Quote from: TonyLBPretty much 100% the same as how I hang out with people here.  Doesn't mean I buy into your ideas, either.  I come for lots of people, and you're just one of 'em. I assure you that knowing who I'm with does not tell you jack shit about who I am.

The difference is that this is not the "RPGPundit's Movement Site".  The Forge pretty well only exists for the glorification of Ron Edwards and the promotion of his ideas, on the other hand.

QuoteWas the description of Camp Nerdly lost on you?  I'm not unique in feeling this way.  This whole "I enjoy my way of gaming and that's important to me, so who cares whether it's important to anyone else?" mindset ... it is absolutely rampant in the Story Games community.  Its like some sort of epidemic whose symptoms are mellow self-confidence and a positive attitude.

Then why is the public pretentiousness, evangelizing, and denigrating of regular roleplayers so RAMPANT, as I've demonstrated in this thread?

QuoteThat is precisely why these folks play games like, for instance, Shab-al-Hiri Roach.  They aren't playing it because they think they're going to convince the wider world that playing a game about a licentious college professor with a mesopotamian insect-God up his nose is important.  Good lord!  How stupid would they have to be to think that?  No, they play it because they find it fun and that's plenty.

Really? Then all those threads where people talked about how revolutionary and brilliant it was and how it was what people "had" to play, preaching it on sites like RPG.net, were those all just a pun?ç

You see, there's one thing you overlook in all of this: I'm not alone. There are a SHITLOAD of people, including many people who dislike me, including some who despise me, who have noticed the same habits in the Swine that I have. Your whole argument just doesn't fly.
It doesn't fly because of the utter frankness of the BRAIN DAMAGE statement.
It doesn't fly because of the nonsense that gets posted on the forums again and again.
It doesn't fly because of all the evidence I've presented here.
But most of all, it doesn't fly because even people who are not my own proxies or fellow-travellers have recognized these same qualities of elitism and pretentiousness, of trying to preach and trying to force their theories on other people, coming from your crowd again and again.
So your whole argument, which might even have some worth if I was just a lone nut and no one else ever felt that the Forge crowd were snooty ever before me, falls to fucking pieces when you realize that over here in the REAL world, pretty much everyone agrees that the Forge crowd are regularly pretentious and evangelistic about their theories and games in a profoundly patronizing and elitist way.  

QuoteThey care about what the games mean to them.  There really isn't a whole hell of a lot of room in that mindset to be all concerned about whether your game should mean something to other people.

Oh please, cut with the fucking bullshit.

If the above is true, then why is it the common bad reputation of the Forge that they are snobs trying to both lord it over and force their ways on other people?  
You sure as hell can't pin it on my abilities; they had that rep even before I was known at all in the RPG world.

Oh, wait, I think I know the fucking reason: could it be because they have regularly and systematically acted like utter fuckheads?!

Why yes, I believe that's it!

And frankly, the Swine have been pulling this "we're just misunderstood, we don't want to shit on anyone else's fun, we just want to get along and live our lives" bullshit for years now. Once upon a time, only guys like me could see past that line of crap.  But BRAIN DAMAGE put the nail on that coffin bucky.  Or did no one tell you?
You're done pretending to be nice guys who just want to get along.
And if it happens that a few of you are, then fuck you for putting up with and playing along with the goddamn shitsacks who proliferate your little "storygames" crowd.

You want to be liked, bucky? Tough shit. Not until you CLEAN UP YOUR SIDE'S FUCKING ACT.  Where the fuck do you get off telling me to "play nice", when you tolerate and make excuses for fatarsed greaseball intellectualoids like Edwards?!  You want to prove that you really are a good guy who just wants to enjoy his game: FUCKING CONDEMN HIM. That's the price you have to pay. Otherwise, if you're going around all buddy-buddy with tommy cruise and johnny travolta, I'm just going to fucking assume you're a fellow scientologist.

QuoteI know a lot of these people.  They do not act the way you believe they act, and as best I can tell they do not think they way you believe they think.  I'd sorta like it if, in your continual hard-on to rant at Ron Edwards, you'd leave my friends out of it.  

And I'd really like it if your friends, and you with them, stopped fucking promulgating the ideas and theories of a man who thinks I'm a brain damaged rape victim, and looks at me and MY FRIENDS with utter contempt.

And until you do, its a fucking war. I don't give a shit if the guy who's gut I rip open was friendly to dogs and little children, he put on the other side's uniform, and the other side wants me and mine wiped off the face of the earth. So he's going down.
You want to start bombing the other side's factories with me, then we might be able to talk.

But right now: I mean just fucking LOOK at you. You can't even admit Edwards is a Swine.  The fucking King-Rat of the Theory Swine.  You can't even admit he's an asshole. You are, by default, saying that everyone who's ever felt attacked by Theorists is either a liar or an idiot.
Not just that, you're bending over backwards, you're going into fucking pretzels, in an effort to try to say that the guy is actually really friendly when you get to know him.

QuoteI understand that you read what they write, and poser-images flood your brain.  I get that.  I'm just telling you, straight out, that's your preconceptions leading you into error.

ALL the time? EVERY TIME? FOR EVERY FUCKING PERSON WHO'S EVER NOTICED IT? ALL THE LITERALLY HUNDREDS IF NOT THOUSANDS OF THEM?

:rollbarf:

Your argument is a fucking joke. You have humiliated yourself, because you could not bring yourself to betray Cult Leader Ron. So now you're a laughing stock, the guy who can't fess up that yes, there are assholes on his side. Tons of them, including his Dear Leader.

You haven't answered fuck all of my claims. Until you say "Ron Edwards is a Swine"; you have only managed to prove that you fit the very reality-altering intellectual-filthy-liar model of a Swine.

RPGPundit

And ... we start winding down toward the end of our show.  It's a good thing.  I'm feeling ready.  I've said my piece:  my experience is that the Forge/Story-Game crowd is pretty much made up of nice, mellow, unpretentious folks who just flat-out like to have their fun and don't care much if people think less of them for it.  My experience is also that the RPGSite crowd is much the same way ... fun, sometimes silly, unpretentious folks who like what they like even if it's not objectively "cool."

It's sad to see prominent knuckleheads demonizing either of these fine groups of people.  It's sad because ... y'know ... they don't deserve it.  But it's also sad because it appears to work.  The more Ron and Pundit rage, the less people there are who put down roots in both worlds.  The more we learn to avoid the battle-lines in a made up war, the less time we spend building bridges and getting to know our neighbors across the way.

That's a shame ... because the one thing that is certain is that folks from these two crowds are much more alike than we are different.  We're the passionate, engaged fringe of an already fringe activity.  What very human silliness to see a group of people so united by choice and circumstance, and to seek out ways to divide them.

Quote from: RPGPunditYou want to prove that you really are a good guy who just wants to enjoy his game: FUCKING CONDEMN HIM.

I've already stated in pretty harsh terms how much I disagree with his opinion, and that doesn't seem to mean much to you.  You insist that I should hate and condemn him as a person just because I disagree with what he said.

I do not see how that would show anyone that I'm a good guy.  Hatred is not a virtue.

Quote from: RPGPunditAnd until you do, its a fucking war.

Well, it's a funny kind of war.  You don't have tanks.  You don't have bombs.  You haven't even got sticks and stones.  You don't have any way of hurting or coercing me.  That means that I can opt out of your war.  I don't have to choose between being a soldier and being a victim.  You have no leverage to force me to act like you.

I refuse to see you as "the enemy."  I refuse to condemn one group of good people in order to be part of another.  I insist, instead, on seeing this whole conflict as a big, often silly, misunderstanding that is fuelled by a few hot-heads with extreme views.  You cannot draft me for your conflict, on either of your invented sides.

Quote from: RPGPunditI don't give a shit if the guy who's gut I rip open was friendly to dogs and little children, he put on the other side's uniform, and the other side wants me and mine wiped off the face of the earth. So he's going down.
You want to start bombing the other side's factories with me, then we might be able to talk.

Yeah, well, I have to ... uh ... wash my cat that night.  Maybe some other time.

Quote from: RPGPunditYou are, by default, saying that everyone who's ever felt attacked by Theorists is either a liar or an idiot.

What I said was:  "I think, on balance, he's motivated by a sense of other-people's-suckage way more than he should be, but that it's not his defining feature. I agree, however, that this is a matter upon which rational people could very reasonably disagree."  By default, I believe that people who feel attacked by Theorists are probably rational people who disagree with me.  You had to work pretty hard to shed that label.

Quote from: RPGPunditYou have humiliated yourself

Wouldn't be the first time, or the last.  What matters to me is that I've had fun.  If people think my fun shows I'm a lesser person ... who cares?  I shrug.

Quote from: RPGPunditUntil you say "Ron Edwards is a Swine"; you have only managed to prove that you fit the very reality-altering intellectual-filthy-liar model of a Swine.

Yes, yes ... until I recant my wrong-headed ideas and associations I am an un-person to you.  I know the drill.

Wow, yet another post where you almost completely dodge any substantive element to my previous post.

The only paragraph that's salvageable is this:

QuoteBy default, I believe that people who feel attacked by Theorists are probably rational people who disagree with me. You had to work pretty hard to shed that label.

So again, you deny that Theorists have attacked them? Why do they "feel" that way then?  I mean just how much evidence can you wear blinders about??

You realize that its this kind of falseness that pisses me off so much, that makes me lump you in with them? You're like a housewife who tries to pretend her husband isn't beating the kids. You want to claim "everything is fine, nothing is wrong, we're not dsyfunctional!"

And yet there they are, bruises and all. I've shown you the bruises, I've shown you where we, the regular gamers, have been DIRECTLY ATTACKED again and again by the Swine. And you still want to pretend that its us who are the liars, us who are "misinterpreting", us who want to fight for no good reason.  

You don't get the luxury of pretending that a war isn't happening. You started it by running around waving Sorcerer in our faces screaming ""GM's suck! Three Tier Distribution Sucks! Task Resolution Sucks! Killing things and taking their stuff Sucks! Immersion doesn't exist! Stories derived from D&D are broken! Narrative Rulz!"" (thanks for that one Skach)

RPGPundit

Wow ... my last post in Pistols.  I'd gotten so used to it, too.  Strangely enough, I just watched the Kare Kano episode where they leave their first semester of high school for summer break.  A lot of that feel is bleeding in around the edges here.  I'll miss the busy concerns of having the Pistols in mind, but it will also be nice to have that measure of freedom back again.

So, logistically though, we should totally get together over summer vacation (y'know ... metaphorically).  I think there are a lot of folks outside of just the two of us who may have questions or comments.  What's going to happen to this thread after the final Pundit-Post?  Should it be locked, and conversation move over into the Commentary thread?  They seem to be havin' a good old time, and I'd be awful glad to go join 'em.  Or should we open up the thread to other people from post #51 onwards?

Well, you're the moderator, I'm happy to leave those decisions in your capable hands.

Before we go, I'd like to express my gratitude to you, Pundit.  I know that this whole affair must have been a drain on your time and energy.  I certainly feel now that I have a much better grip on what you think, and how you put together your arguments.  That's something I've been curious about for a long time, and I really appreciate the effort you've made to communicate.


And now, let's take a look at post #48, and see what we have.

Quote from: RPGPunditSo again, you deny that Theorists have attacked them?

No, of course some people who do theory have attacked them.  I just think that jumping to assume that all theorists have attacked them is going too far.  It's the whole "guilt by association" thing that I was talking about earlier.  I don't think that guilt by association works at all in this context ... but if someone disagrees with me on guilt by association (or believes that every single theorist individually has attacked them) then my default is to assume that they're a rational person who just happens to disagree with me.

Quote from: RPGPunditYou're like a housewife who tries to pretend her husband isn't beating the kids.

Oh, that is rich.  And people wonder why I love talking with you so much!  You're funny!  Yeah, yeah ... that's exactly what I'm like.  By not condemning Ron Edwards I am doing the same thing as enabling child abuse.  Cool.  That is a fine, fine note for us to go out on.

Quote from: RPGPunditYou don't get the luxury of pretending that a war isn't happening.

Yes ... yes, I actually do get that luxury.  And a powerful luxury it is, too.  I get to hang out and have civil, fun exchanges with the like of Doc Rotwang and Elliot and both the James's and JimBob, and ... oh, all the great folks at RPGSite.  At the same time, I get to hang out and have civil, fun exchanges with Judd and Jason and Remi and the many Josh's and the folks at Story Games.  And I get to talk to folks like Andy and Levi at both places.

You are exactly right.  It's a luxury.  Not believing in the trumped up war and the divisive rhetoric (from both sides) is a luxury.  I value it.  In fact, I value it so much that when I see something that first strikes me as an attack from one "side" against another I am always very careful to think long and hard about whether that's even a way of thinking that I want to entertain.  Is the righteous anger I'll feel by getting all angry about something someone said worth shutting myself out of the fun of all the people I'll end up lumping in on "their side"?  Often, it is not.  Letting the kneejerk anger go ... that's the price I pay for my life of luxury.  It strikes me as a small price to pay.

It no longer surprises me that most of the time, when I calm myself down and return to reread the post that first made me angry, I find that a lot of what pissed me off was that I assumed some subtext (of pretentiousness, or superiority, or bigotry, or whatever) that undermined my ability to read the post fairly.  Usually, when I understand what they're saying absent my preconceptions, I may disagree but I'm not angry any more.

That too is a luxury and I recommend it to anyone who feels that more online friends and more gaming viewpoints would be a nice thing to have in their lives.

And here is my final post in the shootout.

First: the case. You have failed systematically to demonstrate that the Swine are the myth you tried to claim they were. You couldn't come up with an adequate response to the reality of the statements of Ron Edwards, the statements of others on the Forge, their evangelism, their elitism, and the reality that the bad reputation that the Forge crowd has is not due to character assassination on behalf of overzealous D20 fans or something like, it is directly due to the acts this community has perpetrated on repeated occasions.

In other words, I just invented a name for them, but the Swine were around doing this shit long before I called them on it.

Your claim that you and your buddies are really just trying to get along with everyone falls flat in the reality that you go around acting as cheerleaders for the Game Theory "Experts" at every turn, except when you find yourself forced to act as apologists to them.  You must be very mad at Ron Edwards for his brain-damage comment; not because of what he said (which was really what he'd always been saying, all along, ever since his first GNS essay, and which your crowd has ALWAYS supported) but in the fact that he said it in a way that made all of you common bean-pickers have to go through a lot of hassle trying to explain it away.

Case in point: you're here, trying to claim that you disagree just as much with Edwards as with me, and that any side's extremism will meet with your opposition.  Yet here you are fighting and arguing with me about what I've said and how much you disagree with me; but I don't see you going on the Forge and challenging Ron Edwards about his.  Where is your "Pistols at dawn" with him?!

Who you choose to fight against and who you choose to stay silent about makes it pretty clear which side you're really on.

Second: the Swine themselves. You were doomed from the start in any effort to prove they didn't exist. The links I've provided are more than enough to show that they do, and to highlight their actions.

So what's left is motive. You say that all that motivates them is a desire to make their game personally fun for them.  That's great, but they wouldn't have to attempt to destroy RPGs as we know them if that was really all it was about would they? They could be happily playing their little story-games to their delight with their group of snob friends, without having a care about anything else.

So why the evangelism? Why the need to try to show others their byzantine and ridiculous theories (theories that never seem to connect to the reality of how anyone roleplays, except possibly the person who wrote it, possibly).  Why try to push on us regular D20 players terms like Narrativism? Or insist that we don't really understand that what we think we're enjoying is actually called "immersionism" and it doesn't even really exist, and we'd be far less miserable if we did what we were told and all played My Life With Master?

Why, oh god why, the absurd unreadable meaningless diagrams?!

No. Its obviously NOT enough for these people to just enjoy playing their games the way they play it.  

So why not?

Pink Floyd once had some really great lyrics describing madness; they said it was "changing a bit part in a war for a lead role in a cage".  And in this case, the "war" I'm talking about is not the war vs. the Swine; the "war" is real life.  Madness is when, unable to handle the bigness of real life, or the smallness of your place in it, you create a make-believe reality for yourself where you're doing something far more important than you really are.

Yeah, I know, now people are going to say I claimed the Swine are all insane.  I'm not, that's just what the Floyd song is about.  But I AM saying that the root of the Swines' need to evangelize and have others confirm their own genius is psychological.  The need to turn a fucking game into "really SERIOUS business" can only come the fear that you're insignificant or mediocre or a failure at whatever you're doing in real life.

That's the what makes one a Swine; not that you talk about smart things in your game, or that you want to make your game pretty; its that you need other people to see how smart or artistically brilliant you are, and you desperately desperately need others to be as serious about this game as you are.   That's why the Swine hate regular roleplayers; their ability to have fun just playing RPGs as a game, without having to use diagrams or Jargon, proves that the diagrams and the Jargon are just a game too. They're meaningless, they don't "help" with anything or anyone, they are just a facade for people to get to talk smart to each other and show off how significant they are, or rather, pretend they are.

RPGPundit

Moderator Note: the Pistols part of this thread has now finished. I will leave it open so that other people may comment if they wish.

Tony and I will be available to answer questions here or on the commentary thread (which we may now post at), though good debating form would call for us not to directly address each other in this forum after this formal closure of the debate.

RPGPundit

Tony: right here, below, and especially in the bits in bold, is where you concede the argument to my mind.

Quote from: TonyLBNo, of course some people who do theory have attacked them.  I just think that jumping to assume that all theorists have attacked them is going too far.  It's the whole "guilt by association" thing that I was talking about earlier.  I don't think that guilt by association works at all in this context ... but if someone disagrees with me on guilt by association (or believes that every single theorist individually has attacked them) then my default is to assume that they're a rational person who just happens to disagree with me.

At this point you're essentially admitting that the "Swine" exist - you're admitting that there's a group of people who do RPG theory who have made a point of attacking more traditional roleplayers.

It's entirely possible that the Pundit is the Joe MacCarthy in this situation and only a fraction of the people he has accused of being Swine actually dislike traditional roleplaying/roleplayers. But saying "Not everyone Joe MacCarthy accused of being a Communist was a Communist; therefore, there is no such thing as Communism" would be crazy.

QuoteOh, that is rich.  And people wonder why I love talking with you so much!  You're funny!  Yeah, yeah ... that's exactly what I'm like.  By not condemning Ron Edwards I am doing the same thing as enabling child abuse.  Cool.  That is a fine, fine note for us to go out on.

Question: do you actually condemn Ron's child abuse analogy and brain damage accusations?

Second question: If you consider Ron's comments along those lines unacceptable, exactly how do you benefit from hanging out with him? If you don't want to be dragged into a silly war, why spend so much time with a man who clearly believes there's a war going on?

QuoteYou are exactly right.  It's a luxury.  Not believing in the trumped up war and the divisive rhetoric (from both sides) is a luxury.

Again, conceding there are two sides to the Swine vs. Pundit debate pretty much concedes that the Swine exist.

Quote from: WarthurTony: right here, below, and especially in the bits in bold, is where you concede the argument to my mind.

Okay.  It's a matter upon which rational people could reasonably disagree.

Quote from: WarthurAt this point you're essentially admitting that the "Swine" exist - you're admitting that there's a group of people who do RPG theory who have made a point of attacking more traditional roleplayers.

Oh, if that had been the definition of Swine that Pundit was using then this would have been a much shorter debate.

Quote from: WarthurQuestion: do you actually condemn Ron's child abuse analogy and brain damage accusations?

I disagree with it in the strongest terms, and think that it's an incredibly unhelpful and obnoxious thing to say.  Does that mean I "condemn" it?  I dunno.  That word's got a whole lot of emotional freight that I just don't know how to respond to.

Quote from: WarthurSecond question: If you consider Ron's comments along those lines unacceptable, exactly how do you benefit from hanging out with him?

He's on a site that has lots of cool people saying lots of cool stuff.  I benefit from the site.

Quote from: WarthurIf you don't want to be dragged into a silly war, why spend so much time with a man who clearly believes there's a war going on?

Well (a) the above-mentioned "He's where some cool people are," and (b) I'm not terribly afraid that he's going to "drag me in."  Like I said above, nobody's got the leverage to make me start thinking this way.

It's not like there's a pretty field of daisies over there and a bloodsoaked battleground over here, and if I walk over near Ron (or Pundit) to talk to some other folks I might get shot.  The battle exists on some other plane, somewhere in their minds, and I can walk right through the explosions and bloodshed that they see and feel so clearly.

Quote from: WarthurAgain, conceding there are two sides to the Swine vs. Pundit debate pretty much concedes that the Swine exist.

Shrug.  I coulda phrased it better, yeah.  Something like "the divisive rhetoric (from all parties)."  It's not like I don't know that the campers have divided up into teams for the color war, it's just that I don't take it at all seriously.