What is a literary RPG?
Snow is hosting a Literary RPG Jam on Itch which I actually think I have something to submit to: a medieval, vampire hunting scenario. My background is also English Literature and I am a fairly avid reader/writer of what is sometimes called Literary fiction so this jam is right up my street and I am excited to see what people submit.
I thought I would take this opportunity to discuss, in my opinion, what could make an RPG “literary”. It is not a simple question, particularly because the term is tied up with so much baggage of status/seriousness/quality and discussions of “high” culture. In short a great many people can see the term literary and simply decide it is not for them.
There is also an interesting overlap with the idea of the Lyric Game, an interesting jam of which was recently held by BreathingStories on the topic of birds. What that overlap is, is perhaps worth discussing in its own right. But I think we definitely can distinguish these two things. In short we might say while most lyric games are literary, not all literary games are lyric. I actually think a traditional dungeon crawling adventure has as much “chance” to be literary as any other game.
Let’s start:
What is the genre of “literary fiction”?
In the world of fiction writing “literary” is a term used by publishers and booksellers to denote a specific genre. It is a genre that tends towards human dramas, often with some kind of social-issue setting, typically set very much in the “real world”. It also often means that there is a slightly higher chance that you are going to get more complex language, or less standard structures.
Open Water by Caleb Mzumah Nelson is a good example of a recent popular piece of literary fiction. It is a novel about a young black man in London, structured around a burgeoning relationship, grappling with his identity within the context of his gender and his race. It is written in the second person (the protagonist is “you”) and an, at times, essayistic manner: ‘You said to trust is not to fill time, but you would like to say to trust is to fill that time with each other. The heart does the same, in the immense darkness of the body, filling with blood, clenching it out, tight as stiff fist with nothing in hand.’
This is, undoubtedly, literary fiction.
But - I would contend that the literary nature of it is tied less to the “genre” elements of the subject matter and more to two other features: the language and perspective. A traditional “genre” piece (sci-fi, fantasy, etc.) can be equally “literary”. Therefore for me, the more human drama elements is not a requirement to call something “literary”. Instead it is aiming for something like ‘non-representational writing’ and, more importantly perspective.
What is “literary”: non-representational writing
Representational?
Non-representational writing is slightly hard to explain. We might also think of it as “evocative” or “stylistic” writing. This is in contrast to writing that tries simply to directly refer to a real world object (even if the world is imaginary).
Let’s take a simple example from Robin Hood: The Roleplaying Campaign. This is p.77 and is describing a gatehouse in an abbey: ‘The gatehouse is a small arched extension of the Outer Buildings, kept by two monks and two lay members (porters). They greet anyone arriving, keep accounts of stuff brought into the Abbey and bar the gate at night.’
This is language that we might think of as straightforwardly descriptive. It is telling me information in an unambiguous way about a place that the language assumes I will trust is “real”. The choice of language (apparently) conveys nothing about the place except for the literal details it provides.
Let’s take a second example, this from Transmission for Them,‘Space splintered before you. Warring fleets reduced to shards, like glass, frozen at the moment of its shattering.’
This is not supposed to be a simple description of an objective world. In the language choice the images are more self-referential: that is, they are more ambiguous in meaning, the language asks you to look at it and consider its meaning: What does it mean to say space is “splintered”? The images you generate here, the meaning that possesses will depend on your past experiences of the language or of things being “splintered”. The unpredictable leaps that your mind make in combining terms you may not have come across together (space, splintered) before. The language is not trying to suggest that there is only one interpretation, it is inviting multiplicity of interpretation. It is not tied to one “real world”.
Now, You might think on reading these two examples that perhaps the difference between them is only a matter of perspective. Perhaps we could find the same “multiplicity of interpretation” in the meaning of “greet” or “anyone” in our example from Robin Hood: what does greet really mean? Are they really greeting “anyone”?. Our second feature of literary helps us explore this and perhaps helps us to see that truly referential/objective language is perhaps a bit of a myth.
What is “literary”: writing from a perspective.
For me, this is the crux of what makes writing literary. It is when writing considers the perspective of the speaker and changes based on that perspective. A lot of RPG writing (and we might say GMs - though that is a topic for another day) follows the pattern of a lot of fantasy writing in that it attempts to present an objective perspective which can claim “this is what the world is”.
Let’s take an example from Rebellion talking about the intergalactic wolf-like race of the Vargr: ‘IDEOLOGY: Plunder. The Vargr have no real ideology with which to support their actions. Many explanations and justifications can be presented for their actions, but all are fluff to cover the basic pack instincts of the Vargr. Given a leader and a target, the Vargr will seek it out.’
That is, they are baddies. They handily have a skull and a nazi-like uniform to aid this impression: 
Now this is presented as factual, and no where else does the writing try to present a contrast to that nor point out the inconsistencies in its description of this group. However, there are inconsistencies. The rest of the spread on the vargr talks about their interrelationships, their political beliefs. The writing is at pains to tell us they are baddies, but nuance leaks through and shows us that there is something else going on. Who is it who is saying they have ‘no real ideology’ who is it who explains the ideas away as just ‘fluff’?
There is a phrase from the cognitive biologists Maturana and Varela that I always bear in mind in instances like this: ‘Everything said, is said by someone.’
Literary writing does not try to hide or occlude this fact. It recognises and leans into it, allowing for spaces of multiple perspective, of disagreement with dominant perspectives (including the narrator). There is a clear link here to RPGs. Some RPG texts try to tell you how the game must be played, the only correct interpretation of rules, setting elements and so forth. Some RPGs, point out the uncertainty and openness to multiple perspectives.
I’ll give a brief example from The Morose Society: ‘Necromancy is not the most well regarded of art, detested and feared by many. And it is all these fuckers fault’. Here we have two perspectives being shared the second (in italics) is clearly expressing some kind of in-world perspective that is not explained but opens up play to different interpretations. But even the opening sentence is showing some kind of perspective that hints but does not determine the nature of the world.
Writing a Literary RPG
If you want to set out to write a literary RPG we might some up what these ideas suggest into a few thoughts:
- Evoke the world rather than describe it: when giving details use language that is open to (mis)interpretation, try to avoid language that is too “objective” and trust the analytical powers of your readers (which are vast, if we allow them to be).
- Think about who is speaking: when you write, ask yourself who is saying this. Another way of thinking about this is asking yourself who in the fictional word you are writing about is the information in a piece of writing “accessible to”. If you look back at all of the examples I have given with this question you will start to identify myriad perspectives lurking beneath the surface.
My submission: The Unburied
The game I am going to submit to the jam is called The Unburied. It tells the tale of a medieval village, seemingly plagued by the arrival of a vampire. The players are people from the village charged with hunting down the vampire. But who is telling the tale, and what really is the vampire?
I’ll write about it soon.