[Nicotine Girls] If you want it hard enough, and you try hard enough - and?
C. Edwards:
Callan,
If I squint it looks like maybe you're asking the value of emo gaming porn? Not trying to be an ass and purposefully obfuscate your question, I'm just not sure what you're asking. If that is close to the mark though, I'll say that Nicotine Girls, as a game, isn't in that category in my mind. Whether you could play it that way, maybe, probably, I dunno as I haven't played it.
The subject matter of Nicotine Girls doesn't revel in itself. It's grounded quite solidly in hard reality. There's no room for the sort of posing (this isn't Vampire) to better be seen in an oh so tragic light that you'd find in something that could be labeled as an emo game. I'm sure someone could approach the game that way, but I'd be wondering just wtf is wrong with them.
My personal issues with the game aren't around "if it's depressing it must be meaningful". They're "this spot here is really raw and sore when I poke at it". Body, mind, or soul, that means that you might want to examine that area further and see if any healing salve needs to be applied. You have to know the extent of the wound before you can determine a healthy approach to healing it.
In many ways, psychologically and emotionally, I'm still connected to that teenage boy that I was and those teenage girls that were my friends. And the slow motion tragedies that were the lives of many of them. But that's my deal. As commentary and spotlight on class, gender and our society Nicotine Girls has a lot to recommend it.
d.anderson:
What proportion of the roleplayers are predisposed to the asserted middle-class perspective? What number of them will benefit, in broadening and deepening of perception (and perhaps significant change in behavior), through play of Nicotine Girls? I have had a few transformative experiences in the course of gameplay over twenty-ish years, and have witnessed a couple, but they seem to be rare and not significantly informed by the design (deliberate or otherwise) of the game. I'll include my own background and AP for this, later, if it pertains and contributes to discussion.
I would really like play to facilitate not just evocative but transformative experiences, yet I feel strongly that it is play culture and not the games themselves that engender an increase in receptivity. Playing with the right people and the right frame of mind, I'd get more out of Nicotine Girls than Gummo (or Kids, or Nickled and Dimed for that matter), because play can easily be a more fundamentally active, creative process than a passive, consumptive one. But without significant personal chemistry, and/or plenty of previous experience with that sort of play, it would almost definitely be a trainwreck , because it is essentially antagonistic to a common cultural pretense among the people most likely to play it. How does design premise and execution contribute to play culture?
Ron Edwards:
Hi,
It's a big piece of Forge-discussion based theory that play, and all the subjects and techniques within it, is a subset of the socializing among the group in question. I, at least, think that no specific topic or technique within play itself has the inherent ability to transform the people, going "upward and outward" if you will - unless the people themselves include that possibility, tacitly or openly, as part of the reason to play.
I've devoted a lot of the last decade finding ways to inspire people to do that. Again, it's not because my games have Rule X or Topic A, it's because I try to present the material in such a way that it prompts questions and with any luck the desire to prep and play with those questions afire. If that happens, then Rule X and Topic A, due to their unique properties, become fuel. But by themselves, tossed upon any old role-players with any old mess of various reasons to play among them, they're curiosities at best.
All this is to say, to your excellent question, that yes - it does "depend on the people." That doesn't mean those people have to know, or to state among themselves, that that's what they want. Nor does it mean that those people will do it anyway without the rules XYZ and the topics ABC. It only means that a group who plays with that degree of personal honesty and willingness to be enriched through play itself will find special value among the games that have them.
As I understand what he's said and written in the past, Paul only designs games for exactly those people.
Best, Ron
Callan S.:
Ron, I thought we had some sort of quiet understanding that I've spent time reading and thinking about your posts - you wouldn't have posted about the time I've given to you in reading you carefully. But to be less monosybillic (zerosybillic? is that a word?), thanks for the responce and I'm sure you appreciate the thought I've put in too.
With #2, I said what I think about 'depressing is meaningful' and didn't attribute it to anybody - your putting a few in my mouth there, unless I'm mistaken. If no one sees a connection to it, it may be there isn't one.
Quote
The game, or the hand I mentioned, asks, What are you going to do about that?
I don't see it asking anything? It's just there, rather like Everest is there and people are drawn to climb that. Nicotine girls reads to me more like a mountain than a game. Just something that's there - not an activity made by someone, it's...I dunno, a mountain. I don't mean that in a negative way (and to me it seems a compliment in a way). It's just that mountains aren't to be treated like it's a game. I think you've got to get your head straight about why your climbing a mountain before you start, even if it's "Fuck this, I'm doing it!". Is my approach making me miss something?
Also I have no professional background in what you call sociobiology, but what keeps drumming in my head is that for the greater part of our development we were in relatively small communities of perhaps a few hundred individuals or less. Someones empathy could have beneficial ripple effects in such a small pool. But that time strikes me as gone and that empathy as simply not enough in the large numbers involved now. Or more exactly, I don't have any faith in it as having any ongoing effect in itself. Perhaps if there are some scientific test results on the matter to look at, it might show otherwise. Without it, relying on empathy seems to be relying on something that worked in smaller communities. That's why I ask the reason for doing it to begin with, rather than just the passion.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the reply. I think I'm trying to sound what you see it as? So it sort of has the appearance of a wound? I'm not going anywhere specific in asking that, mostly just thinking about what you've said.
Ron Edwards:
Hi,
Callan, that makes a lot of sense to me. It seems right along the lines of d.anderson's post, too. You start with mountain climbers. Although again, I stress that doesn't mean a bunch of people who say they are mountain climbers or even really know it. Role-playing groups tend to shake people out who are or are not mountain climbers, to leave a core group who are or are not. I think Chris' point is basically what happens when you are a mountain climber who either didn't know it, or who had been sticking to easy mountains.
You're absolutely right about human community size and the role of empathy. That's a big deal in Alexander's book, especially concerning deception and exploitation. My own example about that concerns advertising that promotes the image of a small village and even goes so far as to assure customers that the staff of a chain grocery store, for instance, is "family." I'll resist bringing this back around to what social class means in this context, simply because it'd be geeking out, but the core notion is that economic levels (roughly) may generate false communities and disrupt potential real ones, with "real" meaning, having the potential of actual mutual benefit.
Best, Ron
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