Broadly, you can divide Western thinkers since the Enlightenment into two categories - the top-down gang (who wish to transform and manage society from the centre, or top, on down) and the bottom-up brigade (who believe in very slow, unconscious and incremental social change, if at all). I prefer to call them "wrong" and the "right", respectively, but your mileage may vary. Anyway, you can also place roleplaying games into those categories, thusly - the idea being that one approach is to the attempt to legislate "from the top" (the rulebook) while the other is a small-state laissez-faire methodology which lets DMs and players come to their own conclusions when playing the game, within a very bare framework of rules:
Top-down gang
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Karl Marx
Sydney & Beatrice Webb
Georges Sorel
D&D 3rd Edition
WHFRP 3rd Edition
GURPS (any edition)
Bottom-up brigade
Edmund Burke
Friedrich Hayek
Karl Popper
George Orwell
OD&D
Risus
Tunnels & Trolls
Interestingly, though these two categories can be mapped somewhat accurately to terms like "new school" and "old school" respectively, there isn't neccessarily a perfect correlation. Rolemaster is definitely a top-downer, for instance, while Blood & Honour is very much a bottom-upper. Also, while I consider myself a member of the bottom-up brigade (the more I write that phrase, the more it sounds like a homophobic euphemism of some kind...) there are some such games I dislike (The Window, Old World of Darkness) and some top-downers I enjoy (Rolemaster). Which just goes to show something, though I'm not sure what.
Perhaps this post is just a roundabout way of saying some games are rules-lite and some are not, but where would the fun be in simply stating that?
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ReplyDeleteI predict insane meandering napalm-chucking comments on this one.
ReplyDeleteI can also predict who they will be from, but I fear that'd be a case of the Superdeterminacy Principle in action.
It's interesting to note that you included 3e in the top-down crowd, but you'd have to agree, I hope, that the OSR is very much a bottom-up thing, yes?
ReplyDeleteNot that I'm disagreeing with you on 3e, just an interesting thing to note.
Philosophy quibble:
ReplyDeleteAll other things aside, can you really describe Karl Marx as advocating top-down change? Radical change, sure, but for him that change originates in the dispossessed classes at the lower end of society. Revolutionary change for him happens almost organically in accordance with the inexorable trajectory of history, with human agency having an ambiguous role in bringing it about. I think Lenin would be better there, as the vanguard seems to play the role that you described as top-down.
I'll admit that my understanding and familiarity with philosophy is no where near my astrophysics comprehension but this post does beg the question...huh?
ReplyDeleteI think I'm missing the point on this one. I'm trying to get where the lines are made and crossed. What defines one thing as one thing and something else as another thing?
GURPS and WHFRP 3rd are in the same category because...? They relate to OD&D being like Risus in that they're...they're not...? I'm just not certain I get the parameters of categorization on this one.
I'm also still sick and likely dopey from cold medicene.
The Real Bottoms Up:
ReplyDeletePierre-Joseph Proudhon
Emma Goldman
Karl Marx
George Orwell
Leo Tolstoy
Nestor Makhno
B. Traven
Bell Hooks
Adam, I think Noisms is rolling Marx in with Lenin, who was the real top-downer (dictatorship of the proletariat, etc.) But Marx wrote the Commie Manifesto (how would that be in New Labour speak, I wonder? ComMan?) alongside Engels, who was very much a top-downer and woe-betide the couple of million at the bottom. So I think Noisms gets it right on that one. Marx constantly gets let off the hook for the monster he created just because it was Lenin in the driving seat, but I don't think that's a very productive approach to Marx.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure about WFRP3 though. I can see with the action cards that it might be seen as being very restrictive rules-wise, but then again the basic skill resolution system is extremely liberating, and the rulebooks are almost entirely flavour - much more so than WFRP2, for example. In fact I'd say the entire rules content of the box is about 10 pages. Plus the cards. I think in this instance Noisms may have fallen for the hype...
Sorry...just now...on TV....in an old episode of I Spy, Robert Culp just said that Marx's writing was pretty...
ReplyDeleteI also forgot the Up Bottoms:
Lautreamont
Tristan Tzara
Antonin Artaud
Marcel Duchamp
William S. Burroughs
Guy Debord
CRASS
It's strange to have a list titled Bottom Up that has Orwell, a left socialist member of the ILP who wrote a moving account of the Spanish revolution in Barcelona, next to the monarchist Burke and Hayek.
ReplyDeleteBut then again my list as a closet anarcho-syndicalist would be a lot like the Drune's. So what the hell do I know?
I have this funny mental image though of sitting around a table playing through a campaign session with the LBBs and any of those people on that list. "No F.A. selling all the swords you looted from the hobgoblins won't break up the rigidities of the labor market that the Weaponsmiths Guild have set up back in town."
No napalm chucking here, although a little head scratching re: comrade Marx. :)
ReplyDeleteThere's China Miéville but that brings in Trotsky and what list does he go on? Iron Council isn't too far from ckutalik's weapon-smith guild.
ReplyDeleteThe first D&D campaign I played in in the 70s had a large communist nation that wasn't evil but had outlawed clerics...
DENNIS: Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
Verification Word" carrion
Heh, I like you more every post,man.
ReplyDeleteAre you familiar with Murray Rothbard? If you like Hayek, you'll probably be interested in Rothbard.
I haven't much patience with top down planner-types either. It's just hubris.
The Window is kind of like Risus, if the creator of Risus was constantly angry at everyone who didn't play Risus.
ReplyDeleteZak: Not been too bad so far, but there's plenty of time yet...
ReplyDeleteTrollsmyth: That's very much the case on the OSR, but just taking individual games in isolation, D&D 3e is very much about the designers creating rules for every possible situation they can think of, while OD&D provided only a very small toolkit and let DMs get on with it themselves. It's sort of a analogous to the two approaches to the economy, society, politics etc. that I'm talking about in the post.
Adam: Point taken, but while Marx's revolutionary and near-instant transformation of society was to happen at the behest of the proletariat, it was still a conscious and radical attempt at social engineering undertaken by a chosen group. The terminology of "top-down" may not quite fit, strictly speaking, but Marx was certainly in the camp of Rousseau rather than Burke,
Barking Alien: In a nutshell, you get games in which the designers/creators try to govern play as much as they possibly can by coming up with a system that can cover many eventualities, and games in which the designers do not do so in favour of devolving the power to arbitrate, as much as possible, to individual DMs/game groups. GURPS and D&D 3rd edition are the former, while OD&D and Risus are the latter.
The Drune: The phrase "bottom-up" as I use it here doesn't refer to the position of the agents of change on the social scale. It refers to the nature of the social change (i.e. not planned, emergent, incremental, intuitive).
Faustusnotes: You've played it more than me, so I'm happy to take your word for it. Of course any system CAN be devolved and liberating (even D&D 3rd edition) if you just take the rules with a pinch of salt, but that's not really the point.
Ckutalik: I'm not a big fan of Orwell as a general rule but his form of anarchism (small or no government have no interference with ordinary people leading decent lives) is basically indistinguishable from what a libertarian would say. He's at the very point at which the idea comes full circle, and terms like "left" and "right" become even more meaningless than they already are.
E. G. Palmer: I think the problem with Rothbard is that, at a certain stage, you can get so radically libertarian that you turn into a revolutionary social engineer. He may be in danger of that, in some of the ideas he holds, and in some ways it makes him more of a top-downer. If that makes sense.
Anarchist: Heh. Well, where would we be without frothing and impotent nerd-rage?
The Drune: Grr. That should have read:
ReplyDelete"The phrase "bottom-up" as I use it here doesn't refer to the position of the agents of change on the social scale. It refers to the nature of the social change (i.e. unplanned, emergent, incremental, intuitive)."
It's interesting that you include Hayek and Popper in your list of "the right." Isn't Hayek is famous for wrongly predicting that the NHS would lead the UK to feudalism, and Popper's work on science seen as having nothing to do with how science works?
ReplyDeleteAlso, given that Hayek was a (lukewarm?) supporter of Pinochet, it seems strange to include him in a list of bottom-uppers. Military dictatorships may lead to laissez-faire liberal capitalism, but bottom up they are not. Especially if you're one of the people Hayek's mates caused to "disappear."
Also, OD&D: a very unstructured combat system, but the magic system is ruthlessly governed from the top down. There's zero freedom in OD&D's magic system. So it's better characterized as unplanned if you're a creative player playing a fighter.
Which gets me around to the really interesting part of this post, the idea of top-down vs.bottom up in gaming. I think you are confusing a lack of structure with a lack of authority, and they don't go together. There's a lot of anarchist theory on this, you should check it out. I may write a reply to this post tomorrow (focussing on the top-down bit, not the inflammatory Hayek comments, though they might have some relevance...)
faustusnotes: It's interesting that you include Hayek and Popper in your list of "the right." Isn't Hayek is famous for wrongly predicting that the NHS would lead the UK to feudalism, and Popper's work on science seen as having nothing to do with how science works?
ReplyDeleteNo. I can understand why somebody who hadn't read either of them might think so, but no.
Also, given that Hayek was a (lukewarm?) supporter of Pinochet, it seems strange to include him in a list of bottom-uppers.
Only somebody totally unfamiliar with his economic writings would argue that. He said some silly things about politics, but that was never the area he made his major contributions.
Also, OD&D: a very unstructured combat system, but the magic system is ruthlessly governed from the top down. There's zero freedom in OD&D's magic system. So it's better characterized as unplanned if you're a creative player playing a fighter.
Eh? How does that follow? Even if it's true that the magic system is "ruthlessly governed from the top down" (which I don't think it is), why does this mean it's only unplanned if you're a creative player playing a fighter? Magic is a tiny part of the game, especially at the beginning, even if you're a magic-user.
I think you are confusing a lack of structure with a lack of authority, and they don't go together.
I suppose I'll wait for you to 'unpack' this.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that Orwell was an anarchist of that stripe at any point in his life. He essentially went from being a member of a small socialist party, the ILP before WW2, to being on the left-wing of the more social-democratic Labour Party (when he was writing regularly for the Tribune).
ReplyDeleteThe Lion and the Unicorn, probably the most direct example of his later-year politics calls for turning the war into a revolutionary war. The programme he lays out explicitly talks about nationalizing basic industry and other sweeping (and presumably quick) changes. Essay is here: http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/
Sorry to beat a dead horse here, I am breaking my rule about mixing politics in with my D&Ding, but Orwell is a personal favorite.
Switching to matters closer to home, I guess I see OD&D as something revolutionary too in the context of the miniature wargaming it grew out of. It's mix of then-radical concepts exploded on the scene and dwarfed the hobby it grew out of. If anything every addition of D&D that has come since is a more conservative exercise of small-scale game concept changes.
Karl Marx is top down approach, which can be seen in Popper's critique of his ideas. Also, the the structure he proposes is supposedly the only right one and very rigid.
ReplyDeleteIncluding Popper in the latter category is very logical, if we view him through his epistemology and his idea about the shape of scientific progress.
To all this I can only say, that I'd like my DnD to be like Bertrand Russel...
Well Noisms, having read them or not I think Hayek's mispredictions are a matter of public record, as is his support for Pinochet. They may not have been his most important writings, but if you want to present someone as being in favour of organic, unplanned change, then you need to explain their apparent support for dictatorship.
ReplyDeleteRegarding D&D, there's more "top-down" planning in the D&D magic system than in, say, Rolemaster or WFRP3, and less scope for individual freedom of action in actual play than in those games. So if you're playing a magic-user you are subject to (what I guess you mean by) strong top-down intervention, whereas if you play a fighter there's no intervention at all. So the degree of "emergent" social change available for the two classes in their core areas is quite different.
Classic D&D magic can be very bottom up if used in a clever way.
ReplyDeleteJust think of the possibilities inherent in the combo of "Tenser's floating disc" a bag of holding and a 300 lb. anvil.
ckutalik: I'm thinking about some of the comments he made in Wigan Pier, and his categorisation of himself as a "Tory anarchist" (IIRC).
ReplyDeleteSquidman: Quite right.
Faustusnotes: I think he supported Pinochet in the belief that it was better to have a dictator rolling back (in his eyes) damaging central-planning policies of previous Chilean governments, than to continue with such policies under a democratic government. Sort of like a necessary evil. I don't agree with it, but hey, you asked for an explanation - and I think you're mistakenly conflating the notion of dictatorship with the notion of an economically top-down, centrally planned, "big state". There's not necessarily a correlation and wasn't in Chile (as I understand it - I'm no expert).
Regarding D&D, there's more "top-down" planning in the D&D magic system than in, say, Rolemaster or WFRP3, and less scope for individual freedom of action in actual play than in those games.
I defer to you on WFRP3, but on Rolemaster - are you kidding me?? Any action you could possibly try to take seems to have a massive table to roll on; referee and player autonomy to adjudicate is much smaller than in most games.
Travis: Well, yeah.
@noisms
ReplyDeleteGotta disagree on rolemaster--(they say this over and over in the rules) each rule-extending chart is optional and nobody is encouraged to use every single rule and they don't fix actions (what the players do) as much as fix the results of actions (what the GM does).
Noisms, rolemaster actually only has 3 important non-combat tables: the Static Maneuver, Movement Maneuver, and Base Spell. All the other tables are weapons/spell attacks and are no different in essence to a standard attack roll/damage roll.
ReplyDeleteThe SM and MM tables simply provide a percentage measure of how effective the maneuver was, and then the GM chooses whether to turn that into a bonus or an effect. The Base Spell Table simply tells you what the penalty to the target's saving throw is.
That seems pretty bottom up to me. The rest of the tables are, as Zak S, explicitly optional, to allow GMs to tailor effects to specific skill checks if they want. They're in the companions, as I recall, not even the core rules.
About Hayek, if you want to go down the untenable road of imagining military dictatorships that allow bottom-up planning, then you need to accept Marx as a bottom-upper (even though we know he was shtupping his maid). The withering away of the state and workers planning, etc.
Of course we - and Hayek at the time - knew that Pinochet's chile was not going to be facilitating "bottom up" planning. State-sponsored death squads murdering union leaders, political activists and community leaders in order to destroy their ability to represent their own communities - bottom up?? Unless you want to take a very fictitious and ahistorical reading of unionism and community activism (which, as a conservative, I suppose you probably do), I think you have to accept that this is not done to encourage "emergent" social change, but to destroy it. The only "emergent" social change happening in Chile at that time was the political movement to get Allende elected against the wishes of the army.
Hayek was only "bottom up" in the sense that he was fond of political movements that destroyed poor peoples' ability to self-organize, leaving them fighting each other for the scraps of the economy that their political masters throw to them. That's not "bottom up," it's "bottom down."
Faustus and Zak: I suppose it depends where you draw the line. But compare Rolemaster with OD&D or Risus; on which side of the spectrum does that leave it?
ReplyDeleteFaustus: You're just a big font of misinformation on this.
You are correct that everyone - including Hayek (and Milton Friedman and other classical liberals [I use that term advisedly as neither man was a conservative]) knew that Pinochet's take over was not an example of "bottom-up" incremental change. But they believed that, since he was doing away with what they viewed as terribly damaging social institutions in Chile, he was a necessary evil. (This is essentially what I wrote in my previous comment, if you'd bothered to really read it.) They were wrong about this and it was inconsistent with what they believed, but nobody's perfect.
Hayek was only "bottom up" in the sense that he was fond of political movements that destroyed poor peoples' ability to self-organize, leaving them fighting each other for the scraps of the economy that their political masters throw to them. That's not "bottom up," it's "bottom down."
You're sounding like a dyed in the wool Trot at the local SWP meeting.
The reason why Hayek is important and why people still talk about him is not because of his political views. It's because, along with Weber and von Mises, he was one of the key developers of the logical critique of socialism and central planning. The core of this critique is that central planners can never have enough information about the economy to allocate resources effectively - the only way this can be done, in fact, is through information communicated in an ad hoc way through a mechanism of prices in a free market system. The core philosophical point is that an economic system is emergent and it allocates resources in an essentially unconscious way, thanks to the existence of prices communicating supply and demand rather than a central planner deciding how much of product x is needed by person y.
His work on this is what he won his Nobel prize for, and what he will be remembered for. Not his political views. Read The Use of Knowledge in Society, not The Road to Serfdom.
Which side of the spectrum you place RM depends on whether you think a skill system constitutes "top down" management. As I pointed out at my own place, I think a skill system can encourage the type of "bottom up" play style you seem to be aiming at, provided it's well-designed. I think the problem with RM is that although well-designed, it's a huge pain in the arse to run.
ReplyDeleteI like this...
You are just a huge font of disinformation on this ... followed by You are correct that... and culminating in (about a member of your group of people you define as "the right"), They were wrong.
Your post is about social change and Hayek's most famous work on social change is a claim that central planning will lead a free society to become feudal. Social change derives from politics, and Hayek's central political claim was hogwash.
But his economics has shown to be hogwash too, hasn't it? Chile's economy collapsed and needed external rescue. Subsequently his and the other Chicago school lunatics got to enact their theories about the superior information handling of the free market in the financial system, resulting in the GFC. We see here a double failure of Hayek's predictive powers: first, because the price signals he thought so superior to central planning were completely uninformative, destroyed a huge amount of wealth, and had to be bailed out by central government through nationalization of the most crucial engine of capitalism (the holders of capital themselves, the banks). And secondly, Hayek's own prediction was that such a massive central intervention in the economy would reduce efficiency and lead to a huge loss of economic and political freedom. In fact, the nationalized banks started lending money again, the economy started moving, and no-one's rights have been impinged at all.
That's a double fail. Nobel prize or not, he does not qualify as a member of any group who might stake a claim to be "the right."
Your post is about social change and Hayek's most famous work on social change is a claim that central planning will lead a free society to become feudal. Social change derives from politics, and Hayek's central political claim was hogwash.
ReplyDeleteHe never said that central planning will lead a free society to become feudal - that's just one of those myths. His basic argument in The Road to Serfdom is nothing like as clear cut as that. As is almost always the case, Chinese whispers have had a pretty strong impact on public perception of that book.
As for "social change" deriving from politics - gimme a break. Politics is one of many things that social change derives from, and certainly not one of the most important.
I like this...
You are just a huge font of disinformation on this ... followed by You are correct that... and culminating in (about a member of your group of people you define as "the right"), They were wrong.
Ah, the typical faustusnotes debate tactics emerge... Luckily anybody reading this knows the context in which my comments were made (which naturally you fail to reproduce). It's a funny thing, the internet.
But his economics has shown to be hogwash too, hasn't it?
Nope. The Austrian Business Cycle Theory explains the causes of the financial crisis of 2008 rather well.
The broader point - that the Chicago School has been proved wrong, etc. etc. - is pretty daft. Wall Street was the engine of a terrible crash, but if you know anything about what real "small staters" say you'd know they were and are as critical of Wall Street during the boom years as anybody. It's not really in dispute that government bailouts of the financial sector during the 80s and 90s contributed to an atmosphere of moral hazard, in which unnecessary risks came to be commonplace (in faith that the government would help out if any problems arose). It's also not really in dispute that though people on Wall Street, Alan Greenspan and such talked the talk when it came to free markets, actually they were really just a big cartel/special interest group and the actual antithesis of the ideology they supposedly believed in.
Admittedly, the above is very much akin to those on the hard left who would say "True Communism hasn't been proved wrong because it's never been properly tried!" The difference is that there are strong logical arguments against Communism whereas there aren't many against Capitalism.
Politics is one of many things that social change derives from, and certainly not one of the most important.
ReplyDelete... unless the social change is implemented by the military. What part of "dictatorship" is not politics?
Now we see the typical Noisms debate tactics:
Ah, the typical faustusnotes debate tactics emerge... Luckily anybody reading this knows the context in which my comments were made (which naturally you fail to reproduce). It's a funny thing, the internet.
Yes, the context is on the same page as the comment I made. This is why we refer to this as a "thread." People can scroll up to view the context, and it's as if I thought that context supported my comment. Funny thing, the internet.
You have admitted clearly - at the same time as you accuse me of "disinformation" - that I am right, that it is inconsistent with the notion of "bottom up" thinking to support the implementation of your social change through dictatorship. Apparently this is just a minor contradiction in Hayek's work, however, because "nobody's perfect."
Perhaps you're unfamiliar with what happened in Chile? I lived with a Chilean refugee when I was finishing my studies in Australia. She fled Chile at 14 when the "security" services came for her family. Their crime was distributing food to poor people on Friday evenings. They had a few minutes' notice and fled their house with nothing, straight to the Australian embassy.
How do you think they were going to stomp those central planning tendencies out of a 14 year old schoolgirl? Is the willingness to countenance that for a broader political goal consistent with Hayek's views on gradual social change?
(this comment had to be cut into two because of the stupidity of blogger).
ReplyDeleteYou are the first libertarian I've ever met who recognizes this quaint similarity you share with communists:
True Communism hasn't been proved wrong because it's never been properly tried!
Every ideologue is always blaming other people for his own mistakes. But in this case you don't get to, because Hayek et al did get to completely implement their true ideals. You may recall the case of ... Chile... in which an entire society was handed to them to reform along their own economic ideals at the barrel of a gun.
That economy collapsed after a few years, and had to be bailed out.
They then moved on to America, and the empirical evidence is clear: every time they tinkered with the central controls on capitalism, they induced asset bubbles and crashes, real wages stagnated, the share of wealth owned by the rich increased, and government debt skyrocketed. This culminated in the disastrous consequences of repealing Glass and Steagall, with the nationalization of the banks and a massive increase in government debt to do so.
The only moral hazard here is that every time they fucked it up, Hayek and his cronies were allowed to continue tinkering with things they clearly don't understand.
That qualifies them for a variety of interesting epithets, but "the right" is not one of them.
I am psychic.
ReplyDeleteFaustusnotes: Why are you still going on about Chile like a broken record? Seriously, did you really not read my previous comments? I'm getting premonitions of my retirement - this must be what arguing in an old folks' home is like! "Well what about Chile?" "We talked about that five minutes ago! Now shut up and let me watch my stories!"
ReplyDeleteThe idea that the Chilean economy "collapsed" after its market reforms post-Pinochet is laughable when you compare what the economy was like there in 1973 to how it was in, say, 1989 (or now) - look it up on wikipedia some time. Amartya Sen is the only serious economist who has disputed the "Miracle of Chile" - which shouldn't surprise anybody because when it comes to idealogues you don't get many bigger than him.
As far as politics/the junta is concerned, I just refer you to what I said previously about Friedman and Hayek.
They then moved on to America, and the empirical evidence is clear: every time they tinkered with the central controls on capitalism, they induced asset bubbles and crashes, real wages stagnated, the share of wealth owned by the rich increased, and government debt skyrocketed. This culminated in the disastrous consequences of repealing Glass and Steagall, with the nationalization of the banks and a massive increase in government debt to do so.
I'm guessing you just cut and pasted this from Crooked Timber or somesuch?
Life's really too short, you know? This phrase is what really gets me: The only moral hazard here is that every time they fucked it up, Hayek and his cronies were allowed to continue tinkering with things they clearly don't understand. If you'd read what "Hayek and his cronies" wrote you'd know that, at its core, the entire argument is pretty much exactly that: nobody can understand the economy very well, so let's not let the government mess around with it in the mistaken belief that it knows what the hell it's doing.
If you can't even familiarise yourself with what you're critiquing, it's all just hot air.
Zak: What number am I thinking of?
You've basically got together a list of people you like, claimed they agree with you and they're right, and contrasted them with a bunch of people you don't like. Roping Orwell in was pretty funny, but you clearly can't justify Hayek either, and you've resorted to bluster and insults to cover yourself, as usual. No wonder you don't want to "go on" about Chile, when it highlights the central contradiction in your little ideological exercise...
ReplyDeletebut still, as you say, "nobody's perfect..."
@noisms
ReplyDeleteYou are thinking of 1776, 1917, 1973, and a repeating decimal that never ends, but repeats in different combinations.
Faustusnotes: You are, of course, entitled to your opinion.
ReplyDeleteZak: Christ, you really MUST be psychic!
It is a terrible burden but I struggle to bear it with dignity.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete