Star Wars, Dying Earth, and the Programmed Setting

This contains discussion of Star Wars VII, no major plot spoilers but some general criticism. (Also, it's five weeks in, so see the damn film already.)

Robin Laws' Dying Earth RPG is not just a role-playing game set in Jack Vance's literary world. It also tries to codify the essential elements of that world - game as criticism. According to Laws the elements of a Vancian picaresque tale are: odd customs, crafty swindles, heated protests and presumptuous claims, casual cruelty, weird magic, strange vistas, ruined wonders, exotic food, and foppish apparel. The system also handles such Vancian happenings as being persuaded against your better interest, and winning great wealth only to lose it all ("All is mutability!")

And Episode VII for me was also a recombination of the elements of "Star Wars": you could see the boxes being checked off, with "doomsday machine", "terrifying monsters", "lightsaber duel", "alien cantina" and so on. But really that is nothing new. I remember reading more than one Star Wars novel in the 90's that seemed like a reshake of elements from the first three movies. Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy trilogy featured a doomsday device called the Suncrusher. There were monsters, dogfights, lightsaber duels and star lowlife a-plenty.





Also: if you tried to do a love story, a police procedural, a picaresque in the Star Wars universe, it might work, but would it be "Star Wars"? The hesitation in the answer reveals that, like the Dying Earth, Star Wars is a programmed setting. It not only provides character types, artifacts and settings, but dictates the plot and action. Compare this to a setting that has become unprogrammed, like the Wild West. While at one time there might have been a stock plot for the cowboy yarn, over many generations its expansion and reinvention has left room for social commentary, horror, preposterous steampunk action-adventure, etc.

Meanwhile, things might have gone differently if the second Star Wars trilogy's attempt to expand the repertoire with political drama, noir elements and romance had been at all convincing. But it wasn't. George Lucas caused a lot of buzz recently defending that trilogy and how he populated it “with different planets, with different spaceships – you know, to make it new.” It's a shallow view, but one that by omission acknowledges that the other "new" elements were failures, that the only things that stand up in those films are the laser duels, space battles, and spectacle. This is probably what sent J. J. Abrams running back to formula, from the potential of a universe to the safety of a program.

I think there's also a reason for the greater popularity of programmed settings over unprogrammed in roleplaying. The Standard Renfaire-Tolkien Setting, with its cozy taverns, dour dwarves, righteous paladins and hen's egg sized diamonds, is a convenient backdrop against which the slightest departure from custom - be it to invoke a different culture, a different genre or just something different - blazes forth like a star of creativity. And on the players' side, a solid and well-known backdrop gives a basis for their own creativity and improvisation.

Think of the Former Children

Thankfully most examples of people saying "Childhood ... ruined" are in a jokey, double-entendre-finding, Captain Pugwash kind of vein.

But there are enough people who say it with a tone of outrage (usually about remakes) to get College Humor to produce a point-stretching, heavy-handed video about the phenomenon.

Travis Pitts: Childhood ... improved, actually

As someone who studies moralization I often ask myself why and how the hell people pour outrage into fiction, movies, music or games. I think I can explain this one.

"Think of the children" is the emotional trump card in moral arguments, right? Now, you can't plausibly say that the remakes and reboots and prequels are ruining a generation that never knew the original and may even prefer the new stuff. So by some convoluted twist of psychology and time, you argue that this entertainment product retroactively harms the child that you once were.

I don't know. Maybe you have to accept your own love of imaginative works, here and now, in order to start taking your juvenile enjoyments seriously and critically? In order to break them out of the shrinkwrapped exile where you might consign childhood to eternal nostalgia?

Because if you accept that as an adult you can still enjoy some of the things you enjoyed as a child, you should also give your maturity its due, and accept that you might no longer enjoy some of those things, and value coming to understand why.

UFO stands the test of time (plot and character, not costumes, natch).

The Planet of the Apes cartoon does not.

So I can take remakes on their merits (for example, the current Apes arc, which updates everything nicely while keeping just enough of the preposterousness and Heavy Lessons of the original). I'm happy to have parts of my "childhood ruined," if that means that I can have other parts of it validated.

Positive Negativity

I agree, ruthless criticism is the way for game writing to move forward. Now let me show you who is the best person doing that now. This dude, Bryce Lynch of the Ten Foot Pole blog.

He is insanely prolific doing reviews. He will read a whole One Page Dungeon Contest and comment on each and every entry. His comments on my entries have not been positive but they have helped me step up my game. He will gladly say something is crap and exactly why he thinks that.

BUT  his "darwinism" only extends to games, not people. He doesn't play in the controversy olympics. He reviews modules as modules. He pans Isle of the Unknown but does not say "Look at this lackluster production from the notorious child-rape advocate." At times he outright separates his opinion of the product from that of the person. "C'mon, you can do better, I know you can."

Of course, most of the people he reviews are obscure Dungeon magazine scribes and one-shot module writers, but the way he also treats the micro-celebrities on his list makes you sure that he really is coming from a place of love for the hobby. It makes his criticism of the games more effective.

There is a third way, between dick-jousting and fluffy hugs. Follow the ten foot pole.