Quote from: BWA;418101For those of you reacting to my statements about not actually having played Forge-style games ... If the only analogies you can come up with are bestiality and homicide, I might suggest that you are being a tad histrionic. And that these analogies are not particularly useful or valid.

A closer (if still imperfect) analogy for someone wildly criticizing an RPG without having played it would be someone criticizing a book without having read it, or a film without having seen it.

Yes, you can learn enough from the opinions of others to come up with things to say, and yes, you can certainly form enough of an idea to decide that it's not something that interests you.

But if you have strong negative opinions about a game you've never played, I think its safe to say that your opinions might be based more on internet nonsense than anything real.

If you don't like the comments here, you can always just go fuck off back to whatever basement you crawled out of.

I don't have to read a book or watch a film whose treatment of subject matter I know that I would find juvenile and distasteful. I know that I would not have to shoot myself in the head to know that it would hurt, either.

Quote from: DKChannelBoredom;418121Heh, this made me smile. If only Marcie/Black Leaf had know this.

Yes, this is my weak argument in the no-play game list.

The point is valid though.

A specific example I could give you for this comes naturally from video games. One of the groundbreaking games of last year was Red Dead Redemption.

It's a evolutionary leap in interesting game design, but I stopped playing it.

Early on, as a player, you had to accompany the Sherriff of Armadillo, and roundup, kill, or capture outlaws, robbers, thieves.

+1 for interesting and entertaining as often you received a larger bounty for capturing outlaws alive and a smaller bounty if you just shot them dead and brought their body in.

Eventually though, the sherriff stops showing up in town as the story progresses. He just vanishes.

No problem, I thought, I'll just become the town Sheriff.

Later on in the story though, when you get down into Mexico, there is absolutely no way you can proceed with the story as a lawman. You absolutely positively must become an outlaw and torch a village and kill a bunch of peasants and stuff like that to complete the game.

I tried a bunch of variations on the storyline like shooting down all the Mexican Army soldiers and the General that was attacking the helpless peasant village.

I tried not doing that story path at all and did all the other story paths.

No go. To complete Red Dead Redemption and unlock the final level, you must become an outlaw.

So I quit.

So too with RPG's. If you can't play and win as any character class in the game, or if it focuses on promoting morally ambiguous activities to the exclusion of other activities, it's incomplete as a game at best, can damage the moral stand that a player chooses to take when playing the game.

Quote from: DKChannelBoredom;418121Heh, this made me smile. If only Marcie/Black Leaf had know this.

LOL, that's funny right there....

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;418094And when I played them, it turned out my first impressions were correct.

That's not at all surprising, is it?

Seanchai

Quote from: jeff37923;418087By this logic, since you have never been shot in the head with a 357 magnum revolver, you can't with absolute certainty be sure that it would kill you, until you try the experience yourself.

In Car Wars, if you are wearing heavy body armor, you cannot do enough damage with a .357 to kill yourself in one shot, you just fall unconscious.

QED.

Quote from: Sigmund;418128Ah, k. Gotcha, I had Vincent Baker confused with Clinton Nixon. Have no idea why. I don't know much about Clinton Nixon so that part of my opinion is revised anyway.

The funny thing about Clinton is that he seems like the decent, reasonable dude who (I think) did all of the technical administering of the site, but who never quite had the balls to tell Ron to shut the fuck up when Ron was saying something monumentally stupid.  He would just kind of go "I disagree" and fade into the background, like he did with the brain damage argument.  At first it seemed like he was outraged about the brain damage comment (which he might have well been), and then he just kind of petered out.  A shame really, because I would have much preferred Clinton being more of a forceful personality -- I find his games a tad more interesting and not quite as, um, weird as some of the others.

QuotePeople who consider graphic and gratuitous violence entertaining are people who should worry less about entertainment and more about working through their issues with mental health professionals IMO.

Depends on the level of violence and the overall context of the movie.  I consider the Saw series an irredeemable pile of shit, but a lot of normal folk seem to like it.

Quote from: Peregrin;418139The funny thing about Clinton is that he seems like the decent, reasonable dude who (I think) did all of the technical administering of the site, but who never quite had the balls to tell Ron to shut the fuck up when Ron was saying something monumentally stupid.  He would just kind of go "I disagree" and fade into the background, like he did with the brain damage argument.  At first it seemed like he was outraged about the brain damage comment (which he might have well been), and then he just kind of petered out.  A shame really, because I would have much preferred Clinton being more of a forceful personality -- I find his games a tad more interesting and not quite as, um, weird as some of the others.

Might have to check one out. I like Freemarket and I think Luke Crane is a Forge frequenter isn't he? Don't know about Jared Sorenson, but Jared was nice enough to come here to talk a little about his game anyway.

QuoteDepends on the level of violence and the overall context of the movie.  I consider the Saw series an irredeemable pile of shit, but a lot of normal folk seem to like it.

I'm not normal either, I 100% agree with you. Thing is, stuff like Hamburger Hill, or Blackhawk Down, or even Apocalypso don't bother me, the violence doesn't come across as gratuitous, or even the focus so much, just an unfortunately accurate detail. I'm certainly no delicate flower, I just don't find violence for it's own sake entertaining.

Quote from: Sigmund;418142Might have to check one out. I like Freemarket and I think Luke Crane is a Forge frequenter isn't he? Don't know about Jared Sorenson, but Jared was nice enough to come here to talk a little about his game anyway.

Both Jared and Luke are associated with the Forge, however I think they both stopped attending the booth a few years back (Luke because he was asked not to come back like a lot of the other designers who got "too big" for the Forge).  There was also a little bit of tension when Luke started doing big, pretty licensed books.  I don't know what the relationship of either is with the Forge at this point really, other than the fact that Luke still seems to defend Ron and the Forge on occasion at RPG.net.

I don't care much what their relationship is to the Forge nowadays, though, because I find their games more interesting and less angsty than whatever is going on with the Forge community.  Their concepts and premises are, IMO, a lot more well thought-out and more universal in their appeal.

Quote from: Peregrin;418145Both Jared and Luke are associated with the Forge, however I think they both stopped attending the booth a few years back (Luke because he was asked not to come back like a lot of the other designers who got "too big" for the Forge).  There was also a little bit of tension when Luke started doing big, pretty licensed books.  I don't know what the relationship of either is with the Forge at this point really, other than the fact that Luke still seems to defend Ron and the Forge on occasion at RPG.net.

I don't care much what their relationship is to the Forge nowadays, though, because I find their games more interesting and less angsty than whatever is going on with the Forge community.  Their concepts and premises are, IMO, a lot more well thought-out and more universal in their appeal.

If Freemarket is any indication, I agree with you here as well.

Folks, Vincent Baker took over administration of the Forge from Clinton Nixon some time ago. E.g. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/about/ at the bottom, or just read the thread there that prompted this thread. Why the change? I don't know, but I wasn't surprised.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;418151Folks, Vincent Baker took over administration of the Forge from Clinton Nixon some time ago. E.g. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/about/ at the bottom, or just read the thread there that prompted this thread. Why the change? I don't know, but I wasn't surprised.

See, I thought I saw something like that somewhere.

Quote from: Werekoala;418138In Car Wars, if you are wearing heavy body armor, you cannot do enough damage with a .357 to kill yourself in one shot, you just fall unconscious.

QED.

Car Wars is not real life.

Usually....

Quote from: RPGPundit;418120It ALL is.

Yeah, pretty much.

The idea was to try to claim that anyone who saw the language as pejorative was simply ignorant (didn't understand the theory) or was projecting.

In fact, the whole brain-damage thing made it perfectly clear that terms like "incoherent" were intended as value-laden judgements all along.

I think the brain damage was a huge part of the reason the theory sections closed: with the truth out in plain english, a huge part of the theory's appeal (the ability to pretend to be objective) was gone. Absent the fig-leaf, it was just a particularly insane bit of rhetoric about how one style of gaming is superior to others... nothing particularly new or useful there.

Cheers,
-E.

One thing that strikes me after reading through a few of those Forge links is how little Ron seems to think of games focused on world-emulation, treating it as if it's some sort of autistic exercise.  

Meanwhile, you've got games like Minecraft making gangbusters, and the entire game is just composed of fiddling around in a sandbox without any real external goals other than to just create...something...anything.  You also have games like Oblivion, which, while the quality of the game itself is questionable because how limited player engagement is with the world (at least compared to Morrowind), don't require any sort of external goals in order to enjoy.  Some people just like moving through the world and experiencing it, and a lot of these people are normal everyday folk, not shut-in obsessives.

So I guess the biggest "huh?" I've gotten from reading conversations at the Forge is why is sandbox or "sim" play so looked down upon?  What makes the "shared imagination" of a group with no external goals somehow less fun or valuable than that of a group which does have external goals for play?

Just because I wasn't competing with anyone or aspiring to create art doesn't mean my time playing with legos as a kid was wasted.  I enjoyed it.  That's all that matters.  You might create a new sport or a piece of art, but if no one enjoys it or appreciates it, it's useless.  Why do people at the Forge think some sort of goal is necessary in order for real satisfaction to be had?  Can't time spent enjoying an experience with other people be valuable in-and-of-itself, even if nothing substantial was gained in the process, other than good memories and a shared experience?

Quote from: Peregrin;418160One thing that strikes me after reading through a few of those Forge links is how little Ron seems to think of games focused on world-emulation, treating it as if it's some sort of autistic exercise.  

Meanwhile, you've got games like Minecraft making gangbusters, and the entire game is just composed of fiddling around in a sandbox without any real external goals other than to just create...something...anything.  You also have games like Oblivion, which, while the quality of the game itself is questionable because how limited player engagement is with the world (at least compared to Morrowind), don't require any sort of external goals in order to enjoy.  Some people just like moving through the world and experiencing it, and a lot of these people are normal everyday folk, not shut-in obsessives.

So I guess the biggest "huh?" I've gotten from reading conversations at the Forge is why is sandbox or "sim" play so looked down upon?  What makes the "shared imagination" of a group with no external goals somehow less fun or valuable than that of a group which does have external goals for play?

Just because I wasn't competing with anyone or aspiring to create art doesn't mean my time playing with legos as a kid was wasted.  I enjoyed it.  That's all that matters.  You might create a new sport or a piece of art, but if no one enjoys it or appreciates it, it's useless.  Why do people at the Forge think some sort of goal is necessary in order for real satisfaction to be had?  Can't time spent enjoying an experience with other people be valuable in-and-of-itself, even if nothing substantial was gained in the process, other than good memories and a shared experience?

There are a bunch of reasons. One of the obvious ones is a belief that games with a more literary theme are superior -- sort of like how classic literature is simply superior to genre fiction in some people's minds.

But a big part of it is that a good deal of the angst in the discussion comes from people who cannot tollerate other priorities at the gaming table:  the theory claims to speak for all gamers, but really speaks to (and through) people who are so inflexible in their preferences that playing traditional games are likely to be a poor experience because those games will serve other's agendas.

Seen from this light, you can understand why it's SIM and not Gamism that gets a bad rap: Nar games are generally designed to drive play in accordance with a narrow premise via the use of in-game rewards. To the extent this works, a Nar-Player can play with other people and have an enjoyable time.

To the extent it doesn't, even Nar games aren't any fun unless you're just playing with like-minded people (a niche within a niche).

Gamist players are -- generally -- motivated by in-game rewards (note: not definitionally-so, but in practice it would work out that way), so if you sit down with one to play a Nar game, their play will likely conform to the Nar-player's preferences.

But Sim players don't care. They are far less interested in in-game rewards, and want to pursue their own imaginative agenda -- often immersion in a fantasy world.

For Sim players, the Nar approach to behavior modification doesn't work and the narrow premise & mechanics can be considered stifling. Worse, many meta-game concerns interfere with immersion for many people making the games simply *unpopular* with a good deal of the gaming community.

Sim players are disliked then, because they're common (hugely common -- the fundamental act of roleplaying is pretending to be someone else; a basically Sim act) and they're unlikely to either conform to the Narrativist's preferences or be particularly impressed by the game mechanics designed to constrain behavior.

Cheers,
-E.