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Plots in books and games
Hello everyone,
https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-pop-culture-obsessed-with-battles-between-good-and-evil
This essay does a good job of that articulating some of issues I have with both rpgs and books as they are currently set up. Briefly, it argues that plots (the articles calls them myths) have changed in the last couple of hundred years to promote a good - evil axis over an older (a)morality.
I see the crossover in the way that rpgs and rpg modules / adventures are meant to be satisfying to read in order to boost sales, despite this actually making them less useful at the table. I read an article where it seems that one of the lead designers for Pathfinder actually said this. I'd be curious in hearing both what people think of the argument, and whether they recognise this in practice.
Thanks.
Comments
Projects like making certain people rich, not national projects like housing the poor)
I’m not sure I see the connection with the format of RPG supplements. I think the truth is that only a subset of RPG buyers actually read the supplements they buy, and only a subset of those actually play it. Most reviews are based on a read, so it makes sense to cater their format to reading. I think a really good scenario would be formatted for readers first, then maybe have a second crib-sheet type booklet to be used for playing.
I am unsure if I was able to fully grasp the intricacies of the argument they were making. Does the Bible as an ancient text fall into the good vs evil structure? It seems to for me, but then I have a feeling they would find a way to make an exception.
My son and I are playing in a D&D game once a week right now and I was "assigned" a lawful evil death cleric to play and yet the rest of the party is not at all like that. It's challenging to play because I only need to get along with the party insofar as my goals are being met, but stepping out of the standard "your party must vanguish evil!" narrative is also pretty difficult for the DM to create space for. I'm been wondering how it's going to work (if it even can with the current setup!). Maybe there is something in the article that addresses why that is difficult to do? Not sure.
I'm about half way through the article just now - I'm enjoying it but haven't yet seen any acknowledgement that the novel (which is what most people mean by "a work of fiction that I'm going to read") has only really existed for a little over 200 years, and has undergone quite rapid development and changes over those couple of centuries. I have reservations about dumping "myths" (where the story is typically aurally transmitted) and "books" (where it is typically read or viewed on a screen) into the same bucket! Any differences might be because of changes in social expectation, but they might also be simple reflections of a different medium and what does and doesn't work.
I was also thinking about Disney films (we've just had two of our grandchildren for a few days) and how although they're modern works, they fit better into the "older" pattern. In Beauty and the Beast, for example, Gaston is not really evil - he's just self-obsessed and infantile in his appreciation of other people. Similarly Belle is not Good in an absolute social sense - she's just kind and pleasant (and equally obsessed but with books and the imaginative life rather than hunting things).
1) Many "original" monster stories e.g. Beowulf, did not entail destruction of entire societies, or classes, of humans or beings. Likewise Dracula. The monsters were in some important way local manifestations of an individual who was dangerous, and who often passed a threat to a community. Of course such stories do not serialise well, nor do they produce sequels with the same characters, and so are less suitable for promotion in our capitalistic system. These seem to lead to detective stories.
2) Many "original" hero stories present the hero in a variety of lights, as we can see most clearly in the huge mass of Arthurian romances. While in a particular tale e.g Arthur, Lancelot, or Guinevere might have a particular moral cast, there are other tales where they are the opposite. Nowadays people often take this inconsistency, and even incoherence, as a fault, or something to be corrected, e.g. TE White, and certainly not something to permit in our present literature, which needs to show that individuals have a "true nature."
But I wonder if it might be a feature of good stories and tales to reveal something about the "world-as-it-is:" Our ideas about how people are in their place should be tentative and only loosely held, because there is no stable basis to social reality, and so our evaluations and judgments of individuals should be based on their capacity to negotiate and change in an uncertain and often unkind world, anwhere the most admirable people demonstrate this character through self reflection of their own conduct in situations, which leads them to respond differently over time. A kind of wisdom or knowledge which is not an expression of identity but of mutability and experience.
I certainly see these ideas in the ways that RPGs often work out at the table, and it's hard to find 1) A GM who builds a world where change is built in, and 2) Players to want to role play a character arc that doesn't involve being monstrous. I wonder if this is mostly because they don't actually know any such world or tales.
Oddly enough I came across some ideas that are loosely related to this while reading The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye by A.S Byatt (for the local book club) where one of Byatt's characters is discussing tales from The Arabian Nights
In passing, the book is interesting (it's a collection of short stories of which the oner names in the overall title is the longest by a considerable margin) and is largely concerned with exploring folk-tale motifs - usually changed or subverted in some way - rather than being plot driven. So you might say that the whole book is being self-referential in the opening phrase quoted above!
Thanks @RichardAbbott I've looked up a copy of the book at the library.
I wanted to add that the "unreliable narrator" is a way to restore the ambiguity and uncertainty that I am talking about here without disrupting the social cohesion that is grounded on the (false?) facticity of individuals possessing a "true nature." Because of this "fact" any ambiguity about a person's character and action must be an expression of either an intentional deception, or of ignorance and stupidity as the only possible (non-deceptive) reason for mistakes. Somewhere in here is hidden the idea that the "true nature" of an individual is that of a god, who can never be mistaken, in a world that is rule-bound, and so cannot respond in surprising ways. World-building is the expression of rules that neuter surprise so it no longer produces its offspring, anxiety and wonder.
I guess also there are only two characters in these kind of cosmologies: The human, god-like in faculty and agency, and the monstrous, human but deceptive. and finally everyone is monstrous, and there are no monsters. IMO boring in the extreme.
Another interesting quote from A S Byatt's The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye (this time from the title story)
A lot of this particular story is exploring the world of the Arabian Nights but seen in a modern setting where the protagonist is an academic British woman (I'm not saying it is secretly autobiographical, but it's certainly true that A S Byatt and Margaret Drabble, who were sisters, fell out big-time because each thought that the other was writing about family stuff that was too close to the bone).
I'd read Possession a few years back and thought it OK but overly long for what it was trying to do. I've enjoyed The Djinn etc much more