Theory Takes The Fun Out Of It

I just finished reading an article in today's Wall Street Journal that got me thinking about "theory" in role-playing games. (Bear with me here.) It's a review by Barton Swaim of a new book called Literary Criticism from Plato to Postmodernism by James Seaton. In the article (which is entitled "Toward a Theory of Lit-Crit"), Mr. Swaim examines Mr. Seaton's premise that most academic literary critics today don't really give a damn if a work of literature is any good from an intellectual or aesthetic perspective. Instead, they mostly care about how well it fits within the fashionable political and philosophical theories of the modern academy. Whether a book brings joy or pleasure to the reader is beside the point. The "meaning" of a work--if such a thing can be said even to exist--is irrelevant. The theory is the thing.

This is, of course, the dreary post-structuralist approach to literary criticism that has haunted humanities departments since at least the 1960s. The litany of (mostly French) names associated with this mode of reading literature is well-known: Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida, Baudrillard, etc. The list goes on and on. Having studied some of this stuff in graduate school, reading Swaim's article reminded me just how deadly dull and serious these guys are. They can drone on for a hundred pages about how words have no meaning, morality is a mere tool of the powerful, and so on, but I never got the sense that they really enjoyed what they were reading. By subordinating the poem or novel in question to some grand theory into which it must fit, these "theorists" were no longer able to appreciate or take pleasure in the work on its own terms.

This is where role-playing games come in. Over the last few years, some advocates of the old-school renaissance seem to have become enthralled with a "theory" or "theories" of what old-school role-playing ought to be. For example, a true old-school game must be a sandbox campaign in which there is no "story" as such. The players must have complete freedom to go where they will and do what they want with little or no GM "guidance". The goal should be to maximize the recovery of treasure. Dungeons should have lots of empty rooms. Megadungeons should be the default campaign style. I could go on here, but I won't. For some people, any campaign that doesn't have most (if not all) of these features isn't a true "old-school" campaign.

Now, I understand why the advocates of such "theories" about old-school campaigns became so vocal. They were reacting to the "story-path" adventures that had themselves become the default in works published by TSR, Wizards of the Coast, and other major publishers. Nobody (except for maybe the GM) likes an adventure railroad in which the players don't make any real choices because they aren't allowed to deviate from the adventure's plot. The Time of Troubles and the Spellplague series set in the Forgotten Realms or the Heroes of the Lance modules from the World of Krynn spring immediately to mind here. In such campaigns, the players become mere bit players in the GM's amateur novel.

Still, although I want to avoid railroading my players as much as the next guy, I worry that focusing primarily on whether a particular adventure or campaign comports with some a priori theory about what an old-school campaign should look like will, like some turgid essay by Jacques Derrida, drain all the fun out of the experience for everyone. So what if your campaign isn't "really" old-school because it's a quest with a defined beginning, middle, and end? What difference does it make if you don't keep track of experience points or treasure all that closely? Who cares if the PCs are heroes participating in world-shattering events rather than small-time adventurers just looking for the next score? If the game is interesting and stimulating, and everyone in your group has a good time, then isn't that what it's all about? I certainly think so. These are games after all. They're supposed to be fun.

So, here's my big thought (theory?!?!?): elevating abstract theory over all other considerations (such as whether the book or adventure is any good on its own terms) is the enemy of both intellectual pleasure and a plain, old good time--whether one does it to D&D or Tolstoy. Avoid it at all costs.