Quote from: BedrockBrendan;626399...and I feel like he must sense that sort of over focused design just can't make a successful edition of D&D.

One of the interesting things to me is just how wrong people like you are when you say that 4E was 'over focused', and really just it's as foolish and bad of a error as that the Forge made in 'System Matters'. In fact, it's the same freakin' error.

Someday I hope people step back and actually look at what they're saying. But I doubt such self-awareness is possible.

Quote from: gleichman;626405One of the interesting things to me is just how wrong people like you are when you say that 4E was 'over focused', and really just it's as foolish and bad of a error as that the Forge made in 'System Matters'. In fact, it's the same freakin' error.

Someday I hope people step back and actually look at what they're saying. But I doubt such self-awareness is possible.

It must be torture being you.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;626416It must be torture being you.

Not at all, I enjoy it a great deal in fact.

Quote from: RPGPundit;626333Of course, its because they'd drunk the kool-aid: Edwards had promised that a game that tried to be JUST G, N, or S would be a much bigger success than a game that tried to be many things to many people and was full of what he saw as "incoherent".

My view the result are RPGs with a spectacularly narrow focus. So narrow that player quickly exhaust the possibilities and grow bored with the game. Which is the opposite of a general purpose "incoherent" RPG which try to emulate an entire genre or setting with its limitless possibilities.

The tragedy that the basic characteristics of an RPG naturally lend it itself to emulation due to the focus on individual characters. As a designer you have to put in a lot of effort to hobble that.

Quote from: estar;626462The tragedy that the basic characteristics of an RPG naturally lend it itself to emulation due to the focus on individual characters. As a designer you have to put in a lot of effort to hobble that.

My god do they try.

Quote from: CRKrueger;626466My god do they try.

I would go as far to say that some of the Forge RPGs read like some special adventure module rather than a full blown RPG as they are tied so solidly to a specific type of character or situation.

D&D 4e in some way read like an elaborate form of Metagaming's Melee. A wargame featureing individual characters and progression. But to be fair ultimately that is the result of presentation of the product line than the rules themselves.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;625685As for that citation...

I see Ron claiming that he never partook of One True Wayism there, but the claim isn't backed up by stuff he said elsewhere. The whole Brain Damage thing seems to stem from his personal bugbear that there is only One True Way to accomplish something resembling satisfying storytelling in RPGs, and that's his Story Now deal, and anyone who tries to accomplish it with Story Before or Story After is literally fucked in the head.

Insisting on a narrow focus is the problem on both sides here.

The original D&D set made no mention of "role playing." Neither did Supplement I, II or III. It was not defined; people playing the game that actually was described generally came to accept the term as descriptive.

The booklets made no attempt to define "the right way" to play: "The best way is to decide how you would like it to be, and then make it just that way!"

That view was echoed half a decade later in the 5th edition of Tunnels & Trolls:

QuoteAlthough there are many "rules" in the book that follows, please remember this: they are largely intended as guidelines to save you the effort of re-creating everything yourself from scratch. If you find something you would like to change to make the game more to your liking, then go ahead and change it. There is no "right" or "wrong" way to play, only suggestions.

The Supplements and magazine articles offered a smorgasbord of variants drawn from different campaigns. I would much rather see that continue indefinitely, than see one thoroughly incompatible "new edition" after another.

The original vision was somewhat obscured in the first edition of AD&D. That's when I recall encountering a new type of FRPer with a fetish for standardized rules sets: metaphorically, D&D as Contract Bridge. In the second edition, it was stated plainly (with considerable discussion of the different results that different approaches were likely to produce).

With 3E, there were certainly a lot of options. However, the "core rules" tightly integrated too much stuff for some tastes (including mine). Whatever happened to the simple framework?

Moreover, some of the new "defaults" seemed (to some people) to create at least as many problems as they solved. The original D&D rules were designed to suit a kind of game few people are playing today (or were even in the 1980s, for that matter). Sometimes, that means they are unsatisfying in different contexts. However, careless "fixes" can make matters worse!

D&D 4E was very far from careless in that regard. Trouble was, it fixed things many people didn't think needed fixing, in ways they found interfered with their ability to play the kind of game they liked, and presented a thoroughly unfamiliar tightly integrated system laden with strange jargon.

If such a novel elaboration is an option, alongside forms that have long been widely accepted, then I see no cause for complaint.

Not that anything anyone else may do with the brand detracts one iota from my gang's enjoyment of our personal style of D&D. It would be nice, though, if D&D fans were not being so pitted against each other.

If Benoist (or anyone else) insists on a particular subset, then he and his associates can easily define it! That was not too hard for the organizers of a Gen Con tournament back in the day -- and they did not need to make their choices "the right way to play" for all D&Ders in order to do it.

Quote from: jhkim;626381I would agree that Edwards made this claim in his GNS essays, and I'd agree that it is wrong (although I don't think sales of self-produced games over a few years is proof).  However,

1) I am doubtful that WotC's choice was based to any significant degree on listening to Ron Edwards.

2) If they did do so, then the blame for this is not on Edwards.  

It is the god-given right of gamers to spout off ill-informed opinions about what RPGs should be like.  Everyone does it - or at least a very large number do.  I'll argue with them about it, but I don't think it is bad or unethical behavior.  Ron Edwards is hardly uniquely culpable for spouting off like this.  If WotC really did follow their 4E strategy because he said so, then they were fucking stupid and the blame is entirely on them, IMO.  

By parallel, I might argue with Gleichman regularly - but if WotC were to publish a new D&D that followed along with his ideas of what RPGs should be, I wouldn't blame him.  I would blame WotC.

In answer to your points:
1) Yes, they most certainly were influenced heavily by Edwards' theory.  There were several people involved in 4e who had bought into this whole idea of being all "(pseudo)-intellectual" about RPG-design. The idea of "theory" and that it was really serious and professional, almost scientific, business to design an RPG, that only really trained and studious people who understand "theory" can do well, had ENORMOUS appeal to them for obvious reasons.

and
2) If some guy is promoting a fake "miraculous therapy" for cancer that uses crystal healing energy or whatever, and talks about how western medicine is "incoherent", and a pair of parents switch their sick kid to it and the kid dies, then certainly, the parents have an important part of the blame.  But so does the shyster who was selling a fraudulent product, convincing the ignorant that his product will fix everything and that its based on sound science.
Ron Edwards is that shyster, and he is directly responsible for the snakeoil he's peddled; that this doesn't absolve the 4e designers of their own blame is irrelevant.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;6270712) If some guy is promoting a fake "miraculous therapy" for cancer that uses crystal healing energy or whatever, and talks about how western medicine is "incoherent", and a pair of parents switch their sick kid to it and the kid dies, then certainly, the parents have an important part of the blame.  But so does the shyster who was selling a fraudulent product, convincing the ignorant that his product will fix everything and that its based on sound science.
Ron Edwards is that shyster, and he is directly responsible for the snakeoil he's peddled; that this doesn't absolve the 4e designers of their own blame is irrelevant.

There are two problems I have with this analogy:

First, whatever else I might think of Ron, I think he genuinely believes his ideas about incoherence, GNS, and even the brain damage.  He attempts to practice these with his own games like Spione and It Was A Mutual Decision.  I think he is wrong about most of these, but I see no evidence that he secretly believes something else about games, and that incoherence and the rest is just a show.  So I don't think being a fraudulent shyster fits - he drinks his own Kool-Aid.  

More importantly, I don't think that opinions about RPGs are anything like medical advice ethically.  As I said, I think that gamers have a god-given right to spout off their opinions about RPGs, regardless of how wrong they are.  

Incidentally, the latter is one reason why I like theRPGsite.  One of the big problems I had with Ron was that as moderator on The Forge, he kept shutting down threads that weren't going the way he liked.  So - being obnoxious and self-aggrandizing fits.  But that doesn't make him responsible.  


Grandiose and wrong claims are different than fraudulent claims.  If a tarot reader lies and says that the last ten people who took his readings each made a million dollars when they really didn't, that is fraud.  If a tarot reader says (and genuinely believes) that tarot readings are the key to unlocking one's future, that is wrong but not fraudulent.  

A parallel that fits better is a business CEO who goes down to the latter type of true-believer tarot reader, based on the tarot reader's aggressive advertising.  The tarot reader gives his best reading, and the CEO goes and creates a business plan based on it.  There is no fraud here - just a stupid CEO who should have known better.

Quote from: jhkim;627128There are two problems I have with this analogy:

First, whatever else I might think of Ron, I think he genuinely believes his ideas about incoherence, GNS, and even the brain damage.

This doesn't make it better.  That on the conscious level he believes his own bullshit, in the same sense that a lot of the people who think vaccinations cause autism believe in their own bullshit, doesn't mean much when he's got a very powerful vested interest in continuing to believ in said bullshit (namely, being the head of a "movement", gaining influence and prestige among the pseudo-intellectual nerds, getting to mock people who don't treat RPGs as "intellectually" as he does, making money from publishing and even public appearances, etc).

I suppose that it moves him that one step from the criminally fraudulent to the (willfully) criminally negligent, but I don't see that as a vast improvement.

QuoteMore importantly, I don't think that opinions about RPGs are anything like medical advice ethically.  As I said, I think that gamers have a god-given right to spout off their opinions about RPGs, regardless of how wrong they are.  

I agree; and its the job of people like me to show how wrong they are.

QuoteIncidentally, the latter is one reason why I like theRPGsite.  One of the big problems I had with Ron was that as moderator on The Forge, he kept shutting down threads that weren't going the way he liked.  So - being obnoxious and self-aggrandizing fits.  But that doesn't make him responsible.  

It does hint to me that he lacks the full conviction of his beliefs, enough that he feels the need to try to silence debate (which is something the Theory Swine have tried to do in most other forums they infiltrate as well).  That would hint to me that he suspects his ideas are on very flimsy ground (well that, and feeling the need to latch onto and subvert the existing RPG hobby as a more plausible option for "success" than trying to strike out on the strength of one's own proposition).

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;627156I agree; and its the job of people like me to show how wrong they are.

And you failed when it mattered.

Assuming that Ron was really the cause behind 4E that is.

Quote from: RPGPundit;627156I suppose that it moves him that one step from the criminally fraudulent to the (willfully) criminally negligent, but I don't see that as a vast improvement.

Heh.  Well, I didn't say it was a vast improvement.  Again, I have argued against GNS and related ideas all the time.  

Quote from: jhkimMore importantly, I don't think that opinions about RPGs are anything like medical advice ethically. As I said, I think that gamers have a god-given right to spout off their opinions about RPGs, regardless of how wrong they are.

Quote from: RPGPundit;627156I agree; and its the job of people like me to show how wrong they are.

And I have no problem with that.  I completely agree with "GNS and incoherence and brain damage is totally wrong".  My problem is when you go farther to the conspiracy stuff and blanket statements about story games and story gamers.

Quote from: jhkim;627128More importantly, I don't think that opinions about RPGs are anything like medical advice ethically.  As I said, I think that gamers have a god-given right to spout off their opinions about RPGs, regardless of how wrong they are.

A good point. The Brain Damage stuff is ethnically nauseating not because Ron was saying mean things about people who like games he doesn't like, but because he was making a completely scientifically unsubstantiated allegation about physical damage to the brain and waving around his credentials as a biologist (and not one who specialises in neurology, to my knowledge) to back that up.

Quote from: Warthur;627196A good point. The Brain Damage stuff is ethnically nauseating not because Ron was saying mean things about people who like games he doesn't like, but because he was making a completely scientifically unsubstantiated allegation about physical damage to the brain and waving around his credentials as a biologist (and not one who specialises in neurology, to my knowledge) to back that up.

Both of those come under a gamer's god given right to their opinion...

The absolute worst thing about Brain Damage was the notion that games are harmful, when the hobby has been accused of exactly that by external detractors--this coming from a sub-group that evangelises about gaming theory leading to better games.

But we can see it as hyperbole. Whether or not it affected D&D 4e hardly seems to matter if that game is a failed experiment.