QuoteBut if the administrator of a board makes a point of making hostile (and error-filled) statements about the very types of games I presently enjoy, it's not going to be a useful environment for me. You dig?

Please don't let Pundit push you away.  Just because he's hostile to the Forge, its designers, and games doesn't mean everyone here is.  He may be an admin, but for most purposes he's just one guy with his own (vocal) opinions.  As Settembrini indicates calling him on his crap is a-okay.  As is ignoring him when he gets too belligerent.  Lord knows I've done both over at his own blog!  I'd really love it if you stuck around and maybe posted something about your experiences with Trollbabe in the Actual Play or general RPGs section.  I'm not a fan of one-on-one RPGs, but some of the other features of the game look intriguing.

Quote from: GabrielActually, I'd be very interested in wider discussion (clearly our minds are made up) of whether Amber passes or fails your Landmark #6.  While I find it a very entertaining read, and an excellent primer on how to GM (probably one of the only good ones), I definitely wouldn't call it a RPG.  It's more like free-form role playing.  It's very similar in nature to a free form moderated military simulation (cadets placed in different rooms, told what resources they have at their disposal, and then a officer presents them with a scenario and decides on their success solely based on his own experiences.)

I find Pundit's love of Amber to be a strange, and possibly hypocritical, aberration as well.  I can't think of a more 'swinish' game in terms of mechanics and play than that one, save perhaps Nobilis.

Quote from: GRIMI find Pundit's love of Amber to be a strange, and possibly hypocritical, aberration as well.  I can't think of a more 'swinish' game in terms of mechanics and play than that one, save perhaps Nobilis.

Well, I won't presume to know what Pundit is thinking, but I can take a stab at MAYBE why Amber doesn't get thrown to the swine.

While I think of Amber as role playing without rules, it is a social game of sorts.  From the beginning of character creation, it is extremely competitive.  And, everything theoretically boils down to player skill, player skill meaning how manipulative a player can be.  And it's very well focused on this premise.

Pundit always makes a big deal about how RPGs are social exercises first and foremost.  Amber eliminates most of the other dressings of a RPG in favor of a purely social experience.  To be a bit unkind, Pundit has historically been pretty big on his "alpha male" hypothesis, and Amber, by its very competitive structure and personality versus personality gameplay, encourages this kind of social pecking order.

Plus, there's the all important lack of pretentiousness.  Wujick writes the book in a conversational manner.  He doesn't dream up new random terms, and instead simply uses the exising RPG vocabulary.  He basically just says, "Hey!  Here's this fun idea I had, please try it out.  I think you'll like it."  That's drastically different from "the Hollyhock God" and claims of "revolutionizing and changing role playing forever."  He doesn't claim Amber is somehow innately superior to something like Palladium, he just says "I have fun playing without dice.  You might like it too."

How about this:

QuoteAs stated in Landmark #3, D&D is the template for a successful RPG.  The relative proposed levels of control of the game between players and GMs is an important part of this success.  In short, players should have total control of their characters and own actions.  Players should be able to expect the GM to be an impartial moderator dedicated to the enjoyment of the social group.  And GM's should have control of the world and non-player controlled inhabitants (unless he abdicates this responsibility, as in the case of player controlled Hirelings and such).

Intruding upon this defined structure, or altering it to cripple the GM or Players respective spheres of influence may be seen as a sign of dysfunctional play and/or may be indicative of something which does not match the template of an RPG.

Yes?  No?  Says something entirely separate from what was originally intended?

I'm one of the most ardent swine hunters and too radical for many, but listen what Clinton R. Nixon has to say:

Quote(Settembrini: the bit I quoted from you is so smart and on the money that I want to shake your hand.)

Enough bragging, honestly, there is a fighting understanding between the Forge and most Pundit-Heads. Even Ron doesn't understand Pundits hate for him, as they are most of the time of the same opinion.

I myself am deeply looking into buying Burning Empires, who would have thought?

Whom I hate feverishly are the Swineheads who run around with their Magic Pixie Dust, and threadcrap non-Forge peoples threads. But they do it for a reason: they are not even seen as the in-people at the forge! They are double sided losers. So I fight them.

But truth and free speech will be served on this site, if anything at all. But this right is also central to the Admin himself. NOBODY shall restrain their arguments, as long they stand up to defend them.

EDIT: ANY Game must be criticized. No matter WHO wrote it. There shall never be a "safe zone" for any type of game. If forge games can stand for themselves, they will survive a punditrous onslaught. If he's right and a game is bullshit, he has done society a service by pointing it out.

Quote from: GabrielYes?  No?  Says something entirely separate from what was originally intended?

I think that's pretty good stuff, though I'd go with "may be seen as a sign of dysfunctional play".  I'm not yet convinced that seriously screwing with the GM/player relationship is a useless endeavor.

Quote from: jrientsthough I'd go with "may be seen as a sign of dysfunctional play".  

I agree, and edited.

Quote from: GabrielHow about this:



Yes?  No?  Says something entirely separate from what was originally intended?

Er.. well its basically saying what I meant to say, yes. Except you've switched th words around to give more emphasis to defending the rights of players.  In the way that it sounds, I mean. You say "Players should have total control of their characters"; whereas the GM you just say should have "control" of his setting.

Let's be honest here: The swine these days, other than the few reprobates left over from the old White-Wolf "hate the players and make them puppets for the Storyteller" days, are all about the opposite reaction: they were anti-player back in the 90s, now they are anti-GM.

Its the GM's role that needs protecting by the Landmarks. I mean, really, both of them need protecting, but the GM is the one who is constantly under assault these days.

RPGPundit

Quote from: GabrielWell, I won't presume to know what Pundit is thinking, but I can take a stab at MAYBE why Amber doesn't get thrown to the swine.

While I think of Amber as role playing without rules, it is a social game of sorts.  From the beginning of character creation, it is extremely competitive.  And, everything theoretically boils down to player skill, player skill meaning how manipulative a player can be.  And it's very well focused on this premise.

Pundit always makes a big deal about how RPGs are social exercises first and foremost.  Amber eliminates most of the other dressings of a RPG in favor of a purely social experience.  To be a bit unkind, Pundit has historically been pretty big on his "alpha male" hypothesis, and Amber, by its very competitive structure and personality versus personality gameplay, encourages this kind of social pecking order.

Plus, there's the all important lack of pretentiousness.  Wujick writes the book in a conversational manner.  He doesn't dream up new random terms, and instead simply uses the exising RPG vocabulary.  He basically just says, "Hey!  Here's this fun idea I had, please try it out.  I think you'll like it."  That's drastically different from "the Hollyhock God" and claims of "revolutionizing and changing role playing forever."  He doesn't claim Amber is somehow innately superior to something like Palladium, he just says "I have fun playing without dice.  You might like it too."

You basically got it, with one exception. Amber HAS rules. Very well defined RULES. The fact that these rules include neither a beancounter element nor a random element does not stop them from being rules.

Amber is the fucking Chess of RPGs.  Or really, more accurately, its the Diplomacy of RPGs. Lots of fixed non-random mechanics that play elegantly, modified by how the players are trying to fuck each other up the ass.

But you're utterly right about the social pecking order business.

You see, Amber strips away a lot of the veneer of illusion that other RPGs have; I think that's part of why it makes certain people so nervous.
It strips away the illusion other RPGs create that the GMs power to influence the world is somehow less than absolute. We all know that in D&D, in just about any RPG, the GM at the end of the day can make ANYTHING he wants to happen. In Amber, Wujcik just got rid of the illusion that things like dice and modifiers and difficulty ratings provided, the illusion that somehow the GM is limited in some way, and made the obvious truth visible.

There is also an illusion, in RPGs, that the game is all egalitarian. Its not, its always a social power struggle. There's always people competing for time, for attention, for protagonism. The GM better be the top dog, and after that part of how he keeps it fun is by making sure that no other player becomes too dominant over the rest of the pack.

In Amber, there is a vent for that power-struggle. First, it establishes absolutely and plainly, by removing that first illusion, that the GM is the top dog.  Then it puts plainly what the second illusion was meant to cover up: that the players with the most ability to think quickly, to be social, to draw attention to themselves; will end up getting more out of the game. Then it creates a way for that truth to be obvious without ruining the fun for everyone, and in the process encourages everyone to think more quickly, be more social, and draw more attention to themselves.

Amber doesn't just make better GMs, it makes better players too.

And yes, finally, the lack of Pretentiousness is a hugely important thing. Being a Swine is 9/10ths about your posture. If you run around claiming that your RPGs are all-important (or more often that YOU are all important for playing RPGs the way you play them) then you are a Swine. Most Swine act that way, making out that RPGs are art or intellectual pursuit or culture, without ever actually doing a fucking thing, so its ALL about posture. And the ones who do make an RPG inevitably make one that in no way lives up to their hype about their own self-importance.
What is the difference, for example, between an old fashioned RPG and a Storyteller game?
Simple, the Storyteller game claims to be a storyteller game. That's it. That's the only difference. Mechanically, there's nothing about Vampire that makes it more sophisticated or more oriented toward "storytelling play" than D&D. Its just another RPG, with nothing special or new about it.

Whereas Erick Wujcik did something radically different. He actually made an RPG that was radically innovative, utterly different from other games that were out there, and he did it without claiming that he was the "answer" to gaming's woes, or that his way was the new movement for the brighter future, or that he was the greatest artist since Jack Kerouac, or any other fucking bullshit claim the Swine like to toss about.

I fucking ADORE Amber because it kicks the living shit out of ANYTHING the Swine ever made in terms of innovation and originality, it is the living proof that they are WRONG, and that they are LIARS. That all their claims of intelligentsia are just that, claims, with no foundation.

It is the anti-Swine.

So I love it for the same reason they hate it. You don't see a lot of Swine love for Amber around the Forge do you?

RPGPundit

Quote from: droogAnybody who's actually played some of the better-known Forge games would be scratching their heads at this description. I've played and run a few of these games (eg Sorcerer, Trollbabe, Dogs in the Vineyard, Burning Wheel, Nicotine Girls, Donjon), and I can assure you that 'having things always go the players' way' is not at all the philosophy behind them.

The whole "say yes or roll the dice"; "fun now", shit... NARRATIVISM is nothing more, when it comes down to it, then the players' selfish demands that they get to protagonize exactly the way they want to, the idea that if something is happening with the story that they don't care for, they should be able to change reality to fit their wants; even if it goes against what the GM had planned.

So you're wrong. But to paraphrase the Emperor Claudius "the difference between me and him is that I will simply not agree, whereas with him your disagreement would see your head on a pole by morning".

You should stay, because here you're allowed to disagree with me all you like.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditYou don't see a lot of Swine love for Amber around the Forge do you?

Depends who you talk to.

I mostly lurk there, but I really love Amber.

Ben Lehman wrote Polaris, the game that won the "most innovative" indie RPG last time out, and in his list of games that influenced his, right in the book, he includes the note that "this game totally blew my mind".

So, that's two fans.  

Can you point me to two people there getting any hate on for the game, or did you just make up that idea based on the lack of regular discussion about it?

Yeah, you won't find any supporters of Amber on the Forge...right?

But wait, who wrote this article?

Do some games on the Forge challenge the concept of narrative control?

Sure, some do.

Do all of the games do this?

Nope.

Is it cool to sometimes play a different game that challenges what I know and have always accepted about RPGs?

Yes.

Have the games that do this better have something more and not just exist to challenge something?

Damned right they'd better.

This is very much like someone who plays Monopoly getting upset because in another game you don't get around the board in an orderly fashion or in some boards games you create the board as you go!  No way!

That isn't a board game, dammit.

So basically, yeah, it's hypocrisy.

What you're really saying is 'games I don't like are swinish', 'games I do like, even if they have swinish tendencies/mechanics/structure aren't'.

That or you're judging on the designer's attitude, not the game itself.

Ah well, at least you stir and foster debate.

QuoteThat or you're judging on the designer's attitude, not the game itself.

Swinedom is all about attitude, it's the culture of self-elevation in swinery that is to be condemned. it has nothing to do with the games. Promethean is a regular adventure game, but the attitude of the authors tries to make it into something "better" which is in no way backed up by the facts or the rules.

Quote from: SettembriniSwinedom is all about attitude, it's the culture of self-elevation in swinery that is to be condemned. it has nothing to do with the games. Promethean is a regular adventure game, but the attitude of the authors tries to make it into something "better" which is in no way backed up by the facts or the rules.

Most Swine games are just mediocre RPGs with claims of grandeur.
The ones that aren't are inferior RPGs with claims of grandeur.

RPGPundit