I'm not coming up with much mechanics-wise. In terms of setting, Mage:tA definitely makes the list, and the Demons chapter of Exalted's Games of Divinity fits too. TB is probably right about how Nobilis is played, but as far as fluff goes I don't think it's terribly postmodern. I'd be interested to hear what eyebeams thinks, since he tends to look at lots of games with this sort of thing in mind, but I can't remember seeing a post from him here in quite a while.

 

[S'mon]

"Reality is up for grabs" settings are post-modernist; Mage: The Ascension is impeccably post-modernist.

The Conan RPG adheres closely to its original source material, including the likely non-existence of its deities, and has been reasonably described as Modernist.

D&D is a mix of traditionalist and modernist, with some of the 2e settings arguably veering towards post-modernism - I thought of Planescape, but its 'marketplace of ideas' approach to morality is really more 18th-century Whig than postmodern deconstructionist.

 

[S'mon]

I agree. This is a much more accurate way to look at RPGs.

Ironically, post-structuralism is a type of critical theory stemming from post-modernism.

cultural Marxism, *boo hiss*.

 

[maddman75]

There's a suggested scenario in Over The Edge in which the PCs discover they are characters in a roleplaying game. Which I suspect would suck.

I suspect Dungeons and Bunnies, a Buffy game I ran at GenCon would count as post-modernist then. The basic story is that a demon looking for vengence uses a spell that creates an alternate dimension based on whatever is around when it is cast. In this case, it hits Anya and Xander's book of D&D shelves, creating an alternate reality where the gang are cast into fantasy RPG roles and Anya is trapped by a mad bunny-god.

I made it mainly because I found the title hilarious and a good excuse to throw in a bunch of gamer jokes. In play, the characters realize that they are playing through an adventure module, and one filled with as many cliches that will fit. From the Mythic Beast Inn full of mysterious strangers sitting in the back and old men with treasure maps, unimportant characters that didn't have a name. It was like 4th wall gamer humor, and a great success.

I mean come on, what gamer secretly *doesn't* want to flee from the Dread Gazeebo.

So for the original question, I think it would be more the individual game that is modernist or post-modern, not the RPG ruleset.

 

[Mallus]

I've been letting this one percolate around my brain for most of today. Here's my (limited) results.

re: modernism and RPG's. Sorry, I got bupkis. Even when I let my ass to the talking, I couldn't find any interesting or plausible things to say about the way modernism maps to RPG's. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't.

re: postmodern. I got a little more here. Two possible line of discussion. One centers on the use of distributed narrative authority techniques that alter the traditional relationship between the player and GM, everything from elements like the Action/Hero points used in d20 Modern/M&M to whole systems like Burning Wheel or Capes. The decentralization of narrative power strikes me as a very postmodern thing to do, exploring and subverting the power relationships inherent in the medium...

The seconds a little more nebulous, but hey, that fits any discussion where the word 'postmodern' is used as something other than a slur.

It's pretty easy to look at RPG's a kind of text-at-play. By definition it's metafictional, as the participants freely move in and out of the real world and the constructed fictional space over the course of the session. There's a lot genre-bending/blending, exploration of fictional spaces from the inside-out, adoption and often subversion of fictional types. Basically, RPG's place the reader/player in a much different relation to the 'text' (inside, as a elf), which is kinda sorta what a lot of postmodern criticism is supposed to do.

 

[eyebeams]

Modernity really arose through several landmarks in thinking in the Western tradition. The view at my alma mater (Trent University) was that one of the key beginnings is Rene Descartes, because it's the secular formation of an essentialist method (even though it's used for theological purposes), not an "emphasis on the individual."

I would say that many indie narrative games are absolutely modernist because they encourages fixed narrative elements mapped according to pidgin high school/19th century literary theory. The classic RPG form *is* postmodern by nature already because it undermines or destroys many modernist assumptions about narrative (a single thread determined by a relationship with a theme/thesis instead of a relationship with the reader/audience/player).

 

[eyebeams]

cultural Marxism, *boo hiss*.

No.