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Games and Gaming: Are indie games postmodern? It's hard to know for sure

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  1.  
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      CommentAuthorGraham
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009 edited
     # 1
    I like Chris' argument that many indie games were postmodern, although I don't agree with it.

    Firstly, I understand that there are different definitions of "postmodern" (as you might expect). It's a term used both in philosophy and art, similarly but slightly differently. I've seen it used in psychology, too.

    It's often used to mean "rejecting the idea that there's a single way of thinking about things". Relatedly, it can mean, roughly, "the view that nothing can be definitely known". Chris uses it to mean something like "Self-knowing" or "Producing things with a knowledge of what's gone before". I've also heard, once, in a book I can't find, that "facsimiles" are a hallmark of postmodernism: postmodern art copies what has come before.

    (Do discuss definitions in this thread, if you like, but if you cut-and-paste them from "authoritative" sources, at least try and see the irony.)

    I can see Chris' argument: that many Forge games are self-knowing, even ironic. They're very aware of what's gone before, consciously trying to react to it. Perhaps something like "Drowning and Falling", an ironic copy of Dungeons and Dragons, could be described as postmodern.

    But, to me, it's a weak argument. I go with Josh's argument: you can't argue that Forge games are postmodern because they revolve around a specific set of ideas*. Truly postmodern games would reject any single way of thinking. God knows what they'd look like, but not like indie games.

    Graham

    * Edited slightly, so we don't have to talk about the Big Model.
    •  
      CommentAuthordroog
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 2
    Doesn't postmodernism revolve around Barthes, Derrida, Foucault and Baudrillard, and do not these writers feed off and interrogate each other?
  3.  # 3
    There has to be a difference between postmodern and parody, I hope. I'd put "Kill Puppies for Satan" and "Drowning and Falling" in the parody department, rather than the postmodern one. Like "Our Man Flint", but not neccessarily like "Scary Movie".

    A postmodern game should be aware of and make commentaries on, for example, The Big Model, or something. Maybe The Rock of Tahaamat is the closest we've got. Or maybe HoL?
    • CommentAuthorGeorgios
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009 edited
     # 4
    Postmodernism has always been the rabbit-hole that led nowhere and more often than not disappeared up its own posterior.

    I really hope that the games we're talking about here, aren't like that.
  5.  # 5
    Posted By: GrahamGod knows what they'd look like, but not like indie games.


    As a practical guy I want to know what that postmodern game would look like, actually. That's the only part of this conversation that interests me. How would it necessarily diverge? What structures (or lack of structures) would be necessary to support it? How would the experience of play differ?

    I recognize various people have already thrown up their hands in resignation, but I'm asking you to speculate.
    •  
      CommentAuthorGraham
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009 edited
     # 6
    That's interesting, Jason. Perhaps they'd look for new formulations of game design, relying on, say, LARPs or gambling games rather than the Big Model.

    Or perhaps they'd explicitly reject the Big Model. If I designed a game that encouraged players to play in different ways* - some competitively, some just to enjoy being in the world - that'd be interesting.

    Graham

    * Steve refers to this as "rich play", in which the use of and negotiation between differing Creative Agendas enriches the experience. It contrasts with with "impoverished play", in which all players play using the same Creative Agenda.
    • CommentAuthorMr. Teapot
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 7
    I'd say that all roleplaying games are postmodern, myself. Death of the author? Self consciously imitating art that came before? breaking down the traditional rules of art? Resurrecting old forms of art (oral storytelling in this case), etc. Yeah, rpgs do all that, all the time, even back to D&D.

    But I don't know if I can make a coherent argument for that point right at the moment, due to too little sleep. Or ever, considering how incoherent discussions of postmodernism can be.
    •  
      CommentAuthorMatthijs
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 8
    Agabadan was possibly what you'd call postmodern. In that larp-ish pervasive game, each player adopted a world view which they themselves designed. They'd interact with other players who had different world views. These world views were also enacted in real life.

    Other than that, you could argue that the hippie method manifesto (http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=3144) is postmodern, especially this: "Hippie methods take in anything that's needed from other disciplines, as long as it's good shit."
    • CommentAuthortimfire
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009 edited
     # 9
    [Cross-posted with Mr.Teapot, who probably did a better job expressing what I wanted to say.]

    Graham,

    I know very, very little about the formal definitions of modernism/postmodernism/structuralism/etc, so I really shouldn't be trying to make any arguments here, but your argument isn't sitting well with me.

    To begin with, the Big Model is an analytical model, not a design or play method. So I have a hard time accepting the idea that "[Forge Games] revolve around a single theory, the Big Model."

    But more importantly, my gut's telling me that you're looking at this too narrowly. The role-playing hobby is only 30 years old, it has no long-standing tradition to reject or redefine. In other words, it doesn't seem right to me that you're trying to compare Forge games to non-Forge games. I think you should be comparing RPGs to other forms of story-telling.

    And if you do that, than I think they start sounding more postmodern (to my uneducated ears, at least). There's an argument that RPGs are a rejection of the popular understanding of "story"---a rejection that there can ever be a "single" story, rather that each instantiation of a game redefines the "story" in its own unique way.

    So while I shouldn't be making this argument, I think RPGs as a whole represents a truly postmodern artform, and Forge games are just a subset of that.
    •  
      CommentAuthorAndy
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 10
    Posted By: GrahamI like Chris' argument that many indie games were postmodern, although I don't agree with it.


    Chris who? And where is the argument?

    Also... Yeah, what Georgios said (though I'd have to read the argument to understood what they meant by PM).

    I definitely feel that "indie" (here let me call them "hippie", or (gasp) "story games") are "post... something": A reaction to the previous paradigm of pretty much all RPG design, craft, and publishing.

    But it wasn't "Modernnism" that forms this dialectic. It's (for back of a better word) "Traditional RPG" (for lack of a better word): Games where the only thing on your sheet are your Stats, your Skills, and your Combat Powers and Gear. While the dice used may vary, and the method of rolling them, this is the thing that these Story Games were "-Post". Also, post-distribution: There were very few who thought of "working with RPGs" to mean anything other than the following two things:

    1) I will work as a writer for a major/minor studio until I build up my cred, and then eventually they will let me work on a large RPG project.
    2) I will self-publish my game idea: Now the first thing I must do is take out a mortgage against my house, print 2000 copies, and have them all stuffed in Alliance/Diamond's warehouse.

    If anything, I'd call "indie games" (in the sense we clearly mean here: The hippie games largely inspired by conversations at the Forge with alternate play mechanics and distro) "post-distro" games. Or "post-stat/skill/combat" games

    -Andy
    •  
      CommentAuthordroog
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 11
    I do not think that Forge games revolve around the Big Model. The BIg Model is just an image, a reflection of much questioning and self-appraisal in reaction to an assumed model of a sub-culture.

    Reactions to this fundamental questioning of the central tenets of RPGs have been diverse, a veritable kaleidoscope of praxis.

    kill puppies for satan is a particularly interesting case, because cloaked in the shape of a parody is an invitation to transgress. Baker makes the invitation all the more insidious in Dogs in the Vineyard. It is a project undertaken with full knowledge that the audience constructs meaning for itself and does not receive it passively from the writer (cf. the Modernist urge in AD&D to fix a pure scheme of morality).
    •  
      CommentAuthorwalkerp
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 12
    I'd say the closest we've gotten to post-modern (given my limited and fleeting understanding of the term) in an RPG is Paranoia and possibly Hackmaster 4th edition. The former makes explicit and then inverses the traditional party/goals structure. The latter put the previously unwritten social behaviour at the table into the text itself. Yet, strangely, HM4 was mostly played straight up.
    • CommentAuthortimfire
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 13
    While I'm talking about things I shouldn't be, I also have an issue with the "indie games are structuralist" argument.

    Literary structuralism is about analyzing the final product, right? Or maybe structuring the final product (aka the fiction)?

    The way I see it, with a few exceptions the "structure" in indie games (and RPGs in general) isn't about structuring the fiction itself. Rather, the structure in indie games is mostly about structuring the creative process, most notably the interactions between participants.

    That doesn't seem to me to be the same thing that literary structuralism is talking about (as gleaned from Wikipedia).
    •  
      CommentAuthorGraham
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009 edited
     # 14
    Posted By: timfireTo begin with, the Big Model is an analytical model, not a design or play method. So I have a hard time accepting the idea that "[Forge Games] revolve around a single theory, the Big Model."


    I was deliberately simplifying that argument, but I do think there's a case that many Forge games stem from the same way of thinking about RPGs.

    Graham
  15.  # 15
    You could analyze a lot of different aspects of a lot of different games and come out with different answers.

    The push for "coherence" in game experience is a specifically modern rather than postmodern one. As is the strong focus on the vision of a game's author, and the very concept of "drift" - as if any game experience ever existed that wasn't produced by the interaction of specific players with a text.

    The community, DIY kind of aesthetics, and the general blurring of producer and consumer can be seen as postmodern. As can the tendency in certain games to aim for 'simulation' of another kind of fictional experience - television or film genres, D&D having long ago slipped into simulating D&D. The self- and group- awareness of 'stance'.
    •  
      CommentAuthoranansigirl
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 16
    We sometimes joke about making a post-modern game (in the art sense of the word), mostly because my husband, and Art Historian, is in the group. These discussions go like this:

    Player 1: "Well, in order to determine what happens next, I'll have to compare the blue triangle to that concept of conflict. If I consider the blank canvas that my character sheet currently is, really there's nothing I couldn't do."

    Player 2: "Well, my blue triangle is actually only triangular because it refers to the trinity, so in that interpretation, you would have to make a moral decision about eating that cake."

    Player 1: "Wait, what cake?"

    GM: "Hold on, I'm referring to the rules." (looks in a blank book that only has an index that looks like an annotated bibliography, with lots of references to pipes and toilets)


    But really, these guys weren't all post-modernists. I guess it depends who you ask, but most of them were modernists, surrealists, minimalists... their definitions all kinda move around fluidly in that modern to contemporary realm that's become so mercurial in the art world anymore. Besides, we all know that post-modernists defy definition, it's all interpretive.

    If I were to pick an art related term to apply to story-games, I'd say low-brow. Which, I guess is technically in the post-modern realm, but not typically what you'd think of as post-modern art. Juxtapoz is a fabulous example. I relate this type of subculture in the arts to the type of subculture indie games and the forge represent in the gaming community. I know that puts me on rocky ground here, since we've had that discussion a lot on these forums (are we really a subculture? really?). But small press and homemade and all that, along with ideas and images that break away from the "traditional" norm of the RPG.

    Maybe?
    • CommentAuthorBill_White
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009 edited
     # 17
    The notion that postmodernism is characterized by the rejection of a "grand narrative" in favor of petit or local narratives is sometimes adduced as a sign of postmodernism's lack of internal consistency, in that the "retreat from grand narrative" can itself be regarded as a kind of grand narrative. I don't find that argument terribly convincing, in that it strikes me as cheap casuistry rather than a serious engagement with ideas. I'm prepared to regard postmodernity as an ideal-type conception rather than something that's embodied or enacted in unmitigated form anywhere. To my mind, a postmodern game will be more or less self-referential--possibly parodic, but in a way that deconstructs shibboleths of gaming rather than reinforcing them--or somehow render problematic the relationship between the act of playing and the resulting "diegesis" (fictional world). For an example of the first type, see PowerKill, which describes itself as a "metagame" to be overlaid upon other games: that's not really a dungeon, it's a Vietnamese village. And you're Lieutenant Calley. A possible example of the second type is Han Christian Andersen's Snow Day!, in which it's not entirely clear whether, when you describe your ice monster thrashing a bully, it's "really happening" or it's just your five-year-old PC's revenge fantasy.
    • CommentAuthortimfire
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009 edited
     # 18
    Posted By: GrahamI was deliberately simplifying that argument, but I do think there's a case that many Forge games stem from the same way of thinking about RPGs.

    Hmm, this is a tricky topic. Because there's a lot of agreement now, I think it's easy to get a skewed perspective on what the "golden age" of the Forge was really like.

    As I understand it, prior to '03 or so everyone at the Forge was basically an individual with their own ideas about gaming. People's ideas didn't really start coming together until around maybe '03, when Ron wrote his "Narrativism" article. (When I joined the Forge in late '03, there was still a LOT of arguing about ideas going around.) But even then, I wouldn't say a "unified Forgian worldview" took hold until... maybe '05. And that didn't last long, in '06 there was the "Forge Diaspora" when everyone went off and started developing their own ideas.

    So I don't think there was ever as much agreement as people seem to think there was. It's also worth noting that most of the memorable "Forge games" were written prior to '05 and a "unified Forgian worldview"... However... I will concede that the members of the Forge shared a particular mindset, even if they didn't agree about the details.
    • CommentAuthorLogos7
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 19
    I would say that given the current concensous on how a (indie) game ought to be, and that concensous's rather clear connection to both a train of thought and a rejection of what came before it makes it pretty definitionally modern.

    Correct me if I'm wrong but was not modernism (in art at least ) a reaction/break away from the traditional thoughts/methods of the enlightment art scene, in much the same way indie crowds break away from the traditional thoughts/methods of the dnd scene.

    Lets look at an dictionary definition of

    a style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions.

    ~oxford english

    Well definitely not the most philosophical of definitions I think it more or less works as is, notice the distrust of theories and ideologies. While drawing attention to conventions are definitely part of post modernism, I really don't think that's enough to make them postmodern or else every satire from then to now counts. The shared mindset that prevails in indie games should be. Another thing that gets mention alot is that post modernism often embraces what modernism rejected so in a sense, that means that satire has to be straight faced and earnest and taken to extremes, which is not something I see in indie games.

    Oddly enough, the work people are doing as part of the 'Old School Renaissance' comes a lot closer to the idea than indie stuff. Its returning to the stuff that has been rejected in the past, often cranking it up to 11, it has a distrust of theory and ideology, it is pretty self aware of its place and the conventions , and doesn't really seem to me to have the over arching meaning behind it (its still old school Renaissance if your bringing back odnd, or traveller, or any of the 80's rpg's really or using their methods [lots of tiny little tables apparently and descending armor class])
    • CommentAuthorKropotkin
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 20
    One of the major problems with Postmodernism is that there seems to be very little agreement about what it is. I took some theory classes where we studied postmodernism and I'll tell you that most of us came away feeling less certain about what it was afterwards than when we started the course (maybe that was the point).

    Dislocation--fragmented identities--simulations--maybe something like that?

    I think rpgs in general might be considered postmodern. I mean we use paper, dice, and our heads to "simulate" these characters and worlds we make up. Why single out forge style games?
    • CommentAuthorBill_White
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 21
    Posted By: KropotkinDislocation--fragmented identities--simulations--maybe something like that?


    Yeah, exactly. For a game to be "philosophically postmodern" (or maybe "post-structuralist"), it should challenge assumptions about the relationship between the player and the game, the game and the fiction, the fiction and the real world. Think about how 1001 Nights sets up a situation where you have characters in-game telling stories to each other, in such a way that the characters are themselves playing a role-playing game! The interplay of characters at the story level reflects back upon the characters at the court level, which in turn reflects back upon the players at the table. Now that's postmodern!
    •  
      CommentAuthorGraham
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009 edited
     # 22
    Well, of course, before continuing, we should all agree on a single definition of postmodernism.

    This is a joke. Let's not do that.

    Graham
  23.  # 23
    Posted By: Bill_WhiteFor a game to be "philosophically postmodern" (or maybe "post-structuralist"), it should challenge assumptions about the relationship between the player and the game, the game and the fiction, the fiction and the real world.
    So that means ARGs (and some LARPs) are more post-modern than most tabletop, right? "Playing yourself" and/or "shared characters" would be two major benchmarks, as I see it: the former blends the diegetic with real life (and real life issues; viz my For Mature Audiences) and the latter eliminates any (traditional) notion of My Guy.

    Maybe just the fact that Story Now is so common in indie gives it a post-modern feel: The traditional game format being one of high competition or simulation (which both, perforce, involve extremes of character monogamy, be it for a plausible condition for "winning" or a necessary condition for "consistent embodiment"), the notion of stepping back from pawn stance to author stance could be another blurring of the lines between player and character (i.e. the character is a means, now, not an end).

    I dunno, though... I'm flailing a bit because I think I might be in the camp that "indie = modernism" with only the latest blush--the most recent deconstructions, be they indie or three-tier--qualifying as post-modern in the sense used by the art community.
    •  
      CommentAuthorPaul B
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 24
    Having watched and participated in a handful of our little indie game contests, I'm pretty sure (some/many) people are using The Big Model as a game design model, not a gameplay analysis tool. That in itself strikes me as a pomo conceit. Even designing "away" from TBM concepts would be pomo.
    • CommentAuthorBill_White
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 25
    Posted By: David Artman
    Posted By: Bill_WhiteFor a game to be "philosophically postmodern" (or maybe "post-structuralist"), it should challenge assumptions about the relationship between the player and the game, the game and the fiction, the fiction and the real world.
    So that means ARGs (and some LARPs) are more post-modern than most tabletop, right? "Playing yourself" and/or "shared characters" would be two major benchmarks, as I see it: the former blends the diegetic with real life (and real life issues; viz myFor Mature Audiences) and the latter eliminates any (traditional) notion of My Guy.


    I'll accept that, absolutely. I just finished reading a book called Pervasive Games that talks about how new communication technologies are enabling games that "break out of the 'magic circle' of play" and into the real world, either in time, in space, or in who counts as a "player." There are plenty of examples, I think, of postmodern approaches to gaming. "I defy the Big Model!" doesn't strike me as one of them.
  26.  # 26
    @Andy: good call on the true form of the dialectic at hand.

    @everyone: I think it's very important to focus, as others have already said, on the relationship between RPGs and the wider art/literary world. It's still quite mightily up for debate whether games are artistic endeavors (okay, when I phrase it like that, they clearly are, but still), at least in the popular consciousness, but I firmly believe that many RPGs constitute a form of "acting/theater game" - at the very least, they're a method of getting grown-ups to engage in the sort of imaginative play that they would otherwise see (moreso, at any rate) as inappropriate, childish, etc. In the words of Jayne Cobb, "well, I guess that's something".

    A high level of Derrida-style textual analysis is necessary to start thinking about what exactly game texts are. It's really important to remember, as has been said already, that our hobby is about 30 years old in its present form. War-gaming roots, LARPing, SCA, and their forerunners, the Spiritualism movement and its offspring, the neo-pagan movements of the 20th and 21st centuries ... all these things bring us to a point where someone derived a generic fantasy game from a number of literary texts, texts that themselves were neo-Romantic reactionary diatribes to modernism (Lord of the Rings, Conan, etc.).

    I think the "back-to-storytelling" side of RPGs is one example of the further fruits of that neo-Romantic, literally post-modern{1} impulse - to embrace the modes and forms of one's ancestors{2} (or rather, my ancestors, if you have no Germanic heritage) and beyond, into territory that is decidedly wary of technology and the alienation and deadening it can bring (I'm thinking of the words of Ron Edwards in particular, here - hinted-at disdain for video games paired with talk of "brain damage" having been inflicted upon certain members of our hobby). Certainly, our allies in the board-gaming hobby, at least the folks at BoardGameGeek.com, have tinkered with an anti- or non-technology sentiment at times, using such slogans as "[proudly] gaming unplugged since 2000". It's arguable whether this is a conscious sentiment or a mere catchy tagline.

    It's fascinating what the GMful and GM-less mini-movements in game design have wrought - to me, they attempt to engage or realize a democratic impulse in the creative process that, to some, is hindered or restricted by previous iterations of our hobby. This is actually where I fit in, politically - sort of an art-as-self-actualization process, where the point of play is to realize and activate both the individual's own creative voice and the individual's interest in and capacity for telling stories, while simultaneously reaping the fruits of an undeniably group process, which teaches the lessons of both improv theater (sharing authority, spontaneity, etc.) and a more communitarian mindset (streeeetch!).

    {1} as opposed to artistically post-modern, which is obviously debatable
    {2} what is D&D but an increasingly layered digestion of the Lord of the Rings, itself an adaptation of a German Romantic Nationalist opera, combined with a heavy layering of riffing on actual Germanic myth? No, I'm not being rhetorical - what do you think?

    I think that, in relation to art and entertainment as a whole, RPGs definitely fulfill the criterion of "challeng[ing] assumptions about the relationship between the player and the game," and the fiction and the reader/user. Over time, RPGs have certainly devised new ways of interacting with the kind of experiences novels, board games, and video games provide - for the former, granting the chance for personal input and control, and for both of the latter, an infinitely greater level of flexibility, detail, and nuance becomes available. I think the parallel development of these different media creates a sort of pomo "re:" effect, in which, across different kinds of artistic endeavor, new and different ways of subject/object interaction arise. But, you know, mainly in RPGs. Video games' renegotiation of the art/audience relationship moves at the speed of technology, while RPGs have always had the fully "open" form of Free Play/Free Narration available to them.
    •  
      CommentAuthorBen Lehman
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 27
    Can I open this up a little bit?

    Indie RPGs are postmodern because and only because all role-playing games are post-modern.

    1) They're postmodern in time. Just like I can't write a modernist poem, I can't write a modernist role-playing game. If you're willing to stick the invention of the RPG in the 70s, unless we find a secret cache of GM notes by Ezra Pound, no one was around to write a modernist role-playing game.

    2) They're post-modern in form. They are not stories, they are a means by which the audience creates stories for itself.

    yrs--
    --Ben
    •  
      CommentAuthorDaniel H.
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009 edited
     # 28
    Posted By: GrahamIf I designed a game that encouraged players to play in different ways* - some competitively, some just to enjoy being in the world - that'd be interesting.

    * Steve refers to this as "rich play", in which the use of and negotiation between differing Creative Agendas enriches the experience. It contrasts with with "impoverished play", in which all players play using the same Creative Agenda.

    Isn't this how most people play--and have played--D&D (and most roleplaying games) for as long as they existed, with differing interests and agendas all sharing the same table? Perhaps not explicitly encouraged by the game rules, but definitely part of the culture of play . . .

    Posted By: Mr. TeapotI'd say that all roleplaying games are postmodern, myself. Death of the author? Self consciously imitating art that came before? breaking down the traditional rules of art? Resurrecting old forms of art (oral storytelling in this case), etc. Yeah, rpgs do all that, all the time, even back to D&D.

    . . . which puts me with Nick in the roleplaying games are already post-modern camp.

    Edit: Also, what Ben said right above me.
  29.  # 29
    Posted By: Ben Lehmana secret cache of GM notes by Ezra Pound

    If only...

    Is anyone else interested in discussing technique? I can start a new thread, but I have nothing to contribute - I'm interested in the outlines of a postmodernist game, even as a thought experiment, if it encompasses new ways of approaching the fiction or social experience. If you've thought deeply about this and think it isn't what we do currently, maybe you have some ideas.
    •  
      CommentAuthorDaniel H.
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009 edited
     # 30
    One other thing, although it butts against what Ben said, and he knows Forge theory better than I do (and someone might already have said this above): Wouldn't refutation of the Big Model, or exploring alternate paradigms, be post-modern? Assuming, of course, that the Big Model accurately reflects the dominate paradigm that has so far existed in the history of roleplaying games.
    •  
      CommentAuthorccreitz
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009 edited
     # 31
    I am so happy that Graham started this thread. (Colin, by the way. Not Chris. I think that led to some confusion above.)
    Posted By: Simon PetterssonThere has to be a difference between postmodern and parody, I hope. I'd put "Kill Puppies for Satan" and "Drowning and Falling" in the parody department, rather than the postmodern one
    Of course there is a difference. In spite of it, I'd say that KPfS and D&F are both postmodern productions. The old "Murphy's Rules" cartoons, I'd say, are parodies. Medium awareness is key: KPfS and D&F are themselves playable games, which show the flaws in the old structures by demonstrating new ones, and then point and laugh. "We've learned so much together!" they tell the reader. "Let's not suffer brain damage/design naïve sim games anymore." They aren't just the joke, like Murphy's; they're in on themselves.

    Posted By: droog kill puppies for satan is a particularly interesting case, because cloaked in the shape of a parody is an invitation to transgress. Baker makes the invitation all the more insidious in Dogs in the Vineyard. It is a project undertaken with full knowledge that the audience constructs meaning for itself and does not receive it passively from the writer (cf. the Modernist urge in AD&D to fix a pure scheme of morality).
    QFT. Very well said.

    Posted By: Graham
    Or perhaps [postmodern games] explicitly reject the Big Model. If I designed a game that encouraged players to play in different ways* - some competitively, some just to enjoy being in the world - that'd be interesting.
    I think that the idea of coherence in game design, contra Ryan, is highly postmodern. Not ever game that understands coherence needs to engage it by blocking contributions from all but a narrow range of CA, though. One possible pomo move: "OK, coherence. What if I design a game that honors a wide range of CAs and harmonizes them, making them feed each other? Because screw coherence." Sorry to bring CA and the attendant identity politics back, but it's what I mean.

    Posted By: Bill_WhiteThe notion that postmodernism is characterized by the rejection of a "grand narrative" in favor ofpetitor local narratives is sometimes adduced as a sign of postmodernism's lack of internal consistency, in that the "retreat from grand narrative" can itself be regarded as a kind of grand narrative. I don't find that argument terribly convincing, in that it strikes me as cheap casuistry rather than a serious engagement with ideas. I'm prepared to regard postmodernity as an ideal-type conception rather than something that's embodied or enacted in unmitigated form anywhere. To my mind, a postmodern game will be more or less self-referential--possibly parodic, but in a way that deconstructs shibboleths of gaming rather than reinforcing them--or somehow render problematic the relationship between the act of playing and the resulting "diegesis" (fictional world). For an example of the first type, seePowerKill, which describes itself as a "metagame" to be overlaid upon other games: that's not really a dungeon, it's a Vietnamese village. And you're Lieutenant Calley.[...]
    I was trying to work "Power Kill" into a post on the other thread. The New Style games seem like a watershed in so many ways — I was also trying to work in "Violence" and "Puppetland". "Violence" is an important milestone on the path to a culture that would enjoy kpfs, by my reading. If ever a (published, widely-read) game could be uncontroversially postmodern, it would be "Power Kill". And man, that game is amazing. Everyone should play it at least once. Only takes an hour, tops. Totally worth it. "Power Kill" is a sandwich made of deconstruction and win.

    A fortiori, then, Seth Ben-Ezra's forthcoming game Showdown must be understood as a very postmodern deconstruction of sociopathic violence tropes in traditional games. "Rendering problematic the relationship between the act of playing and the fiction" is what it does best. Not only does it undermine the "heroic" traits of the protagonists in the fiction as we experience it, it undermines those same traits in the characters' self-images. In the best games, we're left with the hollow husks of the characters we thought we created, losers who resort to deadly violence because they have nothing left. It's like playing D&D and Power Kill at the exact same time.

    Posted By: timfireSo I don't think there was ever as much agreement as people seem to think there was. It's also worth noting that most of the memorable "Forge games" were written prior to '05 and a "unified Forgian worldview"... However... I will concede that the members of the Forge shared a particular mindset, even if they didn't agree about the details.
    I wanted to bring this up in light of what Bill started off saying. Even though it's hard to put a finger on, as we saw elsethread, there is an underlying, hard-to-articulate "feel" to Forge (and diaspora) games, such that almost everyone agrees that game X is in the class, and game Y is out. Postmodernism is notoriously hard to pin down, too. The two ideas have that in common. So it's not surprising that getting one pulsating blob to sit still long enough to be compared to a different squirming mess is really hard. Doesn't mean it's impossible, though.

    Posted By: wrshamiltonThe community, DIY kind of aesthetics, and the general blurring of producer and consumer can be seen as postmodern.
    Especially the last. Also, the blurring of critic and author, and of theorist and author.

    Posted By: Mr. TeapotI'd say that all roleplaying games are postmodern, myself.
    Pomo is a virus that tends to colonize everything it touches. Once you see the door in the fourth wall, once you get the ironic vision, it's hard to unsee it, or unget it. I don't know that the games of the sim-by-default era have any good argument to be seen as postmodern productions, but once there were enough of them, and a critical mass of people thinking about them, I think it was inevitable that the pomo memeplex would find its way into another yet-virgin medium. Only careful watch and warding can keep it out (the wholly unironic spawn of D&D3, for instance, are still cute and innocent that way). That, or constant wearing of blinkers, RIFTS-style.
    •  
      CommentAuthorccreitz
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 32
    Posted By: Jason MorningstarIs anyone else interested in discussing technique? I can start a new thread, but I have nothing to contribute - I'm interested in the outlines of a postmodernist game, even as a thought experiment, if it encompasses new ways of approaching the fiction or social experience. If you've thought deeply about this and think it isn't what we do currently, maybe you have some ideas.
    There's a thead here to do just that. Good idea!
    • CommentAuthorMr. Teapot
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 33
    Posted By: ccreitzI don't know that the games of the sim-by-default era have any good argument to be seen as postmodern productions,


    Even the most traditional sim-driven RPG is freaking radical in artistic terms. An RPG is a tearing down of every traditional understanding of how art is produced, how the author and audience relate to the text, and everything else that western art theory has constructed for centuries. Instead of one artist passing art down to the audience, you have an inverted cyclical pattern where the artist and audience are one and the same, and everything else we know about art is up for grabs. Creating even a thoroughly normal D&D game is an exercise in identifying and deconstructing genre tropes from every action movie and fantasy novel anyone in the group has ever read.

    RPGs have broken down the fourth wall, kidnapped the audience and dragged them up on stage.
    • CommentAuthorLogos7
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 34
    Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person running Kills Puppies for Satan, straight and who the joke is really on.

    I also find the concept of post modern as a kind of 'end of history' for art/creative things, but I gotta admit it has some validity. Pomo is in a lot of ways it seems to me , a lazy way to avoid genuine effort in either creation or criticism (pomo degrades criticism by refusing to create a right and a wrong in favour of localities and all that, and it degrades creation by placing all things as copy, derivitive and satire of what came before it. ) . This means that at the very least, when popular media is pomo we've essentially reached the end of history because there's no way to escape the pomo, as others have said, once you see it , its hard or impossible to not see it).

    Interesting Thought, Thank you

    L
  35.  # 35
    Posted By: Mr. TeapotRPGs have broken down the fourth wall, kidnapped the audience and dragged them up on stage.
    Nick wins the thread.
    •  
      CommentAuthordroog
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 36
    The Old School is clearly post-postmodernist in its attempt to return to the sincerity of the early roleplaying experience. But you can't go home again.
  37.  # 37
    Since we seem to be collecting definitions; my definition of post modernism was always "What Monty Python did to humor".

    This way, it's similar to Forge games. Just like you simply can't do a good old-fashioned joke post Monty Python, you can't make an honest traditional RPG post Forge. We still have some people who don't know about the Forge, so they can still do it, but everyone who does know about is irrevocably tainted. If they make a traditional RPG now, it's a reaction to the Forge paradigm!

    I'm not saying Forge is homo pomo, I'm just pointing out one way it's similar. Also, I accept the notion that RPGs are pomo by nature.
    •  
      CommentAuthorDaniel H.
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 38
    Posted By: Mr. TeapotInstead of one artist passing art down to the audience, you have an inverted cyclical pattern where the artist and audience are one and the same, and everything else we know about art is up for grabs.

    When participating in a roleplaying game, I'm simultaneously writer, director, actor, and audience. It's like a dream; it threatens to go from post-modernism to surrealism.
    •  
      CommentAuthordroog
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 39
    Does not the all-encompassing nature of the unreconstructed GM role reflect auteur theory, a cornerstone of modernist art?
  40.  # 40
    Posted By: wrshamilton
    The push for "coherence" in game experience is a specifically modern rather than postmodern one. As is the strong focus on the vision of a game's author...


    This is a small point, but I want to make it: A strong focus of vision by an author doesn't have anything to do with whether or not something is postmodern.

    Jackson Pollock had a strong vision, but what made him a modernist was his conception and practice of himself as hero, going to oblivion (the blank canvas) and wrenching out of it something full of meaning and truth. It wasn't the fact that he had a strong vision, it's what that vision was.

    For example, David Lynch is definitely an auteur, and I can't see his movies as anything but postmodern.
    •  
      CommentAuthorJosh Roby
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 41
    Posted By: Ben Lehmanunless we find a secret cache of GM notes by Ezra Pound, no one was around to write a modernist role-playing game.
    Pound did not publish his RPG works, but he did serve as an editor of many RPG designers of his day.

    Note: if you grew up speaking English and didn't get this joke, chances are you shouldn't be trying to post like an authority on literary criticism. Just sayin'.
    • CommentAuthorBill_White
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 42
    Posted By: Josh Roby
    Posted By: Ben Lehmanunless we find a secret cache of GM notes by Ezra Pound, no one was around to write a modernist role-playing game.
    Pound did not publish his RPG works, but he did serve as an editor of many RPG designers of his day.

    Note: if you grew up speaking English and didn't get this joke, chances are you shouldn't be trying to post like an authority on literary criticism. Just sayin'.


    That's an interesting assertion.
  43.  # 43
    Posted By: ccreitzPomo is a virus that tends to colonize everything it touches. Once you see the door in the fourth wall, once you get the ironic vision, it's hard to unsee it, or unget it.


    As a former atheist who got religion, while living in the po-mo era, it's been a big part of my Zen practice to know when to set aside rigorous analysis, lest it ruin my ability to be present in the moment and, ironically, to see things as they truly are. It's easy for what I believe to be my critical analysis of a situation to turn out, in reality, to be mere small-minded disingenuousness. There is nothing small-minded about disingenuousness per se, of course, but the two together are a powerfully stupid and useless combo ^_^
    Po-mo IS hard to unsee and unget, and as a result, our culture is rife with absurd, Gen-X style faux-cynicism, in which all we see is profit motive or personal gain behind all generosity, virtue, and selflessness. Horrible misreadings of both Derrida and Marx don't help the situation, either.


    Posted By: Simon PetterssonI'm not saying Forge ishomopomo
    - Simon, let's try to keep this a safe space for queer people like myself, okay?
  44.  # 44
    my next character is going to have "Posts like an authority on literary criticism 2d4"
  45.  # 45
    I unask the question with a yawped "Mu". If one examines textual desublimation, one is faced with a choice: either accept neomodernist deappropriation or conclude that the answer is fundamentally unattainable. Foucault uses the term ‘Lyotardist narrative’ to denote the role of the artist, and this applies equally to game design. However, the subject is interpolated into a Lyotardist narrative that includes art as a paradox. The art or non-art?

    One day, I thought, studying postmodernism might come in useful.
    •  
      CommentAuthorccreitz
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 46
    Simon, surely you meant just "non/art" toward the end there. Or maybe "(non)art", reading very generously. Don't you think that we can "chose" (insofar as we ever "chose") to internalize the paradox and accept both alternatives as "valid"? Or to understand the disclosure/discovery of the paradox as, itself, art?
    • CommentAuthorGB Steve
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 47
    When we're not pointing to the Future, we players of Tbilisi entertain ironic notions of creativity vis-a-vis the hegemonic agendists. The différance suggests that role is ultimately a empty representation of roll but it also tells us that roll is sublimated by role. Of course, knowing Foucault, you can say what you like, the GM is always right and even when you deny his existence he always lurks at the edge of the discourse like a vomiting dog at a party.
    • CommentAuthorBill_White
    • CommentTimeSep 30th 2009
     # 48
    Posted By: Simon RogersOne day, I thought, studying postmodernism might come in useful.


    And did it?
  49.  # 49
    Is pomo something like the Tao? I keep coming across all of these definitions of pomo and they seem very slippery.

    Could one classify Tarantino's movies as postmodern? What about Don Quixote by Pierre Menard? Hopscotch? If On A Winter's Night a Traveler? D&D 4E? Adult Swim?

    Why or why not?
  50.  # 50
    Why not. Definitely why not.
  51.  # 51
    Lyotard brought the term into fashion in the late 70s, who is Quebecois and not French btw. Bill has already given Lyotards definition of the term.

    As for Barthes, Derrida, Foucault and Baudrillard, they are all pretty distinct and didn't have much dialogue between them. Baudrillard wrote against Foucault conception of power as knowledge power in Forget Foucault but beyond that is mostly committed to a Nietzschean reading of Marx and drawing out pataphysical critiques on consumer culture. All of them rejected the terms 'post-modern' and 'post-structural.'

    As my adviser and theory prof told me: Do yourself a favour and forget about any word that starts with post-.

    Rather that coming up with misleading, impossible and over-simplistic definitions, we ought to bring up specific concepts or thinkers and see how they might help us with design.
    • CommentAuthorGB Steve
    • CommentTimeOct 1st 2009 edited
     # 52
    Most indie game design is modernist, born as a direct critique of traditional design, only a few like Sweet Agatha with its deconstruction of the notions of player and game, are post-modernist. Tbilisi is a critique of the notion of creative agenda (the subtext of creative agenda is the rejection of the notion of a subtext) but is a blunt instrument to Sweet Agatha's lyrical experimentalism.
    • CommentAuthorwrshamilton
    • CommentTimeOct 1st 2009 edited
     # 53
    This post was a disaster on just about every level, it's gone now.
  54.  # 54
    Posted By: GB SteveTbilisi is a critique of the notion of creative agenda (the subtext of creative agenda is the rejection of the notion of a subtext)


    Hey, can you elaborate? Whenever you get a chance.
  55.  # 55
    Posted By: ccreitzSimon, surely you meant just "non/art" toward the end there. Or maybe "(non)art", reading very generously. Don't you think that we can "chose" (insofar as we ever "chose") to internalize the paradox and accept both alternatives as "valid"? Or to understand the disclosure/discovery of the paradox as, itself, art?


    You are astute to note the Baudelarian syntatic (tri)dichotemy inherent in this phrase. In the works of Rushdie, a predominant and related concept is the concept of subdeconstructivist narrativity; it could be said that Debord suggests the use of submodernist objectivism to "read" art. The premise of the structural paradigm of reality holds that culture is capable of "games qua games".

    I strongly recommend this as essential reading for anyone interested in postmodernism.
    • CommentAuthorjoepub
    • CommentTimeOct 5th 2009
     # 56
    Posted By: ccreitzSimon, surely you meant just "non/art" toward the end there. Or maybe "(non)art", reading very generously. Don't you think that we can "chose" (insofar as we ever "chose") to internalize the paradox and accept both alternatives as "valid"? Or to understand the disclosure/discovery of the paradox as, itself, art?


    This thread is fun.
    •  
      CommentAuthorGraham
    • CommentTimeOct 5th 2009
     # 57
    I am so proud.

    Graham
    •  
      CommentAuthorAndy
    • CommentTimeOct 5th 2009
     # 58
    BTW, I never got this answered:

    Chris who? And where is the argument?


    -Andy

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