Blind tribalism is the bugbear of the 21st century.

Quote from: Ladybird;621129Internet communities, as a whole, have really got nastier over the past decade

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;621257In the last 12-24 months I've subjectively noticed a change towards negativity not only on RPG boards, but in the entire discussion space on the parts of the internet that I frequent.

Quote from: David Johansen;621214The ugly thing is how much gaming's come to resemble politics.

I think it is ironic that widespread communication technology has possibly made us more tribal and insular as opposed to less. Everything has become politicized. Morality and belief have become inseparable. You can't support public health care without also being for gun control.

Quote from: CRKrueger;621078However, when you buy into the notion (which started with Uncle Ron) that the narrative style of play was objectively superior

Citation Required.

Quote from: CRKrueger;621083If my character cannot possibly make the decision, then that mechanic of the game, by definition, inhibits my roleplaying because it pulls me out the mental viewpoint of the character into the mental viewpoint of the player looking at the character as an avatar, a character in a story or a piece in a game.

What about decisions the player cannot possibly make because they don't have the same knowledge or situational awareness as the character? How do you simulate intuition and instinct?

Quote from: CRKrueger;621083When you are creating a game that requires you to interface with the core mechanics in an OOC viewpoint, it's really hard to just call it an RPG without some form of qualifier.

Hate to break it to you, but every single RPG requires you to interface with the core mechanics from an OOC viewpoint. Even LARPs do.

Quote from: The Butcher;621134Ron Edwards and some of his associates said some really stupid and condescending things back when The Forge was at its height (I want to say 2004-2007 but I'm not sure) that smack not only of one-true-waysim and hipsterism, but of the sort of agenda that Monte Cook alludes to in the segment of the interview quoted in the OP.

You know how many Forge members called Ron out on his 'brain damage' comment? Pretty much All of them, though of special note was one John Wick.

This is not a monoculture. Just thought I should mention that.

Quote from: jedimastert;621182These are story games:
...Sorcerer...

GOTCHA!

Please explain to me how Sorcerer is a Story Game, using your own criteria as reference.

Quote from: David Johansen;621214D&D's Hit Points ARE Hero Points.

Quote from: gleichman;621216but their mechanical use is different for the player isn't invoking them at his whim.

This is actually a psychologically important distinction. Taking an action which costs you is definitely more immersive than spending a point to buy a result.

Quote from: Doctor Jest;621360Why not eliminate categories across the board?

Well, it certainly works for Board Game Night.

Quote from: Benoist;621377That does NOT change the fact that James Bond 007 is NOT a narrative game

Yet apparently it can be played as such using the RAW.

Quote from: Benoist;621377that it doesn't construe the process of playing as "building a narrative", that the use of Hero Points to modify the environment is therefore NOT "an alteration of the narrative", and that its primary goal is genre emulation, immersion, the creation of a verisimilar world that is close to James Bond's.

Arr, there be weasel words afoot in that thar paragraph. Unless I be misunderstandn ye, your saying that as long as I say me game is not building a narrative, and that using Hero Points to modify the environment is not an alteration of the narrative, then my game be a tried and true RPG.

Good to know (and why am I suddenly a pirate? 0_o).

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;621597What must die, what needs to be warred against, is the GNS.

Yeaaaah, Ron and gang kinda moved on from GNS awhile ago after refining some of its concepts. The only places it gets discussed these days is here and on RPG.net. And ironically, the two folks I know who wage war against it the hardest (you and Omnifray BTW) are also the most wordy and 'Forgistic' posters as well, often trying to replace GNS with their own theory.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;621638GNS said they were the same, they aren't.

Um, no. GNS gave us a way to show how they were different.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;621638The Forge died.

It was shut down after it achieved its objective. But keep telling yourself it was a victory if that makes you feel better.

Quote from: soviet;621967The player is simply being given an opportunity to say what their expectations are in a way that puts the player and GM on broadly the same page. This statement is being made in advance, so it's a known part of the conflict before the roll and the GM gets to refuse anything he doesn't find plausible. Finally the GM himself is the one who narrates the outcome and can modify the declared stakes as he sees fit.

If this is what makes a Story Game, then I am totally a dirty stinkin' Storygamer.

Quote from: RPGPundit;622447Except of course that it was due to rampant and egregious proselytizing on the part of the Forge/Storygame Swine that they pushed to implement these changes

No. it isn't. It's the market.

Sorry to say that these games have wider appeal. The problem is they're not reaching the audience because things like Pathfinder, D&D and WH40K are in the forefront. I've also spoken to numerous ex-gamers and most of them left for the same reasons. In fact, I've been very surprised at the number of people who have tried RPGs sometime in their lifetime.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;622478I have definitely seen a lot of debates against immersion online (not here really but in other forums) And there is often a forge-like angle behind it.

Indeed, it's very much a pot/kettle/black kinda thing.

Quote from: CRKrueger;622521That's one thing people forget, the true father of narrative gaming isn't Edwards.  You'd have to give that distinction to Robin Laws.

Aaaactually, it goes back to the authors of Theatrix.

Quote from: RPGPundit;622523And yet now we have storygamers trying to market many of their games as being part of the OSR

Yeah, that IS weird and counterproductive.

Quote from: CRKrueger;623095No one would even think of mixing FPS, 3PS, RTS, TBS, MMO, Racing, Sports, etc.

O R L Y?

Thank god not everyone lacks your apparent imagination.

Quote from: CRKrueger;623095The System Matters™ people aren't advertising their systems, except to their existing audience through arcane jargon.  What does that tell you?

It tells me we have insufficient language fidelity to discuss game systems. Also people evaluate based on BRANDS, not systems, and use the brand to describe the system. That's why all RPGs are D&D to many people.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;623153Yeaaaah, Ron and gang kinda moved on from GNS awhile ago after refining some of its concepts. The only places it gets discussed these days is here and on RPG.net. And ironically, the two folks I know who wage war against it the hardest (you and Omnifray BTW) are also the most wordy and 'Forgistic' posters as well, often trying to replace GNS with their own theory.
.

GNS still gets discussed elsewhere and still has its proponents. I certainly see them on enworld for example,  where there are posters who push it (or some variation of it) pretty aggressively.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;623153Sorry to say that these games have wider appeal. The problem is they're not reaching the audience because things like Pathfinder, D&D and WH40K are in the forefront. I've also spoken to numerous ex-gamers and most of them left for the same reasons. In fact, I've been very surprised at the number of people who have tried RPGs sometime in their lifetime.
.

I think though that there is some truth the idea that most gamers tend to react negatively to a lot of the kinds of mechanics you see in story/forge-type games. I dont think there is anything inherently bad about such mechanics, but their lack of widespread popularity isn't, in my view, simply because they are obscured by the behemoths of D&D and Pathfinder. There are plenty of bigger RPGs out there employing these mechanics,but the closer you get to a storygame, the more I think you find there is division within the game group over mechanics. A lot of these kinds of games re more comfortable with out of character mechanics or mechanics that give descriptive powers to players usually reserved for the GM. Some people genuinely like that, but it isn't everyone's cup of tea. Where I think the more aggressive story game advocates start getting a negative reaction from rpgers who might not otherwise care about them, is when they suggest the hobby can (or must!) be saved by their approach, or that people need to be convinced they really like story mechanics (or there is no such thing as in character play, immersion,etc).

I remember a while back (maybe ten years even) there was a lot of talk of montages in games and the GM using montage techniques to set scenes or establish backgrounds (similar talk was there for flashbacks) While a few people jumped on board, most of us hard a real hard time understanding the appeal. I just found that approach jarring and not particularly enjoyable. It didn't become a huge thing because I think most people didn't like it, not because they never heard about it or because D&D was too big.

Now you still see people using this technique every once in a while. I hasnt gone away completely. But it just isnt something most people seem to want in an RPG.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;623153Blind tribalism is the bugbear of the 21st century.

Pot...kettle...black

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;623153Citation Required.

"More specific to your question, Vincent, I'll say this: that protagonism was so badly injured during the history of role-playing (1970-ish through the present, with the height of the effect being the early 1990s), that participants in that hobby are perhaps the very last people on earth who could be expected to produce *all* the components of a functional story. No, the most functional among them can only be counted on to seize protagonism in their stump-fingered hands and scream protectively"

-Ron Edwards.

"Now for the discussion of brain damage. I'll begin with a closer analogy. Consider that there's a reason I and most other people call an adult having sex with a, say, twelve-year-old, to be abusive. Never mind if it's, technically speaking, consensual. It's still abuse. Why? Because the younger person's mind is currently developing - these experiences are going to be formative in ways that experiences ten years later will not be. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the characteristic behaviors of someone with this history, but I am very familiar with them - and they are not constructive or happiness-oriented behaviors at all. The person's mind has been damaged while it was forming, and it takes a hell of a lot of re-orientation even for functional repairs (which is not the same as undoing the damage)."

-Ron Edwards

"All that is the foundation for my point: that the routine human capacity for understanding, enjoying, and creating stories is damaged in this fashion by repeated "storytelling role-playing" as promulgated through many role-playing games of a specific type. This type is only one game in terms of procedures, but it's represented across several dozens of titles and about fifteen to twenty years, peaking about ten years ago. Think of it as a "way" to role-play rather than any single title."

-Ron Edwards


I have to go off to work now. I will shovel up some more "gems" from the Forge compost pile later.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;623151If you believe in a style of play or a particular definition of rpgs, let people see it through your work and your game sessions.

I agree, that is effective. The OSR moved the center of gravity for the hobby towards traditional RPG's, and (it seems to me) had a huge effect on D&D Next.

OSR publication played a part. But so did the OSR community, the fans who never made a game, just talked about how much they loved that style of gaming.

Blog postings, forum participation, and other advocacy efforts (conscious or de-facto) have their place. And they're the primary way consumers who don't wish to be game designers, or don't have the time and resources to be game designers, can have an effect.

By all means, people should build games if that's something they want to do. (I am.) Set a good example of game design. But polite and persistent consumer feedback — which, stripped of bombast, is what I'm arguing for — is also effective.

(So are buying patterns. "Vote with your dollar" and such. Can be very effective. That seems to be what swayed D&D.)

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;623153It was shut down after it achieved its objective. But keep telling yourself it was a victory if that makes you feel better.

Absolutely hilarious.

As Jasyn pointed out, labeling doesn't have to be an MPAA tag.  Descriptive text on the back, or in the case of FPS vs. 3PS a simple screenshot describes the difference, or adcopy on the site you purchase the game from, or the seller doesn't need to put his own label on it, because he's selling into a retail distribution chain that already has categories and they now how it will be sold.

How can I fix it?  I can't.  I'm not the one filling games with narrative mechanics that REQUIRE ooc viewpoints and simply putting RPG on my game and website.   All I can do it call bullshit when I see it.  Someone says X equals Y, I can attempt to show why X does not equal Y.  I can't make them say X=X, and I can't (and in the end don't care) whether they actually think X=Y or are doing so to try and gain mindshare.

Monte Cook is right when he said that a lot of the discussion about RPGs has gone toxic in the same way that conversation about anything in the US or anyplace within reach of the internet has gone toxic.  People simply want their way to win and so increasingly, no one is even pretending to be arguing in good faith.  That's why there's little point in even looking at awful purple for example.  This place, for the most part, is different, so I call it like I see it and try not to let the drive-by one-liners slide, because a one-liner slides enough uncontested, it becomes common wisdom.  Then you get an echo chamber like TGD, where groups of those one-liners now becomes the foundation which frames all arguments.

Now I might do something like Jasyn is suggesting.  Construct a calm, cool, and collected post, logically laying out why I think, for example, the Comrade system in Only War is a mechanic that defeats the process of IC roleplaying and is not something I'm looking for in an RPG, post it on FFG, and hope a designer sees it and keeps it rattling around somewhere in his head, when it comes time to design the next 40k game.

Edit: For the many people who caught me on the "Mixing" computer game genres, you're right, that happens a lot, I meant to say mislabeling.  You buy a game that says Turn-based strategy, and it's real time, you're gonna be upset for example.  But, if someone does mix the genres looking for something new, they sure as heck advertise it.

Hey, Anon Adderlan: I went back and reread the Brain Damage thread at the Forge, the one where John Wick and others tackled Ron about it.

You are correct that not everyone at the Forge went along with Ron.

You are not correct in saying that they all condemned him. Many enthusiastically defended the concept (though admittedly a lot of that defence involved pretending Ron didn't quite say what he actually said). In fact, it's ironic that you brought up John Wick in the discussion because in John's last post on that thread, he specifically takes time out to bemoan the fact that the Forge had become so "cultish" - his word, not mine - that a sizable chunk of the user base would actually defend Ron on this point.

The great irony of the brain damage controversy is that the Forge created a large number of fanboys who could only approach RPG theory and design from a GNS perspective, as though that were the only way you could possibly describe or analyse roleplaying games. That's not brain damage, but it is precisely the sort of "I have been trained to the point where I literally cannot recognise that there are other ways of thinking about this stuff" nonsense which Ron claimed to be decrying when he was in the midst of backpedalling on the whole brain damage thing.

Possibility 1. There is a global conspiracy of storygame fifth columnists out to destroy the RPG hobby by falsely and maliciously advertising their storygames as RPGs in order to corrupt young minds and leech off the sweet, sweet revenue stream that is tabletop roleplaying books sold on the internet.

Possibility 2. People simply don't agree with you that storygames are not RPGs.

Quote from: 1989;623174Absolutely hilarious.

The forge can't be an unholy global conspiracy that's destroying RPGs if only people would open their damn eyes and a pathetic failure all at the same time. It has to be one or the other.

Or, well, neither.

Quote from: soviet;623188Possibility 2. People simply don't agree with you that storygames are not RPGs.

I know some fundamental Christians who insist that the Earth is only 6000 years old and I disagree with their belief. That does not mean that they are not fucked in the head wrong on the subject.

Within the broader market, story games like Dogs in the Vineyard, Polaris, Apocalypse World, and Fiasco are classified as RPGs - even though Polaris and Fiasco don't call themselves RPGs.  

If I go to a game store and ask where to find Dogs in the Vineyard, they'll say to look in the RPG section.  If I am at a game convention and go to the help desk asking where I can find Fiasco events in the program, they'll tell me to look under RPG listings.  In all the other online forum except this one that I know of, such story games will be discussed in the same category as traditional RPGs.  

So if a story game producer wants to sell to the general market rather than to some subset of people here on theRPGsite, it is quite reasonable for them to use the term "RPG" from a non-ideological marketing standpoint.

RPGPundit already declared his victory over Storygames.  Why are you people talking about something already dead? You know how we know none of these recent games are Storygames? Because RPGPundit already declared them all dead, so they can't be Storygames unless they are somehow zombie Storygames.  And really, those should be extra-easy to spot, what with the moaning and shuffling and decaying flesh and attempts to eat your brain and such.

Seriously though, this debate had value some years ago, but it sure looks meaningless now. Why care about the finer distinctions anymore?

Quote from: RPGPundit;623046Moreso in the case of things like DW and other recent Storygamer Swine efforts where they try to claim that the OSR was somehow thanks to them and a product of their "genius" and "innovation".

I haven't spent as much time as you have on observing this, so I don't have so many examples.

What I have been sensitized to so far are various essays, blog posts and forum posts that seem coordinated and purposeful for positioning a generation of products as the next evolution of RPG, and trying to coopt what's happening with OSR - with stealth marketing.

This is understandable, because OSR is riding so high today, as much for the crash and burn of 4E and failure of Hasbro to understand its market - Hasbro understands this now.

I just reposted my list of software industry deadly sins to my non-game blog, and it is striking how the top three exactly match what happened with 4E and Hasbro. With 5th edition, Hasbro is trying to appeal to the generation of gamers they lost with 4E ("Ignoring Your Customers and Their Real Needs"), which are a lot of the proponents of OSR and those who moved on to Pathfinder ("Underestimating Your Competition").

Quote from: jibbajibba;623138Well whatever floats your boat I guess.
I can't help thinking embracing more styles of play and being a broad church is a better way to go but maybe that is just me.

There's nothing wrong with that, it's commendable.  But you seem to be making one mistake.

You're assuming a new group with a new branch of thought came in and said "Hey guys, let's all get along." and the evil masterminds Pundit and Benoist decided to start a Pogrom.

In fact, it was the opposite.  The notion of battle, the aggressiveness of the clash, the toxicity of the debate was defined and initiated by the newcomers, not by the staus quo.  We're not the ones who went with brain damage, and we're still not the ones who claim the other side is delusional with multiple personality disorder which you still see tossed up on awful purple or even here from time to time.

If you want to compare Edward's brain damage with Pundit's Swine, just think, how many people here not only don't agree with Pundit, but actually disparage him at every opportunity on his own site?  How many people did that on the Forge?  The Forge was much more in line with Edward's extremes then this place is with Pundit's.

We can go round and round, but what it comes down to is that you, JKim and others, simply do not think that anyone on the narrativist side of things is actually treating this like a clash of ideas and memes and is using proven techniques of "idea warfare" which is usually present in the cultural, political and religious arenas to advance the narrativist memes of the Forge.