The Guardian on Reading RPGs: Why don’t RPG manuals count as books?

Roleplaying games are being mentioned in the mainstream press again, and you don't get much more mainstream than The Guardian. An article today, by Damien Walter, discusses the joy of reading (as opposed to playing) roleplaying games, and compares them to other forms of book reading as he asks the question "You don’t have to actually play a role-playing game for it to fire your imagination, so why don’t RPG manuals count as books?"

You'll find the full article here.

 

[Desh-Rae-Halra]

If it makes any difference, my wife is a Librarian and wen I told her about this she said "They are absolutely books".
Also, when companies like Monte Cook Games give away copies of Numenera and No Thank You, Evil to libraries, then what does the author contend they are actually donating?
Should they be classified as a Bound Rule Set? If so, does that mean that any self-help or How-to Book is no longer a book either?

 

[Leatherhead]

This is a very strange question. Books are a medium, not a genre.

 

[James Jacobs]

Whether or not it's a strange question... I suspect that the vast majority of RPGs are read and never played. And I don't quantify an RPG book that's read and never played as a failure, either. I know I'm not the only gamer out there who has bookshelves filled with RPG stuff, and each one I read melds into my brain and adds to the overall inspiration for making or running new games and adventures. Furthermore... it can be tricky getting a game group together, and in those times, reading adventures in particular has always served me as a "surrogate game" when I didn't have an actual game to play or run.

As a result, I always endeavored to make any RPG book I write or develop or edit fun to read. And not only because of my belief that games that are boring or dull or hard to read tend not to be played... because RPGs need to entertain from the very moment they get into a gamer's hands and their words get into their eyes!

 

[Ranes]

I don't really have a problem with the article. But the subheading, "so why don’t RPG manuals count as books?" is a nonsense - RPGs most definitely do count as books (well, except the ones that are PDF, or other formats, of course). And since the question is a nonsense, of course he doesn't answer it.

Who says RPG manuals don't count as books?

I can almost guarantee you that the strapline that's causing so much consternation was written by a sub- or features editor. What Damien says is that he's always 'dismayed' when RPGs are left out of 'the popular discussion about books and reading', which is far more nuanced and reasonable.

Damien Walter is one of us (he doesn't really play but he is a fan). I kicked the BBC news and features desks up the proverbial back at the beginning of 2004, to remind them that it was D&D's thirtieth anniversary that year and that it deserved coverage, given its almost incalculable impact on games since. Radio 4 obliged with a really marvellous documentary, while the BBC News website ran well-informed features celebrating the game. I corresponded with the enthusiastic hack behind those features. One Damien Walter.

But subs... Ah, subs now ain't what they used to be.

 

[lynnfredricks]

I agree with Leatherhead on the point of books being a medium. Game manuals are definitely books. So are auto manuals. There are many kinds of media out there that are made up of components recognizable as also being a part of another medium. The old Adventure text adventure had paragraphs, and while a book can contain a lot of paragraphs, a book is not a computer program. It is an interesting topic to explore from a philosophical or psychological perspective but lets not complicate it with logical fallacies.

 

[Hussar]

Sure, at it's most basic, RPG books are books. They've got paper, and words and usually pictures. Yup, that's a book.

But, that's not what the question is asking. If someone asked you, "Hey, what did you read yesterday" and you said, "The Monster Manual", they'd likely be confused. Same as if you said, "My auto manual". Most people don't read auto manuals cover to cover and certainly not for fun. Since most RPG book lack anything close to a plot or narrative, they are pretty far from what the average person considers a "book".

It's really not that stupid of a question.

 

[Grainger]

I think by "count as books", he means "count as fiction" (which is the type of book most reviewers care about). He's looking at the fictional (imagination-firing) content, rather than the "how to play" aspect of RPG books.

Edit: yeah, what Hussar said.

 

[aramis erak]

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More mainstream than The Guardian? From over here it looks like they're a sensationalist supermarket gossip rag... perhaps its selection bias on the part of only the stuff fit for the National Enquirer normally goes viral enough to be found by yanks who aren't actually looking. Are you saying it's the UK's equivalent to USA Today or the NYT?

The article, for its part, is an interesting look at a non-playing fan's approach, but really, the essay isn't much about the top of story tag..

Though the term didn’t exist back when I was a teenager, squatting on comic-book floors to thumb through expensive hardback editions, RPGs are an example of the kind of literature described by Espen J Aarseth as “ergodic”. These are books, like digital literature, computer-generated poetry and MUDs, where a “nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text”. And they are more common than you might think, especially in geek culture. Game books that allow you to “choose your own adventure” are ergodic, as are fantasy novels with extensive maps and world-building notes. But the RPG handbook pushes ergodic reading to its limit.

This quote sums up to me all I need to know as an educator as to why they're left off the lists... Ergodic lit requires more than just geting mental imagery and story; it would scare many kids off of reading if they didn't already have an interest.

Pick-a-path type books, by the way, are on some US suggested reading lists. I've encountered a few - from the Marvel Comics group.

Most ergodic texts are higher reading levels, too; they often have erudite language.

 

[Morrus]

More mainstream than The Guardian? From over here it looks like they're a sensationalist supermarket gossip rag... perhaps its selection bias on the part of only the stuff fit for the National Enquirer normally goes viral enough to be found by yanks who aren't actually looking. Are you saying it's the UK's equivalent to USA Today or the NYT?

I wouldn't know; sorry! I've never heard of the former, and never seen the latter.

Maybe you're confusing it with the Daily Mail? That's pretty tabloidy.

Though I'd say that tabloids are mainstream, as are the more serious newspapers like the Guardian. By mainstream I mean a "large, non-niche" publication.

 

[Will Doyle]

More mainstream than The Guardian? From over here it looks like they're a sensationalist supermarket gossip rag...

The Guardian won a Pulitzer prize in 2014 for its role in breaking the Snowden files and its overall coverage of the surveillance debate. As a paper it's many things, but it's not a supermarket gossip rag. Like most big news bodies, it just has a fairly broad culture desk.