It is an interesting feature of human beings, revealed I think by role playing games, that while we like thinking of ourselves as individuals, we also quite like the idea of being exemplars of one of a smallish number of archetypes.
The obvious example of this is star signs, as I've written about before. For some reason, while we all imagine ourselves as special snowflakes, at the same time we are also frequently willing to accept that we are members of 12 distinct divisions within the human race that to some extent define our personality in the same way as for others within our caste.
Similarly, part of Harry Potter's ongoing appeal seems to be the idea that young (nowadays not so young) people can feel affinity with one of four houses, which seem to indicate that one is variously good and brave, clever and swotty, evil 'resourceful and cunning', or, er, a bit shit. The same is - I can attest - true in English schools in general; in my own school there were three houses who for some reason were considered to have certain characters even though this patently couldn't have been the case in reality. (One was 'swotty', one 'sporty', and one - inevitably - 'remedial'.)
But RPGs are particularly ripe with this kind of thing. D&D is the obvious illustration: one is not a unique adventurer in D&D, but an elf or a fighter or a cleric. The idea that the appeal of this is really just a matter of division of labour is not I think really true; it's much more to do with the individual liking the idea of adopting a persona that is to a certain degree archetypal. This is why most D&D players still like to be able to make these kinds of choices even when there is no real mechanical benefit attached - it is important to be able to say, "This time, I am going to be a dragonborn and it is going to affect my PC's personality accordingly."
The apotheosis of this was probably the mid-late 90s, when the most popular RPGs all seemed to come with big lists of archetypes which one could adopt. (Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun are the ones that come to mind, but think in particular of the oWoD games, which not only each came with a dozen or so 'races' that one's PC could be a member of, but also cross-cutting divisions like Changeling's seelie/unseelie and young/wilder/grump, or Werewolf's different phases of the moon - so that there were archetypes, sub-archetypes, and sub-sub-archetypes for you to choose from.) There was a reaction against this in both the OSR and amongst storygamers, but it is clear from looking at the 5th edition materials that things haven't changed all that much in the period since.
Why is this? Clearly, part of it is to do with one of the well known, but not well remarked-upon aspects of role playing games, which is that they provide a way for people to imagine how they would conduct themselves if they belonged in a different skin - as an extension of the childhood impulse to imagine oneself in archetypal forms ('I'm a cowboy'; 'I'm a cat'; 'I'm the planet zog'). It's easier to do this if one can, symbolically, think of oneself as stepping into a kind of pre-made costume or suite of characteristics than it is with coming up with something entirely new on the fly.
But I think it's also because we tend naturally to categorise ourselves and each other and indeed the world around us, and this indeed seems to be a feature of how we interact with the world: there are different animal species, different species of trees and plants, and also different categories of human (and here I don't mean in the sense of different races or ethnicities, but in the sense of different personality types: the nerd, the jock, the cool kid, the sneaky politician, the femme fatale, the dirty old man, etc.). We are comfortable with this, and it seems to strike us as natural. We are individuals, but we also fit into conceptual groups or tribes that do not map to race or language or place of origin.
In any event, this way of approaching setting design seems to be popular because it taps into something deep in our psyches. Anyone who wants to design a role playing game or write popular YA fiction take note: if you want it to sell, make it tribal.
My school had houses too, but they were characterised as "blue", "red", and "white" (and towards the end of my time there, "slightly lighter blue"), which tells you a lot about how half-arsed pretty much everything was there.
ReplyDeleteWell, officially ours had names of famous scholars but we knew of them as the 'fannies', 'gits' and 'rems'.
DeleteI remember the first time I realised what you're describing in re RPGs, and it was the first time I played Werewolf. I vividly recall trying to generate a PC, parsing all the moon-phase, degrees of a werewolf transformation nonsense, and thinking first "WTF is all this", and then remembering what WoD is, and who it is for.
ReplyDeleteFor me, PC generation has always sat somewhere between chaotic, dice-rolling fun, and homework (PATHFINDERRRRR!!!). I don't need or want it to be an exercise in self-actualisation, or therapy.
I don't mind at all that many people love that aspect of RPGs, though. It's one of the hobby's great strengths that it can accommodate both ends of this spectrum, often around the same table.
I'm always a little suspicious that the tribal thing is more an expression of aesthetics than anything else (dyed-pink undercut, anyone?) but good luck to 'em.
> dyed-pink undercut
DeleteI've thought a LOT about the "archetypes vs. freeform character creation" dimension of RPGs, how it has bled over into video games, and how this has in turn shaped the psyches of the younger few generations. I would note that the most popular -- indeed, nearly universal -- design approach in these games is now to combine the two approaches, such that one first identifies oneself as a member of one or more tribes/stereotypes/identity groups, followed by a step in which customization of the details (especially cosmetic details) can be as cursory or extensive as the player prefers.
How this has been extended to the politics of personal identity is left as an exercise to the reader. But the phrase "customizing your dude" is part of my everyday household lexicon when discussing political events.
Agreed. "customising your dude" is so apt.
DeleteSmall-c conservative commentators wring their hands, worrying about the origins of woke etc, but they focus on the academic, political and philosophical sources. They miss the influence of RPGs/video games, and particularly anime, on the aesthetics of woke.
The same could be said about the influence of CoD: Modern Warfare et al on the aesthetics of right wing groups like the Proud Boys.
Come for the cosplay; stay for the delusional ideology, doxing and hate.
Good points. The big question is to what extent that kind of pop culture dynamic influences the politics, and to what extent the reverse is true. Does the popularity of the genres you mention reflect something that is happening in the culture? Or are they driving it?
DeleteA question for the ages. We are such a visual-driven species. IMO, it would be weird if we had evolved to prioritise how something is over how it looks. In the ancestral environment, all we had was "that guy has the same scarification as my guys, we're cool".
Delete"Anime=Wole/Not Woke" is one of the more contentious issue and I think comes from a generational gap. A lot of the right wing commentator-sphere-of-general-gripe-and-annoyance are very often Gen X or older and fundamentally do not seem to understand that anime's appeal has, so far, transcended the political spectrum even if there's a lot of politics going on there with the left definitely trying to claim a monopoly on anime. I've noticed that both side of the political spectrum seem to fundamentally notice on different aspects of anime, with the left and center often just liking it because its popular/cool/weird. This is true on the right, especially for people who grew with anime and later settled on a more right-leaning position but in general they tend to see anime with a bit more nuance and also see it as one of the last bastion of popular entertainment where truer archetypal storytelling can exist. Note that I said 'can' as, well, a lot of anime IS genuinely just shlock, but its shlock that still actively produce works which appeal to a male demographic and doesn't actively attack them.
DeleteThere's also what I call the anime colonizers, which is generally more left leaning and tries to ape anime's appeal and visual but fundamentally do not get the different genre and type of shows they try to copy, resulting in a shallow copy of the visuals. These are your Avatar/Legend of Korra, High Guardian Spice, RWBY and Gen;Lock. However, the right wing boomer demographic doesn't understand anime and Japanese media so they see rainbow hair in anime and ugly rainbow hair IRL and assume one lead to the other when its a bit more complicated. There's a certain gentrified styling to mainstream anime and its very common among Millenials and Zoomers who, naturally, tend to lean more left either because of college or simply because that's what is mainstream and in power.
Yes, that's a more articulate way of putting it than I could manage. @anon, your anime vs coloniser anime observation is spot on. The former doesn't neatly map onto the US culture war (for obvious reasons), but the latter is very much optimised for battle. There's a tension there that partly accounts for the loss of fidelity when a western show tries to "do" anime. That said, I am very much not an expert.
DeleteANYWAY, it is the case that people of different ages/nationalities/politics etc carve up the world into different archetype sets. Can we apply that to fantasy? For whom are warrior/mage/rogue etc the archetypes they recognise, and what archetypes would another fantasy denizen from elsewhere in that setting's conceptual space recognise?
One thing I forgot to add is one reason anime is just SO DAMN POPULAR is that the west has basically declined to the point of decaying. As comic books became ever more pointless with reboots and events, as movies and videogame keep degrading and now creators actively antagonize their audience the West has effectively ceded a lot of its cultural power to the East. This is one part I think older right-wingers don't get about anime's appeal: if the USA and other western countries fail to produce the appealing works which entice a younger generation, then of course they won't care about western works. Now add in the fact the people producing these works and/or in control of these IP actively hate their fans its no surprise people turn to anime.
DeleteLike it or not, anime is one of the last refuge (not for long, sadly) when it come to shlocky entertainment and that has a niche. Young men are not interested, by and large, in shows made for women or worse made for a bunch of circlejerking twitterites and executives. As long as we fail to create a worthwhile culture we will keep ceding ground to the East because SOMETHING has to fill that void.
The contention that "the left" is "mainstream and in power" is laughable.
DeleteAs is the angry YouTube ranter talking point that "creators actively antagonize their audience". Even if they might be antagonizing YOU, they're just catering to an audience with different aesthetics or values or tastes than yours. That just means their actual audience is someone else, not you.
DeleteYou mean that same imaginary 'wider audience' the likes of you keep raving about but never really translate to any major growth of the IP beyond a brief culture war shit flinging?
Delete"Growth of the IP", the benchmark of culture.
DeleteI'm a Gemini and a Ravenclaw, and as such I'm better than everyone who isn't both of those things. ;)
ReplyDeleteI'm a Leo. I think I would be counter-cultural and go Hufflepuff.
Delete"also different categories of human (and here I don't mean in the sense of different races or ethnicities, but in the sense of different personality types: the nerd, the jock, the cool kid, the sneaky politician, the femme fatale, the dirty old man, etc.)."
ReplyDeleteHow many logical moves to force your thoughts from this point into transgressive zones? An idle fancy that shall not be followed up on.
I have not sensed any great OSR resistance to the concept of archetypes but the driving force would seem to be a sort of rebelliousness, a yearning to escape from the beaten path that has been laid out before. 'I will strike out on my own, and imagine better then my fathers.' That such misadventures tend to ultimately end up where they set out from in 99 out of 100 cases is not surprising. We are less malleable, more finite, then we would like to think.
I think the OSR resistance to archetypes comes in the unwillingness to get bogged down in choosing race/class combos and having PCs more or less stand in for the player.
DeleteAnd yet, what is the most popular system, if not B/X? All major retroclones of B/X (Lablord, OSE) have brought out an Advanced companion, allowing one to port these options back in. With a rare few exceptions (monster classes) the Race as Class approach is strictly worse.
DeleteA fear of archetypes can only come from those who take the roleplaying element of rpgs too seriously.
Very good post. I find that if I have to define humans (in contrast to other races/species/factions within a fantastical setting), that's how I tend to approach them: desiring both to belong to a group/conform to a precedent as a means of self-justification, while also desiring to gain individual prestige or recognition; the tension between these two drives defines a lot of human activity and identity. Humans are natural negotiators.
ReplyDeleteOne reason why I favour this depiction is that, unlike a lot of things that are labelled "human nature" which in my experience more accurately describe neurotypical or common nature -- akin perhaps to describing, say, heterosexuality as "human nature" -- this one seems to me truly universal.
Yes, that's an interesting way of putting it.
DeleteI will say I'm not sure "tribal" is quite the right word, since the tension between belonging/being known (i.e. matching an idea held in communal memetic awareness so others can access/acknowledge you) and individual distinction (i.e. being recognised as unique) is equally strong among those who don't have the psychological drive for exclusion-based categorization. Perhaps more so, since the neurotypical tendency toward separate black and white photographs rather than a single, shifting web (forgive the awkward metaphors) makes it harder for non-tribalists to be understood. People want you to be A Thing, a component rather than a functioning system.
ReplyDeleteThen again, perhaps this is me quibbling on semantics. I suspect sometimes that my label of "tribalist" is akin to "alcoholic", while others would use it simply as "someone who enjoys alcohol". The problem then would be that neurotypical people all seem to be alcoholics, and give tribe a bad name.
(The understanding that I don't fit into/share common human group dynamics has been incredibly important to my development as a person. If people think about it at all, they really underestimate just how different some people are -- in amusing counterpoint to some other comments here, humanity is far more psychologically diverse than most people think. There are also, though, definitely universals. Perhaps akin to saying that all humans are predisposed to language use, but language families can be entirely different.)
The first two sentences sound a bit like something Hegel would say.
DeleteThere's an interesting idea in David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years. In RPG terms, he says that people tend not to rebel against class-based systems. I need you to heal me because I am a fighter and you are a cleric; such is the natural order of things. We are more easily inspired to rise up against the presumption of equality in point-buy systems where you can complain that I wouldn't need so much healing if I had invested more in armor, I can resent you for hanging out on the back line not taking hits, and if my character winds up subservient to yours it is my fault for not min-maxing better since we both started out with the same points and options to spend them on.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! That actually accords with my experience to a certain extent.
DeleteRandom stat generation and hit point rolls also help with defusing tension in a similar way.
Everybody loves factions!
ReplyDeleteCategorization and generalization are both natural human urges which can be taken too far or to unpleasant places. But they are both deep-seated and necessary to proper functioning (try not generalizing about hot stoves, see how it works for you).
ReplyDeleteOddly, while pointing at blatant stereotypes works generally, I think it's inherently flawed when working with RPG characters. RPG characters by definition are designed and intended to be exceptional (barring a world where everyone explores dungeons, I suppose). You get a weird tension between "my character is a unique special snowflake" and "my character is these basic archetypes with these options and nothing separates me from the other members of that archetype."
Of course, "I want to be unique and different in the same way as everyone else" is the story of every trend ever.
I think you need to be tribal, but there needs to be built in room for every character to be special and unique. At least if you want people excited about and invested in their characters - which is not a requirement. But there needs to be something that makes the player feel that way about some aspect of the game.
Ada Palmer's "Terra Ignota" series has something like that in the fictional future: geographic nations have been superseded by Hives, which are kind of like Hogwarts houses on a global scale. There's the individualist/democratic Humanists, the hierarchical Masons (yes, _those_ Masons), the Mitsubishi corporation, the transhumanist Utopians, and others. Palmer's fans make pins with the Hive insignias, and people can wear them to show which society they'd pick in her future. So it applies both in her fictional future and in her fandom.
ReplyDeleteOne can see why she imagined something like that, but what I think is extraordinary about current developments is the extreme fluidity of our subcultures and the ideas they espouse. It's like nothing has the permanence to end up being a 'house'.
DeleteI'm kind of surprised that nobody has (yet) brought Dunbar's number - if your monkey mind only holds 150 or so individuals, that doesn't leave a lot of room really for special supersaturated ice crystals. Hardware, but input side rather than output. I'll take your original 7 BX classes, multiply by 3 alignments, and multiply again by the Breakfast Club (brain, beauty, jock, rebel, recluse) and you're about 2/3 of the way there.
ReplyDelete(really, bear/not bear is all you need to know and explains about everything if you put perhaps a 3-point scale on either side of bear-neutral)
DeleteMy next PC will be a lawful not-bear recluse fighter.
DeleteHeh. Yeah, we used old Vampire clans to categorize people IRL to pretty great success. ;))
ReplyDeleteGenerally, of course, Jung described this about 100 years ago, but still, it works well.
Mike