From the Swinewatch UK-warzone-thread:

@droog: I can see the merits of all your arguments. And by promising not to be snarky in response, I´d beg you to name three or four big conceptual innovations.

Like:
There´s three types of adventure game rules. I call them three pillars of roleplaying. They were each a conceptual innovation that spawned (or catered to) adventure gaming styles and general rules layout:

- class & level (D&D)
- "I´m just a guy, but I got skills" (Traveller, RQ)
- Point buy (Fantasy Trip, Champions)


That all happened in the first several years of the hobby.

EDIT: I just pulled the example out of my ass, but Elliot pointed us to an LJ post, that went deeper into that subject. So taking that LJ post as an example, could somebody categorize Thematic Games?

Although I´m willing to learn here, I´m asserting that there are no conceptual innovations since 2000. Prove me wrong.

No going for since 2000, but thinking of some more conceptual changes (without making value judgements). Some of these are very old, but I think they do represent changes and progressions.

* Metaplots
* 1 player, multiple characters
* Dice pools
* Player buy-in
* Lifepath/character prehistory
* Psychological impact rules
* Social impact rules
* Dispensing with a gameboard
* Exploding dice.
* Scaling (same system used at different scales for wargaming/RPing)
* Universal systems (explicitly designed as such).

Yeah, that´s all adventure gaming stuff.

We want to know the same stuff for Thematic Games.
Like, what has been added since Pantheon.

First of all, I'm probably not the guy to do this. I haven't an innovative bone in my body, and I can't do game design. I can only go on an impression formed by reading and playing several of these games. I've got only a limited amount of games, because I don't have enough money to justify madly spending it on more games than I've time to play.

So I'm going to start with John's work. I've made an edited version highlighting techniques probably most associated with indie/Forgie/hippie/thematic/swine games:

Hero Points – James Bond 007 (1983), Ghostbusters (1986).
Dramatic modifiers to resolution – Champions (1981), Paranoia or Toon (both 1984).
Mechanics for social resolution – James Bond 007 (1983).
Directed Rewards – Marvel Superheroes (1984).
Instant Rewards – James Bond 007 (1983).
Scene Framing – Torg (1990). Theatrix (1993).
Meta-game control/Director Stance for players – Ars Magica (1987). Prince Valiant (1989), Theatrix (1993).
Freeform Character Traits – Over the Edge (1992)
Player right to introduce conflict – Champions (1981), Ars Magica, Prince Valiant, and Theatrix.
Relationship Mapping – Vampire: The Masquerade (1991), "Sorcerer's Soul" supplement for Sorcerer (2001), Dogs in the Vineyard (2004).
Bangs – Ars Magica's Whimsy Cards, explicitly appears as a GM technique in Sorcerer (1998).

NEXT (?) – what have the Forge ever done for us?

Relationship mapping has been around since Traveller. But I´m betting ion Braunsteins being mapped also.

Quote from: SettembriniYeah, that´s all adventure gaming stuff.

We want to know the same stuff for Thematic Games.
Like, what has been added since Pantheon.

* I don't like metaplot, but I would regard that as a 'thematic' development.
* Troupe style play (not in the WW sense per se) I would regard as a thematic development.
* Player buy in, I would regard as a thematic development.
* Lifepath, thematic.
* Psych impact, thematic.
* Social impact, thematic.
*Arguably, dispensing with a gameboard is the most fundamental thematic development of RPGs.

Quote from: SettembriniRelationship mapping has been around since Traveller. But I´m betting ion Braunsteins being mapped also.

Sort of in Traveller, if you're talking about the contact and NPC card deck system.

This might be easier with a list of release dates...

http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/encyclopedia/byyear/2001.html

OK, folks, you showed us some pretty neat stuff.
Let us not be derailed by bean counting with dates and the real "firsts" as long as they aren´t of utmost importance. (I know I started it, but I was a fool in opening that can of worms. It´s a knowitals pastime, and we could surely spend hours debating some of the stuff. )

Please tell us about the "Explosion of Creativity" that happened from 2002 onward. My claim is still, that Most Forge-inspired games are basically me-too products and not very original. That doesn´t mean they aren´t playable or fun, but it is a stab against the claim of creativity, originality and intellectualism that came up again very recently.

Are there generalizable styles emerging in Thematic Gaming?

Are you only looking for individual elements or do unique combinations count?

Honestly I don't have enough familiarity with the forge to say much about them but in a more 'centrist' position I think combination of older elements can lead to a new overall whole. I'd regard UA as innovative, even though none of its individual elements are, for example.

Well, if you can "only" bring up new combinations of older elements, to prove originality, creativity and intellectualism, go ahead.

I think what the Forge has really given birth to is a wave of games that use various forms of stakes-setting (collaborative pre-narration) and narration-trading (giving various people the authority to narrate outcomes of resolution) as explicit parts of the written mechanics.

Not all work that way. Other games may have had those elements. Some Forge games may have other (original or borrowed) innovations. But those are what IMO characterize the "central mass" of those games.

The other major element common to many Forge games is flag-framing combined with "bangs"--that is, the idea that characters should be created with elements (like kickers in Sorcerer, BITs in Burning Wheel) which are explicitly intended to be introducd by the GM or others with GM-type powers.

Same caveats apply.

Can we reach consensus, that those two technique-classes put a rather high demand on qualitative and quantitative input from all players?

I think I concur, but you might want to see if others even agree that those are the major common elements of Forge-type thematic "story games".

However (if I say so myself) I think I've hit it; basically, what those games offer is, in Forge terms, various movements into "non-Vanilla Narrativism". That is, if you look at the entry "Vanilla Narrativism" at the Forge, you see that its opposite, within the "Nar" camp, would be games that employ notable use of "Director Stance" for players, atypical distribution of GM tasks, verbalizing the "Premise" in abstract terms, overt organization of narration, or improvised additions to the setting or situations. What I wrote above is basically saying the same thing.

You could also say that Forge games are typically expressions of Ron's skepticism that

QuoteI do not think that a story can be reliably created, with players as co-creators, via the means of Actor Stance, continuous suspension of disbelief, immersion (as narrowly defined), or anything similar.

I.e., in order to reliably accomplish their "Nar-ness", they explicitly call for players to assume OOC stances, break SOD, and/or give up immersion. This may be a quantity thing; nobody thinks you can play a game without at some point doing those things. (E.g., you aren't in-character when you call your friends and ask if they'd like to play such-and-such a game.) So if you want to nit-pick, you can say those games go past some semi-subjective limit in the use of those things, particularly in writing them into the rules.

If I've got my RPG-Genetics right, a lot of that comes from Universalis, which is a descendant of Once Upon a Time and Pantheon, probably passed from there into the first crop of designed-at-the-Forge games, and thence into games such as The Mountain Witch. The other major ingredient commonly found, flag-framing, came from Sorcerer (probably as a refinement of some other game, most likely Champions) and is now pretty much de riguer.

Note that Mike Holmes doesn't really consider Universalis to be an RPG.

Ron Edwards identifies two 'superfamilies' of Forge narr games, which I think agree substantially with your analysis.

QuoteOn the left-hand side, one superfamily is rooted in stuff like Over the Edge and Cyberpunk and goes on through the "door" of Sorcerer, branching apart from there. It includes Dogs in the Vineyard.

On the right-hand side, the other superfamily is rooted in stuff like Story Engine and Soap, and it goes on through the "door" of Universalis, branching apart rather drastically from there. It includes (via MLWM) Polaris.
..............................
On the side which includes Dogs....what their characters want to do and start to do cannot be overriden or even mechanically modified by anyone else at the table. If you state, "He kisses her," and the group goes into the Conflict Resolution system, it's established, the kiss is both intended and initiated.

On the side which includes Polaris....If you state, "He kisses her," then eventually, the way the scene works out, it's at least possible that he never even thought about or tried to kiss her.

I thought of that family tree, but I don't really see a connection to my analysis. In my mind, that division has more to do with narration-trading vs. pre-narration, and generally the level of consensus called for in the rules, than it does with distributed/shared narration vs. flag framing.