Media Analysis and the border of rational discussion

Over on Cultures of Play, there’s this really great thread analyzing the use of facist imagery in gaming. It looks at the way in which fascism is glorified, made awesome, and generally, thoughtlessly, tossed about left and right. Joshua even talks about in context to other media, society, and basically why the preponderance of it is problematic.

Though 80% of the points there apply equally to racism, sexism, etc. in terms of gaming, we don’t see the same rational discussion carry over (yes, even in the indie-tabletop-rpg niche). Why is that? Well, in the case of discussing fascism, no one is identifying their privilege with it. You don’t see completely unconnected people jumping up to irrationally defend against his critique because there is no ingrained hierarchy of roles in society based on your role in “fascism”. Though I’m sure no one identifies being a fascist anymore than they identify being a racist, a sexist, or heterosupremacist, what happens when you attack these latter things is that you are attacking a privilege which they have taken for granted- in fact, being asked to actually consider what the world would be like if it was equal in fact, instead of equal because 70/30 sounds fair and you should be grateful you’re even getting that much.

It is even more telling that these rational discussions do take place, about parallel media issues that tells you even more where people are coming from when they get irrational. That is, I don’t have to call you a racist, I just have to watch you show up to defend one for you to tell me, what you’re about.

Of course, it’s not like any of this is news to anyone. Except maybe folks who don’t know how to listen anyway…

Comics Culture, Games Culture

So I finally picked up Scott McCloud’s Making Comics. It’s a good read, though it didn’t strike me as deeply as Understanding Comics, though whether that’s because of the writing itself, the fact that it’s more techinical and dry, or the fact that I’ve internalized a lot of it’s concepts already, it’s hard to say.

Nonetheless, it has a couple of good parts that do make crossover to rpgs.

The section on character design covers motivation, building characters as part of a cast, contrasting them to one another, looking at character motivation without overbuilding the character before the story begins, a lot of good stuff.

The chapter on Comics Culture was the most interesting with rpg crossover to me. He talks about folks using comics as art for art’s sake, art for technical expertise/experimentation, art for expressing life and art for speaking to larger truths.

Yeah, tell me that doesn’t happen in rpgs, both from the design side and the people playing side.

It didn’t just lay out for me the issues of people talking past each other, but also the passionate commitment to the hobby people have. Unlike comics, it doesn’t leave this long lasting artifact we can interact with and call art, but roleplaying does have a value as a performance entertainment- it’s a participatory entertainment.

With other things, you have something left behind that can be judged by someone outside of the experience- and eventually you form a body of critics who spend a lot of time thinking, comparing and talking, and with that dialogue, those of us who are less informed can get the analysis after the fact. We don’t have to do all the hard thinking about it. (This applies to anything from sports commentators to Lit Majors, so…)

For roleplaying, only the people present can fully analyze the experience, so unless someone who thinks along those lines is there, basically our critical culture is limited to the people with both the inclination to think about games that hard and their game experiences. Imagine if music criticism was limited to only the times you’ve played music, as part of a band or larger group, and that only very few people took the time and effort to develop their own music theory from the ground up.

Anyway, Making Comics is a good book on it’s own. I wouldn’t recommend buying it for rpg stuff, but if you can borrow it, or time to spare at a chain bookstore, read those sections. I’d love to see rpgs get their own book that has such clear and down to earth analysis of our hobby, but I think we’ve got probably about 20 years more stuff to work through first.

Debunking White Fantasy

So watching white gamerdom go through it’s usual cycle of “Why aren’t there more POC gamers/Maybe the imagery is problematic/Oh no everything is just fine/No U!” is tiring.

So what’s up with white fantasy? At the heart of it is the white normative- around which the whole universe must revolve.

In fantasy, you can find societies that have room for dragon people, demon guys, 20 kinds of elves, etc, which function in this incredibly cosmopolitan fashion- yet ironically and most sadly, there’s no actual significant space for characters of color.

Well, why is that? All these weird species either boil down to alien non-human species or white people that look a little different and act funny. In other words, neither type threatens to dislodge the white normative. (Remember, human is synonymous with white!).

When and where we do see characters of color, they’re carefully shown with heavy stereotypical markers- asian people dress and act like this, african people dress and act like this, etc., because in that way, they’re not complex and full humans and threatening to the fantasy itself.

What is that fantasy? Well, the nature of modern fantasy is simplification- easy to understand roles, easy to understand problems that are almost always solved by either trying harder or having faith in your own badassery/love/whatever. People of color represent something difficult and complex- a real world issue unresolved (and fundamentally unresolvable as long as one wears the blinders of the white normative/white privilege/white supremacy at it’s heart).

Sci-fi suffers some of the same things, though sci-fi also has a strong tradition of accepting it’s role as a critique and mirror of the times, which is why you generally see more progressive break-outs of stories and imagery than fantasy.

And really, that’s the part where we reach the point of frustration and having to walk away from the foolishness.

It’s not enough that the media has issues, it’s when you watch someone who spent 2 years learning a fictional language, analyzing the theology of Tolkien, and who tries to compare the stories of their favorite fantasy with Babylonian Creation Myth, who YET cannot connect the dots between media issues which have pervaded Western media much, much wider than simply fantasy… that’s when you fucking lose it.

You know the ability to see is there, the intelligence, and even the geeky OCD to look at it hard and take it seriously, and yet… basically what the person is saying is that their fantasy white privilege is more important than you as a fellow human being. (A friend once pointed out that in these conversations, that concern doesn’t hit because they’re not considering you as human to begin with, so deep is the white normative).

And so, any attempts to have this discussion without a firm foundation in looking at fantasy as part of a larger media concern, will always fall back to the cycle of stupid above. Any concerns will be washed away either in straight up trolling or having to “convince” every comer to a random thread or discussion, at the end of which, there can be no victory.

After having gotten into many of these “discussions”, I’ve come to the conclusion that within white fandom, they don’t actually exist to discuss the issue at hand, or seek changes- they exist to provide the appearance of concern, the appearance of progressive thought, while letting things stay the same.

You can observe this for yourself because most end in simple flame-outs, a few white folks attempt misguided missionary efforts to bring in more people of color (mostly by making a story or game about some POC culture), which almost always involves NOT talking to said people of color directly, and a few others give support without actually doing anything.

For this reason, we kind of have to look at it the same way when McDonald’s decides to celebrate Black History Month- it’s a sham with no redeeming value.

At the end of the day, we can either keep waiting for these fictions to gain truth, or take our truth and build our own fictions. I already know which choice seems more sane to me.

Pt. 2- Debunking White Fandom

Amazingly, people prove my point as they protest it. Anonymous commenting? Racist slurs? “No U!” logic? Wow, what was I thinking when I said fandom was hostile?

For the less crazy, it’s tempting to try to even dialogue, but I realize this: Their words are already everywhere. Why should I give racist bullshit more space on my blog? We already know they’re crazy. And the crazy? They’re not going to learn.

So hey, thanks for the support. Let’s keep building this thing without these fools. Fantasy, fandom, roleplaying, sci-fi, geekdom, comic books, anime, whatever- all of this is not theirs to have. We’re taking everything back, including our imagination.

Part the 3

You could also ask a professional in the hobby.

The title alone told me so.

This is why gamers aren’t allowed to talk about race.

Now sure, the thread starts talking about history and culture. But of course, it’s really interesting how quickly people are willing to jump in and offer definitions of things which maybe they know, maybe they don’t know about.

Ultimately, though, such discussions demand a willingness to look at the greater context- and you quickly hit BINGO, since, you know, the typical gamer fandom SOP is to shift whose voices and statements get to “count” based on the listener’s discomfort.

Or, “Whether it hurts you or not as a human being is less important than me getting my squee.”

Additionally:

Leave it to rpg.net, to give you more. D&D’s issues of race to alignment have always been troublesome, though, it’s not an accident that image representation also springs up in this thread, though it’s clear no real dialogue will come of it.

Sadly, I doubt we could expect any better from a discussion in the L5R circles or Glorantha, despite each group’s “focus” on culture.

Enworld joins the game…

Sigh.

Choices: Emergent vs. Preloaded

This excellent post on Enworld explains the difference between 3E & 4E D&D.

It also highlights a massive difference in design philosophy from what has been most of mainstream gaming vs. indie games in regards to loading choices in play.

Most mainstream rpgs usually added more and more layers of complexity onto character building, powers to choose from, and mostly more to resolution without actually adding choices IN play. You have to have mastery at character creation, and naturally new folks will lack this.

A fundamental design focus for the Forge influenced indie designs has been on the experience -in- play, so rules tend to shift away from spending a lot of time on pre-play building and more on constraining play to aim the experience towards making certain choices -within- play.

Some of these are brutally clear- like in Falling Leaves “Will you do your duty or disobey (and risk death)?” or Humanity checks in Sorcerer. Some are subtle, and come out only after playing awhile- Inspectres or Lacuna for example.

It’s funny, because I see this not just as a divide in design, but also a divide in the kinds of players it produces. I’ve seen a lot of traditional gamers freeze up in indie games when the choice time comes out in play. It’s like too muich pressure to make a choice in play, rather than have preloaded all your choices before play. (this includes fictional positioning, and character as well).