Quote from: Erik BoielleIn short, DnD is the ideal roleplayers game, and once the forgers get the hang of improv their games will likly get more like it.

If you think that Improv has no rules...

...I'd like an invitation to your universe.

Quote from: Levi KornelsenIf you think that Improv has no rules...

...I'd like an invitation to your universe.

It has rules, but they are there to encourage acting instead of replace it.

(football has rules, but they are 'if you kick the ball over the line you get a point', rather than 'once you reach shooting position, roll a vs. test on 3D6 against the goalkeeper to score'.)

Similarly with acting games. Roll 6+ to act would be a silly rule.

Quote from: Erik BoielleIt has rules, but they are there to encourage acting instead of replace it.

Right.

So, why would the RPG rules to encourage the same thing necessarily need to involve making rolls, using mechanics, etc?

Quote from: Levi KornelsenRight.

So, why would the RPG rules to encourage the same thing necessarily need to involve making rolls, using mechanics, etc?

They wouldn't, so why would adding (in depth) social combat mechanics to vampire make it better?

A lot of forgy games just have rules intended to spark the imagination (like having the audience shout ideas about where the bit will go on Whose Line Is It Anyway). I mean, if you need that, fine, but once you get the hang of it you'll find you can fly without the crutch, as it were.

Like you do in DnD.

Don't worry - if you work hard you'll get the hang of it!



:0)

Quote from: Levi KornelsenIt provides multiple conflicting answers.

No one of which I'm interested in speaking for - it's the whole mass of them that makes it useful to me.

Ah -- okay. Now I'm following you. I think that knowing a wide variety of theory is good. Certainly in management and communcation disciplines, as well as engineering (the areas I'm professionally familiar with), theories don't agree with each other and offer very different approaches to the same problems.

But each individual theory does answer those basic questions -- theories may not agree, but they are internally consistent and reasonably complete.

In my read of forge theory none of those multiple, conflicting answers actually answer the questions I've posed. Instead of multiple answers, I can't even find one set of good ones.

Where are you looking? And if you were recommending forge theory to a new designer, where would you send him to find insight into Question 11?

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.Where are you looking? And if you were recommending forge theory to a new designer, where would you send him to find insight into Question 11?

For that one, I look straight at rulebooks and look for the mechanism that doesn't look like it was meant to fade into the background - the nail that seems to stick out...

Call of Cthulhu is, to me, mechanically about sanity and how it erodes when you face the Unspeakable.

Amber is about secrets, absolutes, and creative, clever maneuvering.

The Mountain Witch is about trust.

Twilight: 2000 is about details - a set of details that I think the designers chose to make it feel real.

D&D is about heroic adventure.

d20 isn't about anything, but lends itself best to a progression that makes characters larger than life.

Quote from: Levi KornelsenTwilight: 2000 is about details - a set of details that I think the designers chose to make it feel real.

I think that might show the value of obfucating your real intention a bit - for is not the true key that Twilight 2000 PCs can take about ten times as much damage as NPCs. It doesn't actually Say that the idea is to cruise across a lawless europe leaving a bloody trail of eastern european corpses behind you, but...

Similarly, Vampire doesn't Say its about playing bad ass hip vampires in goth gear with a trenchcoat and a katana, and you don't have to play it that way, but...

And CoC doesn't Say it's about mowing down deep ones with a tommy gun, but that's certainly an option.

I think for real popularity you want to aim for something that looks deep, but really allows kewl play.

Its also why new editions intended to make things more how they Should be arn't as much fun as the original.

Dogs in the Vinyard does pretty well at this. Mormon gunslinger exorcists yo.

Quote from: Erik BoielleI think for real popularity you want to aim for something that looks deep, but really allows kewl play.

Just a little above, I rambled a little about the tension between 'clear focus' and 'group-made focus'?

Yeah.  I think this is related to that.

Hi,

I'm going to gingerly step over the whole whether theory is good thing....

I just want to address a point (I think John?) brought up on the first page, since I was the one who wrote the quote that started this whole thing off..

Quote from: jhkimPersonally, I think Kubasik's analogy is broken.  I find that the typical Forge games like Dogs in the Vineyard or Polaris are very little like stage drama, because they have a strong emphasis on narrated action rather than in-character dialogue.  Rather than just role-play out an argument as dialogue, you have to roll your dice and do your Raises or But-Only-If's or whatnot.

I may not have said it well, but my concern wasn't about whether or not there was dialogue between characters. The tradition of Dramatic Narrative is the tradition of charcters interacting with each other directly in conflict. That was the point I was making.

In Dogs, whether or not that the Players speak out the conflict's dialogue, the game's focus is the conflict at hand between characters and the resolution of that conflict.

The same thing holds true in cinema, which draws most of its discipline from theater, but played out in a different form. What matters most is how characters interact with each other in conflict. Often the interaction happens without dialogue (whether in acts of violence or a simple look from a woman trying to seduce a married many trying to remain faithful.)

So, dialogue isn't the key. Direct conflict between characters being the focus of the narrative is. Dogs does this in spades.

Quote from: jhkimI don't think the simple binary split works.  Larps are different than D&D, which are different than Forge games which are different than Amber.

Finally, I wasn't trying to make a direct one to one correlation between these two styles of narrative (Dramatic Narrative and Novelistic Narrative) to "Forge Style" games and non-"Forge Style" Games (whatever the heck Forge Style means these days anyway.)

Different games and groups can draw on these two traditions however they want. My only point is that we are drawing on these traditions, and by thinking through how each of these narrative forms is constructed and used, we can better get the effects we want for our games.

I did address how some games (which are part of "Forge Games") use hardcore dramatic narrative techniques (again, pushing the story through characters in conflict with each other), but I was addressing my comments in the context of RPG.net, where people like, say, Plume, are utterly baffled that anyone would drive a story with conflict. I was just saying, "Hey, we've got centuries upon centuries of storytelling craft doing just that. It's called Dramatic Narrative and it works just fine.

Christopher

Quote from: Christopher KubasikHi

Word up.

QuoteI was just saying, "Hey, we've got centuries upon centuries of storytelling craft doing just that. It's called Dramatic Narrative and it works just fine.

I agree. The distinction between storytelling and soap opera melodrama styles really spoke to me, which is why I brought it up. But in part, it was the story telling aspect that interested me - as you say, soap opera melodrama isn't the only way of telling stories, and in many ways its this other aspect that interests me - give me a character and a conflict and some booze and I can discover long lost evil twins and murders my brothers all day, but attempts at a more considered style tend to be more difficult. Then again, the improv sucks alot as well, so maybe one just needs new techniques.

It suggest there might be an alternative to the forges domatic rejection of prewritten scenarios frex (which is doubly odd because to an extent most forge games Are one shot/con scenarios).

Quote from: Levi KornelsenFor that one, I look straight at rulebooks and look for the mechanism that doesn't look like it was meant to fade into the background - the nail that seems to stick out...

Call of Cthulhu is, to me, mechanically about sanity and how it erodes when you face the Unspeakable.

Amber is about secrets, absolutes, and creative, clever maneuvering.

The Mountain Witch is about trust.

Twilight: 2000 is about details - a set of details that I think the designers chose to make it feel real.

D&D is about heroic adventure.

d20 isn't about anything, but lends itself best to a progression that makes characters larger than life.

Thanks for this.

I find your conclusions *interesting* and a dialog around them would certainly be useful in game design -- but I was actually looking for some guidance from the theory itself: a post or essay or blog entry about how to conduct the assessment of what a game is "about."

Looking at your answers, I would give very different answers than you have for the games I'm familiar with (I would answer especially differently about T2K and CoC). If "aboutness" is important in design, different answers could be very meaningful:

CoC is a popular game -- a game designer might do well to study it and learn from it. If theory points the way and brings out the key factors in what makes it so widely praised and played, theory is very valuable...

But trying to apply the theory (as you've done here) gets us back to where we started:

If all estimations of "aboutness" are highly personal and the the theory doesn't give you any framework for making them or assessing them, then you can't really use the theory to help *answer* questions.

It also doesn't explain why CoC is a successful game; why most people have never heard of Moutain Witch.

Maybe theory can suggest some questions to *ask* ("Think about who the characters are and what they do...") but I still don't think any other discipline would consider those questions (absent guidance answering them) a "design" theory.

Architecture asks questions about what a building will be used for, how it will fit into the existing skyline, and what sort of emotional impact it should have on people who see it and enter it...

But architecture doesn't stop there. It tells you how to use material, shape, and rules of composition to achieve the goal of a functional and beautiful building.

Computer Science asks questions about user requirements, priorities, and leverage of investment... but computer science theories also provides frameworks for answering those.

Color theory asks about what meaning you want to convey with colors -- but it tells you which colors and pallets (historically) help do that.

Forge Theory may have some of the questions, but with none of the answers, I think it falls in a fundamentally different category from other theories used in design.

Again: that doesn't mean it's not valuable -- asking some interesting questions doesn't hurt... but if saying "I used RPG theory to make my Pirates Game" means something very different from "I used Component Theory to design my program" or "I used color theory to make my web page" I suggest using a different terminology.

Either that, or develop actual, usable RPG design theories.

And -- finally (you didn't respond to this point earlier) -- I suggest using the terms defined by the theory as exactly as possible. Even when they're insulting or stupid (Incoherence). It might seem like asking people to use the theory exactly is an attack on the theory, but it's not: it's actually a desire to make the theory into something more useful. It's a  measure of respect.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.And -- finally (you didn't respond to this point earlier) -- I suggest using the terms defined by the theory as exactly as possible. Even when they're insulting or stupid (Incoherence). It might seem like asking people to use the theory exactly is an attack on the theory, but it's not: it's actually a desire to make the theory into something more useful. It's a  measure of respect.

It is, indeed, a measure of respect to do so.

My misuse of the terms that I hate is a form of deliberate disrespect for those terms.

Quote from: Levi KornelsenMy misuse of the terms that I hate is a form of deliberate disrespect for those terms.

Pundit is Levi and Levi, Pundit?  I feel there is deep understanding at the heart of this matter.

Quote from: Levi KornelsenIt is, indeed, a measure of respect to do so.

My misuse of the terms that I hate is a form of deliberate disrespect for those terms.

Sarcasm? I can never tell with you

But seriously -- taking you at your word -- I didn't mean "respect for GNS/TBM" -- I meant respect for rpg theory *in general*

I... believe... that you have respect for theory (if not, it's the greatest put-on ever).

I get that you're not wholly bought into GNS.

But systematic misuse of the terms by theory advocates and people who claim to understand it is what's allowed GNS to survive unchanged.

What we protect, we make weak. GNS is weak. Like it or not, until the Manyfold catches on, it's pretty much in the shadow of GNS -- your kindly adoption of GNS/TBM terms doesn't do much to step out of that shadow.

You're playing into their hands! It's a trap!

Seriously: if you keep on like this, next thing you know you'll be telling people Narrativism is like playing 'Die Hard' and people who think the theory says insulting things like 'Vampire causes Brain Damage' are just projecting!

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.I... believe... that you have respect for theory (if not, it's the greatest put-on ever).

I have respect for people thinking about games.  For people examining their play and telling other people what they found, which in turn helps other people get better play.  For folks looking at games as abstractions.

I have no respect for folks that decide to engage in long semantic debates when they know damn well what you're talking about.  I have no respect at all for people that snark at others simply because those others don't know a bunch of artificial words, no matter how useful those words have proven to some.  I despise not being able to tell those situations apart sometimes.

The theory we have right now, including mine, is a giant mishmash of stating the so-obvious-it's-usually-invisible, of brilliant ideas, stupid sacred cows, and filler.