Quote from: John MorrowThe solution, in that case, could either be to kick him out or to start running an incoherent game that gave Glenn more of what he was looking for (See Robin Laws' advice in Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering, as an example).  One solution to style conflict is to make the game more exclusive and drive the heretics out.  The other solution is to make the players more aware of style differences and the game more inclusive.  And I don't think that has to run anyone's fun.

Glenn wasn't a heretic, though that's the sort of brush he started to get tarred with. He was just in the wrong game (which he had joined for social reasons).

Now, given that the game had already been going about seven years when Glenn joined it, and that we had a good thing going, why should the game be the one to move? Every moment I spent attending to Glenn's needs was time taken from the game as a whole and the players who had stuck by it.

As far as talking it out, the only vocabulary we had for such things was pejorative: 'powergamer', for example, or 'He doesn't get it'. None of it struck me as correct. All I knew was that there was a problem and the fixes weren't appealing.

The only proper fix was to repeat the treatment we had given Brett many years earlier, which was to indoctrinate him in the ways of the group. Personally, I don't think it would have worked, but we were saved the decision when Glenn and I fell out. I had his character eaten by trolls immediately.

QuoteYour point still holds overall. But that specific - that some RPG books have dressed something up as collaborative storymaking that, in plain fact, is not

Well, people all over the world knew that the first time they opened up the Vampire book.
And Pundit calls those people swine.

It´s an observation many of us made.

See there is a fatal misunderstanding, stemming from historical development. It´s what I propagate in Germany as the "genetic appproach to RPG discourse".

D&D was an Adventure Roleplaying Game. It made several promises. One was the promise of "story-creation". A whole new audience was added to the people playing D&D for what it really is. And this subset wanted to create stories. It´s a marketing lie, and to many people believd in it. Ron is the best and most prominent walking talking example of it.
People who project their story needs on a hobby that never, ever even was made to cater to them.

That´s the real incoherence:
Wrong reception of the text, stemming from missing context of the text´s origin. Avdenture gaming needs the wargaming framework of reference.

Due to the false promises of "marketing" for story, and missing sub-cultural ties into the wargaming mindset, people form this new subset felt the urge to move away from D&D. Because they did not understand D&D.

Ron´s RPG-career is a archetypical example for this.

So finally, this subset is reflecting on the hobby, from their viewpoint. And that´s doomed to failure. As can be seen.
They are judging things from a perspective that isn´t the point of origin. They are judging from what they want RPG to be, but actually never was, until they made it up for themselves.

Good for them, but they thusly cannot analyze regular RPGs aka Adventure Games. Cause they don´t grok em, never played them as they were meant to be played.

To do justice: D&D invited this itself, because the earliest learning texts were´nt easy to grasp. But the hostility of White Dwarf, or Gary Gygax to fudging etc. where the first signs for  an audience they never wanted/could  cater to.

The story-audience.

Look at Forgers who started with wargaming mindset in place (for example Clinton R . Nixon), and you will see it is far easier to communicate with them. And they acknowledge the inherent differences.

There is no CA-clash.
There is unspoken assumptions about the very nature of the games at hand.

Quote from: droogWe'll see how it's all going in a few more years, I guess.

Hope springs eternal.

Quote from: droogAnd you know, there is always the point that D&D 3.x is a more coherent game than its predecessor, and seems to have pulled a lot of people back to roleplaying.

That's interesting, because it was purposely designed to be incoherent.  Don't believe me?  Read this Pyramid message board message from Ryan Dancey describing the marketing research and assumptions that went into the creation of D&D 3e (it was part of a longer and more detailed thread that said more of the same).

http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/gaming/BreakdownOfRPGPlayers.html

Basically, Ryan Dancey claims that D&D 3e was designed to cater to four different play styles (Thinker, Power Gamer, Character Actor, and Storyteller) and eight "core values":

• Strong Characters and Exciting Story
• Role Playing
• Complexity Increases over Time
• Requires Strategic Thinking
• Competitive
• Add on sets/New versions available
• Uses imagination
• Mentally challenging

By my assessment, that means it's designed to be Narrativist, Simulationist, and Gamist, all at the same time -- that is, "incoherent".  So why do you think it's a coherent game or was designed to be one?

Quote from: JimBobOzIf you read Uncle Ronny thoroughly, you'll find that "fun" = "Narrativism". If you come along and tell him about some game session where you had fun, he'll categorise it. If he liked it, he'll say it was Narrativist. If he didn't like it, it was Gamist, Simulationist, or had two or three of them at once, and was therefore "Incoherent."

Now, that's simply not true. I even linked to several threads in this discussion where Ron told a poster, "awesome game," and then pronounced it Sim or Gamist.

Quote from: JimBobOzBy all but the most pedantic of understandings, "enjoy" is the same as "having fun." If "fun" and "story" needed to be distinguished, then Edwards would do so in that thread, in response to people; he doesn't. Further, in his responses he makes it pretty clear that "story" = "fun", and "impaired story" = "not fun."

[snip]

As I said, you may wish to quibble, saying that "enjoy" does not necessarily mean, "fun." But then you're trying just too hard.

See, I find this line of reasoning pedantic. Since "enjoy" means have fun (sure, I'll grant that), any instance of "enjoy story" refers to having fun overall? The only reason this even seems to make sense is that you've already assumed that Story=Fun to Ron, always. I don't share that assumption.

Quote from: JimBobOzBut of course you can see this for yourself if you read the thread.

I've read the whole Brain damage thread, and the shit-storm surrounding it. I was trying to avoid evoking that storm again. . .not because I'm scared of its ugly truth or whatever, just because I knew it would explode and overshadow what I was trying to investigate.

James and Jimbob, and anyone else for that matter:

These citations (obviously, give my responses) are not compelling to me. Regardless of whether you think they are evidence of the phenomenon, I'm looking for something more direct. And I'm looking for a widespread pattern. . .or at least a small chunk of instances. I want to know where all this "they tell us we think we're having fun but we're not" comes from. Is it really just from the Brain Damage? Or is there more out there?

Peace,
-Joel

Quote from: Melinglor[...] he's talking about actual reactions of fear, or at least what he percieves to be such. Whether or not the folks he says he's observed the reactions in were having fun, or claim to be, well. . .that's hypothetical. [...] Ron says in his interview with Settembrini that when he talks about people not having fun in their games, he's referring to people coming to him and complaining that they're having a bad time. And I dunno, maybe he's a scummy liar or whatever, but I'm looking for the counter-evidence.[...]

I don't doubt that Ron Edwards has had lots of gamers tell him they weren't having any fun. I do doubt that this is a representative sample of all gamers, and I do doubt that his anecdotal evidence - his experiences - are any more believable than, say, mine.

See for example this rpg.net poll about whether you're having fun.

The results, as of today, are, out of 346 votes,
   "I game nowadays, and it's overall good.", 211, 60.98%
"I game nowadays, and it's overall okay.", 59, 17.05%
"I game nowadays, and it's overall bad.", 6, 1.73%
"I'm not gaming at the moment, but would like to, and when I last gamed, it was overall good.", 30, 8.67%
"I'm not gaming at the moment, but would like to, and when I last gamed, it was overall okay.", 21, 6.07%
"I'm not gaming at the moment, but would like to, and when I last gamed, it was overall bad.", 13, 3.76%
"I'm not gaming at the moment, and would not like to, and when I last gamed, it was overall good.", 1, 0.29%
"I'm not gaming at the moment, and would not like to, and when I last gamed, it was overall okay.", 1, 0.29%
"I'm not gaming at the moment, and would not like to, and when I last gamed, it was overall bad.', 1, 0.29%
"I have never gamed, but would like to.", 0, 0%
"I have never gamed, and don't want to.", 3, 0.87%

So what we get is that of all people who responded, 70% reported an "overall good" experience of gaming; 23% had an "overall okay" experience, and only 7% had an "overall bad" experience of gaming.

Now, I do not claim that this is a scientific survey, nor one which represents all gamers. But it's a survey which is at least as representative as "people who have complained to Ron Edwards." So if you will accept Edwards' account of people's experiences of gaming, then you must also accept this survey. Which creates a contradiction, because the reports are different.

What I think likely is that The Forge attracts people who are unhappy with gaming. Many of us will be familiar with police and psychologists; cops will sometimes think almost everyone is a criminal, and shrinks will sometimes think almost everyone has psychological troubles. It's "selection bias" - if your experience of a particular group is of the troubled members of that group, then you'll naturally come to think that everyone in that group is troubled.

So I think that Edwards has created a forum which welcomes people who are having bad gaming; he naturally comes to believe that everyone has bad gaming. He then builds his rpg theory not on the views of gamers in general, but on the views of unhappy gamers. So he talks to 7% of all gamers, and then reckons that they're 100%. Which is like basing your views of the human body only on physically ill people. A physician knows that you can learn as much from healthy people as from ill people, or even more from them; a good rpg theorist would realise you can learn as much from happy gamers as from miserable ones - or more.

Quote from: droogNow, given that the game had already been going about seven years when Glenn joined it, and that we had a good thing going, why should the game be the one to move? Every moment I spent attending to Glenn's needs was time taken from the game as a whole and the players who had stuck by it.

In other words, you didn't really care about giving Glenn what he wanted.  You were more interested in keeping your "good thing" going.  The problem isn't just that Glenn's style clashed but that you were unwilling to adjust the game to help Glenn have fun out of concern that you'd have less fun.  In other words, there was no flexibility or attempt to find a common ground.  You won't find a good compromise if you don't make even a half-hearted attempt to find it.

Quote from: droogAs far as talking it out, the only vocabulary we had for such things was pejorative: 'powergamer', for example, or 'He doesn't get it'. None of it struck me as correct. All I knew was that there was a problem and the fixes weren't appealing.

Which is why a good non-judgemental vocabular would be very useful for this hobby.  Again, I'll point you toward Robin Laws' book on GMing and ask if you've read it.

Quote from: droogThe only proper fix was to repeat the treatment we had given Brett many years earlier, which was to indoctrinate him in the ways of the group. Personally, I don't think it would have worked, but we were saved the decision when Glenn and I fell out. I had his character eaten by trolls immediately.

Frankly, this sounds like a social problem masquerading as a gaming problem to me.  But, like I said, I'm only getting a second-hand glimpse at what was going on from you.

Quote from: RPGPunditBut what "coherency" is all about in Forgespeak is whether a game has mixed agendas or not. It can't have "sort of mixed" agendas. It either has mixed agendas, or it doesn't.

A game doesn't have an agenda. You have the agenda. The game helps you realise it, or not.

A coherent game will strongly support an agenda. An incoherent game, such as HQ, will waver between agendas in its text. At times HQ appears to be aimed at something like Forge narrativism, at times it seems to be aimed at a more old-school simulationism. But you can play it either way (I know which way I think will be more successful).

Again, people will have to excuse my lack of knowledge, but it's my impression that D&D currently supports a gamist agenda very well, while having no particular support for narrativism. That's coherency. AD&D waffled between sim and gam, to my mind, and it's my understanding that 2nd ed. made that worse.

Quote from: RPGPunditD&D 3.x is the strongest clearest argument in favour of the fact that what MORE people want are games that actually read and play like ROLE PLAYING GAMES and not nonsensical byzantine piece-of-crap Forge Microgames, or pretentious White Wolf Metaplot drivel.

Well, what you need to realize is that metaplot is designed for people who read role-playing games rather than actually playing them.  It's an attempt to turn a role-playing game into a quasi-novel so that people can read along with the developments in the setting without actually having to play and make them happen themselves.  It's sort of like watching over people play.

Quote from: MelinglorThese citations (obviously, give my responses) are not compelling to me. Regardless of whether you think they are evidence of the phenomenon, I'm looking for something more direct. And I'm looking for a widespread pattern. . .or at least a small chunk of instances. I want to know where all this "they tell us we think we're having fun but we're not" comes from. Is it really just from the Brain Damage? Or is there more out there?

Uncle Ronny doesn't speak directly, he speaks in a roundabout way, with new meanings for old words. You have to look hard just to figure out what he wants to say, let alone what he's somewhat trying to hide.

My experiences, the survey I did at rpg.net with 346 respondents, does not match what Edwards says - "most are tired, bitter and frustrated." Confront him with this contrasting data, and does he adjust his theory? Nope. Why not? Well, by a startling coincidence, he says that gamers are warped in such a way that they don't know what fun is.

It's not really a great mental leap, from "deny gamers' experiences" to "GNS". Uncle Ronny makes it every day to avoid tossing his rpg theory in the toilet where it belongs. Why can't you?

The other thing you have to ask yourself is, why is it that so many gamers read what Uncle Ronny says, and get this idea that he's saying we're too stupid or crazy to know what our own experiences are? Why do we read it that way, if he doesn't intend that way? Are we stupid and crazy for reading him that way? Or is that what his dreadful writing is really saying?

Quote from: John MorrowFrankly, this sounds like a social problem masquerading as a gaming problem to me.  But, like I said, I'm only getting a second-hand glimpse at what was going on from you.

It couldn't have been a social problem. I socialised with Glenn on a regular basis – he's a great bloke to hang out and drink with. The falling out was over a very complicated matter, but it was not because we disliked each other. In fact, we're friends again now.

QuoteIn other words, you didn't really care about giving Glenn what he wanted. You were more interested in keeping your "good thing" going. The problem isn't just that Glenn's style clashed but that you were unwilling to adjust the game to help Glenn have fun out of concern that you'd have less fun. In other words, there was no flexibility or attempt to find a common ground. You won't find a good compromise if you don't make even a half-hearted attempt to find it.

You seem determined to take the most insulting interpretation, but yes, ultimately it was five to one. We tried...for several years, as it happens.

I haven't read Robin Laws' book, mainly because it isn't free. To bring this back to the big topic, I've found the Forge has influenced me to see other people's styles as legitimate and fun for them. The base vocab and the model are entirely non-judgemental, in my view.

Quote from: John MorrowIn other words, you didn't really care about giving Glenn what he wanted.  You were more interested in keeping your "good thing" going.  The problem isn't just that Glenn's style clashed but that you were unwilling to adjust the game to help Glenn have fun out of concern that you'd have less fun.  In other words, there was no flexibility or attempt to find a common ground.  You won't find a good compromise if you don't make even a half-hearted attempt to find it.

Haha, this is so true. And ironically, it's me old droog says has the Viking Hat style of GMing.

I've had game sessions with some pretty different sorts of gamers, and had fun. Shit, I had a blatant cheater, and everyone had fun! But the Forge-theory guy? Nope, has to be a particular kind of player, particular kind of fun. No working with each-other, no compromise, nothing. "My way or the highway, bitch!"

This just confirms what I've long felt - the Forge theory attracts people who aren't very good at getting along with others.

"Mate, quit cheating on your dice rolls."
"You are deprotagonising me!"
"Mate, I'm sorry, but you're pissing everyone off by constant complaints and arguments."
"You just don't understand my Creative Agenda!"
(etc)

Quote from: JimBobOzWell, "story", "collaborative storymaking", whatever, comes to the same thing in this context. If we're talking about everyone at a game session "creating a story", then we're saying it's "collaborative."

*Shrug*

You're telling folks to read all the posts on the thread.  My posts on that thread are largely concerned with exactly this detail.  Which is why I'm debating it here.

New thread coming up.

Quote from: JimBobOzHaha, this is so true. And ironically, it's me old droog says has the Viking Hat style of GMing.

No, dude. It was a group thing. Be nice or I'm going to get the knives out again.

Quote from: droogIt couldn't have been a social problem. I socialised with Glenn on a regular basis – he's a great bloke to hang out and drink with. The falling out was over a very complicated matter, but it was not because we disliked each other. In fact, we're friends again now.

As I said before, it sounds to me like it was a social problem. But just because Anna and Bob get along, and Bob and Charlie get along, does not mean that Anna, Bob and Charlie will get along. Or just because all three get along at work does not mean they'll get along while gaming. It's difficult stuff - the existence of psychology, anthropology, sociology, etc, tell us that there's no simple solution to "how people get along."

Quote from: droogA game doesn't have an agenda. You have the agenda. The game helps you realise it, or not.

There are two ways in which a game can help you realize an agenda:

(A) It can provide rules designed to produce outcomes that match the agenda.
(B) It can stay out of the way of an agenda.

People spend too much time worrying about the importance of (A) and miss (B).  This goes back to my point about Dogs.  I don't need mechanics to tell me how to role-play through a tense confrontation with an NPC or another player.  I can just role-play that out.  As such, the game that best helps me achieve a Narrativist agenda is not the game filled with mechanics that force Narrativist elements on me at the player level but the game that gets out of my way and let's me deal with those issues playing my character in character.

The way D&D serves a variety of non-Gamist goals is that it's silent on those goals.  It gets out of the way.  Don't undervalue that.

Further, there is another side to this:

(C) A game can actively thwart an agenda, making it difficult to achieve.

In many cases, it looks to me as if the rules in some "coherent" games are as much about (C) (in order to give players with other agendas no reason to play the game) as (A).

Quote from: droogA game doesn't have an agenda. You have the agenda. The game helps you realise it, or not.

Quote from: droogA coherent game will strongly support an agenda.

I think that the mistake her is the assumption that a game that strongly supports an agenda, in the sense that it has rules designed to cater to that agenda, will automatically help people realize that agenda.  In at least some cases, the rules can get in the way.  It's like having a friend with a problem.  Sometimes getting in their face about it and confronting them is the best way to help them.  Sometimes just getting out of their way and letting them sort it out themselves is the best way to help them.  What the Forge theory seems to do, in my opinion, is to say that being in your face about it is always the best way to deal with something.

Quote from: droogAn incoherent game, such as HQ, will waver between agendas in its text. At times HQ appears to be aimed at something like Forge narrativism, at times it seems to be aimed at a more old-school simulationism. But you can play it either way (I know which way I think will be more successful).

Why does one way have to be more successful and why does it have to be played just one way or the other?

Quote from: droogAgain, people will have to excuse my lack of knowledge, but it's my impression that D&D currently supports a gamist agenda very well, while having no particular support for narrativism. That's coherency. AD&D waffled between sim and gam, to my mind, and it's my understanding that 2nd ed. made that worse.

D&D's lack of specific support for Narrativism is actually a plus that facilitates the sorts of elements that Narrativists are looking for when people don't need specific rules to force the game the be only Narrativist.