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March 17th, 2008
10:43 am - What makes me a gamer?
So some thoughts on the RPG community and subculture. This was inspired by some other discussions -- this time I'm putting links on the bottom, since I want to emphasize my positive message first.
What makes a subculture?
Gary Alan Fine, in his book Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds , analyzed the gaming community in 1979 as a subculture. He defined a subsociety as a collection of individuals who have importance as a distinctive segment of society -- and a "subculture" as a subsociety where there is (1) a network of communication, (2) self-identification as a group, and (3) identification by those outside the group.
Why am I a part?
So for role-players, the key activities would be the games themselves, and communicating in a network of people who play. That would obviously include being a regular in online forums, but one can connect to the network in other ways, just so long as the chain eventually connects to the central sphere of gamers. So a group who just talk among themselves aren't part of the larger subculture. However, if a few of the group connect to large forums, then they are part of it. Those more central to the subculture may spend more time gaming, participate in online discussions, write gaming articles, and/or self-publish their own games.
For myself, I obviously communicate with other RPG players -- through my LJ, various forums, my webpage, and a few conventions. I also identify myself as a gamer. (My license plate says "RPGNERD", for example.) I would say that the main reason I consider myself a gamer is that I play games with others and also talk about games with a community of those who play. I remember being distinctly surprised when Lee in my group said in conversation that she wasn't a gamer -- I felt that by regularly playing games with others, one was a gamer. (She clarified that by "gamer" she meant someone who played video/computer games, which is the more common understanding of the term.)
I could compare this to other subcultures. For example, I am more marginally a part of the Korean-American subculture. I connect to a network through my Korean relatives and subscribing to KoreAm magazine. I identify myself as Korean-American, and others identify me as such. I have some other hobbies, though not as involved as gaming. These days, I don't identify myself as a singer, even though I sing fairly well, because I don't sing in groups often enough to feel it significant. I have in the past been involved in theater as well, though the theater groups I was in were somewhat isolated from any broader scene.
I know a little bit about a few other subcultures by proxy, like the poetry scene and the queer scene (at least in the Bay Area).
What is distinctive about the gamer subculture?
Demographically, gamers tend towards white, suburban, middle-class. They are often college-educated. Within the U.S., they are notably strong in the Midwest, but are pretty widely spread. Religiously, they are mixed with many being agnostic, but with a over-represented minority of pagans. As seen in "Psychological Studies on Role-Playing Games", the general trend is that tabletop role-players tend slightly towards introversion but strongly towards openness to experience (cf. Big Five Personality Traits). There is a trend of estrangement from mainstream culture, which basically means they watch less of the most popular television programs and magazines.
Beyond this, there are a host of traits that most readers are probably aware of. Gamers tend to dress informally in t-shirts and such, similar to sports fans though with different icons. They are not very physically fit, not surprising for a sedentary hobby, and no more pronounced than what I've seen of other sedentary hobbies. They strongly enjoy and prefer science fiction and fantasy, overlapping heavily with SF/F and comic book fandom.
Personally, I'm at least as comfortable in the general gamer scene as I am in other social groups -- including subcultures like a Korean-American crowd or theater geeks, or mainstream culture like going out to a local sports bar or club. I do have things that I am not happy about, but most of them are specific to my tastes rather than universal improvements.
The one dissatisfaction that comes to mind for me is lack of women. Broadly speaking, I'm fine with having gender biased space. For example, I'm fine with predominantly female gatherings like WisCon or BlogHer. I'm also fine with male-dominant spaces like men's movement gatherings or guys' nights out, as long as there aren't real-world perks hinged on them (i.e. like male-only golf games that make business connections). However, I find that within gaming, I enjoy a more gender split like AmberCon NorthWest.
Of course, there are lots of other things I would wish for. At conventions, I'd like better organization, more social activities, and better kids programs or child care -- but that's just sort of a general wish for better stuff. Similarly, there are a lot of hypothetical RPGs that I would like to see published. I would also prefer less division of camps in online discussion. I would describe those more as wishes than dissatisfaction, though.
Dissatisfaction with the Gamer Subculture/Community
This post was inspired by some recent comments about gamer subculture. Matt Snyder posted in "Dice Quixote" that he wanted to play role-playing games, but not participate in the surrounding subculture apart from the games. I discussed some interesting points in the comments to that with Lisa Fleishman. Keith Senkowsky followed up in "Amused..." saying, "Snyder has been accused of saying the subculture is beneath him (which he did not say). Well I am saying it. The subculture is beneath me. How you like them apples?" In response, Stuart Robertson started a thread on "The Myth of Gamer Subculture" on Story Games, and a parallel thread on theRPGsite.
There have, of course, been other negative comments on the gamer subculture in the past. However, they are often not consistent. For example, quite the opposite of Synder's point, Ron Edwards has criticized the tendency of gamers to not socialize outside of games -- notably in his often self-referenced 2002 Forge thread on "Social Context", where he suggested that participating in more out-of-game activities with other gamers was healthier than just playing. Others, more like Snyder, have claimed that gamers socialize together too much -- to the extreme of "doing everything together".
These clash both with my own impressions and the psychological studies of gamers that I've seen. I have seen nothing to indicate that gamers on average have any greater problems than the general population. They have a slight introversion tendency, but it is not pronounced, nor is introversion a flaw. I have seen both gamers who treat their games as a casual night out without socializing otherwise, and gamers who are a closely-knit social group with the people they play with. I don't think see a problem with either behavior. This is not to say that gamers don't have their problems, but then so does everyone.
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October 12th, 2007
01:33 pm - More on D&D for Girls
So as a followup to my earlier post, "Cerise Magazine, September 2007 and 'D&D for Girls'".
Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress
I did read Shelly Mazzanoble's book, Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress: A Girl's Guide to the Dungeons & Dragons Game, now that it is actually out. Unfortunately, I lost my copy of it, so I'm not prepared to doing a long formal review. However, there were two reviews by others that I should mention.
Robyn Fleming gave a mixed but overall positive review of the book in the October 2007 Issue of Cerise -- which also has many other worthy articles. On the other hand, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bluegargantua gave it a rather scathing review on his LJ -- though he did put in some caveats after his wife defended the book.
Personally, I'm somewhere in between. I did like descriptions of the play sessions, but the introductions about the game itself were painful to me. I realize that I am not the target market. Nevertheless, I am fairly sure that if I gave it to the 11-year-old I know interested in D&D that she would quickly become disgusted after reading about Mazzanoble having the DM make a character for her, since she was put off by the complex rules and math.
Judged solely as a gateway for girls to be introduced to the game (i.e. a guide to playing as billed), it seems quite limited to me. There is not much concrete information, and it is written to a narrow audience. On the other hand, I think it has something of a dual purpose. It is a sponsored marketing piece, not just to get new paying customers of D&D products, but to change the image of D&D players more broadly. It raises the visibility of not just female D&D players, but "girly-girls" (as Mazzanoble describes herself).
Astrid's Parlor
On a less mixed note, I am fairly pleased with how the new Wizards of the Coast forum Astrid's Parlor is turning out. It is named after Mazzanoble's original D&D character described in the book, and is intended for topics focused on or related to female gamers. There remain some detractors, but it is far more promising than my original Cerise article would have suggested.
Marketing Games to Girls: The Bigger Picture
I did note two recent articles on the topic of marketing games to girls, via the IRIS Network Forums. These deal with the computer/console game market primarily, but I think that could have an influence on the tabletop games industry -- at least in showing what is possible.
First is the UK Times Online article by Leo Lewis, Nintendo's women gamers could transform market. It is about the market in Japan, where the article reports, Japanese women have overtaken their male counterparts to become the biggest users of Nintendo's Wii and DS machines in a seismic shift that the company said would "transform the video games industry."
Second is the GameDailyBiz article by David Radd, "Game Marketers Increasingly Targeting Women". It focused on an interview with Maleea Barnett, former VP of Atari now working for NeoEdge Networks, a company that focuses on advertising-supported online video games. They study users to put in targetted ads, and their most recent press report notes that hottest trend in gaming is the market of women in her late 30s or early 40s who playing on an average PC -- as opposed to men in their 20s playing on expensive consoles.
Jane Austen Playing D&D?
On a related note about D&D marketing, I came across an interesting reference. I am almost finished with the Naomi Novik's terrific new novel, Empire of Ivory -- the fourth book in the Temeraire series. As I turned it over, I noticed the top quote on the back cover read:
"Enthralling reading--it's like Jane Austen playing Dungeons & Dragons with Eragon's Christopher Paolini."
It's attributed to a Time magazine review of the first Temeraire book, His Majesty's Dragon. What's intriguing is that a Time magazine reviewer was giving a favorable view of the book by comparing it to playing Dungeons & Dragons -- and further that the book publisher then decided that it was the best quote to sell the book with. There are plenty of people who find the quote offputting, but I guess not so many since it is apparently selling quite well. From a search on the web, I found what I guess is original article on the web, Lev Grossman's 5 Great New Books. The full mention is: A British naval captain boards a French warship (this being the Napoleonic era) and discovers a dragon's egg in the hold. This does not surprise him. In his reality, dragons are in common use by the military; popular breeds include Winchesters and Regal Coppers. But dragons bond at birth, and when the egg hatches at sea, our hero, Captain Laurence, must become the dragon's rider--which distresses him, since, as everyone knows, "no woman of sense and character would deliberately engage her affections on an aviator." Laurence's induction into the strange, insular world of 19th century dragon riders and his unfolding relationship with his highly intelligent mount, Temeraire, make enthralling reading--it's like Jane Austen playing Dungeons & Dragons with Eragon's Christopher Paolini.
I've liked Novik's series a lot, but trying to picture Jane Austen playing D&D just leaves me blank. Anyway, I just thought I'd share that bit.
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October 9th, 2007
07:25 pm - GMing as a Social Position
So I'd like talk about game-mastering as a social position.
Recent Discussion
One of the banes of Internet discussion is fragmented forums. On theRPGsite there was a thread started by poster "Gunslinger" called "Do Rules Heavy and Story Games have the same goal?", his thesis being "Both are built to minimize where the GM has final say over resolution." vbwyrde posted a reply to it, and his reply was also cross-posted to his LRPGSW Yahoo Group ("Literary RPG Society of Westchester"). His conclusion: "The upshot is that Player Empowerment and Rules Heavy share the same effect: they tend to limit the discretion of the GM." A link to his cross-post was then posted to the Story Games forum by Tim Jensen as "Somebody should help these people understand story" (account required). I started on the discussion in the last of these, the Story Games thread.
Since not everyone can read Story Games, I'll summarize a bit. Jonathan Walton and Joshua BishopRoby said vbwyrde's reply was reasonable though it misused some terms. Ben Lehman said "My game doesn't have a GM because I knew that, if I wrote a game with a GM, I'd never get to be a player." -- agreed by Ryan Macklin. Curious about the GMing trend, I started a poll on theRPGsite (since it allows an easy option for polls), "Who GMs in Your Group?" Of 53 respondents thus far: 21 are mostly single GM (8 purely one GM, 13 over 75% one GM); 24 are split GMing; and 8 were varying answers.
In his reply, Mike Holmes had an interesting postscript: P.S. so called "Story-games," heck I'd go so far as to even say Narrativism as a movement, have come about, in my opinion, largely due to the existence of GM's who never really wanted to be in sole control of the game, and wanted to play themselves. That is, we didn't want to give up the tools we had as GMs, but we also didn't want to have to "perform," but, rather, get to participate the way the players participate. So it's no surprise that we ended up with games that facilitate this.
I replied: I'll buy that, though by "sole control of the game" I think you mean "sole control of the GM's portion" -- i.e. background and NPCs and impersonal events. From peoples' statements here, it sounds like a lot of the drives also stems from having groups where only one person is willing to GM.
I've almost never had that. In my experience, typically around half the group are willing to GM. I also love the creativity involved in being a traditional player -- breathing life into a character and coming up with unexpected directions. That's one of the attractions of larps to me -- that they vastly reduce the amount of typical GM stuff. There are generally no NPCs, and few impersonal events and narration.
As a clarification to the above, I and the GMs in my group typically enjoy GMing. (i.e. The phrase "willing to GM" doesn't imply a dislike for GMing.) However, depending on the time of campaign it can become a drag after a many sessions. For example, I loved GMing my Star Trek campaigns, but I couldn't sustain it for more than a few months.
Still, complaints of the work of GMing are widespread. For example, in his "Save My Game" column for Wizards of the Coast, Jason Nelson-Brown wrote "Player Thrills, DM Disappointments". A GM had written in complaining that his players ignored his hard work. Jason responded mainly noting that GMs should expect players to not necessarily be interested in the same things that interest them. Jason's feature article series, Save My Game, is often interesting for the social problems that it brings up. His reply to Irreconcilable Differences was also interesting, about a GM and players that split up over the issue of their playing a campaign with dragon PCs.
In theRPGsite poll thread, some of the GMs complained about not being able to play. However, shared GMing was the most common response in the poll, so the problem was perhaps common but not dominant within that set.
Hierarchy as an Issue
I agree with Mike that the dominance of the GM is a key point within the development of modern tabletop Story Games (aka Forge-style tabletop RPGs), and in criticism of them. There is a similar point within Scandanavian larp over the dominance of the larp organizer, though it is less prominent as an issue. One of the articles from the Knutepunkt 2005 book was Martine Svanevik's The Collective's little red book: A step-by-step guide to arranging larps the collective way (PDF link). It was aimed at reducing the dominance of the controlling larp organizer (also called "larpwright" or the equivalent in some circles). Instead, the larp background is written collectively by the participants.
Both collective larp organizing and GMless tabletop games often explicitly hold an esthetic ideal that the creative input from all the participants should be roughly equal. On Story Games, several people expressed a narrow preference for a particular degree/type of control -- where traditional GMing was too much, and traditional playing was too little. Issues of control and input were also discussed at a collective larp organization talk at Knutpunkt 2006.
It is important to note that, though, that lack of hierarchy doesn't inherently achieve this. Lack of an authority position can potentially mean that one person ends up the de facto dominant force. In the worst case, a de facto leader may have effective power to dominate without being given additional responsibility to match. Conversely, an authorized leader can at times act as a gatekeeper, bringing in many people's ideas and ensuring that no single person's ideas dominate. For example, a panel chair may cut off speakers who are going on too long, so that others on the panel have a chance to air their views.
People generally agree that a traditional tabletop GM has more control than a traditional player. However, there is disagreement over the nature of dominance. For example, some people are interested primarily in world background and action resolution. Thus, within traditional RPGs so they see the GM position as all-important for tabletop play, and the players as most passive audience. Personally, I find that the PCs with their personalities, background, and choices as a central feature of RPGs. Thus, I feel differently about the role of players.
Hierarchy in Other Social/Creative Hobbies
It is worth reflecting, I think, on hierarchies within other social hobbies. Both plays and film -- two of my own hobbies in the past -- are traditionally far more hierarchical than RPGs. There is a director, and everyone looks to the director for the final word. The director will give actors notes on their performances, and make decisions regarding the art and all other aspects of the performance. There are some exceptions to this, but in my experience a controlling director was usually true even for very small plays.
As another model, formal club activities often have officer positions the are regularly assigned by vote. There is often a president with a strong leadership role, but many decisions are doled out. Other positions may include treasurer and secretary. Clubs may also have temporary creative projects with separate hierarchies, though. For example, there could be a social club where someone volunteers to take charge of the decorations for the party. Anyone else who volunteers to help follows that person's lead.
I have also been in less hierarchical hobbies, though more rarely. For example, I have sung in quartets or octets where everything was more-or-less collectively decided. I've only played in a larger orchestra that is hierarchical, but I understand that a number of small bands are also non-hierarchical, although there is often a leader in practice.
Thoughts
As usual, I think there's room for a range of different balances. In my experience, the traditional tabletop GM/player split works fine -- less dictatorial than a play or film director, but clearly more empowered and with more responsibility.
Other balances also work well. The original Ars Magica and Prince Valiant had a slowly rotating GM position. I've also enjoyed Polaris and A Thousand and One Nights, though generally for short games rather than extended campaigns.
I think a potentially interesting approach is to have a defined player role that is of a different type. For example, I playtested Liam Burk's game of colonialists occupying a fictional Pacific island, Dog Eat Dog, at the EndGame July 2007 Mini-Con. In it, there is no GM, but there is one empowered player who represents the colonials that can, among other abilities, choose to win any conflict. The position is distinctly different from a GM in tone, but uses the aura of power to good use within the game. This is similar to what the game Paranoia does with its GM, though quite distinct mechanically.
In the future, I'd also like to talk about the higher-level dynamics of a gaming group. i.e. How do you decide (1) what game will be played; (2) who is in the group; and (3) who will be in what role (such as GM)?
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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, 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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September 12th, 2007
03:37 pm - Cerise Magazine, September 2007 and "D&D for Girls"
The September 2007 Issue of Cerise has been out for over a week now. Cerise is a monthly webzine intended as a resource by and for women gamers.
There are a bunch of articles in this one of interest, including:
Related to that, I also have a news article of sorts there regarding Shelly Mazzanoble's new book, Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress: A Girl's Guide to the Dungeons & Dragons Game, and the controversy of a set of threads on the Dungeons & Dragons boards. The article is entitled
It's not my best work, written quickly after a specific request for an article on the topic in the IRIS Network forums. And in the three weeks since I wrote it, there is now a new sub-forum in D&D 4E boards called Astrid's Parlor. It doesn't have a fully defined mission statement yet, but at least it now has a set of posting guidelines.
The top-viewed topics include the designated thread for complaints about the forum ("The 'I Hate Astrid's Parlor' Thread") along with content like "Art of Females" ; "The Cult of the Chainmail Bikini" ; "The merits of emphasized roleplaying in attracting female gamers" ; "Pink Dice" ; "Are female gamers different?" ; and "Races that Appeal to Female Gamers". There is a fair amount of activity, and it shows some promise -- but it is clearly still dealing with the early stages of dealing with gender issues. Still, given what I first reported on in the article, I think the forum is a good sign.
A few other feminism-related links over the past several months, while I'm at it:
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May 3rd, 2007
09:11 am - Cerise Magazine, May 2007
Via ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) feminist_gamers, I noted Cerise: May 2007 and Call for Submissions. Cerise is a monthly "gaming magazine for women"(that covers video games, tabletop games, and live action role-playing). (For those like me who didn't recognize it, cerise is a shade of red that comes from the French word for cherry.)
In the first issue (May 2007), the articles focus on video games -- but that just means that we need people to submit tabletop RPG and larp articles for the June issue over the next two weeks (submissions are due by May 15).
There was an interesting article by Lindsey Galloway that studies the history of the girl's games movement following the breakout success of Barbie Fashion Designer in 1996. However, the efforts to create girl-targetted games foundered after that, which she analyzes is due to a stereotyped and exclusionary direction of the effort. It ties in my mind a bit to a discussion on Levi's Gamecraft forum -- The Micropress Trend and in particular the followup thread Micropress [split] that was kicked off by Mike Holmes comment "All the female gamers who are going to play are in now, you see... there's no untapped demographic left."
As far as demographics, I was reminded of a February interview with Ryan Dancey as Fear the Boot Interview Episode #1. He said that "Most people who play tabletop role-playing games were 18 years and older. We found that they were from middle to upper-middle class incomes. We found that they tended to live in suburban areas, as opposed to rural or urban areas. About 20% of them were women." His analysis was that hobby games thrived where people did not have easy access to other venues. i.e. In a city, people would tend to go out rather than play tabletop games at home.
I'd take what he says with a big grain of salt, but it's interesting to reflect on. I am doubtful that anything is going to change overnight, but I think there is room for the RPG demographic to change and expand.
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April 10th, 2007
11:15 pm - Social Interactions and Sublimation
I have been pondering some more about social contract and gaming. This is inspired a bit by some more theory discussions lately -- notably "Ingredients of a Good Gaming Group" on the IRIS Network, but also some other not-directly-related threads like "Acting out of character" on Story Games which talked about the line-breaking of having a character act in unusual/unexpected/"out-of-character" ways. Also, "The thing(s) about Shared Imagined Space" on Knife-Fight, where a few posts talked about the importance of systems/actions which bridged the gap between fiction and real life.
Lastly, I recall an old post from last August by Joshua BishopRoby, "Blitheringly Obvious Epiphany", where he suggests that "The sole purpose of a game is to create a medium through which players can interact." and "The measure of a game lies in the interaction it fosters". Even though I disagree with it, it certainly pushes one to think more about that side of things.
Sublimation?
So the thing I was thinking about was about what I might call sublimation -- based on a psychology term that I am no doubt mangling horribly. (cf. Wikipedia on Sublimation (psychology))
I'll start with an example. Suppose within your gaming group, two of the players are a couple who bicker constantly. Their long-term relationship may or may not be in trouble, but at times the arguing is sometimes a distraction from the game. For the next campaign, someone suggests that they make PCs who are in conflict. The idea is that rather than having them argue out-of-game and distracting people, channel that and have them argue in-game.
Another example from the Vinland campaign. Ken is something of a power-gamer in that his character is always armed and otherwise preparing for adventure. Rather than complaining that his character should be different, we accept this and shift our conception of the character to fit that behavior. There were occaisional discussions between other PCs and his NPC relatives regarding his strange behavior. It wasn't a major feature, but it was commented on as a sort of paranoia.
So my stab at a more general definition would be incorporating real-world personality and relationships into the game fiction.
I don't think it is terribly uncommon. Say, I flirted with my now-wife when we were playing in a Vampire larp, and that was extremely common in my observation. Flirting was less common but definitely still present in my tabletop game experience. There are also plenty of social power dynamics within play.
Issues
Of course, there are a lot of potential issues with sublimation. Some people have fundamental trouble with such mixing. If they know that there is a real-world analog to something in-game, they see the in-game behavior as being really the out-of-game behavior. This could be seen as a preference for the game to be more separated from reality.
Others might say that this detracts from the quality of the fiction -- though I think it's important to compare it to the practical alternative rather than an ideal. (i.e. Do you ignore the power-gaming player's behavior, or do you address it within the game? Neither is ideal.)
At a higher level, though, what is sublimating doing to our social interaction? When dealing with gaming advice, a fairly common suggestion is to break out of the game and talk to the players out-of-game to resolve differences. Sublimation is the opposite, taking things out of the game and putting them into the game where they may or may not be resolved. When is that good and when is that bad? I don't have a clear answer for that.
One thing is the difference between explicit, formal communication and indirect. So, for example, some people would prefer formal. They despair of the indirection required, say, to ask someone out on a date and would prefer to openly declare their suit and negotiate. Similarly, they'd say that if there is a problem between two people, it's best to has it out in the open and discuss it rather than exchanging barbs and wisecracks.
However, there are a lot of people who prefer more informal, indirect communication. Rather than declaring oneself a suitor, they'd prefer casual flirting that sounds out the possibilities. Rather than openly fighting, they'd prefer to work their issues out more slowly over time.
Taking issues into out-of-game discussion is a more formal and explicit process, while sublimation is more of an indirect way of working things out. I think that deciding between these touches on a huge other layer of human communications -- which is my way of saying I don't have any clear suggestions to offer. I do both in practice, but I'm not sure I could formally say why I chose one or the other.
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February 26th, 2007
04:06 pm - Women of the Century
So there was some recent controversy over Spirit of the Century, starting I think with peaseblossom's post on Friday about SotC entitled Pulp, gender, genre, which has garnered well over a hundred comments.
drivingblind responded in comments, then had his own summary That thread, where he "So at the heart of all the hullaballoo portion of things was how the art was done, and what sort of message the art conveyed. There was very little hullaballoo about the *text*, because pretty much most of what she said about the *text* of the book that was problematic was spot on correct. We *did* get the male to female ratios wrong, and we *did* somewhat accidentally let the list of character types stay male-centric. I mea culpa'd on that part, accepted it and noted it as something we're sorry about and need to work on, and then started swinging at the parts I didn't agree with... which was mostly about the darn art!"
Coincidentally, Brand Robins has posted on a very similar topic with some thoughts starting with illustrations of women for the Conan RPG, and about genre and sex more generally:
Why is that Woman on Her Hands and Knees?
A Question for the Ladies
But Brand, don't You Like Sex? (RANT)
the_tall_man had three posts in response:
Dirty, Filthy Sexist Propaganda (also a GameCraft thread)
Integrity, relevancy, openness, honesty, awareness, and provocation
Views on Genre
Now, by sheer coincidence, I just played Spirit of the Century for the first time this Thursday (game-mastered by Brian Isikoff as part of EndGame Oakland's Thursday Evening Role-playing). And I played a female character -- a woman reporter named Cat Sullivan -- modelled after Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday or Catherine Hepburn in Woman of the Year (whom I had mixed up at the time).
There were five other players. Karen played "Ginny Steel" (a tomboy mechanic, a variant on Sally Slick); Chris Bennett played "Master Kwan" (an oriental stage magician with a talent for disappearing); Sam Stephenson played "Genome Joe" (an over-the-top geek with bio-manipulation and quantum teleporting); Paul Strack played "Dr. Octavo" (another stage-magician type with sword-cane and knives); and Robert played "David Willingsworth" (an English blue-blood).
A lot of the players seemed to be interested in the character -- at least, I had a ton of suggestions for her Aspects. I eventually went with "Nose for News", "Quick Change", "First on the Scene", "I Know a Guy", "Just One More Thing", "Great Gams", "Let Me Check in My Purse", "In Over Her Head", and "Anything For The Story". The "Great Gams" Aspect was Karen's suggestion, which I immediately took up ("gams" is old slang for legs).
I think she got along fairly well. She didn't have any obvious combat schtick, and took back seat to a degree in a fight. I had given her a gun but only Average skill, and I never actually used it in the game since the more combative characters handled things. There was a bit when I went to distract some German guards while Ginny slipped into the engine room, where they assumed that she was slutty just for coming by to chat them up ("We've heard American women are like that"). Notably, it was plausible for them to think that, but it seemed strange for them to say that to her -- making it sound more like a commentary. The Russell/Hepburn fast-talking reporter type would hang out with men frequently. One line that stuck with me from the game: Dr. Octavo: There are things which Man was not meant to know.
Cat Sullivan: Exactly. That's why there are women.
The larger point, though, is that I think the pulp genre does have a fair amount of racism and sexism built into its tropes. I've commented earlier in my LJ on Fu Manchu and Orientalism. Now, Fred responded in comments about the racist/sexist side of pulp saying, "From my perspective, we put more than enough stuff about the ugly bits into the game. We didn't want the game to be *about* the ugly bits of the past -- that's a message that runs counter to the light, breezy fun vibe we wanted. So we hung a lantern on it, said it was there so you don't get ugly surprises if you go researching the materials. But to make it a big point of the game? No thanks, honestly. "
I think that if you want to have pulp without the racist and sexist bits, you have to re-think things to a fair degree. If you want to avoid the ugly bits of the genre, then you have to actively work to change it. I think the Spirit of the Century does make some effort by having characters like Sally Slick, but I don't think it does enough. As peaseblossom noted, it does do better than many if not most RPGs. For example, I discuss Deadlands in my essay Gender Roles in RPG Texts, which I criticized by its "sidebar" approach -- essentially doing the genre straight and then adding a sidebar about women.
You should ideally have character generation that treats gender and race as a core element rather than a sidebar. Fred acknowledges this, luckily. Having taken an interest in Spirit of the Century, I might look at doing some material for it that addresses the imbalance. Looking at my own work, I think of an old HERO System adventure from the early nineties I wrote, a pulp adventure in the South Seas called The Land Which Time Forgot. I had only mild nods in it -- one of the six PCs was a woman (though she was a tough "Rugged Explorer"), and two were Asian. I ponder updating some of this, both for my current sensibilities and the Spirit system.
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February 13th, 2007
03:24 pm - Women in Historical Campaigns
A few older links here on gender in RPGs, with a particular eye for historical campaigns. Last month, Peaseblossom on the 20' by 20' Room posted a some links (care of the 9th Carnival of Feminist SF/F), including discussion of sexism in historical RPGs compared to sexism in SF/F in general.
Specifically, simadrienne wrote "It's not discrimination, it's historical" (22 Dec 2006) in response to this thread in roleplayers. (She notably refers to this amusing strip from "Home on the Strange" by Ferrett Steinmetz and Veronica Pare.) On the side of SF/F in general, Peaseblossom pointed out Richard Pilbeam's post on Grind House, Sin City, Male Priviledge, ... (23 Dec 2006).
The historical is certainly on my mind at the moment since I'm preparing to GM a game set in the 19th century China/Korea. Thus, I am thinking some about how to deal with characters of both sexes.
Now, I'm not doing straight history, but rather an alternate history with fantasy elements based on Naomi Novik's Temeraire novels. The novels differ from historical gender roles -- traced to the divergent point of tamed dragons. The pilots of dragons are a non-traditional military role, and some dragons prefer female pilots over male. In England, only a small fraction of pilots are women. However, in Novik's China, military pilots are almost all female. In the novels, it was explained that being a pilot is the only military position open to women, and families required to send a member for military service preferred to send less-valued daughters rather than sons.
I'm not sure exactly what my approach will be in the game, but I thought I'd just toss out some of the ideas I come across. I should note that most (6 out of 8) of the players are women. I ran another historical campaign with roughly the same group (the Vinland Campaign) before which worked well.
Now, in principle women in 19th century Korea are more restricted than in my hypothetical Vinland based on pre-Christian Iceland of the historical sagas. If I were running a game where the PCs were members in good social standing, then I think having women PCs would be tricky. This is one of the reasons why I am planning instead on setting the game amidst the rebellious groups. The rebellious groups are set on breaking down the old order, and though they are quite different from each other, most give more rights to women (and not coincidentally recruit from women for support). The primary part is probably disaffected peasants, roughly proto-communists. There are also different groups as the outlawed Catholics, followers or refugees of the Chinese Taiping Rebellion (heretical Christians who professed complete equality), or students of the new Tonghak religion. It's also worth noting that the shamanic leaders in Korea are exclusively women.
Of course, there are still many more possibilities for women characters who are exceptions to the rule. For example, in the Vinland game it was unusual for women to be involved in war. However, one of the PCs was a woman set on vengeance who disguised herself as her brother in order to personally avenge her parents and brother who had died in exile. Women of unusual qualities, skills, or circumstances will differ from the norm -- and it is fairly common for PCs to differ from the norm.
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December 19th, 2006
09:49 pm - The Geekness of Gaming
So there's an interesting discussion on the geekiness of gaming on Story Games. James Nostack started the first thread, "De-Geeking Gaming", on approaches to make gaming "less geeky" -- but discussion quickly ran into problems of what geekiness is. Then Sara McAtee started a spin-off thread, "To geek or not to geek? What's the real question?", which questioned the reasons behind the drive to "de-geekify". This touches on something which I've been meaning to talk about since Gen Con, where I and many others had a long talk with Ron Edwards about negative impacts within gaming culture. That has been an infamous issue in the past, so I'm not going talk about the discussion there except that it made me think.
So we're familiar with the basic issue. In many mainstream circles, the connotation of role-playing is a forty-year old, overweight, bearded man living in his parents' basement who talks obsessively about fantasy topics like ninjas or dragons. Even when the few mainstream celebrities like Vin Diesel or Stephen Colbert talk about their gaming, they have to deal with similar stereotypes.
So what would change this image of gaming?
Well, I don't think the problem here is the ninjas. Forty year-old balding, fat, bearded guys living in their mothers' basement probably aren't going to get a lot of respect regardless of whether they're playing six-hour fantasy games or two-hour soap opera games. If you want the image to change, you need to change the demographic of players. That means appealing to more younger kids, and also to women of all ages. If you can think of ways to appeal to thin people and rich people, that wouldn't hurt either.
The single data point that I have on this is that in Scandanavian countries are about the closest I've seen to having RPGs be mainstream. In particular, Denmark seems to have had outdoor larping become an "in" thing for kids. But in terms of activity, they have embraced much of what is often called geekiness over here. You have a lot of larps which involve speaking and acting in character, not to mention costumes. Tabletop RPGs are strongly represented too, though. Both have a lot of fantasy/sci-fi content.
As Ken Hite put in his Ropecon 2006 Con Report, The crowd was much younger, girlier, and sillier dressed than an American game convention, which I take to be a result of Finland's very high percentage of LARPs and freeform groups (about which more anon), which have attracted a goodly number of younger girls in silly costumes. Not that, I hasten to add, there's anything wrong with that. Indeed, given my choice between goth girls garbed as butterflies of death and tubby bearded guys sporting self-indulgent T-shirts, well, call me a rebel but I think the Finnish way may just have something going for it. At the Knutpunkt conventions, I remember in particular conversations with Claus Raasted, who is a Danish larp organizer who had also starred in a reality TV show as a larper. He felt that the costumes and physical activity made larps something more accessible to outsiders, as there was more visual stuff to watch and a demand for physical fitness. Note that he's not terribly positive about the "freaks and geeks" scene within the U.S.
On the other hand, the de-geeking thread has many suggestions for changing the footprint of tabletop RPGs by new game designs: i.e. session length, length of prep time, burden on the GM. A few other suggestions include adding a board or other physical representation, and calling something a "story game" or simply a "game". There was also the suggestion to have genres other than fantasy, sci-fi, and horror. I approve of many of the suggestions for new games on the grounds of variety. Even though I enjoy many fantasy and sci-fi themed games, I like having more choices in genre such as historical, soap opera, war story, sports, and so forth. I would also like different footprints.
A number of low-prep pickup tabletop games were suggested including Emily Care Boss' romance games Breaking the Ice and Shooting the Moon; Meg Baker's storytelling game A Thousand and One Nights; Joe Prince's boxing game Contenders; Gregor Hutton's suburban sniping game Best Friends; Nathan Paoletta's Vietnam war game Carry; and Ron Edwards' romantic break-up game It Was a Mutual Decision. I have the first three of these, and I really liked my first play of them. However, I haven't actually played them since GenCon which doesn't bode well for the footprint.
Of course, there's room for other footprints as well. I was impressed with trying out Dead of Night as a pickup game. Something like it might have potential to be close to the party game "Werewolf" with more of a role-playing angle. I also loved the Parlor Larp series, which were excellent resources which filled a similar role to "How to Host a Murder" but were still distinctly role-playing games. I'm also interested in the upcoming new edition of "Land of Og" being written by Robin Laws (patricks posted a playtest report).
I think that there's an awful lot in here which is more about the content and the marketing rather than the format of design in terms of play time.
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December 13th, 2006
08:53 pm - RPGs in the Eighties Media
So, the eighties Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series has been released on to DVD. See the DVD Details on IMDB for more info. I vaguely remember seeing them back in my youth, but I don't remember anything much.
Along related lines, I saw recent links for other eighties marketing material, including an 80s TV commercial for D&D on YouTube, and Classic Mail Order Ads for D&D. They seem bizarre, but it's hard to separate the general eighties-ness of them from what was seen about role-playing.
I am vaguely curious about the cartoon, and wonder how suitable (or interesting) they would be for my six-year-old son. As I understand it, it was criticized for its violence at the time, but that was in an era when violence in cartoons was not allowed at all. I'm also somewhat concerned about racial and gender stereotypes.
I did watch Cloak & Dagger with him a few weeks ago, which is a 1984 movie about a kid who plays a bunch of adventure games who gets caught up in a real-life spy story. The movie starts with an action sequence which turns out to be imaginary -- and he moves his miniature around and rolls a d12 for his character to escape. The twist is that he has an imaginary friend, Jack Flak, who appears and speaks to him. The sappy part is that Jack is played by the same actor as his father, and is clearly the absent father figure -- with the end being that he gives up his imaginary friend and (it is implied) his games when he connects with his father. Eh... However, in the meantime, he had some cool adventures where he drew on his gamer knowledge. It was fine, though not quite as good as I remembered from when I was a kid.
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November 28th, 2006
09:27 am - How Should I Criticize?
I'm back from Thanksgiving vacation now. Sometime soon, I'd like to start on releasing a bunch of reviews. However, I have some issues with my own reviews which I'm struggling with. A few weeks ago, I commented about this in response to Paul Tevis' rant in Have Games, Will Travel, #77, in a post on his HGWT77 Forum Thread. Coincidentally, Nathan Paoletta recently started a Story Games thread, "Giving Thanks, or How Shall We Criticize?" -- which has some excellent discussion of pros and cons.
The larger context of this is that I feel there are a number of low standards among gamers. This includes both mainstream and small-press games. In particular, I'm disappointed by a lot of things about role-playing games. Even in my favorite games, there are usually a bunch of things which annoy me. I feel that if I let these things slide, then things won't improve in the hobby.
So in principle, I feel like tough criticism should be a good thing. And indeed, as a reviewer, I tend to be pretty tough. But I feel like this gets me into trouble. I remember in particular one of the players came to my Truth & Justice game at GenCon Indy -- and he said that he was surprised I would run it based on my review of it. And that turned out to be one of the funnest con games I've run.
So there's a balance somewhere which I don't think I've quite worked out. I want to push designers to strive for better, but still recognize excellence. However, I don't think it comes across well in my previous reviews (cf. my List of Reviews). However, I come across as very harsh in general, and I don't per se want to drive people away from designers I'm reviewing. If I'm reviewing it, it's because I'm interested in the game.
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October 26th, 2006
10:21 am - WotC Taglines
So, a curious side-note on RPG culture. The Wizards of the Coast site has a bunch of random text taglines for the company, mostly whimsical. There was an RPGnet thread, "We'll be your girlfriend" about one which was apparently taken down shortly thereafter. I was able to fairly simply extract the full list of taglines at the time. I grouped them roughly below.
(Self-referential)
"Insert corporate tagline here."
"This space intentionally left blank."
"Please allow us to introduce ourselves."
"We like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells."
"We speak in movie references, too."
(Referring to banned lines)
"Where people get paid to make up stuff like this"
"They made us take our other taglines down"
"Humor pending approval"
"Someone will put a stop to this eventually"
"Banned from posting for 511,592 hr and 21 min"
(Company humor)
"Not to be confused with Sorcerers of the Sound"
"Not to be confused with Prestidigitators of the Pacific"
"Not to be confused with Necromancers of the Northwest"
"Behold our Cubicles of Legend"
"The World Leader in Hobby Gaming"
(About gamers)
"The top of Gamer Mountain"
"Hey, being king of the geeks is pretty cool."
"We're all rocket scientists here"
"The Land of Do As You Please"
"Freaky in a good way"
"You're our primary and secondary demographic."
"9 out of 10 cool people play our games. The 10th is dead."
(About characters)
"Tell us about your character."
"No, really, we want to hear about your character"
"The in-character company"
(About dice/gaming)
"Rolling a twenty on the die of life."
"Home of the Natural 20"
"Secret lair of your feverish desires"
(Game references)
"Chaotic neutral means never having to say you're sorry"
"If you were a slaad, what kind of slaad would you be?"
"Where fun lives. And sometimes, flop-sweat terror."
"Ah, curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"
"Sponsored by secret dragonic conspiracies"
"Ask us about our spell failure guarantee"
"Purveyors of eldritch, sanity-blasting products"
"Our elves's outperform santa's every Q4"
"Where the trolls do more than impede goats"
"We hated Uni, too."
I don't have a lot of comment on this one, just thought it was amusing.
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October 16th, 2006
12:11 am - Clarifying my last post...
Some clarification regarding the last post, "Gamer Gatherings, and Gender". I think it came across badly, because it started out as linking to some other threads, and I tossed in a mish-mash of other ideas as I wrote it.
The main original idea from that post is having a small gaming event similar to the BlogHer convention. Note that BlogHer is attended by men and has some male speakers -- I went there, for example. However, it is about the topic of women bloggers.
So a parallel event would be a minicon ("GameHer", perhaps) which had a focus on women in gaming. So it would strongly encourage games run by women, with some nods to women game designers as well. However, it could definitely be attended by men. I'm not sure if there's should be a hard-and-fast rule about men running games. I'm not sure if a bunch of guys running "Weapons of the Gods" or stuff from "Another Fine Mess" would be satisfying for this. For example, one rule could be that games run by men should have only women PCs. However, I'm not sure a hard rule would be needed or appropriate.
I think an ideal venue would be like 3DBcon -- which is a small area in a cafe with food, and a nice atmosphere.
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October 13th, 2006
11:56 pm - Gamer Gatherings, and Gender
So I met with some other people for a local gaming meetup thing last week -- mostly unified in interest in recent indie games. It went pretty well, and it got me thinking about social context and meeting other gamers. I'm thinking of writing out my history of gaming groups rather than gaming campaigns. Generally speaking, I think my most common start of a tabletop group is having two people as the core and then accreting others around that. Usually we would then move into having a core of three or four, and a less commited group of others around this. The other cases were joining a university club, or joining a pre-existing gaming group.
The idea of the Silicon Valley meetup seems more like what I experienced as the university club environment -- where you have a larger pool of 12-24 interested members, and then different groups split off from that to run individual games. This is unsurprising since many of the members are ex-Stanford.
One thing that was slightly disappointing to me was that the initial meetup was I think nine men and one woman. This is fairly common among gamers, I know. I am in three active gaming groups at the moment, and one is majority women but the other two are all-male. Still, I wonder about ways to change that. It seems like the circumstances are similar to those in the tech industry -- where there are a lot more men involved. In tech, this has motivated a few women-focused events like the BlogHer conference. There is some interesting discussion of inclusivity in tech events, like Chris Messina's post, "The Future of White Boy clubs". However, my impression is that BlogHer is a much more visible success than inclusivity at general tech events.
Regarding RPGs, a few weeks ago on Fair Game, Meg Baker wrote "Complex thoughts on a simple meeting", discussing her experiences with other women at GenCon 06. They talked about doing a women's meetup at the next GenCon. Given the proliferation of minicons like EndGame Mini-Con (Oct 21) and 3DBcon (Oct 22), it seems like there could be room for a similar women-focused event, that perhaps concentrated on female game designers and game-masters.
Are there issues with this other than logistical ones? If so, what are your opposing suggestions for inclusivity? I'll re-link to Madeline Ferwerda's excellent post, "Really long discussion on specific things to do to better include women in gaming" for some ideas. I expect there to be some issues, but I'm not great at predicting them. (For example, in the general theme of female players and social dynamics, peaseblossom had post about blaming female players, "How Much XP For a Blow Job", and which provoked some response.)
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October 12th, 2006
09:11 pm - On gamer iconography...
A few thoughts thoughts on gamer iconography. In particular, I am pondering the icon for the Indie RPG Awards -- and whether the logo should be changed from it's guy-on-a-d20 to something else. So, the question has a wide scope to the general question of how we as gamers identify ourselves and each other. Particularly because Dungeons & Dragons being the most popular RPG, it seems like some of the most common icons are a set of different polyhedral dice and/or a twenty-sided die. Indeed, the Indie RPG Awards logo has been:
Recently, though, there's been some momentum to identify with the triangle "Play" symbol used for music and video players. Through grown convention, it is colored green (I guess for "go").
 
It started with a thread on Story Games called "The Secret Language of Cars", but has been taken up by many people and now has a web page at go-play.org. There has also been RPGnet discussion and theRPGsite discussion. Go to Cafe Press to find the bumper sticker or other gear.
While there, I browsed about CafePress' Games > RPG Category looking for other logos. I found a few of interest, like this collection, with logos like:
There was also an interesting logo from "Unimental Designs" which they suggest 'says quite simply, "I am a classic gamer." Stylish (yet geeky) and aged for that unique vintage look.' I don't know the origin of it, but it's interesting the similarity with the go play colors and shapes.
So, some personal reflections follow. I prefer to identify with the concept of "play" than to polyhedral dice. While there are a lot of t-shirts with icons about natural 20s, critical hits, damage dice, and so forth -- I don't identify with them well, probably because I rarely play D&D. The two t-shirts I saw browsing that I might be interested in were "Reduce, Reuse, Reanimate" and "<geek>". This isn't a reasoned opinion, though, just my basic feeling. I'm curious what other sorts of symbols people identify with as gamers.
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September 22nd, 2006
04:39 pm - The meaning of "indie RPG"
I've ranted a bit about the term "indie RPG" on other forums, so I thought I would note here about this. (cf. my "Rant about "indie" as a term" on StoryGames and "Why Indie gaming grows" on theRPGsite.)
So a bit of history, first. The term "indie RPG" was pretty obviously coined to be a parallel to indie music and indie movies. That's a shortening of independent, which means that it is created and controlled outside of the established distribution system. The term was popularized among RPGs by The Forge. Previously, games were usually distinguished by being "small-press" or "free", but not "indie". It's worth noting that while RPGs have an established three-tier distribution system, it is smaller and less entrenched than the movie studios or record companies. So it's not as clear what games are independent from.
To resolve this, The Forge has promoted "indie" as meaning creator-owned. A similar definition as creator-controlled was adopted by the Indie RPG Awards. That is, if whoever wrote the text retains control over the final product, then it is indie. That is a very strict definition of indie compared to other fields, but then, RPGs are a much smaller field. This has been prominently posted on the front of The Forge since it started.
Non-indie games, then, are games where the work is written and then control of the product turned over to someone else. This included the big companies, namely Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf. However, it also includes Mongoose Publishing, Green Ronin, FanPro, Eden Studios, Alderac Entertainment, Steve Jackson Games, Atlas Games, Chaosium, Columbia Games, and various others. The latter are all relatively small companies, but as far as I know they don't give ownership of the games published to the author. For example, Atlas Games came out with "The Infernal" for Ars Magica by authors Erik Dahl, Timothy Ferguson, and Mark Shirley. I don't know for sure, but I'd bet good odds that head John Nephew still controlled and owned the publication rather than the authors themselves.
Now, there is a good question as to whether being "indie" in this sense makes a significant difference in games. After all, there are plenty of good games on both sides of the fence -- and plenty of bad games as well. In my view, the key issue is that the RPG field generally doesn't recognize authors/designers. This is quite unlike the fields of novels or music. Often, the author/designer of an RPG won't have their name on the cover. When RPG awards get handed out, they generally get handed to the company, and often the author isn't even listed. Notably, the Origins Awards do list the designers with the final awards, but not with the nominees. The ENnies have just this year started mentioning writers for some products, where previously they listed only company. Others, like the Ogre's Choice Awards, continue to list only company. Similarly, if you go to the RPGnet Reviews or ENWorld Reviews pages, only the company is listed with the review (though authors are listed in the full review along with other details like page count and price). Among other books, usually the author will be listed, with the publisher only noted with other details. I feel this is absurd. If an RPG is good, you ought to recognize the person who designed and wrote the darn thing, not the people who put the cover on it. I feel that not recognizing authorship and design goes with failing to look critically at the writing and content.
But here's what I ranted out in particular:
Increasingly, there are people who are using the term "indie" to mean "games similar to those most often discussed at the Forge". I find this particularly ironic since that flies in the face of what the Forge itself defines as "indie".
Indie games are not a new thing with the Forge. Browse through publishing by year and you'll always find a bunch of indie RPGs. For example, here's the list of reviews of indie games which were up when the Forge was young in 1999: - Army Ants; written by Michael T. Desing
- Badlands; written by Charles R. Capko Jr.
- Cosmic Synchronicity; written by Joseph Teller
- Dominion Rules; published by Dominion Games
- Orbit; written by Jeff Diamond
- Forge: Out of Chaos; written by The Brotherhood
- FRP Project; written by Chris Magoun
- Ghost Light; written by Doug Bolden
- The Guide to Adventure; written by Michael Ball
- octaNe; written by Jared A. Sorensen
- Puppetland; written by John Tynes
- Simplex; written by Pieter Simmons
- Stuper Powers!; written by Fred VanLente & Carson Jones
- Swashbuckler!; written by Jim Dietz
- The Window; written by Scott Lininger
You'll note that the author is generally listed.
Ron Edwards wrote his essay "Fantasy Heartbreakers" about nine games: - Fifth Cycle - 1990, Shield Laminating, by Robert Bartels
- Hahlmabrea - 1991, Sutton Hoo Games, by Dan Fox.
- Of Gods and Men - 1991, Non Sequitur Productions, by Jeffrey Konkol
- Darkurthe: Legends - 1993, Black Dragon Press, by Matthew Yaro and Colin Murcray
- Legendary Lives - 1993, Marquee Press, by Kathleen and Joe Williams
- Neverworld - 1996, Foreverworld Books, by Erin Laughlin
- Pelicar - 1996, Pharoah Games, by Lewis Nicolls (one of six listed authors, possibly the primary)
- Forge: Out of Chaos - 1998, Basement Games Unlimited, by Mike, Paul, and Mark Kibbe
- Dawnfire - 2000, Dawnfire Games/ Committed Comics, by Jason Marin
The thrust of his analysis was: "These are indie role-playing games. Their authors are part of the Forge community, in all the ways that matter. They designed their games through enjoyment of actual play, and they published them through hopes of reaching like-minded practitioners. It is not fair to dismiss the games as "sucky" - they deserve better than that, and no one is going to give them fair play and critical attention unless we do it."
All of these are indie games.
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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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July 17th, 2006
03:07 pm - New Book on RPGs
So I saw about a new academic book about RPGs via Scott Pyle (of SuperFigs) who briefly mentioned it in an RPGnet thread. Unsurprisingly, this has already been reviewed by Finnish theorist J. Tuomas Harviainen -- posted as an RPGnet Review.
 The full title is "Gaming As Culture: Essays on Reality, Identity And Experience in Fantasy Games" (ISBN 0-7864-2436-2). It's a collection of essays edited by J. Patrick Williams, Sean Q. Hendricks, and W. Keith Winkler.
The Amazon book description is: Since tabletop fantasy role-playing games emerged in the 1970s, fantasy gaming has made a unique contribution to popular culture and perceptions of social realities in America and around the world. This contribution is increasingly apparent as the gaming industry has diversified with the addition of collectible strategy games and other innovative products, as well as the recent advancements in videogame technology. This book presents the most current research in fantasy games and examines the cultural and constructionist dimensions of fantasy gaming as a leisure activity. Each chapter investigates some social or behavioral aspect of fantasy gaming and provides insight into the cultural, linguistic, sociological, and psychological impact of games on both the individual and society. Section I discusses the intersection of fantasy and real-world scenarios and how the construction of a fantasy world is dialectically related to the construction of a gamer's social reality. Because the basic premise of fantasy gaming is the assumption of virtual identities, Section II looks at the relationship between gaming and various aspects of identity. The third and final section examines what the personal experiences of gamers can tell us about how humans experience reality.
From J. Tuomas' review, it sounds like a good work. The contributors are mostly academics from a computer science or language studies background, but motivated mainly by being gamers. Commercially available books about role-playing are fairly rare. The best is probably Gary Alan Fine's "Shared Fantasy : Role Playing Games as Social Worlds", but from 1983 it is horribly out of date. Personally, I found Daniel Mackay's "The Fantasy Role-Playing Game: A New Performing Art" (2001) pretty snooze-worthy.
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May 16th, 2006
06:32 pm - Positions on RPG Culture
I am still overwhelmed at the amount of posting on my last two posts ("RPG Culture Wars" and "RPG Culture Wars in Action"). Sorry about the issues with LiveJournal threading, folks. (I like having threading in general, but they should be more distinct.)
As for my motivation here: I think it's good to sit back and reflect on one's own positions. This is a clash of at least two identities for me. I do identify with both the Forge, but I also identify as a traditional tabletop role-playing gamer -- I have been playing published RPGs for 25 years, and enjoy and approve of this as a hobby. There is clearly conflict here, as seen in the comments, but too often it has been expressed as exaggerated rants and snide in-house comments rather than open discussion. Thankfully, commenters have been largely civil with no moderation from me. (I haven't had time to comment in the flood.)
So, what's the core of the conflict here? i.e. Not the details over who said what, but the true differences in position. I think there are genuine differences here centered on the judgment of traditional games. Troy Costisick makes a stab at a definition in his blog post, "What is a Traditional Game?", but really I think we all have a decent idea: i.e. AD&D, Call of Cthulhu, GURPS, Vampire are traditional -- as are games similar to them. Personally, I have different problems with each of these, but I don't have a core problem with the setup. For example, I am a fan of both Champions and James Bond 007, which are thoroughly traditional. As discussed in the comments, Troy wrote about traditional games: "The thing that traditional games tend to do is empower the GM and suppress the players. They encourage, sometimes implicitly sometimes explicitly, the idea that the GM is the one who creates the story, the characters just add their voice and color." I disagree with this as a generalization. Short form: "GM controls world" does not mean "GM writes story". In games, the choices and actions of the PCs make a difference.
Now, there are a subset of traditional games which do advise the GM to at least prepare a linear sequence of scenes for the game to follow -- most notably Torg and Deadlands. However, it is far from universal, and even in those, I think the players have significant input. Notably, D&D dungeons are not linear stories. I've used the example before of a DM running players through G1 "Steading of the Hill Giant Chief". This is about as traditional as you get, in my opinion. Here, the DM is little more than an accountant who reads off descriptions of the rooms as the players choose where to go. The players create dynamic characters, define where they go, and set the pace of the game.
Now, obviously, I don't think that traditional tabletop RPGs are for everyone. As a whole, they narrowly focus on fantasy/sci-fi action, for example. There are many cases of sloppy design and over-complexity. I dislike the typical handling of women and minorities. So I can understand general avoidance of them to play something else. Many of the people I play with these days are much more rules-light than me, and would run screaming from Champions. But that doesn't mean that for those who play it, the standard is "twenty minutes of fun in four hours". If you like Champions, playing it is fairly continuous fun.
The topic of GM advice has also come up. For example, in comments to my previous posts, benlehman wrote: Here's a stab at what I think that passage actually means: "A lot of the 80s-90s era gaming texts have really confusing messages about social relationships amongst the group and mechanics. This has left a lot of gamers confused, adrift, and often believing that they have to put up with social crap because 'it's in the book.' When they figure out a better way, they tend to cling strongly to that one way, because the rest of their experience sits in sharp contrast." I'd be interested in discussing more specific examples. Offhand, I don't agree with this reading. I don't like most GMing advice. However, in my experience, tabletop role-players are rarely by-the-book types. They'll freely edit, kitbash, mangle, and even rewrite from scratch the games they're playing. For example, Gary Gygax's appeals to play D&D exactly as written were met with resounding derision. Also, Gary Alan Fine's sociological study seems to support that the social hierarchy was independent of the rules. As he found it, the social hierarchy in gaming generally followed the underlying social hierarchy regardless of the game played. The dominant people usually game-mastered, but if they played PCs, they would still walk over the GM. This matches my experience. While this might sound negative, I don't feel that interactions are any worse than other social scenes -- like high school, bar-hopping, PTA meetings, or sports leagues.
Still, I'd be interested to hear opposing views of traditional role-playing.
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