RPG Theory- The Limits of My Language are the Limits of My World

[Umbran]

The thing is, a lot of internet TTRPG theory is made by people who actually do have problems to solve.

I am not sure that's true most of the time. I don't think folks who have immediate problems at their table, or as they design a game, usually build bodies of Theory, and then use that to design a solution.

I think the practical elements come first - some folks have problems, or goals that aren't well served by current designs. They find create immediate solutions as best they can. Theory (at least good theory) comes up when people step back and go, "Hey, a lot of people had this kind of problem. Look at their solutions. Is there some generalizing we can do?"

 

[Umbran]

I think part of the reason the statements might have been taken as normative in spite of being intended as inclusive is that having your play described from outside by someone who doesn't understand it (or its appeal) seems ... likely to come across as patronizing if not insulting.

Indeed, because, let us be honest, it is patronizing.

I stood up a thread about advice a little bit ago - and it was based on the idea that if you want to give useful input, you have to ask questions and understand first. Much the same concept applies here - your chances of building successful theory about a thing you can't wrap your head around are low.

This is why, in the sciences, folks tend to push on the difference between hypothesis and theory, and lean into empirical testing of hypotheses before anything gets called a theory.

 

[Umbran]

Like, fine, go play how you want. But if your style of play doesn't merit any discussion at the level of theory and doesn't benefit from comparisons with other systems, plus you're also just here to repeatedly assert what you do at your table...it's a big site. There's probably a thread just above or just below that's about death saves or how psionics might work in a new Dark Sun.

So, the problem here is that you tie this together with the exact kind of dismissiveness that causes folks to reject the comparisons.

There's a real issue when, in making comparisons, we use language that leans heavily to value judgements. So, yes, a comparison is made, and one of the options is stated or implied to be bad. How well do you expect people to take that, when their favorite gets the short end of the stick?

If you want to successfully have theory discussion in a broad and open forum, there's a lot of work in establishing trust that has to go on. Making the scope of discussion (like what playstyles are you discussing, etc) clear is part of that. Minding how you speak about things is part of that.

 

[FrogReaver]

So I see far to many posters in this that do some of the very things this thread is criticizing actually liking the comments criticizing the things they do. Should we suppose it's just intense self reflection or do they not realize they are doing these things?

Feel free to count me in the group I'm talking about here.

 

[FrogReaver]

Finally, there is one more additional issue; when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. This is similar to the @Malmuria "basket" analysis- which is to say, if your theory predicts that TTRPGs fall into a finite number of baskets (say, 3 baskets), then you will forever be limited to articulating how something goes into a particular basket, or why it should or shouldn't be in that basket. A long time ago, I took an advanced critical theory course where every week, we had to write a paper analyzing the same text using a different method of critical theory analysis. One week it would me Marxist theory, another week psychoanalytic theory, another week third-work approach (measure it against the standards articulated from another work, like Burke's On the Sublime and Beautiful), another week semiotic and structuralist, another week post-structuralist, another week authorial intent, and so on. The purpose was to show how the same text would produce different meanings depending on the approach used; that instead of focusing on the "correct reading" it was best to think of different theoretical approaches as different tools with which to retrieve meaning. There wasn't a single correct theory- but the theory you used was determinative of the types of meaning you would end up with. A Marxist approach tended to reveal a lot of elements of class struggle and power relations, whereas a psychological analysis is more likely to reveal elements of the characters' conscious and subconscious motivations.

So I've never had a class on critical literary theory so strike me down if this question is dumb but...

It seems like critical theory as articulated here has it's own basket problem as you describe it and if it does then doesn't that ultimately deconstruct to - any literature means whatever we want it to mean - because one can presumably just create a new framework/lens/critical theory with which to view it where it means exactly what the person say it means when viewed under that framework/lens/theory - and doesn't this same criticism (or a similar one) apply to what is being done in ttrpg theory? That we can map virtually any meaning we want onto it by choosing the appropriate lens/framework/theory.

 

[FrogReaver]

Yeah, I've seen that argument before. It has a chicken-and-egg element to it, as there was a time when no language existed on this planet. By this theory, we could not think of anything before that time, and therefore could not have generated language to begin with. The fact that we have language means we must, on occasion, be able to think outside the box.

I will totally buy that we have difficulty conceiving things outside our language - that with language, we dig ourselves a rut of thought that is hard to get out of, but not impossible.

Yea, it sounds a bit too much like, 'can I think without language?', which one would presume is a resounding yes!

 

[Thomas Shey]

So I see far to many posters in this that do some of the very things this thread is criticizing actually liking the comments criticizing the things they do. Should we suppose it's just intense self reflection or do they not realize they are doing these things?

Feel free to count me in the group I'm talking about here.

Why not a bit of both?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yea, it sounds a bit too much like, 'can I think without language?', which one would presume is a resounding yes!

This is going to come out as ironic, but it probably depends on how broadly you define "think"; managing complex concepts without language may, indeed, but impossible, though its obvious some basic and reflexive concepts can be managed other ways.

 

[pemerton]

On the Wittgenstein quote: it's from the Tractatus. It's not a claim about the "evolution" of language. It's a claim in the logical theory of representation, and it rests on a premise - which Wittgenstein himself later rejected - that all language is representational.

I'll sblock the rest of this:

Spoiler

Part of Wittgenstein's theory is a contrast between saying - ie what a well-formed sentence achieves vis-a-vis the actual or possible state of affairs that it represents - and showing - ie (roughly) relations that the logical theory of representation entails (i) must exist, but (ii) can't be said.

The metaphor for "showing" is the way a ruler is used to measure a distance - on pain of infinite regress there is no need for a third, mediating entity to establish the measurement. An example of something which (per Wittgenstein) shows itself and cannot be said is the representational relationship itself that obtains between a sentence and the state of affairs which constitutes its "said" content.

The limit of my (cognisable) world can't be said, because that would require representing the limit, which in turn would require thinking both sides of the limit. Rather, the limit shows itself, as a consequence of the limits of my repertoire of representation (and the limits here are in-principle ones - eg even in principle I can't represent the representation relationship itself; and there are other things too that Wittgenstein thinks can't be said, not due to any contingent limit or ignorance but as a matter of logical principle, like ethics and theology).

What this contentious theory tells us about RPGing and discussions of RPGing, I leave to others to explain!

 

[pemerton]

My working definition of TTRPGs is somthing like 'games that are played using both rules and the logic of a shared imaginary space'. I'm sure it's not watertight, but I think it gets at the common thread.

What I would add to this is: most of the participants in a paradigmatic RPG adopt the "player" role, which means that their engagement with the shared imaginary space - the shared fiction - is mediated through their imagined projection into a particular person located within that shared fiction.

I know that there are fuzzy boundaries here, and cases that don't fit my paradigm; but I'm trying to distinguish the "first person's eye view" that characterises a Braunstein, Blacmoor and then RPGing more generally, from the "god's eye view" that characterises a typical wargame player's engagement with the shared fiction (even in a wargame where the fiction matters to adjudication).

TTRPG theory makes a lot more sense if you approach it as a heuristic developed to serve particular technical or aesthetic goals.

I've done a ton of theory as well, and it just doesn't seem to come off the same way in conversation about RPGs as it does in a Lit Grad lecture. Well, except about Derrida, but that's Derrida for you. I think I'd agree that a limiting factor is probably that the base theory sets are not as well constructed/appreciated/deployed/insert theory word here as is the case with Lit theory (or whatever theory). Not that people don't argue about Lit, obviously they do, but the nature of the arguments seem a little different to me. Tough to really put my finger on the exact differences though. Something to think about.

I encounter literary theory mostly either in criticism, or when it bleeds over into social and political theory. It's normally a tool for analysing and evaluating content. It tends to take it as uncontentious that the audience has available the artefact to be criticised - though of course what exactly that artefact consists in, and how independent that is of the audience (if at all) is a matter of contention!

But most RPGing analysis I'm familiar with isn't about the criticism of already available artefacts. It's an attempt to understand the processes of creating a shared fiction using RPGing techniques - or inventing new techniques that build on the core idea of the first-person perspective within a shared fiction. So I am really agreeing here with @gorice: RPG theory mostly isn't about aesthetic criticism, but rather about resolving technical or aesthetic challenges that arise in the course of RPGing.

the Bourdieu reference in the paragraph I quoted seems intended to claim that these discussions are themselves ways to establish authority over "taste." This is not necessarily tendentious, as people can do this without really thinking about it. For example, with regards to ttrpgs, 5e obviously takes up the most air. This means that discussion of other games is always striving to contrast itself with 5e, to show what they do different and better.

Is there an element of observer bias here? I don't regard 5e as the RPG around which all other discussions orbit. For me, the canonical RPGs for comparison are Gygax's AD&D and Moldvay Basic; RQ; and CoC - the classics - and then AW as a modern classic. But I also like talking about systems as systems. My experience is that it tends to be those who predominantly play 5e D&D who are not happy to talk about less widely played RGS on their own terms.

The seemingly widespread view that it is pretentious or elitist to enjoy or prefer RPGs other than 5e D&D strikes me as coming from much the same place as the view that it is pretentious or elitist to think that (say) My Life Without Me is a better film (both in general, and as a Mark Ruffalo vehicle) than Age of Ultron.

I think part of the reason the statements might have been taken as normative in spite of being intended as inclusive is that having your play described from outside by someone who doesn't understand it (or its appeal) seems ... likely to come across as patronizing if not insulting.

I've never really got this. Ron Edwards analysis of purist-for-system RPGing is brilliant - as a 19-year RM devotee far more insightful than anything to be found on the ICE messageboards! Likewise his analysis of 4e D&D, all the more remarkable for being written about 5 years before the game was published! He also explains other games I've loved really well - CoC, RQ, Prince Valiant, even - I would say - AD&D. I have never felt patronised or insulted: he takes my games and (by implication) my play seriously. And helps me better understand my own engagement with them.