Quote from: silva;566509I remember there was some hot discussions about Diablo when it came out. Some people defended it as a RPG, while another people didnt.

But yeah, nothing approaches the degree of obssesion found in tabletop RPG forums.

Well, I mean video-games actually went off and got successful, so there are a ton more people in the hobby who don't have nerd-levels that urge them to argue about the purity of genre.

Quote from: CRKrueger;566505Since different games under your definition can deliver wildly different experiences, and be played for very different goals, your definition is broad to the point of not being a definition at all when used in a discussion of game theory and design.

It would be like trying to have a meaningful discussion on the hardware differences as a software platform between a smartphone, tablet, netbook, chromebook, desktop, laptop and blade server when you call them all "Computers" denying that there is any effective difference between them.

Not crazy, but silly in the best case, dishonest in the worst case.

I sometimes find it difficult to believe what I'm reading on this thread.

Think about what you're saying here. Think of all the different human pastimes there are - all the different hobbies. Skiing, football, rock climbing, chess, sewing, writing poetry, reading books, playing computer games, taking photographs...

And you're telling me that putting In A Wicked Age and D&D in the same category of pastime is "broad to the point of not being a definition at all" and "silly in the best case, dishonest in the worst case"?

That's really weird.

That's because in video games you don't have people releasing Counterstrike 3 as a cutscene-driven rpg experience and calling it a FPS.

Actually follow videogame communities (not game design articles) and you'll see plenty of heat when an existing property changes due to experimentation or a focus on a different experience.  People ragequit LotRO over the combined introduction of the Runekeeper class as well as increased focus on raiding, frex, and that wasn't even a minor genre alteration.

Quote from: noisms;566513That's really weird.

If you're talking about "Outdoor Activities" as opposed to Indoor Activities, then kayaking is in the same category as free-climbing.  If you're talking about "Climbing", then free-climbing is not the same as mountaineering.  Two different things.

But, if you don't believe me, ask the author himself who classifies his own game as a Storygame (which is what it is).

Quote from: Peregrin;566507Aside:
I've been wondering if the divides we put between a lot of tabletop games when constructing communities is inefficient (including wargames and board-games).  You don't see structures similar to ours when you look at PC/video-game communities, despite the large number of game genres (however, genre blending is common and nobody really loses sleep over what a game calls itself anymore).

There didn't used to be either, if you go waaay back you can find older discussions about RPGs online, with much less of the vitriol, passive agression, or overt hostility of the more recent ones.

I mean sure there were arguments, always arguments, but I was quite shocked by the general atmosphere in rpgnet, having been completely away from internet based discussions on RPGs for a long time. Not, note, from the internet. And even there go back enough and there is a much more friendly feel to the place.

Eventually I pinned it down to a medium-ish sized group of posters who were extremely aggressive in promoting narrative games, calling actual roleplayers "brainwashed" and so on, and this is a pattern which has been repeated many times. Genuine hobbyists, probably regardless of hobby, are reactive, not active, because its just a hobby.

Its a sad commentary alright, but not on the hobby or the actual hobbyists. I'm afraid the Pundit is quite right in his various assessments.

Quote from: CRKrueger;566519If you're talking about "Outdoor Activities" then kayaking is in the same category as free-climbing.  If you're talking about "Climbing", then free-climbing is not the same as mountaineering.  Two different things.

But, if you don't believe me, ask the author himself who classifies his own game as a Storygame (which is what it is).

I think this post demonstrates how meaningless it all is. Free-climbers don't complain that mountaineers are swine who are trying to poison their hobby from within. They just enjoy climbing, and I daresay there are lots of free-climbers who go mountaineering and vice versa. And I doubt very much that there are any free-climbers who claim with any sincerity that mountaineering is NOT CLIMBING.

If you want to subdivide RPGs into "traditional" versus "story games" then fine, but it's basically a cladistic argument that has no meaning in the real world. There is a huge amount of cross-pollination between the two, most people who play one type play the other, and they all involve the same core activity - pretending to be somebody else while rolling dice and sitting around a table. As far as I'm concerned that's much less of a distinction even than the one between free-climbing and mountaineering. It really is a step above saying Whoppers and Big Macs are different foodstuffs.

Quote from: Halloween Jack;566466No. The key difference is that in grognards.txt, we actually know who and what we're talking about. The thread basically pisses people off through the abominably cruel act of quoting them in their own words. Never has use of the "copy" and "paste" functions made anyone so very, very sad, on the Internet.

No. You attack straw men and isolated quotes...grognard text does to grognards exactly what you accuse pundit of doing with storygamers. And it isn't discussion it is primarily insults made within an echo chamber with no serious opposition. At least here we have folks like you who do speak loudly for the other side. Like I said I am not a fan of the insults myself, and there are postsrs here who can make such accusations without being hyprocrites...but you are not one of them. everything you are complaining about here is done at SA to an even greater degree.

Traveller is correct.

There was always discussion and disagreement, frequently heated, about stances and goals in RPGs, but it took Ron Edwards to turn it into a Cultural War and make it really nasty.

There was always discussion and disagreement, frequently heated, about Editions of D&D, but it took the WotC marketing dept. and the 4vengers to turn it into a Cultural War and make it really nasty.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;566522No. You attack straw men and isolated quotes...grognard text does to grognards exactly what you accuse pundit of doing with storygamers. And it isn't discussion it is primarily insults made within an echo chamber with no serious opposition. At least here we have folks like you who do speak loudly for the other side. Like I said I am not a fan of the insults myself, and there are postsrs here who can make such accusations without being hyprocrites...but you are not one of them. everything you are complaining about here is done at SA to an even greater degree.

Here we have regulars who duke it out, and discuss things, there they gather and stroke each others' cocks giggling.

Quote from: CRKrueger;566523There was always discussion and disagreement, frequently heated, about stances and goals in RPGs, but it took Ron Edwards to turn it into a Cultural War and make it really nasty.

If all it takes is one dude with a forum that was always pretty tiny and culturally irrelevant to most tabletop gamers in the real-world to make hobbyists lose their shit, that doesn't speak well for the folks losing their shit.

Quote from: noismsWell, this is why I think the distinction is really silly. I should make it clear that I am only using terms like "traditional" and "story game" for the purposes of clarity.

Exactly my point.
Half of my job here has been accomplished.  Words being used for common understanding.  My god, you'd think there was a definion in the offing...

There must be two Ron Edwards. Apparently, one of them is a total failure who no-one ever listens to and whose games all suck. The other one is the head of a global conspiracy that has successfully infiltrated and subverted most online fora and sabotaged several key RPG franchises, and who continues to wage a war of terror on all right-thinking roleplayers even to this day.

Actually there might even be a third Ron Edwards, a random guy who said some interesting things about RPGs and published a handful of cool books before stepping back from the limelight having mostly done what he wanted to do. But no-one ever talks about that Ron Edwards. It's always either Keyser Soze or George Costanza, never anything in between.

Quote from: CRKrueger;566523Traveller is correct.

There was always discussion and disagreement, frequently heated, about stances and goals in RPGs, but it took Ron Edwards to turn it into a Cultural War and make it really nasty.

And Ron Edwards shut his fucking forum down? God, nobody is defending him, but your tilting at a windmill that's no longer even operational.

QuoteThere was always discussion and disagreement, frequently heated, about Editions of D&D, but it took the WotC marketing dept. and the 4vengers to turn it into a Cultural War and make it really nasty.

Uh-huh, it was the '4vengers' that made the edition war nasty. Not Pazio whispering in the ears and validating the fears of 3.5 fans. Not morons like the RPGPundit and their paranoid rants.

Quote from: soviet;566542There must be two Ron Edwards. Apparently, one of them is a total failure who no-one ever listens to and whose games all suck. The other one is the head of a global conspiracy that has successfully infiltrated and subverted most online fora and sabotaged several key RPG franchises, and who continues to wage a war of terror on all right-thinking roleplayers even to this day.

Actually there might even be a third Ron Edwards, a random guy who said some interesting things about RPGs and published a handful of cool books before stepping back from the limelight having mostly done what he wanted to do. But no-one ever talks about that Ron Edwards. It's always either Keyser Soze or George Costanza, never anything in between.

Don't forget the fourth Ron Edwards, slavering over bat penises.

Quote from: Peregrin;566526If all it takes is one dude with a forum that was always pretty tiny and culturally irrelevant to most tabletop gamers in the real-world to make hobbyists lose their shit, that doesn't speak well for the folks losing their shit.

and if that's all it was, then no one would have lost their shit, but the horseshit spread.

I guess you're still pretending to operate under the incorrect assumption that since the average consumer doesn't visit forums, they mean shit to designers.  

The designers can't interface with the average RPGer who's never see an RPG forum, so where do they look for advice, input, feedback, temperature taking...hmm...where could it be...oh yeah...RPG forums.

Wow, what a concept, shouldn't really be a surprise to someone who's supposed to be a guru of "REAL" gaming theory. :rolleyes:

Or you can go back (once again into the breach) and revisit where it has been linked to WotC designers talking about GNS theory, or links to where Jay Little is a big GNS follower, and pretend the logic centers of your brain stopped working and you don't see any impact of GNS on these games, for whatever fucking reason the distinction deniers have for doing what they do.

99% of RPG Gamers have never heard of Ron Edwards...hurray.  Unfortunately that means absofuckinglutely not a goddamn thing because 99% of RPG Game Designers have, and some are Grade-A Kool-Aid Champions.