Hello all,

With some interest I've looked at some of the recent discussion on this forum, and have come to the conclusion that its time to shift gears here.

At first, I was willing to allow a certain amount of venting of steam of Forge-related discussion, since I was also wanting to do some steam-venting myself.

But as of now, I would like to make a REQUEST of all the participants of this forum in particular: This forum is supposed to be about game and game mechanic design, and developing new practical theories for those designs. And, secondarily, for discussing what should be the "Landmarks" or foundational assumptions for the making of these theories.  Its not supposed to be a place to discuss the Forge or GNS.
 
So I'm going to ask if the participants on this forum could try to stop talking about GNS, or the Forge, and start ponying up with new ideas instead.
I wanted to make this the one place on the entire fucking internet where you can talk about theory without having to talk about GNS on the Forge's terms. So that's what we're going to do.

To that end, I realize that I might have made a mistake in titling this forum the way I did, as it put the emphasis on Theory and not on game design. So effective immediately, the new name of this forum is "Game Design and Theory", rather than the other way around.

Some of you were suggesting that this place be named "practical tips"; I had intended for the "Actual Play and Craft" forum to be for that, but it seems that the "actual play" term is something that is a little intimidating to many people, so I've inverted the title of that Forum too.  The point there isn't to make up gamelogs of your sessions, its to talk about stuff that you've done or that's happened in your games, with the overall goal of improving your Craft and helping others improve theirs.

That is all.

RPGPundit

Ah, one more thing. The sort of threads I would like to see more of on this forum, just so that people have an idea of what's a good start, would be more stuff like the "Starting Small" thread, the "players participating in world design" thread, etc etc.

Not to mention that it would be cool if people started talking about ideas for designing actual games.

RPGpundit

Sorry to keep adding to this, but two more things:

1. I will step up on this note by not talking about the Forge or GNS on here anymore, and asking that such discussion be halted rather than jumping in with my Flaming Keystrokes of Truth as is my wont.

2.  Forge-fans and theorists are welcome to be here! But the idea is to be here to derive NEW theory from DIFFERENT foundations than that which the Forge works with.  You see the Forge as being the place where you discuss theory for people who are dis-satisfied with gaming as it is. Some of you think all gamers are secretly dis-satisfied; you might not get very far here if you believe that.  But for those of you who don't, and can accept the concept that the majority of gamers actually have fun playing RPGs the way they are, why not step up to the challenge of devising theory not for the minority of "narrativists" out there, but for making better and different and more effective games that are meant to appeal to the majority of "mainstream gamers" out there?
Look at it as an intellectual exercise if you want. You guys like that sort of thing.
Anyways, those of you who don't think GNS is God-Derived Dogma, and just one possible set of foundations and criteria; why not spend your time here trying to invent a whole new and different set of foundations and criteria? Why not see if you can make something more workable and more appealing to mainstream gamers than GNS?

RPGPundit

Why not just call it: Game Mechanics and Design

That should include theory if someone wants to speak to it.

We should bear in mind that there are still not that many posters on here so I think that splitting RPG discussion into "general RPG chat" and "abstract RPG Chat" is a little bit silly as it's spreading what is broadly the same kind of talk over 2 different forums.

I just having the one forum for RPG discussion, for the moment at least, might be a good idea.

Either way, I don't think we need a specialised "RPG Theory" forum.  I have some other organisation ideas but I'll put a post in the relevant forum.

EDIT : Actually, no I won't, I'll keep it here.

Do we really need a special forum for the Pundit?  It does send the message that this is a vanity forum and he could alternatively post his ideas to the columns area (thereby supporting that bit) and then reposting with a link in the general RPG bit where we can all discuss his latest insanity... um idea.

In my experience of running a forum, in the early days it's important to keep the churn going and the best way to do that is to concentrate posting into as few a number of forums as possible that way people don't have to go hunting for ideas.


Just a couple of thoughts...

You know, Mr. Analytical has a good point... Too many subforums might divide attention.

Wow, man.  You've done good things with the site so far.  Do you really want to shoot all your progress in the foot like this?

This is the first step towards a good board going bad.

-O

Quote from: RPGPunditSo I'm going to ask if the participants on this forum could try to stop talking about GNS, or the Forge, and start ponying up with new ideas instead.

I take it that's the therpgsite.com as a whole and not just the theory forum.

Interesting, that was the same thing RPGNet requested.

Yeah, that does come dangerously close to a topic-ban Pundit.

The fact is that this board is already finding a certain character and GNS discussions aren't part of it (largely because a sizeable chunk of the people on here hate the Forge).  There's no need to comment on what can and can't be posted.

I don't think we're banned from discussing it, just requested not to.

I think technically I can start a thread called GNS for Furries in which I apply GNS theory to developing a shared gming game for furry fans, and while that would cause Pundit personal pain I wouldn't be stopped from doing so.

An alternative to Mr. Analytical's suggestion: just advertise the existence of the New Posts feature, which is an effective way of aggregating all the new discussion without having to hunt it down in each forum. At the same time, focused discussion that falls into one category or another can be a little more, um, coherent by putting it into the appropriate specialized forum.

But in the end I don't feel strongly about Mr. Analytical's idea one way or the other.

I do think that "Game Mechanics and Design" is a better title to minimize the temptation to spin airy totalizing grand unified theories. (Someone else had a suggestion with the word "homebrew" in it which was in the same spirit.)

Quote from: BalbinusI don't think we're banned from discussing it, just requested not to.

I take requests seriously from site owners. To me it equals a topic ban.

Oh well, no real loss. I was going to have to leave next week anyway or lose that $20.

I don't think it's a good idea to request for any topic to not be discussed. Things have been going well so far. If people want to talk about something, let 'em. Just ignore the threads that discuss the stuff you don't like.

Quote from: ColonelHardissonI don't think it's a good idea to request for any topic to not be discussed. Things have been going well so far. If people want to talk about something, let 'em. Just ignore the threads that discuss the stuff you don't like.

I agree here.  I want to post about gaming stuff.  No matter what it is, any kind of "topic-ban" makes me feel the site is turning much more purple.

Pundit, I think you're discovering if you didn't already know it, the burden of moderation. You practically have to self-censor to avoid giving the impression of censoring others.

Anyway, while it'd be nice to see Pundit's request as having no more weight as whatever nonsense any of us might post, I don't think that's practical.