[Torg] Fiction and Reality (Genre and Being Real, 2 of 6)

[Jasyn Jones]

On Feb 14, 2010, at 4:11 PM, Travis James Hall wrote:

>> Jasyn Jones
>> 
>> On Feb 13, 2010, at 11:25 PM, Travis James Hall wrote:
> 
>> Then there's the times (many, many times) when I've clashed 
>> with people because I insisted that cosms are genres, which 
>> they flat out denied could be the case.
> 
> Aye, well, I'd be another one. Other cosms aren't genres, they are worlds

My apologies, I was trying to summarize and spoke imprecisely. You are absolutely correct, cosms aren't literally genres and my saying so was a mistake.

Let me rephrase: 

The official cosms of Torg were designed specifically to be examples of genres, so a multi-genre game would be possible. Thus, the cosms of Torg do reflect the tropes of certain genres. (RPG genres, in specific, as what the literary world and cinematic world considers genres to be is very different.)

I have held this position for a long time and many have taken exception to it, precisely because having cosms reflect genres felt wrong (for the reasons given).

> may or may not implement genre tropes (and almost always do in the
> published material).


This takes me into a slight philosophical digression. Do all cosms have to reflect genres? In one sense, no: If it's a gamemaster creating a cosm for his game, he doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to.

One could go the reductionist route and claim that any cosm, no matter how designed, would end up being an example of some kind of genre. High Tech or Social, science fiction and so forth. This may or may not be true, but if implemented it would tend to widen what a genre is so much, it would render them meaningless.

Another example would be settings that lack clear genre tropes, because they mix so many elements that they can't be rendered down to a single genre ("kitchen-sink settings" in Dave Oakes formulations). Rifts, for example, mixes fantasy, science fiction, anime, horror, Arthurian tales, and so forth. People would have a point about that.

A counter-point would be to say that even the official cosms tended to mix two different realities together in bizarre, yet entertaining ways: Egyptian Pulp, Medieval Theocratic Cyberpunk, etc. Rifts, one could say, is just an extreme case of that.

As for me, I wouldn't claim that all cosms must match the Platonic ideal of any given genre or a mix of genres. Clearly, they must match the vision of the writer, and only the writer. Their cosm, their rules.

I would think, for the purposes of my own games, that having cosms with muddy, unstated, or unclear genres tends to dilute what I like about Torg. Too many of them, and it gets hard to tell the differences between cosms. I don't want Platonically pure cosms- I like Aysle having cannons- but for me to find them enjoyable, they should present a clear sense of what themes are important and how the cosm should be depicted.

By tapping into archetypal settings, the writers of Torg helped GM's quickly grasp what a particular cosm was and how to depict it in play. And, of course, multi-genre play was the whole point of Torg, from the beginning.

>>> I do suspect
>>> that this is largely what was always intended by the writers
>> 
>> I wasn't sure that it's what they intended, and I 
>> didn't want to claim "This is my idea and the people who 
>> created the game agree with me." I try to clearly separate my 
>> opinions from the game's official declarations.
> 
> I did limit myself to a declaration of suspicion, not of fact.

Sure, and even if you hadn't, I wouldn't have criticized you for it. One, it is certainly possible to say "this is what the designers intended" in regards to any number of issues and be correct. Two, it is certainly possible that if I disagreed with such a statement, I might be factually incorrect.

In this case, I avoided claiming authority from the designers not because doing so would be wrong, but because I didn't know what they thought on this issue. I don't know that they would or did agree with me, so I didn't want to say they did.

>> The reason I wasn't sure is that "The Chekov Solution" (from 
>> the Torg anthologies) posits the exact opposite situation: Wu 
>> Han is troubled because his behavior was caused by CE 
>> fiction, and racist fiction at that.
> 
> It is important to remember that characters in fiction do not always fully
> understand the universes they inhabit.

True. There is no iron-clad law that says the stories are canon rules. But, since there was no definite statements supporting my suggested solution, I didn't want to state that I knew what the designers thought. Especially when I didn't.
--
Jasyn Jones
jasynj (at) gmail (dot) com

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson

Check out my Torg webpage, Storm Knights:
web.me.com/stormknights/