RPGPundit Declares Victory Over The Forge, Because theRPGsite Will Remain Open

There's nothing funnier than a man bleeding out on the ground, struggling to breathe, and claiming he won the fight.   Its the thing that makes the Black Knight sketch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail so hilarious.

Ron Edwards is now the Black Knight.  He's had both arms and legs hacked off, and he's claiming he's won the fight.

Let's not beat around the bush: today is Victory Day, alright, but for OUR side.  The fucker has gotten to the point where not even the other Storygamer-Swine can stand him. He's lost the ideological vanguard of his own movement, he's lost the control of the publishing (and IPR was, for Edwards, always meant to be about HIM getting to control what gets distributed to the masses, not about giving people the "freedom" to "self-publish").  Every game he ever released after Sorcerer was a gigantic flop even by Forge-Swine standards (which probably has to mean it sold negative copies, since a blockbuster hit at the forge would be two dozen sales).  Spione, the game he thought would be his big break, that he went on a fucking European tour to promote, ended up being an utter failure.  Essentially, by the end of his career, Edwards had gone from being "dangerous movement leader" to being "failed Fantasy Heartbreaker author".

Shit, before he declared that he's "won" and that he's closing the Forge,  when was the last time we'd even heard of Ron Edwards? Fuck, even I hadn't had to think about the asshole in months...

This is just sad. Its pathetic. Its like if the band 98 Degrees announced they were breaking up today. The natural response is "they're still together"?  The announcement of the Forge's closing is really a post-mortem.  It had been beaten long ago.

That's right: I am declaring Victory.  The Pundit has won! I have beaten you, you shit-eating motherfucker.

And you know what my proof is? I'm staying open for business.  The Blog is still here. TheRPGsite is here. Its been years since theRPGsite had beaten the Forge in size. In fact, what with Enworld being D&D-specific and rpg.net no longer being mainly about RPGs, theRPGsite is currently the biggest independent general RPG-related forum on the internet. Not the Forge, us. We won.

In the end, my strategy worked. And the strategy was simple: Truth. Bringing the poisons out to the surface, again and again. Never once letting the fucker get away with it, never once letting one of his lies go unchallenged.  Until finally (and we're not talking recently, but a couple of years back) public opinion turned.  Many people always found the Forge and its ilk annoying, but they started to realize the real depths of both the contempt the Forge-ites had for the regular roleplayer and the depravity of the vision of what the Forge-swine would like roleplaying to look like. And they said "No".

This is V-day, as it were; but really, the war had been won long ago. Edwards was trapped, alone, in his little bunker in the ruined shell of what was left of his empire, since quite a while back.  Now he's decided to call it quits, but even here he can't just bow out gracefully.  No, he has to pretend that he is the victor, that the rest of us having walked away from him after hacking him to bits are the ones who are running away, and so he must have won.  I suppose its no surprise that a man who's obsessed with bat-penises would have no dignity even in death.

So forget walking away. I'm no King Arthur.  Ron, you sad fat piece of shit, consider this post my kicking in the bunker door and and capping your fucking head.

Of course, the larger struggles are not over, they just change.  The Swine are still out there, and if history is any indication; while individuals like Ron Edwards, and individual movements like the Forge-Theory movement can be proven to be utterly intellectually bankrupt and die out, the Swine themselves are a phenomenon that will always be with us to some degree.  They will reinvent themselves, just like they did the last time (after the WW-Swine's "story-based gaming" led to the near-collapse of the industry and was ultimately rejected).  Before it was Swine dressed up as would-be artists, then it was Swine pretending to be intellectuals.  God knows what's next.

Just remember you fuckers, I'll be there to stop you too.  I'm not going anywhere. I won.

RPGPundit

Fuck yeah!

You may all congratulate me now.

RPGPundit

"People who don't know who I am and wouldn't know me if they passed me in the street are going to stop doing things I hate, so clearly it is a victory for me!  Fuck yeah!"

Quote from: RPGPundit;413268Before it was Swine dressed up as would-be artists, then it was Swine pretending to be intellectuals.  God knows what's next.

Swine worshipping at the altar of Fun?

Quote from: Hackmastergeneral;413271"People who don't know who I am and wouldn't know me if they passed me in the street are going to stop doing things I hate, so clearly it is a victory for me!  Fuck yeah!"

Aww, sore loser much?  This is my day, fucker. You sound like Darren over at rpgnet.. one of the very first replies to the news there is "i can't wait to see what the Pundit says about this", and Darren had to jump in with "no one cares".  Well, Darren obviously does. And you obviously do. That's why you both felt so bitter and annoyed enough to have to make weak and pathetic public claims of how irrelevant I am.  At least Darren isn't hypocritical enough to be doing so over here on my incredibly successful forum that will be staying open because its won (just hypocritical enough to be doing it in the first place).

RPGPundit

A celebration is in order.

Quote from: Benoist;413274Swine worshipping at the altar of Fun?

That would be curious to see, but its probably a contradiction in terms, since one of the big basic "points" of Swine-think is that RPGs can't be just fun, they have to be something profound that validates their existence ("we're not just playing a game, we're making ART!" or "we're not just playing a game, we're creating an intellectual theory/doing therapy/challenging the establishment/etc.").

The whole point of the Swine is basically that "fun" for them has nothing to do with actually playing RPGs.  Its all about pretending to be artists, beat poets, intellectuals, psychologists, etc. because of rpgs.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;413276Aww, sore loser much?  This is my day, fucker. You sound like Darren over at rpgnet.. one of the very first replies to the news there is "i can't wait to see what the Pundit says about this", and Darren had to jump in with "no one cares".  Well, Darren obviously does. And you obviously do. That's why you both felt so bitter and annoyed enough to have to make weak and pathetic public claims of how irrelevant I am.  At least Darren isn't hypocritical enough to be doing so over here on my incredibly successful forum that will be staying open because its won (just hypocritical enough to be doing it in the first place).

RPGPundit

Considering I have never played an indie game in any form ever in my entire life, no, I'm not a sore loser.

Considering I have never visited The Forge ever, no.

I'm just finding it funny that you think Ron's decision to close the Forge has, in any way shape or form, anything remotely to do with you and your one-sided war.

That somehow he is sitting in the smoking ruins of his forum, looking up at the sky and screaming "Curse you Pundit!!!!"

Congratulations - you have "won" a "war" only you cared about, only you were fighting, and only you had any stake in.

That would be me on the big purple glad i didnt have to wait long for the response i expected after such a pretentious statement by the forge founder...though tbh i found the later comment "who is ron edwards? why should i care? does he speak to dead rpg's? alot more accurate of a summation of the guys impact than anything else i've read recently.

Again, Hackmastergenereal, and yet here you are.  On my (successful, still here) forum.

There is Darren, forced to cry at everyone about how I'm not important and they shouldn't care what I say, because they obviously do.

And even, there's Ron Edwards, claiming "victory" over a war that the Swine have ALWAYS tried to pretend was never happening (because they knew it didn't serve their purposes for people to think they were fighting a war to try to fundamentally change the roleplaying hobby forever). They were his words, not mine. He has admitted the war now, because he hasn't got any reason to hide anything now that he's finished.

Whether you've ever been to the Forge or not, you obviously have some serious issues with me. Which makes this a bad day for you. I am licking your delicious sweet whiny tears, bitch.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;413276You sound like Darren over at rpgnet.. one of the very first replies to the news there is "i can't wait to see what the Pundit says about this", and Darren had to jump in with "no one cares".  Well, Darren obviously does. And you obviously do.
RPGPundit

Darran's obviously wrong - our visitor figures have broken the thermometer.

Then again, you were mean to him once.

Quote from: Hackmastergeneral;413281Congratulations - you have "won" a "war" only you cared about, only you were fighting, and only you had any stake in.

That's the whole point, though. We're at a point at TheRPGSite where, apart from Pundit, no one cares about this issue anymore. Not you, not me (for pretty much the same reasons, actually), nor anyone else. This whole thing is history, and only very few people remain on this site who care to remember, or remember at all. There's plenty of people around, including myself, who aren't even first hand acquainted with the site's legacy.

But this is the point we're at. It's not just Ron Edwards by himself, but all the ideological conflicts he might have once engendered on this site or others, that's been blown to oblivion. No one cares.

Which is, incidentally, why no celebrations or congratulations are in order either. It's a lonesome party, where no one except the celebrant turned up. As Brian Gleichman once put it (and I paraphrase), 'If the RPGPundit didn't remind people of the Forge, it would have been forgotten sooner. He only serves to give them a stage presence that otherwise they'd have lost long ago.' It's hard to deny the truth of that.

Neeeeext!

Quote from: RPGPundit;413280That would be curious to see, but its probably a contradiction in terms

I agree. I think that's exactly what we've been seeing for the past few years. The argument has changed from the "RPGs could be profound if only they weren't RPGs" to "RPGs could be so much more Fun™ if only they weren't RPGs". That's my take, anyway.

Quote from: One Horse Town;413286Darran's obviously wrong - our visitor figures have broken the thermometer.

Then again, you were mean to him once.

That's not how most Pundit haters start: it starts with me being right, and them realizing I am right, and hating the way I'm right.  Then they say something stupid, and only THEN am I mean to them. Cue years and years of impotent tears on their part as their constant predictions of my impending irrelevance and demise are fruitless.

Now its Edwards who's met his demise, and all the Pundit haters are pulling out their hair... and this is just such a great day! I've got a shit-eating grin so wide that everyone who meets me today is going to think I'm on fucking Ecstasy.  

There is really no drug better than the sweet taste of your enemies' tears.

RPGPundit