GNS Theory: Good, Bad, or Ugly

[bosssmiley]

http://jrients.blogspot.com/2006/02/i-g ... -here.html

And that's all I have to say about GNS.

[Koumei]

There's usually a thread on it on /tg/, complete with people making their own three categories (from Hurp/Derp/Skub to 2E/3E/4E) and trolling each other.

Ah well. I'm not going to get anywhere with this here.

This makes you smarter than almost everyone else who came here with an opinion. The fact that you realised it's not going to work regardless of who is right shows you'll do just fine here.

[Shoggoth]

There's a recent thread here with an alternate model that seems more useful - it's additive, so instead of "this game is X, Y, or Z", it's "this game has X and Z, but not much Y". Also, the terms used are more entertaining.

What's always bugged me is that Narrativist doesn't mean what anyone would think it means, and Simulationist has a bunch of conflicting stuff crammed into one category. For instance, concrete rules vs immersion vs genre simulation. But hey, it's good for starting flamewars.

Now see, this is what I do with GNS. It's silly to say "This game is Narrativist", when most of the time there are many ways to play a game. Most games don't fit into one "set" anyway, it's some Sim elements + some Narrative elements, with poor support for Gamist play (as an example).

And I agree that the Simulationist definitions are overly long and incoherent. I think it's the default NOT N NOT G and it needs to be thought out better.

[RandomCasualty2]

Now see, this is what I do with GNS. It's silly to say "This game is Narrativist", when most of the time there are many ways to play a game. Most games don't fit into one "set" anyway, it's some Sim elements + some Narrative elements, with poor support for Gamist play (as an example).

And I agree that the Simulationist definitions are overly long and incoherent. I think it's the default NOT N NOT G and it needs to be thought out better.

Yeah, any good game should appeal to more than one of the categories. Every RPG has some narrativist elements, because you're telling a story. Every RPG has some gamist or simulationist elements too. It's just that some RPGs are more one category than another.

[Username17]

And I agree that the Simulationist definitions are overly long and incoherent.

Would that it were limited to that. Let's talk about the twenty three thousand, two hundred and seventy word tirade that is the Narrativism definition. It goes on and on, and frankly I can't make hide nor hair of it. Let's get some of the choicer bits for the purposes of making fun of it:

The five elements of Exploration are interdependent: Character + Setting make Situation, System permits Situation to "move," and Color affects all the others. This concept applies only to the imaginary causes among the elements; the real people's actual priority or cause among these things, in social and creative terms, varies widely.

OK, first of all, he just said that the five elements were independent. Then he talked about how the element "situation" was in fact dependent on all the others. What the fucking hell?

Narrativism has a single definition, but it's difficult to articulate for people grappling with muddled RPG terminology.

Go on!?
Apparently, Ron Edwards is grappling with muddled RPG terminology, because despite the fact that he assures us that Narratavism has a single definition, he is personally finding it so fucking difficult to articulate that he takes over twenty three thousand words to not actually get this point across!

So much so that he has to pull in some other dude in the middle of the definition in order to explain this concept. And this guy does a much much better job, probably because he's less of a pretentious asshole:

I receive a lot of emails like this one from Landon Darkwood:

I think I may have had a revelation.

... In your Simulationism essay, you have this: "'Story,' in this context, refers to the sequence of events that provide a payoff in terms of recognizing and enjoying the genre during play."

Is this the key to distinguishing the [Narrativist vs. Simulationist] play modes? My intepretation of this statement is that in Simulationist gaming, a long and complex story might come about and be part of play, but only for the express purpose of bringing about all the appropriate genre elements in the game as part of the internal consistency of the Dream. i.e., a Sim game Colored with elements from Chinese wuxia movies might have a multilayered story involving class conflict, people being trapped by their social position, repressed romance, heavy action, a sorcerer and his eunuch henchmen - but these are all trappings of the genre. So, their inclusion in the game, part and parcel as they are to the Dream, isn't Narrativist because no one is creating a theme that isn't already there. In other words, it's just played out as the Situation part of the Exploration; because the Dream calls for it, there just so happens to be a kind of intricacy involved.

In Narrativism, by contrast, the major source of themes are the ones that are brought to the table by the players / GM (if there is one) regardless of the genre or setting used. So, to sum up, themes in Nar play are created by the participants and that's the point; themes in Sim play are already present in the Dream, reinforced by the play, and kind of a by-product.

Am I on this now?

"In a word," I replied, "Yes."

Mother fuckers! I think I need to highlight this again so it doesn'tescape notice:

In Narrativism, by contrast, the major source of themes are the ones that are brought to the table by the players / GM (if there is one) regardless of the genre or setting used.

Narratavism is apparently fucking defined by people being assholes who take stuff from outside the game's setting and ranting about their personal masturbatory fantasies while the rest of the players look on in puzzlement or fear! If you play World of Darkness, you'll be able to spot a "narratavist" player because he wants to play an astronaut riding a robot stegosaurus.

One of the three pillars of GNS theory is apparently this:


It's rambling, it's incoherent, and when you get down to the bottom of things: it's amazingly disruptive. Not only is it a vapid theory, it's an insult to gamers and game design.

-Username17

[zeruslord]

That could actually be a vaguely workable, and awesome, setting. As long as everybody can agree on dinosaurs with lasers and and armor, the game works. If some jerk comes and tries to play an elf, however, you are totally screwed.

edit: link was broken

[Absentminded_Wizard]

OK, first of all, he just said that the five elements were independent. Then he talked about how the element "situation" was in fact dependent on all the others. What the fucking hell?

Actually, he said they were interdependent. So, while there's plenty to make fun of in GNS theory, Ron Edwards is innocent of that particular contradiction.

---

It increasingly seems like the method for generating GNS theory was:

1. Divide all gamers into three vague categories. If you find a type that doesn't fit, feel free to be arbitrary.

2. Make up some elaborate BS to make it look like all gamers in a given category have something in common. The more big words you use, the more likely people will buy it.

Seriously, every excerpt posted from the original GNS articles makes me want to dig up that old Gygax quote that basically said, "Your gameplay isn't art; get over yourself."

But even leaving the problems of coherent definitions aside, the theory still has structural problems. Even if you were able to come up with reasonably coherent definitions of the three pillars that everybody could agree on, you run into the problem that there are more than three types of gamers.

In some other stuff linked in this thread, Ron Edwards talks about Realists as a subset of Simulationists. Simulationists presumably also include people who want to emulate the unrealistic conventions of their favorite genre. So you have people who belong to the same category and yet still have opposing agendas.

You could argue that this is a problem with the original definitions of the categories. However, I don't see how you could come up with only three categories of gamers without including subgroups with mutually exclusive goals somewhere. This is important because Edwards thinks that GNS theory enables you to totally satisfy a target audience by strictly adhering to one of his three categories in designing a game. If the categories are too broad, the theory fails at the practical application its creator intended for it.

[Talisman]

Hey! No bad-mouthing of Dino-Riders!

Hey Shoggoth. Welcome to the Trial By Fire.

[Shoggoth]

And I agree that the Simulationist definitions are overly long and incoherent.

Would that it were limited to that. Let's talk about the twenty three thousand, two hundred and seventy word tirade that is the Narrativism definition. It goes on and on, and frankly I can't make hide nor hair of it. Let's get some of the choicer bits for the purposes of making fun of it:

OK, let's start here. The definition of Narrativist is NOT 23K words long. The article discussing it in detail, including copious examples and context, I will believe is 23K.

The five elements of Exploration are interdependent: Character + Setting make Situation, System permits Situation to "move," and Color affects all the others. This concept applies only to the imaginary causes among the elements; the real people's actual priority or cause among these things, in social and creative terms, varies widely.

OK, first of all, he just said that the five elements were independent. Then he talked about how the element "situation" was in fact dependent on all the others. What the fucking hell?

Try rereading that quote of Edwards' that you pulled. "The five elements of Exploration are interdependent."

So much so that he has to pull in some other dude in the middle of the definition in order to explain this concept. And this guy does a much much better job, probably because he's less of a pretentious asshole:

I receive a lot of emails like this one from Landon Darkwood:

I think I may have had a revelation.

... In your Simulationism essay, you have this: "'Story,' in this context, refers to the sequence of events that provide a payoff in terms of recognizing and enjoying the genre during play."

Is this the key to distinguishing the [Narrativist vs. Simulationist] play modes? My intepretation of this statement is that in Simulationist gaming, a long and complex story might come about and be part of play, but only for the express purpose of bringing about all the appropriate genre elements in the game as part of the internal consistency of the Dream. i.e., a Sim game Colored with elements from Chinese wuxia movies might have a multilayered story involving class conflict, people being trapped by their social position, repressed romance, heavy action, a sorcerer and his eunuch henchmen - but these are all trappings of the genre. So, their inclusion in the game, part and parcel as they are to the Dream, isn't Narrativist because no one is creating a theme that isn't already there. In other words, it's just played out as the Situation part of the Exploration; because the Dream calls for it, there just so happens to be a kind of intricacy involved.

In Narrativism, by contrast, the major source of themes are the ones that are brought to the table by the players / GM (if there is one) regardless of the genre or setting used. So, to sum up, themes in Nar play are created by the participants and that's the point; themes in Sim play are already present in the Dream, reinforced by the play, and kind of a by-product.

Am I on this now?

"In a word," I replied, "Yes."

Mother fuckers! I think I need to highlight this again so it doesn'tescape notice:

In Narrativism, by contrast, the major source of themes are the ones that are brought to the table by the players / GM (if there is one) regardless of the genre or setting used.

Um, first of all, quoting someone who has managed to encapsulate your idea better than you have is a perfectly valid tactic. If your way of communicating doesn't get across to some people, and someone else's way of stating the point works well, then by the gods you use it!

Secondly, let me just explain what that bit means.

Many games have themes that arise in play. Themes are a natural part of storytelling, and since much of gaming is just that themes come up all the time. Usually it's because the GM works it into his grand story, but sometimes it comes from player initiative. HOWEVER. Narrativist play specifically is when the players/GM begin the game with the intent of exploring themes that do in fact BEING BEFORE THE GAME, AND ARE THEREFORE ORIGINATED OUTSIDE THE GAME. It's not that you're riding a fucking space dinosaur in a vampire game, it's that you decide ahead of time that you want to play characters that will allow you to explore the idea of mortality or whatever and so rather than arising FROM the story, the themes are the core of what the story is built around. It's not that hard.

It's rambling, it's incoherent, and when you get down to the bottom of things: it's amazingly disruptive. Not only is it a vapid theory, it's an insult to gamers and game design.

-Username17

It's disruptive only because people like yourself decide to get mortally offended when someone brings it up. I'm sorry you hate Ron Edwards, and I'm sorry you think he's an offensive asshole. I've never met the man, so I wouldn't know. He writes like an elitist professorial type, but I'm OK with that. Chill man.

[cthulhu]

http://jrients.blogspot.com/2006/02/i-g ... -here.html

And that's all I have to say about GNS.

That is seriously 4 or 5 awesomes.

[Shoggoth]

OK, first of all, he just said that the five elements were independent. Then he talked about how the element "situation" was in fact dependent on all the others. What the fucking hell?

Actually, he said they were interdependent. So, while there's plenty to make fun of in GNS theory, Ron Edwards is innocent of that particular contradiction.

Hey, you beat me to that one! That was my point!

---

It increasingly seems like the method for generating GNS theory was:

1. Divide all gamers into three vague categories. If you find a type that doesn't fit, feel free to be arbitrary.

2. Make up some elaborate BS to make it look like all gamers in a given category have something in common. The more big words you use, the more likely people will buy it.

Again, the purpose of GNS is NOT to categorize gamers. I think most of the problems that arise out of GNS are because people try to do this over and over again, and it always fails, and then people become offended an pissy.

GNS (I believe, not having a direct mindlink to Ron Edwards) is an attempt to formalize some kind of theory of the experience of gaming. It's a pretty bold idea, and it's far from perfect, but there's no reason not to try. And as far as the large words go, have you ready very many formal academic papers? It's what he seems to be going for, and I think he hits that mark.

Seriously, every excerpt posted from the original GNS articles makes me want to dig up that old Gygax quote that basically said, "Your gameplay isn't art; get over yourself."

Yeah, Gygax was full of terrible ideas.

But even leaving the problems of coherent definitions aside, the theory still has structural problems. Even if you were able to come up with reasonably coherent definitions of the three pillars that everybody could agree on, you run into the problem that there are more than three types of gamers.

In some other stuff linked in this thread, Ron Edwards talks about Realists as a subset of Simulationists. Simulationists presumably also include people who want to emulate the unrealistic conventions of their favorite genre. So you have people who belong to the same category and yet still have opposing agendas.

You could argue that this is a problem with the original definitions of the categories. However, I don't see how you could come up with only three categories of gamers without including subgroups with mutually exclusive goals somewhere. This is important because Edwards thinks that GNS theory enables you to totally satisfy a target audience by strictly adhering to one of his three categories in designing a game. If the categories are too broad, the theory fails at the practical application its creator intended for it.

I do agree that there are structural problems. Simulationism is I think in many ways a grab bag of things that don't fit in N and G, and it does feel reductionist in a lot of ways. However, it again doesn't try to describe gamers, so much as the MOTIVATION of gamers, which can be complex. I don't think he really believes it's perfect (he's said so himself). But I do think there's merit there.

[Shoggoth]

http://jrients.blogspot.com/2006/02/i-g ... -here.html

And that's all I have to say about GNS.

Also? That is fucking awesome.

[Elennsar]

So instead of describing gamers, we describe the complicated motivations of gamers.

So much better.

And apparently, instead of sticking within a genre's plot elements, narrativists create their own damn plot elements whether or not they fit the genre.

Really, I prefered it when I couldn't tell the difference between narrativists and simulationists. It was a lot less disturbing.

[Talisman]

A friend of mine was (and maybe still is) heavily into GNS Theory. I never had the heart to tell him it made no sense to me.

He was a helluva roleplayer, but he thought too much.

And apparently, instead of sticking within a genre's plot elements, narrativists create their own damn plot elements whether or not they fit the genre.

I think the intent here is that the players get to share in the creation of the world, not just follow the plot the GM comes up with. This, BTW, is something I fully support: my players create NPCs, suggest storylines, etc. Gaming is shared storytelling; it only makes sense to extend that to shared worldbuilding.

But if you want a samurai in my LotR, or an elf archer in my Dino-Riders, then you can go to hell.

[Username17]

Many games have themes that arise in play. Themes are a natural part of storytelling, and since much of gaming is just that themes come up all the time. Usually it's because the GM works it into his grand story, but sometimes it comes from player initiative. HOWEVER. Narrativist play specifically is when the players/GM begin the game with the intent of exploring themes that do in fact BEING BEFORE THE GAME, AND ARE THEREFORE ORIGINATED OUTSIDE THE GAME. It's not that you're riding a fucking space dinosaur in a vampire game, it's that you decide ahead of time that you want to play characters that will allow you to explore the idea of mortality or whatever and so rather than arising FROM the story, the themes are the core of what the story is built around. It's not that hard.

Read it again.

A simulationist Chinese Wuxia game might have a Sorcerer with Eunuch Henchmen. A Narrativist game by contrast will include things regardless of genre brought in by the players or GM.

Which means straight up that according to that definition, a Narrative is best defined because there is no in-world or in-genre reason for the inclusion of a Sorcerer and his fucking Eunuch Henchmen. They just get brought in by one of the people at he table without need for explanation.

That's totally fucked.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Gygax was indeed full of terrible ideas, but he did sometimes have some good ones. Such as "Letting friends/coworkers bully me into putting psionics into D&D was a really bad idea and I never should have let them."

Another excellent example would be, as said above, "Your game isn't art. Deal with it."

Because it's a fucking game. You play it to have fun, relax a bit and tell a story. You are not producing an Art House production that is just TOO DEEP for all the plebeian to understand, you're enjoying a hobby. And the GNS crowd encourages cockbags to treat their game like a masterpiece, and we already have a hard enough time with the World of Darkness crew.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

It increasingly seems like the method for generating GNS theory was:

1. Divide all gamers into three vague categories. If you find a type that doesn't fit, feel free to be arbitrary.

2. Make up some elaborate BS to make it look like all gamers in a given category have something in common. The more big words you use, the more likely people will buy it.

Again, the purpose of GNS is NOT to categorize gamers. I think most of the problems that arise out of GNS are because people try to do this over and over again, and it always fails, and then people become offended an pissy.

Except there's this quote from Ron Edwards himself:

Much torment has arisen from people perceiving GNS as a labelling device. Used properly, the terms apply only to decisions, not to whole persons nor to whole games. To be absolutely clear, to say that a person is (for example) Gamist, is only shorthand for saying, "This person tends to make role-playing decisions in line with Gamist goals." Similarly, to say that an RPG is (for example) Gamist, is only shorthand for saying, "This RPG's content facilitates Gamist concerns and decision-making." For better or for worse, both of these forms of shorthand are common.

For a given instance of play, the three modes are exclusive in application. When someone tells me that their role-playing is "all three," what I see from them is this: features of (say) two of the goals appear in concert with, or in service to, the main one, but two or more fully-prioritized goals are not present at the same time. So in the course of Narrativist or Simulationist play, moments or aspects of competition that contribute to the main goal are not Gamism. In the course of Gamist or Simulationist play, moments of thematic commentary that contribute to the main goal are not Narrativism. In the course of Narrativist or Gamist play, moments of attention to plausibility that contribute to the main goal are not Simulationism. The primary and not to be compromised goal is what it is for a given instance of play. The actual time or activity of an "instance" is necessarily left ambiguous.

Over a greater period of time, across many instances of play, some people tend to cluster their decisions and interests around one of the three goals. Other people vary across the goals, but even they admit that they stay focused, or prioritize, for a given instance.

Edwards appears to deny that GNS is a labeling system, and yet any game always focuses on one to the exclusion of all others. Oh wait, he said "instance," not game. That way he can avoid the accusation that any of his elements mix by changing the application of the word "instance" to one encounter or one decision in the game at his convenience. He's cooking the books to support the exclusivity of his categorization.

GNS (I believe, not having a direct mindlink to Ron Edwards) is an attempt to formalize some kind of theory of the experience of gaming. It's a pretty bold idea, and it's far from perfect, but there's no reason not to try.

You might have a point here. I can see a case that GNS is to RPG theory what alchemy is to chemistry. Of course, the problem is that it appears that the Forge not only closed their GNS forum, but their RPG Theory forum as well. Apparently, GNS was the be-all and end-all of this field in their minds, and that attitude seems to have stuck with the adherents of the theory.

And as far as the large words go, have you ready very many formal academic papers? It's what he seems to be going for, and I think he hits that mark.

The question is, why is he aiming for that mark? If you're not writing a formal academic paper, you shouldn't use that kind of vocabulary. The first rule of good communication is to write at the level of your audience. Unless all indie game designers have advanced degrees in a liberal arts field, a lot of Edwards' terminology is going to fly over their heads. If you're deliberately using a writing style and vocabulary that confuses large parts of your audience, people are going to assume that you're more interested in showing off your vast intellect than actually communicating anything.

And yes, I've had to read formal academic papers as research for term papers.

Seriously, every excerpt posted from the original GNS articles makes me want to dig up that old Gygax quote that basically said, "Your gameplay isn't art; get over yourself."

Yeah, Gygax was full of terrible ideas.

I'm not fond of that quote because I'm any kind of Gygax fanboy. I just think it was really perceptive, regardless of the source. BTW, here's the quote in full, from my old BBBoy sig.

Send anyone claiming that their RPG activity is an art form my way, and I’ll gladly stick a pin in their head and deflate it just to have the satisfaction of the popping sound that makes…. One might play a game artfully but that makes neither the game nor its play art.

But even leaving the problems of coherent definitions aside, the theory still has structural problems. Even if you were able to come up with reasonably coherent definitions of the three pillars that everybody could agree on, you run into the problem that there are more than three types of gamers.

In some other stuff linked in this thread, Ron Edwards talks about Realists as a subset of Simulationists. Simulationists presumably also include people who want to emulate the unrealistic conventions of their favorite genre. So you have people who belong to the same category and yet still have opposing agendas.

You could argue that this is a problem with the original definitions of the categories. However, I don't see how you could come up with only three categories of gamers without including subgroups with mutually exclusive goals somewhere. This is important because Edwards thinks that GNS theory enables you to totally satisfy a target audience by strictly adhering to one of his three categories in designing a game. If the categories are too broad, the theory fails at the practical application its creator intended for it.

I do agree that there are structural problems. Simulationism is I think in many ways a grab bag of things that don't fit in N and G, and it does feel reductionist in a lot of ways. However, it again doesn't try to describe gamers, so much as the MOTIVATION of gamers, which can be complex. I don't think he really believes it's perfect (he's said so himself). But I do think there's merit there.

In addition to the quotes I provided above, there's this little gem from Edwards' System Does Matter article:

One of the biggest problems I observe in RPG systems is that they often try to satisfy all three outlooks at once. The result, sadly, is a guarantee that almost any player will be irritated by some aspect of the system during play. GMs' time is then devoted, as in the Herbie example, to throwing out the aspects that don't accord for a particular group. A "good" GM becomes defined as someone who can do this well - but why not eliminate this laborious step and permit a (for example) Gamist GM to use a Gamist game, getting straight to the point? I suggest that building the system specifically to accord with one of these outlooks is the first priority of RPG design.

His goal is for you to be able to design a game in accordance with one of the GNS elements and thus keep players happy. Any contradiction in the definitions makes that goal impossible. Therefore, GNS not only isn't perfect, it's not even useful for the things designers are supposed to use it for.

[Neeeek]

He writes like an elitist professorial type,

No, he doesn't. He writes like a pseudo-intellectual. As in someone who is trying to cover up that they aren't that bright/don't have an argument by using jargon (self-invented most of the time in his case) and big words.

I used to be a volunteer editor for this website, and anyone trying to pull that sort of crap would have had their submissions ripped to pieces (or were phenomenologists. A school of thought that literally uses the argument "If you don't agree with us, you just haven't achieved understanding of what we're saying yet." I hated those guys. Gave me a 3 week headache.) And if you can find a more elitist professorial group than a bunch of Philosophy professors writing about their individual specialties, I'd be very impressed.

[Username17]

I'm a biologist. I am well versed in the need for specialty nomenclature in academic subjects. When you use terms like "genetic drift" or "parasitism" it has very specific meanings. No one in the field would ever refer to the Trill symbiont as a "parasite" because it provides a tangible reproductive benefit.

And even in the field of RPG theory, terminology clarification is needed. We try to avoid saying "realism" because realism has a weird meaning in reference to a fantasy game (it means that the events portrayed are likely sounding within the limited context of the fantasy world which we have already been asked to suspend disbelief for). We try to use the word "verisimilitude" when speaking academically about fantasy role playing universes. Not because a contextualized "realism" means anything different from "verisimilitude" - but because verisimilitude happens to mean that in Natural English.

That's an important point. We actually go out of our way to use weird words to mean what we want to say in order to dispel confusion. That is the essence of academic writing. You use specific terminology to get your point across exactly. And you damn well don't make a word mean something it doesn't mean if you have some perfectly serviceable word in actual natural language. For example, you don't use the word "premise" to mean a question that you are trying to answer through play. There are perfectly serviceable words like Inquiry, Examination, or Quest that all roughly mean that.

-Username17

[Maxus]

Agreed.

Someone can come up to me and talk about anticlines or synclines, or schist, or varigated sandstone, or fossiliferous shale, and I'll know what they're saying.

Reading Ron Edwards makes me feel like I'm reading a talk by Buckminster Fuller.

[Shoggoth]

You guys make some very good points. I do agree that much of the terminology that he uses is imprecise, and when he uses words like "Premise" to define exploration in game, it only leads to confusion. But I do want to make two points here.

[quote="FrankTrollman]
Read it again.

A simulationist Chinese Wuxia game might have a Sorcerer with Eunuch Henchmen. A Narrativist game by contrast will include things regardless of genre brought in by the players or GM.

Which means straight up that according to that definition, a Narrative is best defined because there is no in-world or in-genre reason for the inclusion of a Sorcerer and his fucking Eunuch Henchmen. They just get brought in by one of the people at he table without need for explanation.

That's totally fucked.

-Username17
[/quote]

OK, once again you are conflating "things" with "themes". A Sorcerer and his Eunuch Henchmen are an element of play. They are "things" in the game, and unless you are playing in some kind of crazy Rifts-like melting pot world where retarded things can coexist for no reason, it's NOT appropriate to mix them. A theme, by contrast, is something like "mortality", or "slavery". The sorcerer and his eunuchs could be used to explore the idea of slavery through the eunuchs, but that same theme could be brought into a game in a Sci-fi universe, where aliens are enslaved and used for labor (Wookies, anyone?). You don't bring in the "thing" (sorcerers), you bring in the "theme" (slavery). Totally different things.

Secondly, whenever anyone says "Your game is not art", I say to them "Who the fuck do you think you are, telling me how to play my games?" I play games in tons of ways, from simple DnD hackfests to roleplaying heavy games of My Life With Master, and if I want to try to create freeform art, then I'm damn well going to. Don't fucking judge me.

If I want to take this stuff seriously, how does it offend you? You can still play your game any way you want to.

[Leress]

Saying "Your game isn't art" has nothing to do with how some one plays the game.

[Quantumboost]

Secondly, whenever anyone says "Your game is not art", I say to them "Who the fuck do you think you are, telling me how to play my games?" I play games in tons of ways, from simple DnD hackfests to roleplaying heavy games of My Life With Master, and if I want to try to create freeform art, then I'm damn well going to. Don't fucking judge me.

If I want to take this stuff seriously, how does it offend you? You can still play your game any way you want to.

Who's telling you how to play your games? You can use your games to make art, sure. An RPG is still not art, neither is the act of playing it. Saying "that makes neither the game nor its play art" is equivalent to saying "that makes neither paint nor applying it art". The painting is art, but the act of making it isn't, nor are the rules used in the creative process.

You can follow rules of human perception and apply paint in order to design and create a stop sign just as easily as you can to make a painting. You can play an RPG to get your jollies hacking up orcs just like you can to craft a game-based fantasy story (not to say that even hack&slash can't be done artfully). Even if you consider the other players your audience (outright acting is very rarely required by the rules of any but the most pretentious games), the Gygax quote is actually entirely accurate regardless of who said it.

Also, wanting to take game-related stuff seriously is probably a prerequisite of posting here. It just happens that being serious about stuff at the Den doesn't preclude lolcats, Pokémon analogies, and massive quantities of sarcasm. At all.

Because lolcats are srs bizness.

[Kaelik]

Art is: "the creation of beautiful or significant things" amongst other things.

This is generally defined based on how society, or other people view it.

Why do you think that you playing an RPG game is somehow beautiful or significant? Why do you think that we other people should have to recognize the intrinsic worth of you playing a game? I can think the way you play is stupid, retarded, and deserving of nothing but scorn. Tough shit, deal. Your game isn't fucking art.

[Elennsar]

Since last I checked, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", your point fails to make his gaming less artistic than he claimed it is.