Working for peanuts is all very fine

"While Humanity will be amusing itself, or enjoying cultivated leisure—which, and not labour, is the aim of man—or making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply contemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will be doing all the necessary and unpleasant work. The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends."

That's what Oscar Wilde had to say in "The Soul of Man under Socialism". I was reminded of it because of the machine-assisted future imagined in Cthulhu 2050: Whispers Beyond the Stars. There, robots do the majority of jobs and most humans are given a stipend to survive on.

Is that how things will turn out? It's often said that new technologies don't take away jobs, they just change the jobs we have to do. Thus, a modern city has far fewer ostlers, crossing-sweepers, grooms, and so on than a 19th century city where transport was horse-drawn. But AI/robotics is potentially quite different from any technological advance we've seen before. It might turn out that there aren't any jobs (maybe apart from actor, priest and sex worker) that an AI agent or a smart robot won't be able to do better than a human.

Who wants a job anyway? We're conditioned these days to identify employment with a sense of self-worth, but Louis XIV would have laughed at the very idea that he should have a job, and Oscar makes the case that we should really aspire to be artists and connoisseurs. 

But that cuts both ways. Nobody can want to spend their days driving a car, for example. For an AI to drive a car on today's roads -- to attain SAE level 5, that is -- it can't simply be an unconscious machine. It would need a world model that recognizes that objects persist when out of sight. It needs to be able to interpret the likely behaviour of a human pedestrian or other motorist. It might be called on to make Trolley Problem assessments. It must, in short, be fully capable of rational thought. And if you have built a real intelligence like that, it's not ethical to condition it from "birth" only to enjoy driving cars for you. That's raising another conscious entity to be your slave: it's not only wrong, it never works out well in the long run for either slaves or masters.

Suppose that by 2050 (which might be optimistic; the AI we currently have is not close to general intelligence) we have a host of super-smart ASIs, genius-level intelligences capable of imaginative thought, what would humans do? Suppose those ASIs doubled the world’s wealth. (Not that we necessarily even need AGI to get a massive economic benefit from AI, of course.) Assuming the human population didn't just double, and if that wealth were distributed just as unevenly in the future as it is today, the poor in India and Africa would be raised to the current levels of the poor in Latin America. Latin America to present-day China. China and the Pacific countries to modern Europe.

But will it work like that? What will those people do? And how many people do we need on the planet anyway? Two billion? Seven billion? Fourteen billion? Or maybe far fewer. We would no longer need a huge population in order to ensure enough geniuses for progress (if you accept Julian Simon's argument to begin with) and we're already aware that unwillingness to solve the climate problem caused by too many people means our civilization may not survive another century. Maybe a global population of twenty million humans would be sufficient. If such a calculation makes you uncomfortable, welcome to the world where tigers (global population 6000) and elephants (global population 450,000) live.

Some have asked, "How will the big corporations make money if nobody has a job? There'll be nobody to buy their products." The answer to that is: money is just a token for the ability to get things done. If you had a million robot slaves, you wouldn't need money; you could just reach out your hand and whatever you need would be given to you. I don't raise this point because that's my picture of the future, just as a reminder that we are not talking about the world as it is now with a little boost like a steam engine or a power loom. It will be a different paradigm. Speculating about it is fun as long as we're willing to think way outside the box.

The same cigarettes as me

So I'm not the only one irked by seeing modern characters popping up in period dramas. I don't know who writes the Movie Media Hub posts on Facebook, but I'm with them on this point. Not specifically feminist characters, though: any character whose function is to spout modern attitudes a few centuries ahead of their time.

I disagree about why such characters are inserted into stories. There are multiple reasons. Most obviously, it's a way for a lazy writer to get laughs. "Heh heh, it's Victorian times but Holmes just said 'OK Boomer'." Ursula K Le Guin griped about fantasy writers who put contemporary American slang into their heroes' mouths:

"...Since fantasy is seldom taken seriously at this particular era in this country, they are afraid to take it seriously. They don’t want to be caught believing in their own creations, getting all worked up about imaginary things; and so their humor becomes self-mocking, self-destructive. Their gods and heroes keep turning aside to look out of the book at you and whisper, “See, we're really just plain folks." '

It happens because some audiences are easily pleased. They are asking, as Oscar Wilde put it, for art "to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity."

Anachronism is also a quick and easy way to get the audience on-side with a character. How can you not root for the guy who's denouncing slavery in the 18th century? Well, there were indeed plenty of people denouncing slavery back then, and a good thing too, but if you are going to put them in a script they shouldn't talk like 21st century characters. Unlike us today, they exist in a world where it apparently wasn't obvious to everyone that enslaving another human being was a monstrous crime. And even if you get the mindset and the dialogue right, it's still a lazy way to create rooting interest. Consider first whether you need to start with a hero whose every attitude is right-on. We were talking about the superfluity of likeable characters in a recent post and, as a great storyteller once pointed out, it is more satisfying to see one sinner that repenteth than ninety-nine decent characters who need no repentance.

Mainly, though, I detest this trope because of its cultural chauvinism. If somebody is interested in a story with an historical and/or non-Western setting, what is the point of inserting modern Western characters? You may say we can't fully know how people in such settings would see the world. Equally, we can't all be as selfless as the Buddha but that doesn't stop us giving money to charity. We make an effort at all sorts of things we can't hope to do perfectly, so why not storytelling or roleplaying? We do know that a farmer in medieval Iceland won't share the attitudes of people at a TED talk. If we want the farmer to make a stand for something we believe in today, we should look for a way he'd credibly conceive of and frame that in the context of his times. In writing or playing such a character, we can find stepping stones that help us imagine their interior life, for example using a process that Robert Graves called analeptic mimesis, effectively taking what you know of a time and place and dreaming it back into existence. That is true even in a fantasy story, as long as it's a fantasy setting where somebody has thought out some of the culture and economics that shape it.

In his book Medieval Horizons, Dr Ian Mortimer contrasts historical accuracy with historical authenticity:

"We impose our own prejudices on the past and reinvent it as 'how it must have been' to conform with our outlook. To appeal to a modern audience, therefore, a medieval heroine in a book or film must be shown as having control over her own life. Alternatively, she must appear constantly fighting her oppressors. Male peasants must similarly include at least once plucky, Robin Hood-like character who leads the others in defying authority. The result is a reproduction of modern society draped in medieval clothing." 

It might be an interesting exercise to write a modern drama but insert one character with the (imagined) attitudes of somebody from the 23rd century. Presumably even the least demanding audience member would spot something amiss then. And how would they take to having their currently fashionable beliefs scorned as antediluvian and even toxic by some supercilious git from the future?

Of course, your tastes may vary. Looking for fiction or games set in the early 19th century, do you want Middlemarch and War & Peace -- or, alternatively, are you looking for Bridgerton? Taking an imaginative leap into another society, or just dressing-up in period costume? Now you know where I stand. Still, those Regency greatcoats are jolly tempting.

Rarely pure and never simple

We were talking recently about alignment, and because I don't believe in those concepts I've never been very interested in heroes and villains, either in games or in fiction. The kind of fantasy stories I grew up with featured characters like Cugel, Elric, and Conan. No nursery-room ethical posturing for those guys. They did what they did for their own reasons. We could sympathize, even root for them and despise their foes, but there was never any suggestion of objective cosmic goodness.

I expect the same of player-characters in roleplaying games. Some have been very decent -- or have tried to be, as it's never easy doing good in a realistically complex world -- and some have been murderous and sought to justify it. The important thing is none of them were fairytale saints or pantomime villains. They acted from the motives that make real people do things.

That's why this post ("Why Most of my TTRPG Characters are Dislikeable") resonates with me. Personally, while I think likeability is not an important trait in a character, I don't set out to make my PCs dislikeable. I just want them to be interesting and feel genuine. Often in fiction I'm drawn to characters like Walter White, Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings, Zachary Smith and Vic Mackey. But I also like Spock, Kirk and McCoy. Steve Rogers too. And Robin (both of them) in Robin of Sherwood -- because Robin fights for justice without being "good" in a soppy children's story way, and the Sheriff is his and our adversary and definitely not a nice guy without being "evil". The drama benefits from those characters and that world feeling real, not nursemaided along by a partisan narrator.

History is merely gossip

Oscar Wilde was born 169 years ago, just under a mile from where, a few decades later, my grandfather arrived in this world. They might well have been baptized in the same church. You’ll have to excuse the biographical intrusion; I feel a strong bond with Oscar, seeing as we also went to the same college, though I haven’t as yet followed him to prison.

Frank Benson tells a fine story about Oscar in his undergraduate days:

‘The big, loosely built Irishman, the lazy, lumbering, long-haired, somewhat sallow faced individual with a greeny-brown coat and yellow tie, once defeated single-handed a party of rugger hearties who proposed to make hay of his rooms.

‘To the astonishment of the beholders, number one returned into their midst propelled by a hefty boot-thrust down the stairs. The next received a punch in the wind that doubled him up on to the top of his companion below. A third form was lifted bodily from the floor and hurled on to the heads of the spectators. Then came Wilde triumphant, carrying the biggest of the gang like a baby in his arms.’

('Rugger hearties' are what we might nowadays call jocks.) It shouldn’t have astonished the beholders that much, in fact, as Oscar had a boxing Blue. Another of his college friends told this story:

‘Oscar had some really beautiful framed drawings on his walls, given him by his friend Frank Miles, of mostly nude subjects; and looking round with an eye to mischief I spotted some penny stamps on the writing table with which I thought it would be a delicate attention to clothe the pretty ladies. This I did, and the party shortly after arrived. First one looked up, giggled and blushed, and then another, till the whole party was convulsed, but all Oscar said to me was ‘It’s really too bad of you,’ but he had to laugh at my inane joke like all the rest. As he never seemed to have devoted any more of his time to work than the rest of us, it came as a bit of a surprise that he took the Newdigate scholarship.’

My favourite Oscar anecdote, though, is this. Although talking in Reading Gaol was strictly forbidden, one of Oscar’s warders would exchange a remark with him now and then. The warder in question had a great respect for Oscar as a literary man, and he did not intend to miss such a chance of improving himself. He could only get in a few words at a time. Oscar later told the story to William Rothenstein (who incidentally drew the accompanying sketch):

`Excuse me, sir,’ asked the warder, ‘but Charles Dickens, sir, would he be considered a great writer now, sir?’

To which I replied: `Oh yes; a great writer, indeed. You see he is no longer alive.’

‘Yes, I understand, sir. Being dead he would be a great writer, sir.’

Another time he asked about John Strange Winter. `Would you tell me what you think of him, sir?’

`A charming person,’ says I, `but a lady you know, not a man. Not a great stylist, perhaps, but a good, simple storyteller.’

`Thank you, sir, I did not know he was a lady, sir.’

And a third time: `Excuse me, sir, but Marie Corelli, would she be considered a great writer, sir?’

This was more than I could bear, and putting my hand on his shoulder I said: ‘Now don’t think I have anything against her moral character, but from the way she writes she ought to be here instead of me.’

Game write-ups

Game write-ups make for notoriously bad fiction. It’s not that surprising. “What happened in last night’s game?” someone asks, and we’ll trot out a great wodge of incident. But a story is much more than incident, as the Master reminds us. Incident – that is to say, the plot – is just the foundation. On that a storyteller builds the real narrative, which is a personal journey of change. Fighting a shoggoth has to mean something. You know this; you’ve seen “The Body”.

The best games would anyway make the worst stories. Fiction is designed to have endings that are “surprising yet inevitable”. We know Luke has to hit the thermal exhaust shaft, we just don’t know how he’s going to hit it. But we don’t want games to be inevitable, we want them to be like a second life. And our lives, engrossing as they are to us, don’t have the neat symmetries and moral and thematic patterns to be found in a work of fiction. The only way to achieve that effect in a game is if the referee (“games master” to me evokes a low-wattage sadist in a rugger shirt) twists events to come out the way he or she wants them to – which is the antithesis of good roleplaying. Not only must it be possible for defeats to occur, but they might be pointless. Shit must be able to happen - as, in our play-through of this adventure, it most definitely did.

All that aside, background incident is a useful resource to a writer. A lot of creative writing graduates could do with more of it. So in theory it should be possible to grow a good work of fiction out of a roleplaying game. Raymond E Feist infamously based a lot of his early novels on Tekumel campaigns. Still, we were talking about good fiction… I have been pestering Paul Gilham to turn his blisteringly brilliant Ghosts of London campaign into a novel. Paul demurs because I’m sure he realizes that all that meticulous plotting, vital though it is, is only the start. He’d need to break it all apart, insert a character with a need to change, and let us see the succession of plot events as the conduit for that change.

I did none of that with this write-up for our current 1890 campaign run by Tim Savin. It’s just the bare events of the game, albeit in the voice of my character. But it might be of interest because it’s based on a published scenario (“The Night of the Jackals” from Cthulhu By Gaslight 3rd edition) and because it gives a glimpse of our own games, which some of this blog’s readers have enquired about. Tally ho.

 

Hey, monster, leave that kid alone!

If you live in the United Kingdom, you might want to pick up The Observer newspaper today as it has a review of my interactive Frankenstein novel. To be honest, the reviewer loathed it, but when it comes to being talked about, I'm with my fellow Magdalen alumnus Oscar Wilde: there's only one thing worse...

The review does make a specific complaint about not being able to affect the story. That's actually a misconception on the reviewer's part, so I'd better set the record straight. The scene she mentions is when the monster encounters Victor Frankenstein's little brother, William. In the original novel, he strangles the boy. In my version, that outcome is not at all inevitable. However, it isn't based on an old-style gamebook choice: "Strangle the boy Y/N?" Rather, all of your choices affect the monster's alienation, as well as Victor's empathy towards other people, and his trust in your counsel. And those hidden factors influence where the story goes. That means that certain decisions may seem unavoidable when you reach them, but in fact you have been shaping your destiny all along.

This is fundamental to the style of interactivity in Frankenstein, because choices have long-term consequences. Who, after all, makes an arbitrary spur-of-the-moment decision to kill in cold blood? "Would you like to strangle the boy? And do you want fries with that?" Certainly the monster is not that kind of dispassionate Ripley-style murderer. It is his entire history that builds to that moment, and when it happens (if he does kill the boy, that is) it should be with a feeling of, "Oh God, what have I done?"

I am looking forward to people talking about their individual experience with Frankenstein (available here). "The monster murders people because Victor tried to destroy him," one will say. "Nonsense," says another, "Victor didn't try to destroy him; he tried to save him." "But the monster gets the blame for murders he doesn't commit," another will say. It's that Rashomon what-really-happened effect that Orwell talks about in his essay on historical truth. Thus, Frankenstein is built on a form of interactivity that allows outcomes to be surprising and yet inevitable - and that is what we should ask of all good stories.