The Experience of Gaming as Art

From a comment posted on jhkimrpg

I don’t think rules are a requirement to understand a session, in fact they can be quite transparent to an observer to a session, and are not necessary to enjoy a game and its artistic output. I tend to use the jazz analogue for roleplaying as I consider it the most relevant. While the audience can gain a greater appreciation of a work by understanding the techniques the artist used it is also possible to be in the audience and let all the technique wash over you, just enjoying the art. Game sessions can be the same. While understanding the rules can add a level to the experience it is also quite possible to enjoy the session for itself. In fact the best gaming experiences are the ones that can be purely enjoyed that way just as the purest forms of music are ones where the technique fade to the background and you are in some creative now.

I think the dependence on the written rules reflects the difficulty of our genre to be enjoyed by others because of various social issues and thus the rules (and setting) taking center stage as the form of the hobby we can share. I‘d like to see us move beyond primacy of the technicalities or the relics (rules and write-ups for example) and be able to enjoy the genre for its pure creative moments, the point of play.

Tantanea Health Thoughts

I think I’ve been going about the modern era of tantanea all wrong. I’ve been focusing on my cool plot idea over the opportunity to do character building and interaction with NPCs and have thus been setting up a very unstable social situation. I think I’ve been too much in the mindset of 2 sessions per past life and also spinning from several players leaving at once thus upsetting the game’s dynamics. I need to recover from that quickly and do a few things to remedy the situation.

1. Take a break from the Mandarin plotline. Let things rest in an uneasy truce state.


2. Get Kesh back his crystal skull


3. Link Kathryn’s character firmly to the circle


4. Let some time go by in game to allow the characters to restore their base of operation.

All of this can probably be easily done in about half a session if I go into it with the right mindset.

I’m also growing disenchanted with Mission Play, it doesn’t seem to do the job in this game. Or maybe I’ve been using them as a crutch to avoid awkwardness in the game session. I liked the out-of-session extended contest Jeff and I did and I’m wondering if that would work to establish important items about the past. Or perhaps I’m just worrying to much about these "important items from the past".