At last, peace can ensue!
My deep insight has finally reached the Forgers!

Look here:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=24317.0

QuoteP.S.: This highly intense, emotional thing we were doing here shares some roots and methods with the thing the guys next door with the minis and battlemap were doing, but I repeated saying that evening that both are totally different hobbies. That's not to say that one person cannot like both, but they are very, very different.

Bolding mine.

and look here:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=24288.msg237147#msg237147

Still hoping that your jargon will be excepted in the Forge, eh Sett? Sorry to dissapoint, but I've heard the same shit being spewed on those very boards before. You do realize that you're not the first to try to divide this hobby into different camps?

I mean I heard folks use Kyle's Hack & Thesp styles to differentiate between the types of games they want to play/run. Doesn't mean they are in a different hobby.

Edit: In all my years of gaming I've yet to come across a rule/system which switches on an emotional response in players or turns a game into a deep emotional/thematic experience. If games are such it's because of the players.

Also, Sett's post is a prime example of the disingenuous nature that theory folk always seem to exhibit. I mean all this time, anything from the Forge is wrong, evil etc...but when they write something that fit's into "your" theory - it's the truth. Fuckers.

Regards,
David R

For somebody who thinks they're not in the same hobby, you sure seem to spend a bit of time trawling their forums....

Both the Forgers and Settembrini are wrong. They're quite the same hobbies - as David R said, different styles in the same hobby. I mean, When Harry Met Sally is one kind of movie, and Saving Private Ryan is another kind of movie, but they are both movies. Even, god forbid that I should be forced to watch it again, even Dumb and Dumber is a movie. The style of the thing, even its quality, don't change its essentially movie nature.

Likewise, with rpgs. Just because Settembrini pretends to be an elven princess in a chainmail bikini with a +3 Vorpal Longsword/+6 vs Nasty Hobbitses and Ron Edwards pretends to be an elven princess who wants to break up with her boyfriend but is nervous to tell him it's because of her satanic child abuse, does not mean that they are in different hobbies.

It would be really nice if I could say that I was in a different hobby to these lunatics, whether they're bat penis studying lunatics, or Prussian munchkin lunatics, but I have to be honest with myself and admit that it's basically the same thing we're doing, playing roleplaying games.

Quote from: David RAlso, Sett's post is a prime example of the disingenuous nature that theory folk always seem to exhibit. I mean all this time, anything from the Forge is wrong, evil etc...but when they write something that fit's into "your" theory - it's the truth. Fuckers.

Yep.

QuoteFor somebody who thinks they're not in the same hobby, you sure seem to spend a bit of time trawling their forums....

I was equipped with a linky by one of my loyal readers.

Quote from: Kyle AaronEven, god forbid that I should be forced to watch it again, even Dumb and Dumber is a movie.

Heresy!

I'm with Kyle on this. And I don't even think there's always such a big stylistic difference. I think there's a general gradient that many groups and players slide back and forth through. I think this is true to a greater extent than a lot of people (IME on the indie side of the fence more commonly) would like to admit.

It isn't a different hobby to have characters with personal relationships that are important (or even primary). It sure isn't a different game.

-Marco

Quote from: MarcoI'm with Kyle on this. And I don't even think there's always such a big stylistic difference. I think there's a general gradient that many groups and players slide back and forth through. I think this is true to a greater extent than a lot of people (IME on the indie side of the fence more commonly) would like to admit.

It isn't a different hobby to have characters with personal relationships that are important (or even primary). It sure isn't a different game.

-Marco

Lord! Marco knows I feel the same! The PCs in our IRC game will spend hours dealing with relationships. Our last session was a dinner with the party's candidate for queen - or rather the candidate for queen who picked the party as her champions - conducted in Elizabethan English, intercut with a couple going variable-G dancing. OTOH, when the bioroid assassins teleport into the cargo bay, it's time to drop the relationships and pick up the weapons.

-clash

Well, the movie analogy doesn't quite work because it relies on seeing movies as objects (artifacts) rather than cultural activities. By that analogy, an RPG and a telephone book are the same thing.

David's on the mark when he suggests that it's people, not rules, that trigger emotional responses. But that doesn't invalidate Sett's claim. Woodcarving and sushi-making are different activities even though both involve knives.

I really think we have to view this whole "thing" in terms of culture and cultural identity. Miniatures and board wargames have distinct but overlapping cultures; RPGs and wargames are the same, so are different genres of RPG activity. You'll never have total separation but I believe there are clusters or clumps of associations--of people, games, and concepts. They're not arbitrary, and the distance from the "center" of one clump to the "center" of another may be a fairly large even though the edges blend together.

Pffft. Muddled mumbling and sloppy semantics to avoid the truth: these are all roleplaying games.

A game is an activity undertaken for amusement which has varying amounts of both choice and chance; the choice or chance may be emergent properties of chance and choice, or vice versa.

Roleplaying is taking on and playing an individual role.

These are all roleplaying games.

That's why the movie analogy is apt. Because what the movie is about and the style and quality of the thing is irrelevant to its essential nature as a movie. Likewise, with rpgs.

If you want to talk about a movie as a "cultural activity" rather than an "object" then you can talk of "movie-making" instead, or "movie discussion groups" if you prefer, but it all comes to the same thing.

Both the Forgers and Settembrini are talking a load of old bollocks. That's because each wants to feel superior to the other, and you can't feel superior without feeling separate. You can't be superior to something you're inextricably a part of.

Like it or not, both lots of geeks are gamer geeks. Of course, plenty of them deserve mocking laughter for other reasons, but...

The tasteless and shallow self-righteousness of the Poster formely known as JimBob is too much for me.

Parting shot: Why in hell, if all is one and one is all, are you not posting at the Forge?

Consider and ponder, and embrace my superiour insight.

Alas, I won´t be able to read your reply, though.

Have fun being yourself!:cool:

I read the Forge post and the thing that strikes most is the poster's rather precious way of writing "Jenga(tm)". TM? Once you have internalised this kind of attitude, it is over. You have no balls.

TheShadow

I think this was supposed to be funny.

Well, you and the poster in question both being German, I'll take your word for it.

TheShadow