November 27, 2024: Games As Art And Literature

[RoboAdmin]

November 27, 2024: Games As Art And Literature

Read this article on the Illuminator.

[kkc]

I played a lot of RPGs when I was younger. GURPS of course, but also AD&D and Paranoia among other properties. In almost all those cases I bought and owned the sourcebooks and other material as a functional thing, because my gaming group had to have the most interesting settings or the latest rules. So those games definitely worked primarily as games.

And then there's BTRC's magnum opus, the magnificently embarrassing Macho Women With Guns.

MMWG communicates everything that it needs to right there on the title page. The supplements are similarly evocative, and they're called Batwinged Bimbos from Hell and Renegade Nuns on Wheels. The whole system threads that same needle that The Princess Bride does for fantasy films, in that it's both a parody and a celebration of the genre and tropes that it lives in. And you don't have to read too far between the lines to understand that the game scenarios save the harshest scrutiny and the most pointed jokes for any type of person who would actually seek to demean or diminish women.

I own almost all the material for Macho Women With Guns, but I've never actually played it. The game system is only barely functional, but the material is consistently fresh and funny and stands up to a reading just for fun, without also getting in the way of being an actual reference for play. It's almost as if the creators said to themselves that it would be entertaining to have a TTRPG system based around 1970s exploitation movies, and then made the joke real and gave it life. I'm really happy that this silly game exists, even if I'm only ever going to enjoy it as literature and not as a game.

[Shostak]

For well over a decade, I’ve been fermenting a vague concept for an exhibition at the art museum where I work that would explore RPGs as an art form. As mentioned in the Daily Illuminator post, there are several aspects of games that can be looked at this way, ranging from product illustrations to the rule sets themselves. (Personally, I love the original counters for the Melee and Wizard microgames, for instance.) Then—and perhaps most importantly—there is the performance that emerges from putting rules into play by both planned and improvised action. And, of course, players make their own illustrations, miniatures, props, etc.

The concept fascinates me, but how to actually build a satisfying exhibition around the concept eludes me, since the performative aspect of RPGs is both a major component and rules-dense (as opposed to, say, checkers). Would someone who knows nothing about RPGs be able to leave the exhibition having had a similar aesthetic experience to someone who visits an exhibition about Romantic landscape painting? The example of works by artist Sol LeWitt may prove useful, since he sells sets of instructions from which others create his works. I’m still waiting for things to gel in my mind.

[kkc]

Originally Posted by Shostak

For well over a decade, I’ve been fermenting a vague concept for an exhibition at the art museum where I work that would explore RPGs as an art form.

The people who want to exhibit video games as art have puzzled over this same problem. I'm sure you've already sussed out that the main problem is that most art requires only a passive audience or observer, whereas interactive games demand a level of participation. To fully appreciate the artistic value of any game (electronic or otherwise) requires that you play it and not just look at it, and for some people that's more work than they're willing to commit to.

There is such a thing as interactive theatre, where people come into a performance space knowing that they'll be asked to answer a nun's questions or guess who committed a crime at the end. Can we set the same kind of interactive expectation for an art exhibition, where everybody who comes in can expect to have to roll dice and imagine a role to play?

[whswhs]

Yes. I have Nobilis on my shelves, a game whose worldbuilding reflects metaphysical assumptions that I dislike; I don't think I'd ever run a campaign in it. But it's a beautiful book and I'm not going to let it go. I've admired Wraith: The Oblivion for a long time, but I've never gotten my players to sign up for a campaign; but I keep it and daydream about campaigns I might want to run in it. And I have a number of other games, from early "old school" games to recent ones, that I don't anticipate running, but that I want in my library.

[PracticalM]

As someone who has designed games professionally, I keep a lot of games I no longer play because they have features or mechanics which I want to keep around for research purposes.

I'm getting better at pruning games where I can keep an electric copy of the rule book. Yet some of these games have an emotional or bring up memories which are comforting.

Same with books I think.


I did finally get rid of all the software that I only had on 3.5" floppies after I no longer have a working computer to read those. Next is all the old CD-ROMs that won't run on newer machines.

[JLV]

There's a LOT of truth to this -- after all, I never really played my copy of Campaign For North Africa (barring that one comical misfire some 47 years ago), but I still have it...and every once in a while I take it out of the box, look at it, read some of the rules and scenarios, even set up the maps. Only to realize I lack the time and space to really play it. Same thing with the Europa eastern front games. I own them, in several iterations, but I haven't played them since roughly 1992.

[selenite]

Some games I'm keeping to read. Some as references. Some as options should I ever have a group of players which fit them. For example, if I have some people wanting to role-play who all turn pale at the sight of a gridded map, I shall pull Hillfolk off the shelf. If some grognards come over, Squad Leader.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by kkc

There is such a thing as interactive theatre, where people come into a performance space knowing that they'll be asked to answer a nun's questions or guess who committed a crime at the end. Can we set the same kind of interactive expectation for an art exhibition, where everybody who comes in can expect to have to roll dice and imagine a role to play?

Even if you can do that, it doesn't capture the experience of a long campaign where the characters change the world and are changed by their experiences.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Even if you can do that, it doesn't capture the experience of a long campaign where the characters change the world and are changed by their experiences.

While capturing that experience is probably too much to ask, it is fair to expect that an exhibition about RPGs would help a visitor appreciate this aspect of RPGs.

It would be great to hear from this group what folks think would be essential to an exhibition that attempts to explore RPGs as a complex art form. What would such an exhibition need to have in it in order for you to feel like you came away from the exhibition having learned something, having had a satisfying (or at least interesting) aesthetic experience, and that visiting the exhibition was worthwhile and left you with a better appreciation for what RPGs are?