Just wanted to correct a couple of things here.

First, the AP referenced on the rpg.net thread was not a demo at Gen Con. This was someone buying the game and, after-hours, playing it. That is to say it wasn't organized by the game's writer, or anyone involved with Play Collective, the booth at which Vincent (full disclosure: and I) was based, which is my definition of demo. It appears to be much more accurate to say that these are pick-up games of Poison'd we're talking about.

Second, Poison'd didn't technically wind up selling out because there were about 25 (I may have that number wrong) copies found after the end of the con. I believe 100 were printed in total. It was a $9 ashcan; the game is not yet fully done.

--

Further:

My understanding of "System Matters" is not that game systems are deterministically guaranteed to produce certain kinds of games, but rather that the system one designs tends to produce play of certain kinds. Therefore the fact that something many people find repugnant came out of a given game session does not mean the game is necessarily to blame, nor does it mean that one cannot have good clean fun with rules that actually do encourage repugnant behavior.

Or to put it another way, system matters, and so do people. Fervor over this sort of thing, statements that tacitly demand that one pick a side, remind me of nature/nurture arguments in a lot of ways. It's both. It's always both.

Quote from: Consonant DudeThere is no contradiction.

It's called "system matters", not "system is all that matters".

GNS Cop!

System matters, in forge theory, means a very specific thing: specifically that

• Fun = Creative Agenda Fulfilled
• There are exactly 3, non-intersecting CA's
• Systems can promote CA's and, to produce fun gaming, should ideally focus on a single CA

Under The Big Model SDM means slightly more -- system is defined as "how decisions about what happens in SIS get made" meaning that system is *all* that matters, since anything that affects the game is System.

Now it's true that TBM defn of system is so broad that saying "system matters" under that definition is a useless tautology ("what matters = what matters"), but there you go: if you try to apply forge theory rigorously, everything resolves to nonsense.

On the other hand, if you watch theory folks talk amongst themselves (where rigorous use is not appreciated) then you'll see an approximation: the idea that what gets mechanically rewarded (or, in some formulations, what there are mechanics for) is what shows up in the game.

Hence: D&D has combat rules and gives points for killing things so that's what D&D games are about. Pirate Atrocity has rules for buggering people and a-buggering they will go... but apparently not: it turns out you can ignore the buggering rules if you want to... does that mean my fighter can come out of the dungeon now?

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: RobNJSecond, Poison'd didn't technically wind up selling out because there were about 25 (I may have that number wrong) copies found after the end of the con. I believe 100 were printed in total. It was a $9 ashcan; the game is not yet fully done.

Thanks for the info; I stand corrected.

Quote from: RobNJFirst, the AP referenced on the rpg.net thread was not a demo at Gen Con. This was someone buying the game and, after-hours, playing it. That is to say it wasn't organized by the game's writer, or anyone involved with Play Collective, the booth at which Vincent (full disclosure: and I) was based, which is my definition of demo. It appears to be much more accurate to say that these are pick-up games of Poison'd we're talking about.

Thanks for clarifying that Rob -- good to know you guys weren't directly involved in that specific game.

Quote from: RobNJMy understanding of "System Matters" is not that game systems are deterministically guaranteed to produce certain kinds of games, but rather that the system one designs tends to produce play of certain kinds.

Wait, so the game is designed to encourage reugnant play?

Quote from: RobNJTherefore the fact that something many people find repugnant came out of a given game session does not mean the game is necessarily to blame, nor does it mean that one cannot have good clean fun with rules that actually do encourage repugnant behavior.

But didn't you just say above that the game was designed to "tend" to generate these repugnant play results?

Quote from: droogThe guy used to be an exorcist. He's exorcising his own demons.

Mighty generous of him to let others partake in the endeavor.

QuoteGotta love spiritual struggle. It produces some great shit!

News to me.

Quote from: StuartActually, their moderators should have stepped in and shut that thread down after the [offending] post.  Most hosting companies and domain registrars say something similar to:



Edit:  I should have said offending post -- the first post was fine.

 Actually I just checked - looks like that thread is open again for posting - but the moderators have gone in and trimmed close to 300 posts.

Maybe they finally read a few of the "Bad post" reports that people were sending.


 - Ed C.

Quote from: Joshua FordI think I'm with Temple on this one. The game itself doesn't seem to be an issue for me as the recent sugar-coating of pirates for kids is a little unsettling. They may have buckled the odd swash, but they also practised murder and rape, so lets not go completely overboard on making heroes of them without some redress.

So the esophagus-fucking was done out of fidelity to history?

...Okay I was wrong - about the editing over there. All those pages and posts seem to be back again.

 Looks like the moderators over there don't care ...as long as its a trendy Indie/Forge game it doesn't get touched.



- Ed C.

QuoteLook at Pirates of the stupid Caribbean, even. There's Elizabeth Swann on board the Black Pearl, and all the pirates are leering and closing around her, and she shouts out "parlay," right? There's a threat there. And we know that in Disney's Caribbean, the threat will never come true, but in my movie, my Reservoir Dogs on a boat? We don't know any such thing. In my movie Elizabeth Swann is in danger. When that scene starts, you in the audience don't know whether this is the scene where I (as writer-director) back away from brutality or the scene where the gloves come off.

So you have two choices folks - Disneyfied pap, or graphic sadism. And we know which ones the mature, cool kids will pick.

This type of crude pretension - that the remedy for schlock is to glut yourself on depravity - isn't confined to this tiny off-shoot of RPGs. We see it in movies, books, television. Some brooding wanker who holds pop culture and mainstream society in contempt gets the thoroughly unoriginal notion that if you embrace the opposite aesthetics of safe, phoney, mainstream art, then you will be brave, important and truthful.

Which is of course a load of shit. Revelling in muck for its own sake is no more insightful or sophisticated than Hollywood or Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. If you really want to tell truthful stories and examine the human condition in a serious fashion, then grow up, take your hand off your cock, and stop deluding yourself that bad taste is brave.

Quote from: StuartI'm quite certain that the Actual Play from Poison'd posted to RPG.net would fall under the "criminally obscene" categorization.  I mean... how much worse that that could you really get?

Well they certainly would have a difficult time arguing that it had literary, artistic, political, or scientific value since they've already argued that it was produced by either (A) a desire to get a mechanical bonus in a game or (B) a player just saying twisted things and was posted to promote a game.

I don't know about this "criminally obscene" nonsense, but I would have thought... supposedly, the reason to close Tangency Open off to the general reading public, and restrict it to over-13s, is that it sometimes contains rude stuff, like people talking about their sex lives. So I'm puzzled as to why that nasty thread remains out in Tabletop Roleplaying Open where everyone can see it.

Also supposedly, one of the reasons to ban people who call each-other "fuckhead" or whatever is to help ensure the place has an okay image. So again, I'm puzzled.

I was amused by the fact that in the thread there was a minor drama over some guy using the word "nigger" - not as an insult, but as an example of something gratuitously offensive - and they got him to edit it out to "the n- word". Yet molesting the dismembered corpse of a child remains. They have a strange idea of what is too offensive to even read in type.

Quote from: jeff37923Wait, so the game is designed to encourage reugnant play?

Well, no, that's not what I said and it seems highly unlikely that you don't know that. Why are you willfully misinterpreting what I said? How can we have a conversation under such circumstances?

Quote from: jeff37923But didn't you just say above that the game was designed to "tend" to generate these repugnant play results?

Again, no.

Quote from: RobNJMy understanding of "System Matters" is not that game systems are deterministically guaranteed to produce certain kinds of games, but rather that the system one designs tends to produce play of certain kinds. Therefore the fact that something many people find repugnant came out of a given game session does not mean the game is necessarily to blame, nor does it mean that one cannot have good clean fun with rules that actually do encourage repugnant behavior.

So you're saying that the perverse nature of the events in the game session didn't necessarily have anything to do with the game book itself.

I agree, but that's not actually what "System Matters" says. If you look at Uncle Ronny's essay on the topic, he specifically says that
   "I have heard a certain notion about role-playing games repeated for almost 20 years. Here it is: "It doesn't really matter what system is used. A game is only as good as the people who play it, and any system can work given the right GM and players." My point? I flatly, entirely disagree.
[...]
To sum up, I suggest a good system is one which knows its outlook and doesn't waste any mechanics on the other two outlooks. Its resolution method(s) are appropriate for the outlook: they have search and handling time that works for that outlook, in terms of both what the players have to do and what happens to the characters."
Now, when he speaks of system mattering, what he specifically means is that system matters in producing one of the three types of play he recognises: gamist, narrativist, or simulationist. He does not speak of system mattering in other respects, whether system can make a game humorous or serious or noble or puerile or whatever. But it's a logical extension of what he says, and it's also the way "System Matters" has been taken by the Forger disapora, as evidenced by numerous posts about D&D, Vampire and so on.

So "System Matters" from the Forger point of view may be taken as saying a bit more than it "tends" to produce certain kinds of play. If Ron Edwards gets to blame Vampire game design for "brain damage" impairing our ability to tell "real stories", then by the same principle we must blame Poison'd for the child murder and necrophilia in the game session we're discussing.

Now, I don't think system matters very much. I don't think anyone has any kind of brain damage due to bad roleplaying game books, or even bad roleplaying game sessions, nor yet do I think that it's Vincent Baker's fault if some players of his games did some fucked-up shit in-game. They're just expressing some fucked-up part of themselves, that's all.

But then, I'm not the one saying "System Matters". A simple requirement of any theory is that it should be internally consistent. What the Big Model says about (for example) D&D and Vampire must also be applicable to Poison'd, Sorcerer and so on. We can't say that System Matters when it's talking about games we dislike, and System Doesn't Matter when it's talking about games we like. A theory must be consistent. And that's what the point of the original post of this thread was. The Forgers are very dogmatic about their theory, unless applying it could make them have to say that their own games are bad. "System Does Matter! Look, D&D makes you just kill things and take their stuff!"
"What about that fucked up Poison'd session? Is that the fault of the system?"
"Well... system only tends to produce certain types of play, in... um..."

If the D&D and Vampire systems deserve blame for the fucked-up play they produced under the "System Matters" principle, then indie games deserve blame, too.

But then I think that system doesn't matter much, really. People matter. Again, I know nothing of this game book - only the play report, which is seriously fucked-up. I blame the people involved.

Quote from: RobNJWell, no, that's not what I said and it seems highly unlikely that you don't know that. Why are you willfully misinterpreting what I said? How can we have a conversation under such circumstances?

I think you are trying to obfuscate the truth of the situation, that with a game mechanic designed to reward sociopathic behavior the players will tend to engage in that sociopathic behavior in order to gain the reward.