thread: 2005-05-02 : Person vs. Protagonist
On 2005-05-02, Matt Snyder wrote:
This discussion has dragged on for a little more than a week now on various blogs. I find it really interesting, and occasionally frustrating.
I want to take this space to clarify some issues that I thought at the outset were pretty obvious. I'm amazed, excited, and frustrated all at the same time that the following are not obvious:
1) I'm clamoring for more games of the "regular people, regular situations" type. NO WHERE have I bashed, well, anything at all. I have said, repeatedly, I'm all for you and your fun, all for D&D, all for genre, geekdom, and on and on. I enjoy those things often. Yay! I'm not criticizing anything except the utter lack of sufficient games of "regular people, regular situations" type.
2) Genre has been a huge terminology problem. I wish I had never used the term. Oh well. What I have been talking about all the time are dramatic situations of the kind found in, say, literary fiction, TV drama, or movies found in the Drama section. It's a "genre" of its own, sure. I wasn't trying to avoid or bash "genre." But, I was trying to point out this genre's "un-geekness." As in, geeks aren't usually very interested, but regular folk seem to be. (shrug)
3) It's the situation, stupid. For some reason, I sense people took me as saying "just regular people doing boring stuff in regular life ... BORRR-RRRING." Um, no. I'm talking about regular people involved in tense situations that produce a powerful story. And, the games I'm imagining and clamoring for damn well better do a good job of setting those situations up so players can knock 'em down.
4) Isn't it strange that people seem to need to "protect" themselves from meaningful (or literary, or thematic, or whatever term you like) creation of "regular people" stories in gaming? I've already read at least two posts/replies that say something to the effect of "I don't want to explore that stuff; it's too close to home. I'd rather do it in some funky way with superpowers." This in the same breath as "It's ok in movies." Why do we feel that collaborative creating a story via characters in a role-playing game is more "threatening" to one's psyche than watching sympathetic characters on the screen? WEIRD.
5) Isn't it strange that we must argue a bit and flounder around for an appropriate word akin to meaningful to express the bloody obvious? We're talking about a process in which we create stories. We struggle with the words, and we constantly explain our statements, like I'm going to do in this next sentence: I'm using story here as a constructed narrative that expresses a profound theme. God, why must we do that? We are too geeked. I hate that!
6) Ego trip time: I find it fascinating that at no point in this broad discussion no one has recognized Dust Devils as a completely appropriate type of this game. It's not exactly accidental that the guy who wrote that damn game started all this lasershark mess. Dust Devils has a strongly recognizeable genre. It has ZERO supernatural or otherwise typically "geek" elements. It's "regular" people in "regular" situations, if we sorta fudge the Old West as "regular." There are no lasersharks in Dust Devils, to be sure (Ben, look, I used it correctly! Nyah nyah!)
So, all the while I'm bitching about this, I already put my money where my mouth is—about three years ago. MOre to come.
Happily, the discussion has brought up Wuthering Heights, SOAP, My Life With Master and Nicotine Girls as possible "ungeek" games. HeroQuest and Dogs in the Vineyard have also been discussed; both include obvious "geek" elements like supernatural magic. Of course, they also feature incredible systems for wonderful Narrativist play.
