One of the big signs that the tabletop demographic is aging is in the way it reflexively refers to things that may have been true when those of us now drifting between 30 and 40 were starting out, but aren’t true for younger people. I can think of three offhand:

Nerds and Jocks and Never the Twain Shall Meet: Except that everyone uses a computer now. Gadgets are in; interfaces matter. The most popular cultural franchises are based in some form of fantasy or speculative fiction. A-List stars attend comic conventions.

Roleplaying is  Mysterious Minority Activity: Except that World of Warcraft is a household name. Thousands of people play fanfic RPGs using the aforementioned most popular cultural franchises. Our core relationship with fiction has changed to something nonlinear, described by continuity and facts of the setting instead of following a linear narrative.

My Scene is Hateful: Except that it’s like every other scene. The Internet promotes incredible fragmentation and specialization. This is a world where people into the fetishistic sex described by one obscure fantasy author can become a community. It’s where minority forms of political discourse flourish, and people use semi-anonymity to reveal more vigorous, problematic things about themselves.

If you think any of these things your mind is old; in terms of relevance to contemporary culture, it’s practically dead. But these ideas still taint most recent thinking about roleplaying. People ask how they can make roleplaying “more relevant to a mass audience” when that audience has already embraced it. They talk about getting out of the Geek ghetto when there isn’t one. They design games based on outdated ideas about story and narrative: elements where traditional roleplaying actually stands on the cutting edge.

In short, our “progressive” thinking about RPGs is actually retrograde when you compare it to the 21st Century. We are wasting our time trying to appeal to the mainstream as it existed in the 80s and 90s, because we’re old. And our old friends online applaud us for it. They buy books we wrote to make RPGs more like literature as we thought about it in high school, and clones of games we actually played in high school. Even our moral-political problems carry the stink of outmoded values: sex before the rise of easily accessible kink, gender before the demographic switch in everything from readership to education, ethnicity as hard boundary instead of a point of intersection.

Part of the problem is that in the Americas and Anglosphere we’re recovering from a step backwards at the top. It really was that bad, and even defensive gestures reproduced the problematic root mechanisms of dogmatism and forced dichotomies. Part of the problem is that our lifestyles have changed, especially for the online scene. We’re getting old, but we have enough privilege to become early adopters of the technologies and movements that are (ironically) making our perspectives irrelevant. There’s something kind of perverse about using these developments to re-entrench dying ideas, something that’s maybe even infantile.

The issue isn’t really about making roleplaying relevant, because it is — especially in scenes that have little to do with our little corner of the activity. It’s about reinvigorating our creative lives as roleplayers by learning the root ideas behind what the real neophiles are doing and applying them to our own experience. The alternative — playing that same old tune, or engaging in a oneupmanship contest to see how much of our outdated values we can reproduce — will win us short term social and financial rewards, but also inevitably lead to a greying, inescapable niche.

Let’s end this dismal sounding post with three constructive things I think you can do to become a more relevant game designer and player — and a better, happier one, too.

Play What You Hate: People talk about what “works for them” and how they know their tastes, and are looking for that one game to satisfy them. You know what? Fuck that. You should be trying new games and exploring new ideas all the time. This whole “I’m grownup and don’t have to eat my broccoli” attitude is stupid and needs to die. I had serious doubts about D&D4e but I made myself play it and it’s been incredibly rewarding. These days I only draw the line at things I’d find morally objectionable, and few games are that bad.

Stop Looking for Principles First: Pattern recognition is a powerful drive, and combined with social rewards it can damn you to thinking inside the box. Have the experience first. Take note of what’s happening, not the box you think it’s happening in. To take an example out of my own experience, developers who’ve worked with me know I’m skeptical of the “toolkit” trend as an Internet fad driven by cliched, you-can’t-tell-me-what-to-do gamer values — but I abandon that as soon as I’m called to work on one. Instead I playtest, bring the results back and then try to consciously reconcile it with my toolkit hate after the fact. When something works and I’ve seen it work I can’t exactly bullshit my way out of it.

(I still think toolkits are overrated, by the way. Sorry.)

Play to the Now: It’s fun to reminisce about the good old days and you’d be remiss not to take your own experience into play, but you have to cut reproductions of the past — even an idealized version of it — out of your diet in favour of experiencing roleplaying the way it’s happening now. This is probably the toughest one for me. I’ve done some fanfic-style games but I’m still alergic to full-on MMORPGs (though I did try EVE Online after White Wolf hooked up with CCP). Part of me — a strong part – would like another kick at the can with Mage: The Ascension, and I do like talking about it. But I ended my Ascension game as definitively as possible for a reason: It was the past and I had truly pulled the last bucket of good water from that well. The aftermath is still pretty fun, but I want to look for inspirations that are less reassuring and familiar. That means exploring new media for play, new emphases and idea that I did not make, but will help me dig a new well.

These suggestions are not really about being creative. Creativity comes after. They’re devoted looking, listening, and putting yourself in some unfamiliar situations. This is hard and it’s not a full time thing. I’m running a semi-experimental game right now but I year to get back into a Big Campaign again. Maybe I will. In the meantime, I’ve got room for one more novel thing do do. I wonder what it should be?