I think a lot of people in the indie TTRPG spaces who think of their TTRPGs as art kinda have a David Cage approach to the idea that TTRPGs are art, in that they don't actually think ordinary mainstream TTRPGs like D&D, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, etc. are art. They think TTRPGs could be art, but only if somebody who never lowered themselves to fully engage with the mainstream entries in the medium came in and showed them how to be art - everything before that point being just mindless waste.
The result is that they try to make some really deep and meaningful shit without knowing that it's been done before and done better by entries just barely below the surface level, and without knowing basic things about the inner workings of the engines of the medium itself that make them function.
If I want to make this observation into something actually constructive, I might say, like, instead of making your first very TTRPG something that you think has never even been attempted before and will blow everyone's fuckin minds instantly, your first TTRPG should probably be a really basic remake of Basic D&D (like, D&D1e) from the ground up with your own tools and knowledge. When they teach you video game design in college, they don't sit 101 students down and tell them to make something completely original, they tell them to make, like, really basic platformers and shit. You have to know how to make Super Mario Bros. before you can make The Game That Changes The Way You Think of Video Games Forever.
(The one small problem with the comparison is that entering the hobby of TTRPGs through D&D5e and its fucked up play culture as your first game actually really demonstrably makes you a worse player, game master, and designer with a ton of really bad habits to unlearn. I don't think the same could be said for, like, Super Mario and Fortnite in video games.)
Per some feedback I have received on this post, I admit I may have been a little off-base here and been too quick on the draw with my assessment my fellow indie TTRPG designers. I'd like to amend my statement about you having a "David Cage approach" now that I have been enlightened to the fact that a good number of you also fully think D&D is degenerate art.
1: Does this post say âYou have to like D&D?â Yes or No.
2: Does this post say âD&D is a good game.â? Yes or No.
3: Does this post say âEverything meaningful in TTRPGs has already been done by D&D?â Yes or No.
4: Does this post say âEvery TTRPG should be a carbon copy of D&D?â Yes or No.
5: Does this post say âYou are a Nazi if you donât like D&D.â? Yes or No.
6: Does this post say âD&D is not racist.â? Yes or No.
7: Does this post say âCriticizing D&D for being racist is wrong.â? Yes or No.
8: Does this post say âCriticizing D&D for being racist and that alone is the same as considering it âdegenerate art.ââ? Yes or No.
Answer key under the cut.
All correct answers to all questions in the quiz are of course No. If you answered Yes to any of the above questions, please reread the material and consider what assumptions led you to draw these conclusions.
The second part of this post was written in response to several comments, messages, posts i read, etc. a couple of which DID specifically use the term âdegenerateâ to describe D&D. Even for the ones who didnât, they expressed reactionary sentiments brushing dangerously close to many of the COMPONENT PARTS of the idea of the theory of âdegenerate art,â such as the idea that art is good if it instructs its consumer in good morals and values, and bad if it doesnât, regardless of anything else it has to say or technical skill (or lack thereof) involved - further more that such âbadâ art should never be considered even a little bit as part of oneâs artistic repertoire.
If you do not consider D&D âreal artâ and/or donât take it into account when making art in its same medium, then you cannot even criticize it for being racist in the first place because in order to be racist it would have to have themes and that is a pretty common feature of art. You cannot examine its successes and flaws as a piece of art/game design, and you are probably going to repeat many of its same mistakes in your own game design because you havenât considered the single most influential TTRPG of all time as part of your own TTRPG design knowledge. Because you havenât examined it, you are also likely to throw other pieces of art that hold superficial similarities, but are trying to do better, out with the bathwater.
Media consumption is not activism. Taking into consideration the design of - or even playing - a game that holds evil themes does not itself corrupt a person or their own art with the taint of evil, and you canât avoid stepping on land mines if you never examine them to get a good sense of what they look like.
If the system ain't broke, don't fix it, I guess! Accounting may not be the oldest profession, but someone had to keep the books for them.
I mean, in theory I know that Excel is based on the structure of earlier accounting technology that's been around for hundreds of years -- what do we think we did to track commerce before computers? -- but it still kind of blows my mind to, for example, look at my ancestor's journal from a whaling voyage in 1770 and see spreadsheets in the back.
According to the book I'm reading, proto-Cuneiform writing seems to have actually started as spreadsheets to keep track of resources rather than as a way to record language or express ideas.
The administrators of that extremely early city had to keep track of lots of things, and doing this by memory alone was a nightmare. These spreadsheets were devised as a solution to that as an evolution of an earlier system that used clay tokens and balls.
Spreadsheets are older than written language as we currently understand it.
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theres definitely a line of thought ive noticed in liberal circles and in media and stuff where they think that bad stuff works and is true but is just bad for some moral reason.
but the thing is that this stuff is just factually wrong. eugenics doesnt work. race science isnt true. theyre morally wrong, yes, but theyre also factually incorrect, ideas that are deployed in service of monstrous ideology despite the fact that they simply arent true.
and its a major impediment to effectively combating these ideas, because if you concede their premises, you have already given ground to your enemies.
okay in the process of writing my last post i went "hm, yanno i don't even know what new shows Cartoon Network is making right now. maybe it's because i've grown out of the period of my life when i was big into western cartoon fandoms?" and i went to go check what Cartoon Network's current schedule is and there's not a single show that started this decade. the newest show on their lineup, Summer Camp Island, started airing in fucking 2018. oh my god this is so bleak. its like all gumball, scooby doo, and regular show they're just reheating the 2010s' leftovers.
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