Quote from: jhkimThere is some truth to what you say -- that is, a lot of people are using it to mean a vaguely-defined "Forge-influenced/Forge-style".  However, I don't think that this means the term has to be abandoned.  

To take a very practical case: these days I'm administering the Indie RPG Awards, which were established back in 2002 when the creator-owned definition of indie was more in use, and there was less of a distinction of Forge-associated games being distinct from others.  So, the question is, should these be renamed "The Creator-Owned RPG Awards"?  That sounds sucktastic to me.

Given that said awards are only a front to do some mutual back-patting for Forge-approved games, I would say you could stick to using "indie".

Maybe the rest of us should just relegate the term "indie" to a ghetto term, meant to isolate forge games, possibly with some other derogatory junk added on (like "indie garbage"), and call decent RPGs "Small Press".

RPGPundit

Quote from: droogThat whole 'indie cred' thing is for teenagers. Grownups like what they like and don't worry about whether it has cred.

Sometimes I like to listen to the Carpenters. Nobody I know rates them, except for some girls. It doesn't seem to affect my relationship with my friend Clive, who constantly seeks out new and obscure music (which we seem to hear a few months before the radio plays it).

The Carpenters fucking rule. Superstar is one of my favorite songs.

Quote from: Abyssal MawThe Carpenters fucking rule. Superstar is one of my favorite songs.

What the fuck is going on here? Are you trying to make peace?

Me, I like 'Rainy Days and Mondays'.

Quote from: jhkimThe whole fetishization thing sounds like psychobabble to me.

In general or only applied to something that game designers might do?

I think it's nicely applicable to lots of things. Basically, not valuing something for its inherent qualities but because of some magical connection. You find it a lot in collectors.

But if you're going to dismiss the concept out of hand then, whatever.

QuoteSo, for example, I played three games with Ben Lehman this past weekend: Basic D&D, The Face of Angels, and A Thousand and One Nights.  (Ben's author of Polaris -- a GMless game about fairy-tale knights at the North Pole, and thus is presumably grade-A swine.)

Dude, are you addressing this to me? I know who Ben is.

Quote from: jhkimWords always have certain connotations and stereotypes.  However, that doesn't mean that we have to follow the pattern of abandoning what a word means and instead embrace everyone's misconceptions.  

So, for example, there are stereotypes of what a French movie is like, or what a Hollywood movie is like, or what a Hong Kong movie is like.  Does this mean that now "French film" now means self-involved arty film and we have to find a new word to refer to films like "La Femme Nikita" and "Taxi" -- that they aren't French films any more?  

If that is the case, then we have to admit that a role-playing game is a game played online with lots of other people -- and we should be searching for a new term for older games like D&D.

Perhaps you and the Pundit can fight over the last one.

As much a I admire your insistence on keeping the terms as they were, the fact is terms take on new meangings and the leave the old one in the garbage every day.  Hooking Up? Dating? just a couple off the top of my head.

Sometimes you just can't go back to the old meaning.

None of that implies that because people play RPG's on line that RPG doesn't mean only that now.  Words take on new meanings when people kinda agree to it.  Nobody has attempted to take over the term RPG to mean only online gaming. Instead, common wisdom has attempted to sub-divide with things like TTRPG and CCRPG and everyone seems comfortable with that.

If, someday, I am one of a few thousand people playing TT RPG's, and the tens of millions of people who play CC RPG decide that really, RPG means what they do, I'll probably be stuck calling what I do TTPRPG or something.  Damn my luck.

How did this turn into whether indie game designers actually play?  As far as I know they pretty much all play regularly, or at least when the opportunity presents itself.  I wouldn't be surprised if one or two don't, just on the laws of averages and all that, but generally these guys play as much as anyone else.

Is that seriously in dispute here?  I'm seeing posts defending the Forge when other than Pundit's usual rants nobody was attacking it.  Predicting an indie glut is not the same as saying teh Forge suxxors.  Apart from anything else, I first encountered this concern in posts from Mike Holmes and Paul Czege on Storygames.

As for the semantics thing, whatever, until we got sidetracked into that nobody was struggling to communicate.  Now we are looking for terminological exactitude the thread has been totally derailed, I'm not sure that's really a clear victory for communication.

Quote from: BalbinusAs for the semantics thing, whatever, until we got sidetracked into that nobody was struggling to communicate.  Now we are looking for terminological exactitude the thread has been totally derailed, I'm not sure that's really a clear victory for communication.

As I've said before, the whole point of most semantic arguments is to avoid having to defend your weak ideas.

QuoteAs for the semantics thing, whatever, until we got sidetracked into that nobody was struggling to communicate. Now we are looking for terminological exactitude the thread has been totally derailed, I'm not sure that's really a clear victory for communication.

I´m actually very pissed by this rather obnoxious discussion tactic. Gimme a blunt attack, but spare me the semantics-syndicate.

I´m giving some people the benefit of doubt, though
They don´t neccessarily mean to be bad by doing so.

I'm sorry.  I'm partially guilty for allowing myself to be drawn in.

I think you'll have a glut (why can't I publish - look how easy it is!), but not a "crash."  It's too diversified for a "crash." The glut will be mainly crappy material that lives on for years on a website that almost nobody visits.

QuoteThe glut will be mainly crappy material that lives on for years on a website that almost nobody visits.

That´d be really sad.
Ron´s Vision was explicitly to (also) reach out to "all those guys with a geocities homepage", a part of the Forge-mindset that I always found to be worth of success.

Quote from: BalbinusHow did this turn into whether indie game designers actually play?  As far as I know they pretty much all play regularly, or at least when the opportunity presents itself.  I wouldn't be surprised if one or two don't, just on the laws of averages and all that, but generally these guys play as much as anyone else.

Is that seriously in dispute here?  I'm seeing posts defending the Forge when other than Pundit's usual rants nobody was attacking it.

Well, I was responding to Elliot and Abyssal as well as Pundit, but fair enough.  

Prior to the sidetrack, in Post #21, I wrote:

Quote from: jhkimThat everyone and their brother has their own game is nothing new. It's just that in the eighties and early nineties, people would call their game a "homebrew" rather than an "indie design". There was often less sophistication particularly in the writing and the printing.

In the last nineties, I started my list of Free RPGs on the Web -- and I was quickly amazed at how many people had their own game system, sometimes with hundreds of pages. My list quickly grew out into the hundreds, then passed a thousand. What has really changed now is that post-nineties, people now have the tools to really put together and publish a commercial game on their own.

To elaborate, the change that I see is that now there is a real independent design community -- whereas before everyone came up with original ideas diverging from a starting point of D&D or another popular game.  I think having a community has established a more prominent place of such designs as a whole.  There will always be a bunch of designs which don't get much attention -- often deservedly so.  The prominence of story games simply means that besides the D&D variant and complicated fantasy world, we will also have obscure story games as a type.  

What I hope to see is more people recognizing the diversity of indie and small press designs, and it seems quite possible.

QuoteRon´s Vision was explicitly to (also) reach out to "all those guys with a geocities homepage", a part of the Forge-mindset that I always found to be worth of success.

He'll always be able to do that and it'd be good if everyone can take their sense of fun and turn it into a game that they actually enjoy with their friends, regardless of whether the game sees wider usage. I wouldn't consider this to be superior to people finding ways to have fun with existing games, though, and if it distracts from that, leading to wasted energy, it'd be less good.

When I say what I just did, I'm looking at gaming strictly as a hobby--that is, for the sake of argument I'm taking at face value Ron's claim that there's no gaming "industry", no meaningful division between creators and users of RPGs.

On the other hand if we accept that division, then a glut becomes meaningful in that consumers will have a hard time locating games they'll like, among the myriad games which are bad or simply unsuited to their tastes. And creators will similarly be harmed--not by competition (can't really complain about competition) but by market confusion as consumers can't find their stuff, or simply give up altogether in distrust.

That shows what I think is deficient so far, in the "cottage industry" model of indie gaming: a way for producers and consumers to find each other in a mutually beneficial fashion. The existence of the Internet and forums, even though they reduce the cost of marketing and make tactics such as "guerilla marketing" highly effective, does not really eliminate this problem.

I can think of a few things that might help tackle the problem:

Increased role for criticism. Currently difficult due to cultural wars and conflict of interest, and of course ultimately risks creating a critical elite that rules the hobby, just as the bad old "mainstream" publishers do now.

Name recognition for individual designers, as opposed to membership in a "movement", as a mark of quality. Risks development of a designer elite.

Increased accessibility of actual play reports that truly convey the manner in which a game is used--as opposed to campaign journals that concentrate on the fiction. The Forge has done a lot of this, though I also see a lot of gamer therapy and theory-testing that muddies the picture, as well as people who still don't get that AP reports aren't first draft fiction or news reports from the game world.

Quote from: jhkimThe prominence of story games simply means that besides the D&D variant and complicated fantasy world, we will also have obscure story games as a type.  

What I hope to see is more people recognizing the diversity of indie and small press designs, and it seems quite possible.

Sometimes I think this diversity maybe a good idea for them, but now that  I think of it, what benefit is there to the story game community if they become derivative of themselves, which is a possible conclusion? The market for these games is so small, will those few folks really be interested in games that are inspired by Polaris or Lacuna and go from there? Will that really grow their market or will the phrase 'Forge Heartbreaker' become a serious description for these games, and a reason for why no one will buy them?

Quote from: jhkimWell, I was responding to Elliot and Abyssal as well as Pundit, but fair enough.

To clarify, I wasn't making that claim, I was responding to your mixing together two different ways that products are conceived as "cool" for purposes of making and consuming them.

Apologies to all for the somantic red herring.

-clash