Re: Interview with Vincent and me
Clyde L. Rhoer:
Hi Marshall,
If you want to send me an email at theoryfromthecloset via a place called gmail dot com, and reference this conversation I'll burn a CD and mail it to you. I can't afford to have transcripts made.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Christopher,
PART ONE
I hope that interview spurs, at least for one person at one site, some positive action about agenda and comportment. I agree that if all people want is an internet version of a self-affirming, go-nowhere hangout, then there's no reason they can't have one, or a hundred. My hope is that if some one or few folks want something else, they recognize what it takes to get it, and start taking steps.
Here's my nagging personal question about that issue, though: why do people who know full well the problems and hassles that we're discussing here, continue to frequent the sites in question? Why did you, for instance, post and post as the "do it right" bully for so long? Why does Matt Snyder go bang his head against the wall at a site in which defying and frustrating him with illogic has become a status symbol? Well, these are rhetorical questions and not answerable except for a given person about themselves - no one owes me an answer about them. And maybe the phenomenon reflects the people's degree of good will that they bring to a site, which is commendable. But at this late date, I think it's time to reconsider the effort.
Your points about calls for actual play bear special attention. Looking at what happens at Story Games, when someone poses some idea or makes some claim about role-playing, and when another someone says "Where's the actual play," I typically see it read as meaning, "Prove it!" I think that's counter-productive and, well, rude; at the very least, it's not going to serve as a door to understanding a valid idea. A lot of my ideas have been used as big sticks by over-eager Forge participants on other sites or among their acquaintances, and the net result is to piss people off and, incidentally, to get me personally vilified as some kind of cult leader. The actual-play concept for discourse is just another in that long line.
Which is not to diminish the primary point that the proposition is most likely not very strong anyway. Again, based on my readings of the posts, the first someone is often talking out of his or her ass, if not actually dishonestly (also sometimes the case). I think a given website can be tagged as a place where either this sort of thing gets head-smacked at the very outset, or it doesn't. If it does, then cool. If it doesn't, then bringing the desire to critique at all to that site is a vain hope from the start, because the person is probably just angling for status at the site, or trying to say something without saying it, as with a case we've discussed privately in detail.
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PART TWO
Regarding identity politics, check out this article from Zmag, ten years ago: Editorial: The personal is the political?!
...
Great, isn't it? I'm restraining myself from unleashing bolts of rage at what that article criticizes, left and right, all and sundry. Talk about cultural malaise; this is the curse of our times. "I sleep with rutabagas, that makes me political. I'm done!" "I shop at XYZ supermarket, that makes me political, I'm done!" "I have this haircut, that makes me political, I'm done!" Fucking consumerism co-opting dissent. Who would have thought it would ever have become this complete? In retrospect, I might even be able to point to the month, I think, when I heard a nasty wet "snap" in the atmosphere, denoting the inflection point of the transition, sometime in 1985-86.
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PART THREE
You're a bit harsh on how dull "other people are," don't you think? Well, OK, this is the tequila forum, after all. A bit of excess is part of the fun.
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I'm not sure any fruitful discussion could come of this subject -- especially on the Internet -- but it does baffle me. Is it really just RPGs? Gamers? People in general who don't want this responsibility of accepting the fact that they make decisions every day that have consequences and it's simply dumped out into the open in this weird little hobby?
You know my thinking on this. I think there's a general subcultural flaw in gaming, as currently constructed, which I think got fairly well outlined in the Infamous Five postings. The good news is that this flaw is rapidly disappearing, internationally, due to about a dozen activities which emerged from this site. I also think there's a specific pathology that applies to the little part of it that you and I like the most, which is the whole brain-damage issue. That concept is steadily progressing through the usual steps which end at "Everyone knows that, it's obvious" - about the 70% mark, at this point. All of this is highly specific to gaming, however.
Regarding pop culture in general, my first response was to disagree with you, because I think over-blown symbols and extreme fantasy can be powerful vehicles for dissenting views or at least for grappling with problematic conditions. But maybe that's a matter of definitions, and maybe I'm thinking too broadly. To focus on here-and-now today, I agree with your point, because I think our current pop culture, well, isn't. I think it's a consumerist effluvium from yesterday's pop culture, and that we as a culture are currently struggling to create a new one, in extremely adverse conditions. As long as the conceit that one (or anything) can be apolitical persists so widely, then we'll have to keep struggling.
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It makes The Other too convenient, too easy, and absolves us of all responsibility for our actions and examining our responses to threat.
In that, we are agreed in full. There's a reason that my creative energies are now turned toward communist spies, Arabic terrorists (as we call them), Cuban soldiers, and Asian insurgents, drawing upon different but related points in my and my parents' lifetimes. I am also discovering, over and over, the truth and nuances of Walt Kelly's phrase: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
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What fascinates me about the reaction to Dogs is how, for so many, the game exists in a null set of logic for so many, where the game simply doesn't work, or, perhaps more strangely, gets reinterpreted into a religious tract where the GM forces the players to be gun wielding religious fundamentalists who have no choice in how to behave. I mean, even here, it's like asking people to do a Mensa puzzle to wrap their brain around the game's logic. What is that about? That's a really interesting question to me.
As you know, I agree with you, although my reaction is usually one of frustrated expostulating rather than interest, so my real interest lies in seeking successful play-accounts as counter-examples. We're blessed with a bunch of them lately. Jesse's current thread seems like a perfect example of people who share your agenda, understand the rules of this particular game, went into play with no pre-conceptions about what the story would be, and emerged as authors of a story they'd created, there and then, about important stuff.
Best, Ron
Callan S.:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on January 02, 2008, 08:54:22 PM
Regarding identity politics, check out this article from Zmag, ten years ago: Editorial: The personal is the political?!
Pretty tangental, but that article describes and also continues a particular blindspot, from how my eyes read it. I mean, if someone came and yanked your your wallet out of your pocket, you'd see them as an assailent - as an enemy, at least for that moment. The article instead describes, from one example, the civil rights situation of black people as a fault in the system. It's like describing the guy yanking your wallet as sharing some sort of system with you - but there's just a fault in the system. For me the disturbing bit is just behind that - it's treating what their doing as if its part of something, some system you agree with. It would seem horribly easy, with just the right pressures and forces, to reverse the complaintents proposal that it's a fault and instead put extra emphasis on their agreement with the system. Ie, in the heat of the moment get them to just think about how they agree with the system and legitimize it - institutionalise the wallet grab. Even if the offender does change behaviour, it's not acknowledged they were wrong, they were just following the system 'incorrectly'.
On topic, jesus, no wonder when it gets that murky a whole bunch of shit turns up in various associated activities.
Christopher Kubasik:
Hi Ron,
Quote from: Ron Edwards on January 02, 2008, 08:54:22 PM
Here's my nagging personal question about that issue, though: why do people who know full well the problems and hassles that we're discussing here, continue to frequent the sites in question?
Although I don't "owe" you anything, I already discussed this with you on the phone, so I'll post here: For me it was because the people I know in real life and meet with at local cons post on those threads. I think that connections made in the flesh trump (or lead) Internet connections -- at least for me.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on January 02, 2008, 08:54:22 PM
...when another someone says "Where's the actual play," I typically see it read as meaning, "Prove it!" I think that's counter-productive and, well, rude; at the very least, it's not going to serve as a door to understanding a valid idea.
When I ask it, it's because I can't figure out what the person is saying. Someone on Story Games can say, "Let's talk about Thematic Calibration..." But I need pictures to go with the words to know what's going on in that thread.
Do people use the "actual play" request as a stick to beat people up? I'm sure they do. People do all sorts of things. But now we're in the realm of intentions and what the person meant. It still doesn't seem too much to ask that if people are going to talk about RPGs they are able to reference something from the actual play of RPGs. This isn't String Theory. It's like Football or Pokemon -- it either happens in play or it doesn't.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on January 02, 2008, 08:54:22 PM
Regarding identity politics, check out this article from Zmag, ten years ago...
This had nothing to do with what I was talking about -- but you clearly wanted to share, and I'm glad you had the opportunity!
Quote from: Ron Edwards on January 02, 2008, 08:54:22 PM
You're a bit harsh on how dull "other people are," don't you think?
Yes. I was. Good call. I was thinking of all the 40 page Dogs threads I've read on this point-of-confusion, but I was overstating by a long-shot. Thanks for the reality check.
Quote from: Ron Edwards on January 02, 2008, 08:54:22 PM
because I think over-blown symbols and extreme fantasy can be powerful vehicles for dissenting views or at least for grappling with problematic conditions. But maybe that's a matter of definitions, and maybe I'm thinking too broadly....
I'm surprised you thought that's that I was dismissing "over-blown symbols and extreme fantasy" -- I mean, what???. But I'll move on, and your point about "consumerist effluvium from yesterday's pop culture" is my point exactly.
On the other end, No Country for Old Men, There Will be Blood, The Shield, and other movies and TV shows deliver what I want in spades.
The problem with "extreme fantasy" at the movies is economics -- the more expensive the budget the greater desire to never, ever offend anyone. The job of a summer blockbuster is roll everyone in, give us a lot of visceral jolts, and roll us back out into the sunshine. That's not a function of fantasy or overblown symbols. That's about the contemporary economics of Hollywood.
Christopher
Larry L.:
Okay, I got some technical glitches worked out and finally listened to this thing. Good stuff. This thing Clyde does is nice.
There were several topics that came up I'm interested in discussing, I'll have to organize my thoughts on these first. (But the gist is: Yay!)
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