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October 2nd, 2007
09:39 pm - Serious RPGs?
I'd like to talk about serious role-playing games a bit. There are several groups talking about serious games, notably the Serious Games Initiative which has regular panels at the Game Developers Conferences. As they describe themselves, The Serious Games Initiative is focused on uses for games in exploring management and leadership challenges facing the public sector. Part of its overall charter is to help forge productive links between the electronic game industry and projects involving the use of games in education, training, health, and public policy.
However, that is all about non-RPG games. There isn't a real parallel within RPGs -- at least published tabletop RPGs. There have been a few projects using RPGs in education, like the Church of Sweden's games for youth groups or The Role-play Workshop in Oakland. But that's about the limit thus far.
Existing Role-playing Projects
My thoughts on this were originally kicked off by Matthijs Holter's project "We All Had Names" -- which is a RPG-like educational project about the Nazi holocaust in WWII. It has three historical interaction pieces where participants verbally portray characters and events. After each piece, participants discuss the characters and events, relating them to their own experiences, the greater historical picture, and current affairs.
There was a discussion some months ago about the game on theRPGsite -- Holocaust/Shoah RPG: "We All Had Names". In it, several people suggested that he contact with various Jewish groups and institutions focusing on Holocaust education -- which he followed. Matthijs also posted to Vincent Baker's "Knife Fight" forum, in a thread called "Am I doing a fucked up thing?" (need to sign in to view).
Interestingly, in the RPGsite thread, Koltar mentioned an improvised experiment in 1967 by a schoolteacher called The Third Wave, where he set up an immersive game with his students that incorporated emulated the Hitler Youth without specifically referencing it. The experiment grew out of his control in that the students flocked to it, and were later shocked when he eventually confronted the class with the basis for the experiment. It was adapted into a fictionalized book "The Wave" and a TV Movie, The Wave (1981). It certainly shows potential for role-playing to have powerful impact on people.
There are a number of Scandanavian larps that have been noted for their serious content. Mellan Himmel och hav was by all accounts quite powerful in questions gender and relationships, by immersively casting people into an alternate system of gender and marriage. System Danmarc was explicitly about class conflict, casting people as the rejected second-class citizens in a dystopic future Denmark.
There are also tabletop games in addition, though some are not serious in the same way. Steal Away Jordan is a game where the PCs are slaves in the 19th-century U.S., released at GenCon Indy this year. In Eric Finley's 2005 Game Chef entry, The Last Supper, you play Christ and the Apostles on the tense eve of the crucifixion. Their discussions form the basis of what will become the doctrine of Christianity. Also, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kynn had his game, Bone White, Blood Red (1.3M PDF download), which is about the Pueblo revolt of 1680 against the encroaching Europeans. (He had a discussion thread on it, "Is Bone White, Blood Red racially offensive?".) Vincent Baker's pirate game game Poison'd recently came under fire for the extent to which it encourages rape as an in-game event. I have not played it, but there is a mechanical stat with potential benefits (as well as drawbacks) for committing sins from a list including rape, murder, blasphemy, sodomy, robbery, idolatry, and adultery. (This was discussed in an RPGnet thread, then later in theRPGsite thread 1 and theRPGsite thread 2. There are Actual Play threads on Poison'd on the Forge, here and here.)
Questions
To me, important questions that come to mind are: - Should games about serious subjects be designed to encourage serious reflection? How should they do so and to what extent?
- Could more RPGs find a useful place in education, training, health, and public policy? How should we approach design of such games?
Encouraging Reflection
There are plenty of fictional works about serious events like war, mass killings, and rape, along with serious topics like religion and history. While there are many black comedies, the comedic value doesn't contradict imposing reflection. Works like M.A.S.H. or Dr. Strangelove are comedic, but still arguably make for serious reflection. However, for many people, there are works that cross a line. They are about serious subjects like war or rape, but make light of them. This is almost certainly in bad taste, and possibly irresponsible in what it encourages. I feel this way about some works.
For an novel author or film director, avoiding this can be subtle but definitely within their control. In a tabletop RPG or LARP, though, the game designer is not supplying the fiction but rather only a piece of it. The players can most certainly introduce content that crosses that line -- see Lydai Laurensen's "Rape in RPGs" essay, for example. Now, I don't think the designers of D&D have any responsibility in games where this occurs. However, if you design your game to deliberately focus on serious material, then I think there is a responsibility.
Obviously, this is not the sole responsibility of the designer. However, introducing the content as something to focus on is taking on some responsibility. It seems like a tricky line. I will be able to comment more, I think, after trying some of the games mentioned. (I am considering a game of Steal Away Jordan.)
Design Useful RPGs
One of the goals of the Serious Games Initiative is the use of games in education, training, health, and public policy. This is pretty much invisible to most players. However, it's not as crazy as it might sound. In 1988, a psychiatrist, a journalist, and a psychologist created Therapy: The Game. In 2005, TriKing Games released the collectible card game Anachronism that was promoted by the History Channel. People don't think of board games or card games as serious either, but there is the potential to release such games.
I have a collection of links on education topics: Educational Uses of Role-Playing Games. This includes an essay of my own, entitled "RPG Realism & Education".
We're all familiar that "role-playing" techniques are often used in psychology. There was a 1988 article by therapist John Hughes entitled "Therapy is Fantasy: Roleplaying, Healing and the Construction of Symbolic Order". He documented his work with "Malori", a 27-year-old college-educated Australian woman who role-played and particularly played a young Englishman called John "Jack" Hargreaves. His summary is: "I have explored in detail one case in which the conscious manipulation of personal symbols has led to a reorganisation of frames of meaning with a resulting personal empowerment and an eventual return to health. The case is unusual in that it has not dealt with an established healing system but one synthesised in extremis by an exceptional individual utilising symbolic frameworks available to her. As such it stands as one further example of the pervasive power of symbols in our daily lives."
I think that an RPG that deliberately encouraged such uses would have to be written by an experienced psychologist or psychiatrist. However, I think it is interesting to note documented power of not just role-playing techniques, but specifically tabletop role-playing games.
In general, I think design of RPGs for serious uses should involve at least consultation with experienced professionals. Still, it's not rocket science. I've played Anachronism, for example, and its historical information isn't intimidating. I wouldn't want to discourage educational material in RPGs by setting an unrealistically high bar.
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January 8th, 2007
04:37 pm - Maguire on Licensed Settings
In comments on the last post, brand_of_amber wrote about literalization within licensed settings. This matches what M. John Harrison said in his essay about thinking about what Sauron looks like. It's thinking about the elements in the story as real things rather than simply as vehicles for the meaning. So, on the other hand, we have transformative works like Maguire's Wicked. Pondering this, I just read this Interview with Gregory Maguire. In it, he talks about what lead up to Wicked. He did not start thinking that he would write a book in Oz, but rather than he would write a book about evil. However, his earlier imagination was a key factor. He talks about how he was intrigued by the subject:
Oh, the Wicked Witch of the West. Gee, we don't know much about her, do we? She wears black and she's kind of ugly; she doesn't seem to take care of her skin very well; but she's still interested in those ruby slippers. Why? There's a complication there. What is it?
She always tells the truth. In the movie, the Wicked Witch might be scary, but she never lies. Glinda, in a sense, lies to Dorothy; Glinda knows from the beginning that the shoes can take Dorothy home, and she doesn't bother to say anything. She puts Dorothy in danger. And the Wizard lies all over the place; that's his job really, like any unelected public official; it's all propaganda. But the Wicked Witch doesn't lie.
Even as a kid, I was aware of that. I thought, What's behind that? Why is she like that? What's this all about? It just happened that my interest was matched by the interest of what is probably now about 750,000 people, to read and find out, well, what is she about? It was awfully lucky. It was an awful good stroke of luck the day that I thought about that.
Note his citing his imagination as a kid. As a child, he thought about what the Wicked Witch was like as a person. He wondered what was behind her -- how did she grow up and what did she feel. He didn't think "Oh, her truth-telling is just there to exposit the danger of submitting to authority, to force Dorothy into taking a stand."
In the same way, I suspect Jacqueline Carey's Banewreaker came very much from imagining Mordor as a place and the life of its people. Who are they? Why do they live the way they do?
I find that imagining about a setting as a real place and its people as real people is an excellent creative tool. It might or might not be what the author wants you to think, but it can lead to fascinating thoughts. I ran several Star Trek games based around my imagining of the Federation as a democracy. Based on Journey to Babel, it seemed like a madhouse to have several hundred aliens to each other trying to hash out in infrequent sessions what the laws of the Federation were to be. So how did they cope? How did voting work? It occurred to me that the Prime Directive would be a necessity not on moral grounds per se, but to prevent more advanced Federation members from effectively buying the votes of less advanced members by economic and cultural domination. This lead to a lot of very interesting games.
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10:28 am - More on Licensed Settings
There was a lot of discussion on my last post, centered on M. John Harrison's essay, "What it might be like to live in Viriconium".
There was a bit of discussion on my interpretation of the essay, though I think it was mostly agreed. As I see it, the point of the essay was that derivative works "tame" the "wildness" of the original. I mostly concur with the objective points here. A derivative work takes elements of the original, but puts those together in a new work which doesn't have the same message or essence. The derivative creator who borrows those elements is instead putting in his own message and ideas, which will presumably be more familiar to him than the work of another.
Types of Derivative Works
Derivative works include sequels or fan fiction within the world, parodies, sampling, alternate covers of songs, mash-ups, parodies, collages, and so forth as well as role-playing game adaptations. Examples abound of sequels (John Gardner's Grendel, Gregory Maguire's Wicked, John M. Ford's The Final Reflection, etc.), parodies (Corey Yuen's vicious High Risk), sampling (2 Live Crew's Pretty Woman), covers (Joan Jett's punk cover of Ronald Isley's song "Shout"), mash-ups (like the Go Home Productions' "Rapture Riders" or "Love Will Freak Us"), and so forth.
None of these are intended as a replacement for the original, though. They are aimed at people who are already familiar with the original, and derive their power from familiarity with the original. Are they more tame? Well, the creator of a derivative work is taking the material and putting their own stamp on it -- so the material is most likely going to be more familiar to them. However, to a third person, the derivative might well be more wild. (This is often the case with samping and parodies, say, but I think Wicked is no less wild than The Wizard of Oz even though I like the latter better.)
At the same time, these do not generally try to retain the essence of the original. In general, I would say that if you want to represent the essence of a work, you should direct people to read the original. If you are making a derivative work, you should try to distinguish yourself and do something distinctly new. Most of my favorite derivative works are reversals which take the opposite side of the original, which casts all of it in a new light.
Now, I do have some concern about another class of derivative work: remakes and adaptations. The problem with these is that they do supplant the original and often form people's first exposure to the material. For example, the film version of The Wizard of Oz is quite different than the original book -- and in many ways reverses the message. (In the original, Dorothy is the sole light and color of the grey Kansas farm, and everyone else learns from her. In the film, she is being taught to appreciate the dull normal life.) It is a terrific film, but being exposed to the film first actively harms reading of the original. princeofcairo had this complaint about August Derleth supplanting Lovecraft, which I can understand.
Quality
However, all of this is independent of the quality of the derivative. Even if you think that your work is better than the original, that does not excuse supplanting it, in my opinion. Conversely, I do not think that not being able to live up to the original is a reason to not try. The world should have creative works which are unskilled and/or clumsy. (Indeed, I think that having them is required for more skilled works.) No one should refrain from singing a song just because they can listen to a recording of a professional artist singing it. And I consider the fans who write their own stories a step above the fans who pride themselves simply on the literary works they have read. Creativity is not something to be left to only the experts. I might not want to read the fan fiction of some random person in Poland, but I don't want them not to try it.
It's certainly true that the average person will make a hash out of writing fiction or playing an RPG in a literary setting. Most likely, the results will be banal and kitsch -- just like typical singing is painfully off-key or lifeless hitting of notes. However, its not like their other efforts would be any different. Efforts to make original settings are typically dull pastiche, with flavorless listings of lands and races -- only with Chiropti and Ular and Aasimar rather then elves and dwarves.
None of this dissuades me from saying that it is a good idea to try. I can understand that there are purists who don't want to read multiple interpretations of an original work. I see this as a matter of taste in the same sense that some people don't like spicy food or pistachio ice cream. I've had that impulse for some flavors myself. Though often, I find I don't like what the original artists themselves do with later works -- like Lucas' prequels to Star Wars, or Zelazny's later Amber series.
Questions
That said, I do have some questions. So, droog64 suggested that there was something wrong in principle with using a derivative setting that was independent of the idea of ownership. The objection was an aesthetic judgement of that. However, I don't understand what the substance of this is. For example, if someone in 1939 wanted to write an epic in the same setting as The Hobbit, would it matter who the owner is and who the author is?
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January 5th, 2007
04:18 pm - M. John Harrison and Licensed Settings
So in a recent thread on theRPGsite on licensed settings, Jeff Zahari (aka Droog) brought up an old debate which I haven't talked about on my blog. In the course of discussion, he added this post where he cited an essay by M. John Harrison. I also recall that a few months ago in a an RPGnet thread, I came across Matthew Cheney's post "Maps and Fantasy" -- where he paraphrases China Mieville, and also quotes from the same M. John Harrison's essay.
Not to beat around the bush, but the essay is called "What it might be like to live in Viriconium". I remember discussing that essay a while ago on the Forge -- in the thread, "A wild and untamed thing - how literature refuses gaming" from November 2004.
Since I first read it, I disagreed sharply with Harrison's essay. As I see it, it is opposed to imagination on the part of the reader. Specifically, he is opposed to the idea of reader's imagining what it is like to live in Viriconium. Instead, he wants the reader to only follow the words on the page and not allow their imagination to wander afield and envision things beyond that which he wrote. Or at least, certainly not speak of their imaginings to others.
Now, I can see this as a matter of taste. That is, I can understand someone who only wants to hear one canonical source for Viriconium -- and doesn't want anyone else's imaginings of the same material. However, as a general principle, I think it is a good thing. In artistic terms, I'm a post-modernist -- and specifically I like and approve of sampling, alternate covers of songs, mash-ups, parodies, collages, and so forth where people mess with the work of others. All of these are ways of creatively reacting to and commenting on the original, making something new which comments on the old. I see this as questioning and taking different views on material, as opposed to only accepting the canonical works of a distant popular author. It's related to what I touch on in my old post on "Personal vs Impersonal Art".
So, some things which spring to mind for me: John Gardner's Grendel... the film version of "The Wizard of Oz" (which reinterpreted the whole as a dream) and Gregory Maguire's book "Wicked"... Joan Jett's punk cover of Ronald Isley's song "Shout"... All of these are great ways of taking earlier material and messing with it. I approve of respect for earlier material, but respect shouldn't go overboard to reverence where you feel you shouldn't be allowed to re-interpret it.
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September 14th, 2006
11:19 pm - Replies on Art and Elitism
So, I happened on John McLintock's posts taking the opposing view on the idea of role-playing games as "art". I think one of the issues here is a different ways of taking the term "art" -- but also what this means in a larger sense. So, I agree that the term "art" has some elitist connotations. The typical elitist usage would be something like "What I'm reading is art -- what you're reading is just trash/entertainment/etc."
Part of my point is that I dislike that distinction. I'm willing to make distinctions of good quality versus poor quality, but a creative aesthetic work is art regardless of its quality. So, I don't want to draw a line between "art films" and "action films", say, as categories. All films are art, all paintings are art. Why this is important to me I go into with my old post on "Personal vs Impersonal Art".
Anyway, John McLintock has two posts that I've replied to:
The emperor's new clothes? The state of roleplaying theory #1 (Jan 19, 2006)
"Roleplaying as art? Not for me" (Sep 13, 2006)
The funny thing is that for his opposed terminology, he cites two things that are important to me: tearing down elitism, and connecting it to earlier, more personal forms of creativity like storytelling and the oral epic.
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January 30th, 2006
01:17 pm - Different Gamer Cultures and How to Change Them
This weekend I had a negative experience with a few gamers. It wasn't a horror story, but an annoyance going to someone's house which convinced me to say that we shouldn't go back there again, although I'd like to play with many of the people we met there. I don't want to go into the details here, just that there was a passive-aggressiveness related to bringing our son. (It's much better to have a rule not to have kids if they're going to be resented.) These were all boardgamers, however, with a fondness for rail games and trade games. This makes me think of complaints which others have made about the RPG subculture more specifically.
I'm curious what other people's experience is of the differences among hobby boardgamers, miniature wargamers, role-playing gamers, and non-gaming sci-fi/fantasy fans. (Though I can't say much about non-gaming fans as I know less about them.) The gamers have many similarities. At large boardgaming events, I still see a large collection of t-shirts, many beards, occaisional poor hygiene, and general nerdiness. They tend to be mildly conservative both politically and culturally, most often of the Libertarian flavor -- wargamers especially. They're usually private about religion. Role-players tend to be more chatty and theatrical -- but still nerdy in their chatter. They have a tendency toward paganism in religion. They're somewhat more liberal but still at most centrist.
This relates to something I discussed with Nathan Paoletta reactions to gamer culture in his post on "Another Thought on Art". He noted that modernist and post-modernist art tended to react against traditional narrative story, whereas recent Forge-inspired RPGs tend to react towards it. I noted that the former related to larger social issues -- i.e. modernist and post-modernist thought are often politically opposed to traditional power structures.
Many among the Forge crowd cite some RPG-specific design features for role-player dysfunction, especially (1) unclear and/or subjective rules and (2) reliance on GM authority for resolution. And they can be extremely outspoken about this. What's curious to me is how this relates to the contrast of boardgamers, wargamers, and role-players. i.e. What social change are they pushing for?
I'm not much of a game designer at this point. There are a few house systems up on my site, but I've never seriously packaged anything for release. I had an incomplete entry in last year's game chef contest -- a small-scale larp in Restoration-era London. In general, I think I tend to push for more immersive, benchmarked systems in tabletop, and for simple larp systems. Thinking about my social issues... (1) more respect for one's personal creative work, including RPGs, and the work of RPG authors -- i.e. taking game content more seriously. This goes back to my point about locally-produced creativity, which I think is a serious social issue. (2) I'm definitely left of center (though more moderate financially), and will tend to drag in issues like feminism, gay rights, and right to privacy into my games. (3) Among geek subculture, my main issue to beat is inclusion of women.
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January 5th, 2006
02:43 pm - Definition of Art
If anyone wants to debate with me the definition of the word "art", then do it here. I'm satisfied with Keith's definition, though I find it a little confusing. To him, art by definition is shared to uninvolved stangers -- so the exact same painting may at one point be "not art" and then later become "art". If I see a painting in my friend's house, I don't know whether it's art or not. I have to ask him who made it and/or where it has been shown before. It's reasonable, but I think it's also perfectly normal usage to call a painting "art" regardless of how it's been shown thus far.
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01:37 pm - More on Art
So there has been a lot of discussion on my prior post. Several people have objections to my use of the term "art" -- but really I'd like to drop the semantic debates. If you have a problem with the term, then just substitute something else. My point was that creative works I was involved with or close to have greater meaning to me than distant creative works, however masterful. If you want to call only the awe-inspiring works of great masters as "art" -- that's fine, but I'm not interested in the discussion. Argue about how kids should really go to "craft class" and not "art class" somewhere else. If you have an argument, separate it from the semantics.
I'm not saying that RPGs should have more pretentious introductions, or that role-players should smoke clove cigarettes and act serious to impress people who are watching. I'm saying the opposite: that having pretentious introductions is irrelevant. I see no reason for RPGs to be made more impressive to audiences. Improv acting already exists, and there are plenty of other established fields for entertaining audiences through creative display. Deep in the comments of the prior article, jamused (whom I played with for two years) wrote: What I would have expected if the aesthetics of it really were primary is that the players would have discussed the aesthetics, their aesthetic goals, and how to achieve them, quite a bit both before play started and as it unfolded. Things like theme, pacing, symmetry, foreshadowing, and so on. What happened instead was a lot of talk--generally in character--about what the characters wanted to achieve, and how to go about accomplishing that, plus some out-of-character talk about the psychology of the various characters. Now, the ooc talk could have been an attempt to work out aesthetics, but it really didn't feel like that to me; conspicuously absent was any give and take about maybe the character should be like this or that for aesthetic reason X or Y which I find to be absolutely typical of actually trying to collaborate with others on fiction. Instead, it seemed much more like the character's player providing a glimpse into the character's internal thinking so that the other players would understand the character more, and it seemed like there was a pretty clear understanding that character ownership was absolute. This is a narrower view of aesthetics than I have. Further, even within creative fields, aesthetics aren't necessarily flagged by high-falutin talk. I've met poets, painters, and dancers who clearly work from aesthetics but have no self-conscious critical language. To my mind, explaining the character's internal thinking is clearly aesthetics. It's certainly not a game-ish push for accomplishment.
RPGs don't have the same aesthetics as, say, literature but they have aesthetics nonetheless. Whereas a writer might talk about plot structure, a role-player is more likely to talk about the rules, the world, and the characters. To take a concrete example, I believe that Hârn is art. It is an expansive, impressive aesthetic work. Even if the plot of a Hârn game has no literary value -- there can still be artistic value in exploring the vision of the world, just as there can be artistic value in a landscape painting. There is more to RPGs than just this, but the different sides to it are worth painting.
Josh's and others views tend to view the art of RPGs only as a narrative -- looking at a subset of literary qualities like theme, pacing, symetry, and foreshadowing. I think that does RPGs a disservice. By their nature, RPGs are not going to be as structured in their plots as planned and edited works like books and movies. While I have nothing against RPGs which try to structure the narrative more, I don't think that makes them more artistic.
Elsewhere, Victor Gijsbers has an interesting thread entitled "Are we making entertainment?". At first, I had some important objections to what he said, but he had a clarification later in the comments. (Also, see Brand Robins' "Games, Art, Power, and Me".) In part, he wrote about his original post: I failed to recognise that games can wear masks. For instance, they can pose as pure entertainment, while their potential for changing people lies hidden underneath, performing its work subterraneously. This is what Paul and John emphasise.
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Anyway, there is nothing wrong with games that are entertaining, in the sense that they are fun. But there is a lot wrong with the attitude to roleplaying games that believes the only relevant question is "Did you have a good time?". I mildly object to the term "masks" even though it's similar to my own description. I agree that works can be deceptive in what they're doing to the viewer, but calling it a mask conveys the presumption that entertainment generally has no effect on people. I think that exactly the same thing which entertains can be the thing which changes us.
In short, I think that making RPGs better will make them better art. One approach may be to be more structured about plot, but I don't think that's the only way. RPG rules which strive for realism are not inherently worse and no less artistic, any more than realist painters are lesser than surrealist ones. Experimenting with different kinds of RPGs will help make RPGs better, but I don't think they have to change fundamentally to be art.
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January 3rd, 2006
05:45 pm - Personal vs Impersonal Art
I'd like to talk about role-playing games as art here. There what I mean is about how RPGs affect people's meaning compared to other arts, like music, dance, theater, books, movies, and so forth. Note that I'm declaring here that RPGs are art. They are distinct from other arts, but that doesn't make them any less powerful or interesting.
In November, Roger Ebert wrote about video games in his Answer Man column. This found via Lore Sjöberg's blog entry "Video Lit". What Ebert wrote was: There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.
I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic. Keith Senkowski echoed similar sentiments in his recent post entitled "Not Art...". As he puts it: See the key is hitting other people outside of the creation process (which I consider friends and family a part of, even if indirectly). That is what makes it art.
So an improv show is art, cause the audience is experiencing the performance. If I as a bystander sat in and watched a larp unfold, it would move from craft to art. Playing with friends or strangers doesn't have anything to do with it cause you are a part of the creation process either way. You have a hand in the creation and it disqualifies you in my definition.
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I've been creating shit since I was a kid in all sorts of media (even music and acting a few times in my life) and I have seen the distinction between art and craft in practice. Art resonates over time with people and touches generations. Craft doesn't.
Now, I take this fairly seriously -- particularly Keith's final comment. I commented particularly on RPGs place a few months ago in my Excerpt from an upcoming essay. The issue for me is a difference between consuming professional mass media and fostering personal creativity. I agree with Keith that work by close relations is in some sense equivalent to work which you collaborated on. In both cases, it makes the art more personal. I believe I understand the distinction which Keith is making, but I disagree about the importance. Rather than "art" versus "craft", I would divide it into Impersonal and Personal Art.
1) Impersonal Art
This is work which is created by people unknown to you. This has the benefit of going through many critical filtering layers to reach you -- such as editors, producers/publishers, and so forth. In short, it will generally be mass media. The critical hurdles put a high standard of quality on it. It will usually be produced by professional artists with much experience and/or training. It will generally be very polished, well edited and packaged, and framed to appeal to a maximum number of people.
2) Personal Art
This is work which you are more closely associated -- be it your own work, work you collaborated on with others, or the artistic work of a friend or close relation. On the one hand, this sacrifices the critical layers. However, it also increases the relevance of the work to you.
I believe that personal involvement and creative input makes an experience more relevant and thus more powerful than simply consuming the creative output of a stranger. I get more out of reading my friend's poetry than reading some random stranger's poetry -- because I know that person and my life may even be touched by the same things written about. When I think over the artistic works that resonate with myself, the ones that touched me most were the ones I was involved in -- songs I sang were more powerful than songs I heard; plays I acted in were more powerful than plays I watched; and games I played were more powerful than games that I only observed.
While I think that impersonal art has it's place -- it helps bridge gaps of culture. However, I think that personal art is also extremely important and sadly neglected these days. When I look at modern culture, I feel like far too much influence comes from mass sources: television, books with millions of copies, and so forth -- and too little comes from one's personal communities. Too much of art is irrelevant to the reader, ripped from it's creative context and in the process stripped of much of its meaning. For me, role-playing fills this place.
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