Quote from: mearls via. AM"There really is no definitive right answer. Just stay curious, inquisitive, and intellectually energetic, and things will come to you. I think the most important thing is to play lots of games with a critical, inquisitive eye."
-Mearls.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;413689(and newsflash here- a lot of those end ideas are useful to think about. Very few of them ever came from Ron Edwards..in the end he was just a self-centered guy with very few original ideas. But he wasn't the only guy on the Forge back then.

It probably should be noted that Mike didn't design 4e, either.

Well, unlike some, I do not think that ideas such as GNS theory are akin to Paranoia's "Communist Propaganda" skill in that they infect by mere casual exposure - I just don't think they are that seductive. But it is still hard for me not to have the impression that GNS theory as it relates to D&D was not a series of talking points late in 3rd edition design and in the formative phase of 4th edition design. It may not actually have been particularly influential on the design - I was not a party to the design process - but I do think 4e ended up more closely resembling what an attempt to create what GNS might predict as a superior D&D game would look like.

I can't demonstrate any causal relationship, but I still think it's likely that GNS got talked about to some extent and that probably some ideas were "compared" to G and N "agendas" somewhere along the line. It's up to the players do decide on an individual basis whether any of the changes are for the better or the worse. It's not my favorite game, but I play it from time to time.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;413584OK, since no one seems to have bothered answering the "Who the fuck is Ron Edwards and why should I care?" question, and it's pretty damn relevant, let's go:

Ron Edwards ran an RPG theory message board you've probably never heard of called "The Forge". He also came up with two RPG manifestos entitled "GNS" and "The Big Model" that people sometimes make references to, usually in an extremely vague manner that doesn't really explain anything. And finally, he personally wrote some games that he self published that you've really never heard of like Sorcerer and Spione.

Ron Edwards is personally a drama queen ruled by what appears to be delusions of grandeur and bipolarism. He has shut down discussion on his forum for some amount of time more than once on the grounds that there was no longer anything to discuss in the field of RPG theory. Needless to say, his bold pronouncements about history ending never really seem to materialize, so even this latest closing of the site will probably be temporary.

His theory that ha garnered the most attention is "GNS" - which stands for "Gamism, Narrativism, Simulationism" and is a three-part model for discussing the relationship between games and the gamers who play them. It is important to say up front that the number of people who say they subscribe to this theory is about fifty gajillion times larger than the number of people who actually do, because while those three terms sound like the mean something and lots of people are willing to bob their heads and say something like "Gamism... yeah... like playing the game like a game..." or some similar freshman horse shit, the reality is that in "actual" GNS Theory the terms don't really man anything at all, and certainly don't mean anything you would understand or agree with. See, Ron Edwards is a pseudo-intellectual with keyboard diarrhea, and is incapable of discussing any term at all without writing a short story about it in which he pulls a Humpty Dumpty and redefines not only that word to mean something that is nothing even tangentially related to its actual Natural English definition, but also several other words that he needs to redefine in order to further confuse the redefinition of the word he is theoretically talking about.

That's not an exaggeration, his definition of Narrativism alone is twenty three thousand words long. And within that he contradicts himself in direct A + ~A style more than a dozen times. While GNS theory has its nominal proponents, none of them can agree with each other over what it means because it is an eighty thousand word morass of contradictions, redefinitions, and reredefinitions. But that doesn't mean that you can't find common ground. Certainly, the Forgeites in general and Ron Edwards in particular have written actual material, so you can in fact make generalities about what they mean even though it is in fact a stop-error to try to parse what they actually say.

Here is the rundown of their "core" beliefs so that you don't have to try to wade through their incomprehensible gibberish about how a "Theme" is a distinct object in the game that provokes an emotional response from the players and is brought to the game by a player without regard for system or genre during narrativist play. That is an actual part of the theory, by the way, that's not just me making fun of them:

• An individual player is either Gamist, Simulationist, or Narrativist, and not some mix of the three.
  
• A game should, and indeed needs to appeal to just one of those things at a time.
  
• A game attempting to appeal on multiple levels makes it worse at appealing to whatever level it is actually appealing on, making the game experience worse.
• Playing games is SERIOUS BUSINESS.
• Individual Players have specific questions they want answered by participating in the game.

And that's all fascinating. But why should you care?

You should care because Mike Mearls is one of the people who claims to subscribe to at least part of GNS theory. When they were trotting out 4th edition D&D, they really used Gamism, Narrativism, and Simulationism as real terms in their actual puff pieces without a trace of irony or derision. And while they did not use those terms in a manner consistent with having done more than the most cursory skimming of Ron Edwards' actual material, they did nonetheless use enough of the terminology that it seems likely that they were influenced in some way by Forge thought. And indeed, they really did make a game that went out of its way to not appeal on multiple levels, exactly as Forge theory would suggest.

And the result was that a year before they published 4th edition D&D, they announced that they had 6 million D&D players, and this year they announced that they had 1.5 million players. Meaning that over the course of three years, 75% of D&D players jumped ship, and it is entirely possible that Ron Edwards bears partial responsibility for that trend line.

-Frank

A very impressive summary, Frank.  My congratulations.

And yes, the closest thing to a "victory" Edwards has is the incredible damage done to D&D.  Not so much because of his own direct doing but because of the incredible stupidity of the people currently running things at WoTC.  Of course, for more than a few of the Forgites, the destruction of D&D was DEFINITELY one of their main goals.  Only I think that ultimately, this too will fail.  Because 4e will fail, and the next edition of D&D will (I hope) be an eclectic hodgepodge of exactly the kind Edwards always claimed was "incoherent" and of exactly the kind that always sold millions more copies.

Shit, "Essentials" should have been that.  They have kept it tied to the 4e system out of one-half pride, and one half a misguided sense of necessity, believing that what they need to keep now are those 1.5 million dudes who are still playing 4e and would be (at least a little justifiably) pissed off if there was a full-blown edition switch now.
But Essentials goes halfway to what's needed: A basic set, simple classes, classic look, mass distribution, etc, its just bound to a piece of shit set of rules it can't get off its back.  

I think the best hope for D&D would be if the next version they make was one that didn't just look like the D&D of 30 years ago (you know, the best-selling one ever?), but played like it too.

Whether or not that happens, I think 4e will be remembered mainly for its disastrous flirting with Forge-theory and the definite proof of that idea's utter bankruptcy just like 2e is mostly for its disastrous flirting with the ideas of its generation's Swine.

Its certainly starting to look like we only get a good D&D in every odd-numbered edition.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;413700People really do have their own ideas.  While Ron Edwards may have had his followers, he wasn't Voldemort. he doesn't hold an unnatural influence over people.

This is of course true, if, for some reason, seemingly in dispute at times. This doesn't mean Ron, personally, or GNS ideas as Ron presented them or otherwise, can't have a conventional influence on other designers. And like Ben said, the design influence need not necessarily have been primarily on Mearls. Also, just speaking hypothetically, since as you said Mearls wasn't originally a leading designer of 4e, just because he went on from gaming outpost to work on a lot of non-forgey material doesn't mean he wouldn't later become interested in applying forge or GNS ideas later and in a different context.

edit: also, though Mearls wasn't an original designer of 4e, he did do design work on 3e books like Nine Swords that were considered to be proto-4e experiments to some degree.

Quote from: Hairfoot;413585Why insane?  It was specifically and directly related to RPGs, and fits even your narrow definition of free speech.  If by "free speech" you mean "speech that Pundit approves", then say so.  You're already a hypocrite at least one, two, three times over, so there's little to lose.

Your record speaks for itself so, you only stand to look slightly less ridiculous by dropping the defence-of-free-speech charade.

There is a significant difference between presenting political positions that some might call "conservative" and direct-linking to the most infamous White Supremacist website on the internet.  Most normal people understand that difference, you apparently do not.

It is not a question of free speech, it is a question of the wellbeing of the site.  Though in this case I do indeed look upon that site and any element of its thinking as abominable to me, four of my great-grandparents having died in concentration camps, I think it is fair to say that it is not a question of my partiality here.  I am a huge and vocal proponent of filesharing, but despite this I forbid linking to filesharing websites or putting up things for download that would be a violation of current inaccurately-termed "Piracy" laws.  Even though I deeply disagree with these laws, for the security of the site, and to avoid the place just turning into a filesharing haven, I forbid it here.  LIkewise, to avoid your neo-nazi friends thinking that this is a safe and hip place for them to hang out and talk about lynching negroes and gassing the jews, I forbid sites like Stormfront.

Free speech in even the most liberal of countries does not mean you can shout "Fire" in a crowded building. And on this site, those sorts of things are the equivalent of that.

RPGPundit

Quote from: ggroy;413702For 5E D&D, wonder if they will drop the forge-isms along with the MMO style stuff.  MMO style stuff like the striker/defender/leader/controller roles, and the power sources (martial, primal, divine, etc ...).

What would you characterize as the most prominent forge-isms of 4e?

It's important to remember that Edwards didn't invent GNS, he corrupted the original idea.  For example, Simulationism...

If you're a tl:dr, just read Conclusion at bottom

Quote from: John H KimThreefold Simulationism Explained
by John H. Kim

January 25, 2004

         "Simulationism" is a term coined in February 1995 on the newsgroup on the forum rec.games.frp.advocacy (rgfa).[1] Here I want to explain it, and put it into context. Over the next two years on rgfa, it was defined negatively as the rejection of certain methods. The definition was that it was against using meta-game information (like whether a character is a PC, whether this is on-screen or background, or who the players are) to affect in-game resolution. Thus, it rejects methods like die-roll bonuses for how cool a maneuver sounded to the GM, or requiring drama points to allow players to alter background. Instead, what happens should be based on thinking only about what would happen in the game-world as a alternate reality.

         Based on discussion, a number of people have found this style to be rewarding. However, it has been difficult to analyze in terms of why it is interesting. In part, this is because Simulationism rejects simple analogies. Simulationist role-playing is not storytelling and is not game-playing per se. In revisiting the style, I want to try to analyze what it is about -- in particular my own observations from games which tended towards pure Simulationism.

         Simulationism was later made a part of encompassing typologies that culminated in the "Threefold Model".[2] However, here I am treating it as simply a style unto itself -- a method of decision-making, parallel in some ways to artistic styles such as Impressionism or Surrealism. There are characteristics and tendencies of Simulationism which may be as important as the formal definition.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Analogy and Identity
         A central feature of Simulationism is that it rejects closely identifying role-playing with either fiction writing or other types of games. This is important, because role-playing is often viewed and judged by external standards. For example, an RPG might be judged poor if the events it produces would not make a good book or movie of that type. Conversely, an RPG might be judged poor if it isn't fairly balance like a board game or card game.

         Rejecting this identification is important to finding out what is interesting about RPGs uniquely. Thus Simulationism calls for throwing out preconceptions about what the game should be like, and instead requiring people to form their opinion about how they like play as itself. Simulationism allows that individual techniques might be borrowed from other activities -- like mechanics from card games, or inspiration from novels. However, that doesn't mean that role-playing is any of those other activities, or that the essence of role-playing is the same as them.

         In some ways, this might be viewed as transitional. Once you have learned about role-playing free from analogies, you can try mixing it and relating it more with other activities. But it is vital to try throwing out preconceptions for a while, at least.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adventure Design
         The most radical aspect of Simulationism is its approach to GM preparation. Traditional RPGs call for the GM to prepare a customized adventure which will be appropriate and compelling for the players. The GM should prepare dramatic "hooks" to encourage the PCs to engage with the planned adventure. Typical hooks include:

A mysterious figure in a tavern offers the PCs an unusual job.
A character's loved one is kidnapped or threatened by some evil foe.
An old enemy shows up unexpectedly to cause trouble for a character.
However, the central tenet of Simulationism prevents this. When the GM prepares between sessions, any invented background should be based solely on what should reasonably be there in the world. It may be extrapolation, random, or arbitrarily imagined -- but it cannot be deliberately constructed for narrative purpose. This rejects melodramatic hooks or other prepared dramatic structure.

         This hamstrings GM control over the plot. Since there are no dramatic hooks to draw the PCs, the GM has little control over what the PCs will do. The GM is reduced to control over background, and this may not be a driving force of the plot. In fact, neither the GM nor the players may know where the plot is going. It is possible for it to head in directions completely unexpected by anyone -- because the GM created background without planning for what the players would do, and the players act without knowing what the complete background. This is one form of what Liz Henry calls dialogic collaboration as opposed to hierarchical.

         Many gamers worry that this approach will lead to nothing happening. The PCs will walk around and look in different places, not find anything special, and be bored. Indeed, if the players are conditioned to expect a prepared adventure, this can be just what happens. The players search around for hints about what the GM wants them to do, and fail to find it. But by adjusting play, a different dynamic emerges.

         In Simulationist play, the onus is more on the players to drive play. Without contrived situations to force the PCs into action, the PCs need to be more pro-active. They need to be rebellious, in the sense that faced with a stable status quo, they will take risks to upset that status quo. In GM-driven adventures, there is an unusual event (a melodramatic hook) which spurs the PCs to action. But in Simulationism, there will not usually be such unusual events. Without such hooks, the PCs need to seek out conflict.

         Now, some people may still say that most players won't be pro-active enough. Players are generally passive until prodded. There are a number of techniques which may apply to this:

You can divide responsibility differently. In traditional games, the most active gamer in the group usually becomes the GM. You may want to change that. Have someone else be GM, and have the most active gamer be a player.
Players learn based on what they are shown. If they are continually fed dramatic hooks, they come to view it as the GM's job to be the motivator. By removing the hooks, it forces the players to plumb their characters' drives.
You can build a generating situation as a premise of the campaign from the start. For example, the PCs might all be normal people in the modern world who suddenly gain superpowers. This single premise can be the cause of all sorts of different conflicts and events for an extended campaign.
It is useful to stick to a limited region, or "scope". You can design the campaign with reasons to stick in the area. Then prepared elements like NPCs and locations can be re-used over many adventures.
Skimming over extended time may become important. If nothing is happening right now, you can skim through time to six months later when something is likely to happen. In general, the players should control this. Wherever they are interested in and want to play out, it makes sense to go there.
Keeping track of detail can become important. Campaign logs and overviews are often important references that generate ideas.

         In the end, you are likely to have a more historical or biographical feel to a Simulationist campaign. In narrative terms, it will often lack dramatic closure to events, with some plots trailing off and others only dipped into. However, it will also have an ever-increasing depth of detail and relations. This makes the plots complex and rich in meaning. Again, Simulationism holds it central not to judge the game as novel or play-writing, but rather an experience unto itself.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Action and Scene Resolution
         Action resolution differs from adventure design, because it is less about GM preparation prior to the session, and more about use of rules and dice during a game session. However, it still follows the same Simulationist principle of following internal cause.

         Many drama-oriented systems advise the GM to overlook or modify die rolls or rules. In particular, they suggest that cool-sounding or inspirational PC actions be allowed to succeed. There is also the alternate concept that the challenge should be fair -- meaning that if the players act intelligently, the PCs should succeed. Simulationism rejects both of these. Results are not fudged for story, so when faced with difficult odds the PCs may well fail. Alternatively, they may get lucky and breeze past the opposition. There is no bias that the PCs will be facing difficult but beatable odds.

         The vital lesson to be learned from this is letting go of what you want the story to be. Often RPGs can turn into a meta-game power struggle between players and GM, or among players. The GM wants the story to go one way, and the players want it to go a different way. Simulationism encourages letting go of expectations of how you want things to turn out, and instead concentrate on enriching what does happen.

         Another vital lesson is to reduce the stigma of failure. Systems which reward players with character success also necessarily stigmatize the players of PCs who fail. In these systems, if your PC fails, it is because the GM didn't think your playing was good enough to be granted a success. This makes the game judgemental, and focusses the players on performance (either as game-players or as actors). If the group agrees to stick to the Simulationist results, then the focus shifts. Players still try to have their PCs succeed, but it is more acceptable for a PC to fail because it does not imply failure on the part of the player. There is more focus on detailing what happened -- both externally and internally to the characters.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conflict and Drama
         So the above explains the open nature of Simulationist play, which may turn out very different than either the GM or players expected. But this leaves undefined what games seem like in a narrative sense. What happens it not a result of a planned dramatic structure. If the characters are simply doing what they want in a background, then how does drama occur, if it does at all? What sort of events happen, and what type of meaning can be derived from it?

         A common problem in traditional campaigns is a group of characters who have no strong ties to the setting, and who have no strong motivations. The typical solution for this is dramatic hooks invented by the GM, which drive the PCs into the prepared adventure. However, these depend on GM skill about what will both motivate the character and interest the player.

         Simulationism rejects this as a method. Without an external agenda of goals which they are supposed to pursue, the characters should pursue goals which are personally important to them. The players must learn to create characters whose actions are interesting to play. The foremost among these is willingness to take risks. Play will then center on extrapolating the consequences of their actions. If a PC takes risks for his ambitions, then he may succeed or he may fail. Either way is interesting.

         Further, these become goals relevant to the players, because character creation is a deeply personal process. Given choice and scope to make a complex character, players will invest a piece of themselves. This often represents wish fulfillment: characters who can and will do things that the player cannot. This is not a meta-game agenda separate from the character itself. Rather, the fiction character in its definition reflects the interests and wishes of the player. Extrapolating the results of these efforts inherently produces meaning relevant to the player. Rather than the GM guessing what will be meaningful to the player, it is up to the player to create a character whose actions are meaningful.

         Ultimately, the meaning in the game doesn't come from whether particular actions succeed or fail. If a character decides to charge into open fire to save a fellow soldier, the most important thing is his choice to do so. Whether he succeeds or fails is secondary, and either way it is interesting.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Role-playing and Immersion
         Simulationist role-playing is concerned about accurately reflecting other personalities, cultures, and philosophies from your own. The means of doing so is not clearly reflected in the definition. This need not be a clinically-detached intellectual exercise. It can be an emotional experience as well as an educational one. Note that Simulationism rejects literary basis, so imitating how similar characters behave in movies or TV is rejected. Detailed role-playing calls for probing the motivations of the characters, not simply imitating other sources.

         On rgfa, most simulationist posters were opposed to coercive personality mechanics. These are mechanics which specified what a player character should think or do independent of the player, such as having a numeric trait like "Self-control 4" which is rolled against to determine one's action in certain situations. In discussion, the primary argument was accuracy. Adding in such rules was not felt to make character behavior more real. For a skilled roleplayer it would interfere with attempts, and for a poor roleplayer it would simply add uncorrelated random reactions to the poor roleplaying -- and real people do not behave randomly. I feel this argument is strong, but there is a further reason. The emotional power of Simulationism usually stems from the consequences of player choice. For similar reasons, Simulationists tended to favor point-based character creation rather than random-roll.

         While it is not part of the rgfa definition, there is often an association of Simulationism with what is called "immersion". For example, many of the simulation-oriented posters on rgfa were also in favor of what was called "deep in-character" play or immersive play. In Petter Bøckman's adaptation of the Threefold Model FAQ for Scandanavian LARP, he substituted the term "Immersionism" for "Simulationism".[4]

         There are many views on exactly what immersive play is, or even whether it exists at all. James Wallis, in his essay "Through a Mask, Darkly", discusses a type of immersive play which he calls mask-play (based on Keith Johnstone's concept of 'the Mask state' in acting). As he describes it,

'Mask-play' is the most complete way that the player can enter the game-world. Think of it as a virtual reality: when the player looks around, they see the game-world. They look at other players and see the characters. They look in a mirror and see their character's face. Only by doing this, by shutting out as much of the real world as possible, will the player be able to let their normal personality take a back seat, and allow the personality of their fictional character to take over. I can't describe what that actually means because it doesn't happen often enough to be analyzed, but personal experience makes me think it's worth striving for. [5]
This certainly relates to other narrative forms. In his book on creative writing, the Lajos Egri writes:
The first step is to make your reader or viewer identify your character as someone he knows. Step two -- if the author can make the audience imagine that what is happening can happen to him, the situation will be permeated with aroused emotion and the viewer will experience a sensation so great that he will feel not as a spectator but as the participant of an exciting drama before him. [6]
I do not mean to imply that immersive mask-play is a superior (or inferior) form of the same experience as fiction. However, I think it is important to note the similarities between them -- as opposed to considering them opposites.

         The full topic of immersive play is beyond the scope of this essay. Some people (such as Wallis) consider it important, and it seems to correlate with Simulationist play.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simulationist Game Systems
         Most game systems have emphasized either genre emulation or fair challenge in adventures. However, there has been many Simulationist or simulation-like influences. The earliest adventures were thinly veiled challenges for the players. D&D dungeons were designed as tests for the players, not based on internal logic. There has always been some dissatisfaction with this. The most common response has been to adapt literary sources or genres, suggesting that games should be like the source material. Examples include Call of Cthulhu (1981), James Bond 007 (1983), Amber (1991), and Theatrix (1993).

         I would cite the three key Simulationist systems as SkyRealms of Jorune (1985), HarnMaster (1986), and Ars Magica (1987). Important predecessors include Empire of the Petal Throne (1975) and to some degree Traveller (1977) and RuneQuest (1978). These had no direct literary models for what adventures should be like. They were instead rooted in a vision of the setting, where characters were integral parts of the world and society. They at least tried to make adventures flow from real character motivations within their world, rather than being arranged from hooks. There were still packaged adventures for these games, and of course many games ranged in influence. Still, I see these as being among the most Simulationist.

         For me, a key difference is having player characters who are not adventurers, superheroes, soldiers of fortune, or similar archetypes. These have fairly thin in-game motivations for their adventures, calling for dramatic hooks or simply adventure for adventure's sake. Simulationist games tend to have more social and/or selfish characters. For example, in Ars Magica the PCs are following their ambitions of learning magic as part of a small community of magi (Covenant). In SkyRealms of Jorune the PCs are trying to gain citizenship by earning engravings on their challisk.

         However, Simulationism has also had an strong influence on other games. Evolving from the challenge-based D&D, many games adopted simulation-like handling of miscellaneous action resolution, but then struggled with the disconnect between this and their attempt at literary emulation. This called for various fudging and manipulation to get a proper plot to result, primarily on the part of the GM. One solution is to change action resolution to account for drama, as exemplified by games like Theatrix (1993) and Everway (1995). The simulationist solution is to drop literary emulation, and instead explore role-playing simulation as a different art form.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conclusion
         Threefold Simulationism is based on method and observation rather than a theoretical goal which it strives for. The tool is simulation: projecting what should happen based on the game-world as it has been imagined. Put aside what you think the story should be based on books and movies, and instead think about the game-world as an alternate reality. Many people found interesting consequences and experiences through the use of this tool.

Vreeg calls this "World in Motion", a lot of people would just call this "Role-playing" and anything else as a different type of game.

Unfortunately, Ron raped the word Simulationism with his leprous bat penis and now people avoid it like a aged Tijuana whore.

Quote from: DKChannelBoredom;413652Yeah. I already kinda miss the crazy f*cker - but you can't say he wasn't warned.

It's humorously ironic that he even had complaints about rpg.net mods in his sig, and then managed to get himself banned over here too.

Quote from: Benoist;413683VERY MUCH this. I don't think you're targeting the right person (Mike Mearls - I'd look more towards guys like Andy Collins personally), but Quoted for motherfucking truth nonetheless: the basic relationship between the tenets of GNS, particularly how a game should be G or N or S, not a combination of those things, and how it influenced the original 4e design.

It also ties in with my earlier comments about the new Swine worshipping at the altar of Fun™. It's not about Melan's Tyranny of Fun post so much as it is about this, the GNS model, in particular.

Andy Collins, Bill Salvicsek, Rob Heinsoo, and David Noonan were actually way more influential in setting 4e on the path it took than Mike Mearls was. In the early days of 4e development, Mike Mearls was a pretty minor figure, basically contributing some stand-alone pieces of "exception based design" for the monster list. It was really only later that his amazing work ethic (20,000 words a week or more) and relentless self promotion got him kicked up to the lofty title he holds today.

The thing is, Mike Mearls is a relentless self promoter. And one of the things that goes with that is that he talks about his influences from time to time on-the-record. And he has come out in favor of Ron Edwards a couple of times, and he has talked about Gamism and Narrativism and stuff several times. Andy Collins, on the other hand, is incredibly tight lipped. What feelings he has about Ron Edwards are basically unknown, and any speculation on my part would be baseless.

Sure, David Noonan has a blog, and his multipart piece about how he put "roles" into 4e D&D because he liked Everquest and could not find any other examples of them existing or working in any context is well established. But that's actually neither here nor there as regards "Why should I care about Ron Edwards" which is the topic of this thread.

-Frank

Quote from: CRKrueger;413709It's important to remember that Edwards didn't invent GNS, he corrupted the original idea.  For example, Simulationism...

Yeah; and the thing about the GDS typology is that it is worded in understandable language and makes practical sense for people wishing to identify the reasons they like certain sorts of gaming and don't like others.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;413595GNS (or at least GDS) predates Ron. (Don't take my word for it, ask Eliot Wilen).  The original version was a sort of compass between game-story-and simulation. It didn't say much about having to be either one or the other.

The strict 'either THIS or THAT' version people know of today is marketing BS. What Ron calls Narrativism is actualy a tiny subset within a subset of simulationism by which people would try to actually simulate stories by having literary elements. So a game wouldn't count as "narrativism" at all unless it had a strictly defined moral premise. No matter how intricate the story was or how deep the roleplaying was- it doesn't count as narrativism unless there is a strictly defined moral premise. So for example, if we were talking about a superhero game, it wouldn't count as anarrativist unless right up front everyione agreed that the entire purpose of the game was to explore the concept of "With Great Power comes Great Responsibility".

By chance, of course, all of Ron's designs did exactly this thing. So he of course defined himself as the only person who had a game that created important stories rather than empty simulations or simple games.

In the end it was kind of a joke that got played on unsuspecting elitists who assumed they had a smug lock on the role-playing vs roll-playing argument.  

Mearls was never a kool-aid drinker at the forge, (early members who dropped by the forge during that early period included Jeff Rients and Brian Gleichman as well. Were they also Ron Followers? I don't think so.)

Mike was only truly associated with the Gaming Outpost, which predates the Forge. And this was before he ever designed anything professionally.. he was just like any of you guys.. a guy who liked gaming and showed up on a forum.

Frank's full of shit and incompetence as usual.

I'm sorry, but you're the one who's full of shit. Before he destroyed D&D, Mike Mearls and I were relatively cordial internet-buddies. He was a regular reader and frequent commenter on my blog (he might still be the former, for all I know, though we haven't spoken now in years).  He and I chatted on email.  Just before he was hired at WoTC, Mearls had briefly considered moving to Uruguay and had spoken with me about it.

And Mearls was ALWAYS a Forge-sympathizer.  And by that I mean a GNS/Ron Edwards sympathizer.  We had spoken about that.  The only significant difference between then and now was that I had no idea how much of a Forge-sympathizer he was.  At the time, our arguments about it made it seem like Mearls was willing to accept that GNS was unbelievably flawed and stupid, but he was trying to argue that the overall idea of creating "Theory" was somehow incredibly valuable and that Ron Edwards was the only one really trying to do it. My counterargument to him was that there was nothing useful in anything the Forge had created and that in fact what Mearls was hoping to find was not "Theory" as the Forge understood it, and that in fact the Forge had mainly contributed to making it impossible for that kind of "theory" to ever emerge (because from this day forward, people will always associate "rpg theory" with "Forge Wankery").

I don't know if Mearls was always a more dedicatedly true believer than I had been lead to believe, and he hid it from me out of embarrasment or some other motive; or if over time he drank more and more of the kool-aid (it would certainly explain how he could have evolved from his relatively grand early work to the crap he put out now).  But don't try to pretend that Mearls "only went to a meeting once" or "was just interested in the articles".  He wanked off to the Forge hardcore, he was a card-carrying member.  That's why he went ahead and tried to make D&D into EXACTLY the kind of Gamist game that the Forgites always claimed was the only thing D&D was good for.

RPGPundit

Man-crushes can be like that, pundit. They say they agree with you, talk about moving next-door, then, bam! They up and start worshipping colours out of space.

Quote from: Cole;413629I think the Cylonophile ban was a bad decision. His Koltar comments were asinine, 3rd grade shit, but as I observed it, his posting was primarily RPG-related discussion of arguable merit. I think trying to fight a one-sided nerd war against an indifferent poster is retarded behavior, but better dealt with by saying "shut the fuck up" and moving on than by threats of banning.

Koltar was not indifferent about it, he was upset about it. He had complained about the constant harassment many times, and was right to have done so.  This was not one guy telling another guy he's a cunt or something like that, this was an unceasing campaign of harassment in THREE DIFFERENT FORUMS, where Cylonophile couldn't stop himself from firing completely OFF-TOPIC insults at Koltar, unprovoked, over the course of a FUCKING YEAR while being repeatedly warned to knock it off and choosing to ignore that (or being psychologically unable to stop himself).  The fucker deserved to be banned for the wellbeing of the site, and because that sort of harassment, of anyone, is not on.

RPGPundit

Pundit,

When Mike was there, there was no hardcore. He was part of that community and those discussions about theory (which included things like diversity of opinion and actual disagreements) before the Forge even existed.

And 4e is the greatest version of D&D ever published, so I guess that's that.

Quote from: Seanchai;413650Having been threatened with banning for saying he was a bad moderator, I disagree. It's easy to think he's the bees' knees when you're kissing his ass, but when you actually say things he doesn't like, the mask starts to slip and you begin to understand what actually motivates him.

Seanchai

That's an... interesting version of events you've got there, buddy.

In any case, all of your arguments are just so pathetically transparent when you consider that you are still here, slinging insults, god knows how much time later.  Whereas on rpg.net, you'd have been gone by lunchtime.

RPGPundit

Quote from: ggroy;413702For 5E D&D, wonder if they will drop the forge-isms along with the MMO style stuff.  MMO style stuff like the striker/defender/leader/controller roles, and the power sources (martial, primal, divine, etc ...).

I don't see these roles as problems at all with the game. They are just elements that have been with the game since the fighting man hit stuff while the cleric healed him while the magic user shot at stuff. These are now just made explicit tactical functions for the classes/archetypes you play in the game, but that isn't something "new" per se. No. I think that the ideology that's been defeated is this "Gamism vs. Narrativism vs. Simulationism" paradigm, where a game has to be overwhelmingly geared towards one style, if not exclusively as in Edwards' theory, to somehow be successful on a design standpoint.

I always thought this was a bogus theory, a theory that was doing more harm than it achieved, and I think that my belief has been proven right by the way Essentials step back from some extremism in 4e's original design. I don't think we will see it come back any time soon. What had been forgotten in this whole theoretical GNS equation was the user himself. Design is targeted at a user, and a user never ever fits neatly into one category or the other, whatever categories you come up with.

I'm happy this madness has seemingly come to an end. We'll see.