I increasingly look to the future with an inchoate sense of foreboding. The physical world around us seems to be deteriorating before our eyes; there is a degeneration of basic civility in our interactions with one another that speaks of a rapid decline in empathy and common decency; young people walk about in a daze as though shell-shocked by the cataclysmic forces their constant phone use has unleashed on their psyche. This doesn't end well, and it's not in the gift of our political, cultural or religious leaders to fix.
I therefore become less and less interested in 'dark' themes. The skies are darkening enough. What I would rather do is try to carve out creative spaces in which I (and ideally other people) can re-engage with the best aspects of human imaginative potential - our love for what was good about the past; our capacity to hope; and our excitement about being alive in a glorious world and universe more extensive than we can dream of. This is not naive escapism, but what one might call - if one were of a mind to be provocative - committed escapism: escape not for the sake of running away, but for the sake of re-engagement with certain things that make it good to be alive. Who knows? If enough people start doing it, maybe together we can get somewhere.
Almost two years ago I wrote a post about The World of TSRan, an idea for a campaign world which tries to recapture and also improve upon and intensify what was good about the way high fantasy was imagined in the AD&D of the period 1985-1995. This is an idea that is dear to my heart. Being an adolescent boy is pretty crap, but reading through the material TSR put out in those days - everything seemingly illustrated by Larry Elmore or Keith Parkinson, everything writ large across vast landscapes that made one desperate to run out without a pocket handkerchief and go exploring, everything relentlessly emphasising adventure adventure adventure - was a call to a world that was bigger, grander, and imbued with potential. It suggested not just that there were no limits on what could be imagined but also that what could be imagined could itself be aspirational. One could imagine beauty, and awe, and spectacle, and daring deeds, and that could in itself give you the wherewithal to transcend the limitations around you and make real the burning ambition to be someone, and do things, and leave one's mark. One might, if one tried hard enough, imagine oneself to glory
Partly, the appeal is of course nostalgia - what I earlier called our love for what was good about the past. And the past was good (not perfect); characterised by human interaction largely unmediated through technology; by emebeddedness in community; by a sense that what was coming tomorrow would be largely the same as today but slightly and gradually getting better. I've written this before on the blog, but watch an episode of Friends, or Frasier, or Seinfeld, or an early episode of The Simpsons, if you want to recapture that optimistic world - a world that had its flaws but that was characterised by smiles, humour, conversation, affection. But it is not just that which makes the World of TSRan such an alluring place. It is also that it is filled with hope, and wonder - a dangerous world, to be sure, but one in which it is possible to make one's name, and to see and experience great things along the way.
One can achieve this, I think, without being too twee, and in acceptance of a certain amount of po-facedneess. What makes the World of TSRan so compelling is that despite its cheesiness it is sincere, and in its sincerity it transcends cliche. It is a world in which in the end - in the distant, distant end - good triumphs over evil and light over dark. Doesn't that sound refreshing set against the backdrop of what we 'consume' by way of culture in 2024?
This is totally what I've personally done when writing sourcebooks for Arion Games's second edition of the Advanced Fighting Fantasy RPG. Revisit the old Fighting Fantasy gamebooks to document their awesome content (new monsters, plants, treasure, spells, magic, people, etc.) and publish it as new AFF 2e material for gamers to have fun with. :-)
ReplyDeleteDefinitely Titan had the vibe I am talking about.
DeleteDo you mean to say, Tolkien-by-way-of-Dragonlance aesthetics and moral terrain, without the specific baggage of either setting?
ReplyDeleteI think he means Fritz Leiber-by-way-of-Forgotten Realms before they were the kitchen sink, plastified Forgotten Realms we know today. As in the first grey box. Or maybe Greyhawk, "Lhankmarised" (wich is what Gord tries to be). Dragonlance is a place where people would, given a sufficiently derpy plot, utter the word 'dragonborn'. There again, the division line is so thin, plastification did set in so fast...Maybe the world of TSRan is a bit of an unfulfilled promisse, existing more on the products catalogues (or on a 14 year old kid reading those lavishly illustrated catalogues) than on the published material itself.
DeleteBoth of you have it right, I think. Although I share our Anonymous friend's spine-crawling sensation at the mention of Dragonlance, there is no doubt that when I first read the Chronicles at age 12 or whatever I was that they were imbued with the kind of atmosphere I am talking about. I like the idea of TSRan as unfulfilled promise - that's a great way of putting it.
DeleteMy tween and teenage years coincided almost exactly with the 1980s: I was 9.5 years old on 1-1-1980, and I was 19.5 years old on 1-1-90. As such, Starcourt Mall (the main setting of the 3rd season of Stranger Things) brought back memories. I have told my 19-year-old daughter that, in my estimation, there is no human creation that can equal the shopping mall at its height for sheer fun for tweens and teens. I remember all the cool stuff in my nearest mall: a magic shop (that included RPG items), a toy store (that also included RPG items), the Pearl of the Orient, a video game place, a bookstore (that also included RPG items), some sporting goods places that included plenty of guns and knives, Spencer's (what with its wacky gifts and concert shirts and black velvet wall hangings and posters of bikini girls), an electric piano place from which music constantly came, caramel corn you could smell a mile away, a tobacco shop with its fragrance, Radio Shack, candy shops, excellent food (including a Mexican restaurant to die for), fast food, a ton of clothing shops for the girls, always crowded, lots of other young people, and plenty of pretty girls... What more could a tween/teenager want? I could spend all day there.
ReplyDeleteThis was shot in the head by online shopping, precursor to the disintegrating clamor of the sail fawns that young people stare at all day.
It's melancholy to see my daughter look longingly at Starcourt Mall and have to tell her, "Yes, that's pretty much exactly how it was," while knowing it is long gone.
Yeah, I get you - although I am actually lucky enough to live close to a still-existing mall that is just about keeping going and is a great place to take the kids.
DeleteBeen convinced that this is why LOTR has stuck around for so long: it's about the good. There's no ironic or satirical or hopeless quality about it...
ReplyDeleteNo doubt.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_sincerity
ReplyDeleteI know about the 'new sincerity' but in my head it's always been associated with something vaguely nauseating - there is a fine line between trying to be sincere and being cloying?
DeleteYou can see a similar concept of how Neo Sincerity emerged organically from late internet culture without any fancy shmancy pretentious academic thesis: the evolution of the Chad meme, especially the 'Yes' Chad face aka Nordic Gamer.
DeleteThis meme is often used by having a crying and/or angry Wojak going "NO YOU CAN'T JUST DO X/YOU ENJOY X WHEN ITS BAD/OLD" and the Chad face unironically stares back at him stoicly and says "Yes". Now I know this may seem a bit esoteric to older generations, but this meme is an expression of sincerity in an age poisoned by irony. One example scenario would be the crying wojak representing players of races like Tieflings, what RPG calls 'Sparkletrolls' going 'You can't just make a dwarf with an axe and beard unironically' and the Chad face says 'Yes'. Because he doesn't care. He is being unironic and honest in his enjoyment of something irrelevant of how the irony and postmodernism poisoned mind think its bad.
It is as though we have been through irony itself and emerged through the other side, so that there is no irony left. This is both a good and bad thing.
DeleteWe are also at the point of 'what was old is now new'. In the '80/90/2000s and onward people have kept complaining about played out clichés or tropes (I hate that word) and it was edgy and witty to twist or subvert them. The problem is that the twists and subversions have become the norm so the supposed cliché people rag against have mostly not been played straight in decades.
DeleteMaybe it has in OSR circles where ancient grogs stick to established conventions but among Gen Xers and Millenials onward people rag on clichés that have not been overplayed clichés in a long time. Its been so damn long since the days of what you call 'TSRan' that its become a forgotten myth and when you expose new people to it, they see it not as old hat but as brand new. What is old is new and what was new is now old hat.
People have always been complaining played out cliches since forever. It's just that really innovative people complain about and subvert the actual cliches of today, whereas the cliched complain about cliches of the previous generation, and "subvert" them by doing the exact same well-established thing as everyone else, i.e. producing cliches.
DeleteNicely put, both.
DeleteThis is a fantastic idea, and we need it. I come from the same era, starting with roleplaying in about 89 but not getting really going until 90 with the Black Box and the RC (thus my serious love for BECMI). I know exactly the feel you're attempting to capture.
ReplyDeleteThanks - the people who get it, get it!
DeleteFor whatever reason, the other day I wanted to hear a performance the Who did of "A Quick One" at the Stones' Rock n Roll circus. One of the comments was this:
ReplyDeleteThe result is so beautifully free that it dispels fear and raises the human spirit. I suppose the greatest accomplishment of any art form.
I think that's what you are talking about. It's not escapism because it doesn't pretend that there is no such thing as fear. Rather, it frees you from it. I have a huge amount of respect for artists of any kind who can achieve this.
Absolutely. Great comment - thanks.
DeleteEven some people cursed to be millenials (like me) are starting to feel this burn out of the 'modern world'. Those of us who dislike cellphones and the new ways of communication have felt and seen the world become every more dark and dreary. Its not to say we don't use technology a lot, of course, but we use it to try to reach other people who think similarly as opposed to just doomscrolling and watching mind numbing nonsense. If we cannot escape the cloying technological prison then we at least try to exist inside it in a way that can create even a tiny bit of fulfillment.
ReplyDeleteIts also becoming a sad reality for those in our generation, too, that online communication is paradoxically the only way to reach out to people who share our values as those we meet in 'meat space' are cellphone addicts and culture war brain rotted people with no spark of imagination or creativity left. This paradox mean we must use the very technology that rotted our minds and drained our souls to communicate, almost in secret, with those across the world who feel the same emptyness and are starting to see what we've lost. The odds of me meeting someone IRL who would even like an OSR adjacent game drawing inspiration from the older, more aspirational stuff is functionnally zero. That mean I must find like minded souls online.
Its quite the paradox, no?
It is, yes, although there is something kind of subversive or even samizdat-like about using Skynet against itself. That might be a more comforting way to think about it.
DeleteAs long as you use technology to ENHANCE and supplement the human work and imagination I think there is nothing wrong with it. Its difficult to explain but basically there is an unspoken, even nameless current of people using the technology which entrap others to free themselves because otherwise they would be alone in real life and unable to find any like mind.
DeleteFor TTRPG it is an unfortunate reality that, as the player pool increased massively the player quality diminished as 'normies' flooded in. To run more esoteric or experimental games one has to turn to online to find people whose tastes match yours as opposed to struggling in vain to try to get something decent out of the plentiful but low quality chaff of your average D&D normie.
Difficult to say - in a sense there has never been a bigger market for esoteric/experimental games, thanks to the internet. It's important not to be dimissive of that.
DeleteBeen working on my own setting based on similar premise for a few years.
ReplyDeleteI call it adolescent fantasy. Not in terms of literary genre, but in terms of exploring the type of fantasy my adolescent self seemed to come pre equipped with, or quickly picked up, when I encountered fantasy RPGs. And yes, it turns out the implied system of the setting is ad&d2e and B/X-becmi.
I've only recently introduced it to the playing table. It's mostly been a personal exploration of fantasy for me.
'Adolescent fantasy' captures something of the mood for sure.
DeleteImagine my surprise, after reading the New Sincerity wiki article posted above to learn that two local Austin Band, The Reivers and Glass Eye, were cited as members of the 'New Sincerity' musical movement. I booked both of these bands multiple times for parties. Small world!
ReplyDeleteI will give them a listen.
DeleteI think this is basic "Golden age, silver age, iron age" thinking, possibly a mid life crisis. The world has issues now, but in the past we have the Cold War, two World Wars, Chernobyl, homophobia, racism... There's good now as there was before. It's just different.
ReplyDeleteEnzo
Thanks for the free diagnosis!
DeleteI worded it very poorly. I apologise.
DeleteEnzo
No worries - there is always good and bad in every era, but I don't think that the psychological conditions we live under are cause for optimism.
Deleteit's cool
ReplyDelete