benlehman

So a fellow, a really good game designer, actually, posted to the Forge recently essentially asking "are RPGs legitimate fine art?" A lot of the responses were comparing it to literature, etc. My response was livid enough that I felt like reposting it here, and I'd be interested in any comments anyone has.

Well, for what its worth, I am a novelist (and, much as I hate to admit it, a poet), and I think what we're producing is far cooler than just more literature. I mean, I am fond of new literature. I read good books and write mediocre ones, and I'm very cool with that and it excites me.

But it is not what we are doing. What we are doing is not "like" fiction writing, nor is it "like" theatre. It is a totally novel artform, although perhaps one rooted in oral traditions and mythic storytelling.

So let's not worry about whether we are as cool as Shakespeare. We are cooler than Shakespeare. The Shakespeare of RPGs will come thousands of years from now, and he will be building on the artform that we are making and defining, right now.

I cannot stress this enough. We are making a new way of understanding and communicating with the world and each other. This is awesome.

The question to ask is not about Shakespeare. The question to ask is about Thoth and Mimir and Odin and Prometheus and Pan and Inanna. Are we (and I use the collective to mean we, all of us, the people who play RPGs) as cool as them, those ancestors who wrent from the stuff of our minds not only new art, but new artforms, who didn't just have something important to say, but an important way of saying that? The people so important that they have become gods?

Are we as cool as them?