The emphasis on production that Iconoplast seems hung up on really isn't the focus for most gamers. You're not having the game as a means to produce anything tangible. Really, that's not the point of the exercise at all. Its an experience, and that can't be bottled in any way that will not diminish it. It is the experience, the reality you live through in the course of the game, and the person you become for it, that is the focus.
And yes, this exercise is one of using a product created by another, unless the players and game master are creating something completely new on their own, which some do. For the most part, running any game out of a book is a bit more like watching the movie than making it in that way. After all, most folks watch a lot more movies than than they make. Published RPGs are products. The creativity and literature were produced for the book, and the works created by the players are derivitave of that at best.
So the real product in RPGs (if you want to look for that) is the books themselves. If you have the creativity to design your own world, one alternative to writing a novel, which can only be experienced in a linear fashion, is to write an RPG, which can be experienced in a very open ended manner subjective to each person who participates in the setting and characters you drew up to describe your world. Its just a differnet form of media. Your readers interact with your world, and sometimes even contribute to it. The RPG industry is a small animal, and you betcha developers listen to fans about how to make the world a better place for your characters to live in. Often game writers start out as fans themselves, you know.
But I suppose the biggest difference is that you are not writing the story so much as the world stories can take place in. The world may well suggest a story, and strongly at that, but it is still open to where and how you interact with the setting. In this way, an RPG is literature written from the abstrct perspective where everything is given but the plot. That's up to the folks who actually run the game.
Anyway, as to the original question, I'd have to say the works created by the RPG industry have mostly affected genre. As understanding of worlds trickles out into the public awareness, other works of literature can be based upon them with less supporting background, as the setting is already understood by the reader. Or you have cases like Buffy, where the world is just a hair off from the World of Darkness in too many ways. White Wolf has had a noticable effect on the modern monster horror genre, I'll have to say, like D&D and similar games have helped develop fantasy.
I would think this is more the contribution than the creation of literature itself. At least, unless you count the RPG books themselves. There are some RPG books I would consider literature, albeit an advant guard format, though this is still not a popular view of them, yet. |
. Tribe 8 and Nobilis I would agree with and perhaps even Paranoi.
