This week, I’m going to read all eight Anti-Sisyphus zines by Jared Sinclair (1).

Disclaimers: I like and respect Sinclair and considered him a friend, although our interactions have been limited since he departed Twitter. We engaged around AS and the philosophy of roleplaying a lot in good faith. My discussions with Sinclair informed a lot of my approaches to writing, best exemplified in Ludicrous Compendium and Blow Up Hamlet, two of my best works. Ludicrous Compendium #3 was released through Spear Witch. I shall venture forth regardless of my biases, also saying that you should probably buy these zines and read along because, as they are designed to be played, this may not make sense without them.

It appears I understood AS largely through conversation with Sinclair and a few other friends, rather than through successfully reading them. I have trouble with attention, and until recently wasn’t medicated, and as I read through AS for this post, I realised that I recall reading AS3 and AS4 clearly, though not the others. My memory isn’t what it used to be, or at least as far as I remember it. This then, despite previous beliefs, could be considered my first read of AS as a whole.

In the foreword to AS1, Sinclair presents a thesis that he then attempts to develop in each proceeding issue. In AS1 he is concerned that the procedures in our games do little to facilitate meaning, despite the ‘universal human desire’ to find meaning in story. Any meaning, Sinclair says, is imported by us, smuggled through the space between the rules, rather than being provided through procedures by the designer. By providing procedures for an activity, we render it meaningless, and so procedures are best chosen for unimportant activities.

I’m not convinced by the argument developed by the rules included in AS1 (2). My immediate thought is to look beyond TRPGS: Monopoly. Monopoly is a game where meaning lies largely in long-held house rules, previous experiences and trauma, long-held feuds and relationship. Monopoly sucks, but it is such a vacuous game that it holds meaning well.

I don’t think AS2 provides a stronger argument either, however, a pattern begins to emerge more strongly regarding what Sinclair believes creates “inducement to meaning” at this point in the development of his thesis: Vagueness. So, ‘The Buying and Selling of Goods’ and ‘The Tracking of Light Sources’ of AS1 fail because they are certain, elegant subsystems. You know when they occur, you know how to modify them. They have depth and clear aims. ‘Dice Pool Skills’ and ‘Treacherous Weather’, however are vague: ‘and so on.’, they say, ‘based on their class/background’, ‘appropriate tools’, ‘especially dangerous weather’, ‘stands until the GM decides’. The vagueness in these two tools feel like the “vacuum into which meaning flows” Sinclair seeks in AS1. To a degree AS2 asks the question, if unclear rules provide inducement to meaning, then are clear rules more, or less meaningful?

[…] we can listen to our dungeons and the dreams they have together [..]they are perfect already, and full of the terrible things we gave them. (3)

In AS3, Sinclair goes farther afield. The rules here are planted deeply and directly in the surreal. For me, the seed of anti-text is not just present in AS3, but blooming. It takes AS2’s question and applies it even more directly, and in my opinion this further proves that by placing vacuities into procedures, they become more meaningful. 

Sinclair continues in this direction from here: AS4 is an adventure, where there is nothing to interact with but rumours and an imagination. Here, it seem to me that Sinclair’s sense of where his proof lies has moved away from procedures – “often those things that are least interesting about [the game]” as he says in AS1, and instead anti-text is in full bloom (4): Enigmatic (not just vague) rules and lore that may or may not be true, and may or may not be written in the text at all.

AS5 is a case for Game Masters turning over their sovereignty to their players, and lays out a kind of hierarchy of agency that speaks to the primacy of the players that create the meaning, and by implication the insignificant of the procedures which are simply channels through which players to induce meaning. It is the most didactic issue; maybe for that reason I feel it is not the strongest in the sequence, despite it’s relevance, particularly looking forward to AS8.

The eight procedures of AS6 are the most enigmatic yet. Even the foreword is a poem attributed to a anachronistic Antiphon, “From behind the screen where I hid, I advance personally solely to you”. Here Sinclair might be considered his most self-indulgent, but I think his argument is to show how far text can be pushed in terms of procedure and of world-building.

I’m not convinced that AS7 is the same step forward in strengths and development of the theses that the previous issues are. The questionnaire format brings character sheets to mind, implying to me that here Sinclair is coming to character creation as he did Adventure and System. My approach to anti-text character descriptions as you can see in Tattoopunk Antebible, is basically Sinclair’s here, so it feels less absurd than intended? But regardless, while Sinclair is famed for a shitpost on Twitter, this is the first issue of AS where the content veered towards that, largely because it’s so game-designer centric.

AS8 is clearly Sinclair’s conclusion to the AS thesis. It is, for the first time, an entire game, in the vein of Dungeons and Dragons, in one page. It hails back to AS1’s original thesis, departing from the anti-text direction he has taken since AS3, and instead providing an example of what a full anti-Sisyphean procedure would look like. Opening with intentionally mundane OSR (5) procedures, I think to emphasise that they are the least interesting part of the game, Sinclair sets the scene for ‘Playing the Game’, which nihilates all resource management in all environments, and does not further define either resources or environment. This takes the familiar structure, and turns it completely on it’s head. Without internalising AS5 and 7, I suspect it’s unplayable. Leaning on the system will result in no play. Allowing play to flow around environments and resources will result in play. AS8 is a solid conclusion to AS, brings it full circle back to AS1 in a satisfying way. As Sinclair says in the foreword to AS8: “invent the rest: a past that lives only in the spaces between neurons, a future that is blank.“

Having finished Anti-Sisyphus, I’m satisfied with Sinclair’s thesis, and it was fascinating watching it develop in different directions, back tracking and re-forming arguments over six months and eight issues. It’s also fascinating to see how much impact it’s had on my philosophy, reflected in the principles I laid out earlier this month in Four Challenges. I think re-reading it right now provides me more guidance regarding system development than I remember it providing when it was first released.

There are, however, gaps that I can’t see are addressed (perhaps intentionally). On face value, it seems Sinclair would prefer a a blank page; however that is clearly not the case. Procedures are a necessary channel, but how do they channel, How do you choose your procedures? Is it relevant? Chosen procedures often imply what the author regards as important or implicit (see Four Challenges), so what is the interaction between saliences and vacuous procedures? This could be paraphrased as ‘Do all rules nihilate, or just some?’ This relationship feels worthy of discussion to me, and if the conclusion is ‘just some’, why? And how?.

I cannot discuss Esoteric (a salient consideration worth reading and considering in this context), but instead consider the Invitation, a lyric game that is largely procedure (technically) but is also aggressively enigmatic and collaborative. Is the shallow bowl mundane, or the instruction, Does it simply create space for meaning? Do we fill all rituals with meaning by and disregard their procedures? Are lyric games anti-text brought to bear on our own psyches? My feeling is yes, but it’s something unaddressed by these zines despite abutting against it.

Finally, consider Dungeons and Dragons 3.5e. With rules covering every contingency, is this text the best example of inducement to meaning? Sinclair could have developed this argument based on AS1: If everything is procedure, a game is all vacuum through which meaning flows. If this us the case, are D&D players truly playing unintentional homebrew or simply creating meaning in a way more obvious than in games with less vacuity?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but they seem worth answering. What are your thoughts regarding Anti-Sisyphus? Have you read them? Do we agree with our conclusions? Did I misunderstand anything in your opinion? Would it be valuable to continue this series by reading Anti-Gorgias as well? Let me know in the comments. 

18th January 2022,

Idle Cartulary

1 Anti-Sisyphus #1 is shortened to AS1, #2 to AS2, etc.

2 Probably because Sinclair is good at game design, and so these procedures are interesting, and my designer’s mind cannot divorce from the meaning that is supposed to flow around it.

3 Honestly I’m truncating these quotes because AS is so brief I fear quoting everything Sinclair writes, but also occasionally he says things in a way that doesn’t benefit from paraphrase.

4 My gut feeling regarding why AS4 is such a success is because in the type of game Sinclair is referencing, the adventure or module is the game, and the rules are largely immaterial and interchangeable. Sinclair accidentally took aim against the wrong target, and has finally found.

5 I know I’m not supposed to use the term, but seriously look at these procedures you know what I mean.