(I should double-emphasize that it’s not as if RPGs don’t have a ways to go with that last one. For instance, I’m still a bit stung that the transgendered cop I created for “Bloody Mary” in Urban Legends got that part of his background cut at the developer’s insistence.)

Right after the D20 licence came out but before the Book of Erotic Fantasy I floated a thought experiment with some other writers about attacking the license with three books:

• The Killing of the King: The occult flow of causality requires you to assassinate JFK using every possible permutation allowed by the (loosely conceived) constraints of evidence to prevent the early rise of “Third Way” liberalism, because it sucks. Just look at how many times Tony Blair had to lie.
• D20 Eco Ops: This’d be a modern resource with rules for eco-activist sabotage. The game systems would be integrated into comprehensive descriptions of the organizational and tactical methods used by real groups, with the explicit position that the book was an ideological training ground.
• The third one is still a project I’m pursuing so I won’t go into too much detail, but it involves methodical real-world drug use by characters to stimulate their creative autonomy.

In retrospect a rewrite of the D20STL would have just resulted sooner, but the real point wasn’t to attack the license as much as use it as a conceptual benchmark in pursuit of challenging ideas. It’s all pretty contrived, but I’m afraid that I don’t think RPGs are doing better right now. They’re about Meta-issues for gamers, either situated in the game or the community. There are a whack of games stabbing at depth, but they just don’t succeed. It’s stuff like Man, organized religion sure is screwed up! or It’s hard when people die! or Poor people sure have it rough! or Aren’t you offended when I’m gross!

Challenging art requires to to fight a position that’s commonly believed in a way that gets to the point. Gamers are overfond of Star Trek-style superloose allegories (It’s really about black people/queer folks/etc, not aliens!), possibly because these were invented to avoid complaints from people just like them. The fact that these people lived in the 1960s indicates we haven’t come very far, have we? We like to use these to dodge blame for the bad stuff (like orcs as stand ins for colonized peoples) and take credit for the good stuff. We need to build challenges that are harder to dodge.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Mage: The Ascension (and others; just going with what comes to mind first) both tried out these sorts of challenges, though neither succeeded completely. Werewolf started out by saying Human nature and corporate capitalism in particular are immoral, destructive forces. Mage said Modernity isn’t necessarily desirable, probably isn’t rational and is a servant of political interests, anyway. Boy, did that make people mad, and not mad in a kind of throwaway fashion. Gamers still get pissed off about it. They get pissed off when hints of it come up, like when Awakening added a nod to John Zerzan-like primitivism in Tome of the Watchtowers, or whatever Phil Brucato wrote in Changing Breeds, and they’re probably not going to like something in an upcoming book where the easy colonized-peoples metaphor are the smart guys.

This kind of thing doesn’t happen too often though. It’s hard to present a commercial proposition that’s based on telling the audience their beliefs are screwed up unless it’s about religion. If it’s about religion it’s pretty easy because people who can’t irreverently manipulate signs suck at RPGs anyway. So besides things like like Satan was a good guy! Angels were stone killers! writers and designers get scared of saying this stuff because they don’t want to alienate their audience, especially now that segments of the audience can broadcast all kinds of crap in response on a public forum.

You would think that smaller publishers would pick up the slack here but by and large, they don’t. They’re pretty addicted to Trek-level allegories to inoffensively pick up the slack, with a side order of the ‘ol grossout (like that Old School thing where the guy details the evil things you do to summon demons and crap). I’m not saying it’s never been done there (Steal Away Jordan, for instance) but the small press sure has some ways to go.

It also doesn’t help that the culture of gaming is chock full of creative machismo. Everybody wants assurances that their creative impulse isn’t being oppressed by the GM or designer or group of something — everybody’s an enemy of the big swinging cock of self-expression. Challenging that . . . Well, it pretty much feels like pointing below the belt and laughing to these types, and making a statement about how you ought to think or feel can’t help but do that. It’s a pity, because it other media people take more responsibility for their responses.

I’ll put it this way. You know those crazy far right movie reviews that talk about how every flick will turn you into a gay(er) (more) heathen (card carrying) communist? Keep that style of analysis but remove the slant (mostly; there’s something inherently totalizing and fascist about that mode anyway) and you have how pretty much every internet-vocal gamer reacts to new RPG stuff they have a problem with. If someone did that for every movie they saw without a hint of satire or comic effect you’d probably think they were assholes, wouldn’t you?

Finally, you can’t do your best job without revealing something of yourself. It’s possible to do a good job writing against your beliefs, but it can be seriously disconcerting. I despise the world views of the Euthanatos and Silver Ladder, but people frequently cite that stuff as some of my better work. RPGs represent a special danger because the audience generates its own deep narratives and might really piss you off with them. I really sympathize with Vincent Baker dealing with Dogs in the Vineyard being used to play SS members, resulting in oneupmanship where everybody tried to sympathize with the SS. The answer to these challenges is that doing something like this means you’re an asshole, but nobody really wants to be put in a position where they have to call somebody an asshole. And win or lose that fight, you’re dealing with someone who created an involved narrative to an immoral end.

That’s the danger; that’s the challenge. Once you flirt with the heavy stuff you’re not dealing with remote intellectual questions any more. You’re laying it out, and you may end up confronting what you don’t just think is a creative conflict, but a basic moral error while you’re fighting for a position you believe leads to something finer in the world.

Who’s up to the challenge? Am I up to it? I don’t know. I think we need it. I hope we get it in 2010. Like I said at the beginning, it’s not the purpose of art, but without it, an art form has no purpose.