Quote from: RPGPundit;414010I sure hope you're right.  I do think that the Forge basically killed meaningful game design for about half-a-decade there.  

What RPGs desperately needs is the equivalent of a Chicago School; an anti-pretentiousness think-tank that doesn't want to manipulate and change RPGs into something else to suit their dark agenda, but to allow the laissez faire of RPGs unregulated by ideology or social engineering to flourish.

RPGPundit

Funny.  I would've fairly directly equated the Chicago School with the likes of the Forge: a bunch of twits that couldn't grasp the significance when the world failed to live up to their theories.

Quote from: RPGPundit;414010I sure hope you're right.  I do think that the Forge basically killed meaningful game design for about half-a-decade there.  

What RPGs desperately needs is the equivalent of a Chicago School; an anti-pretentiousness think-tank that doesn't want to manipulate and change RPGs into something else to suit their dark agenda, but to allow the laissez faire of RPGs unregulated by ideology or social engineering to flourish.

RPGPundit

But... the Chicago School destroyed the entire world economy and offered shitty non-functional austerity measures to try to "fix" it. When times are good, they suggest tax cuts. When times are bad, they suggest tax cuts. Their proposals produce as much poverty as wealth, because they are not rational. Driven as they are by ideology, and possessed of an occasionally effective privatization hammer, they try to treat all problems as if they were nails.

I mean sure, I want to see a Hundred Flowers Bloom as much as the next guy, but you aren't going to get that listening to a bunch of mouth breathers ranting about Rational Expectations day in and day out. What you want is some Scandinavian school - something that acknowledges that there are multiple answers to multiple questions and tries to achieve some sort of balanced mixture.

-Frank

Quote from: Bobloblah;414025Funny.  I would've fairly directly equated the Chicago School with the likes of the Forge: a bunch of twits that couldn't grasp the significance when the world failed to live up to their theories.

A-yup. :cool:

Quote from: Bobloblah;414025Funny.  I would've fairly directly equated the Chicago School with the likes of the Forge: a bunch of twits that couldn't grasp the significance when the world failed to live up to their theories.

I had a very similar thought.

IMHO, one day someone will wake up and say: "Hey, let do this!" - the way Gary Gygax and Richard Garfield did in their respective genres. "This" will be both good and succesful and the world will move on starting from it.

The problem I see now is that from the Forge actually sprung out some good ideas, but the behaviour of the movement as a whole managed to alienate people both from them and from their ideas.

I bought a couple of their games out of simple curiosity, and, by willingfully ignoring the Fundamentalists mindset behind the movement, I was able to enjoy the games as they were, and to appreciate some of the ideas behind them (what didn't happen was to be totally converted to these ideas and only these ideas body and soul - an unforgiveable sin, I understand).

But I also feel it would be a loss to throw away the baby with the water (better yet: with the hot air). Some of the ideas about extending the RPG concept to shared narrative experiences, without a clear "Game Master/Narrator", at the very least enlarge the field (again: IMHO the folly of the Forge was to try to totally transform the field instead of contributing to it). In these kind of RPGs you would lose a bit of authorial control but gain a bit good brainstorming (if done right).

Anyway - and sadly - the ideas and the way their were presented are, now, so unextricably interwined that even the most interesting among the former will suffer from the latter for the foreseeable future. Just say: "I think that I'll self-publish... and I have no problems in creating a niche product where I explore some theories of mine" (all legit endeavours) and you will be already labeled. And this will be the sadful legacy of the Forge.

Must every single thread on this forum devolve into people rending their garments and rubbing ashes in their hair over The Forge and its sinister dystopian collectivist conspiracy to Destroy All Fun?

Although, having checked, the existing thread that is actually about the Forge devolved into a D&D Edition War, so I guess the karmic balance is maintained.

Carry on!

Quote from: BWA;414043Must every single thread on this forum devolve into people rending their garments and rubbing ashes in their hair over The Forge and its sinister dystopian collectivist conspiracy to Destroy All Fun?

No, some just sort of peter out.

The good threads though...





The funny thing is, the majority of posters here either don't give a fuck about the Forge either way or think it did at least some good, it even has some outright fans.  The anti-Forge crowd is if anything something of a minority.

A vocal minority though, one has to give them that.

Quote from: BWA;414047Although, having checked, the existing thread that is actually about the Forge devolved into a D&D Edition War, so I guess the karmic balance is maintained.

Carry on!

It's been more restrained than the RPGnet one - which has been closed.

Quote from: One Horse Town;414052It's been more restrained than the RPGnet one - which has been closed.

WOW.
( I hadn't looked in over there in close to 12 hours)

It also resulted in maybe two to three spin-off threads in Trouble tickets and 3 to 4 bannings .

- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;414056WOW.
( I hadn't looked in over there in close to 12 hours)

It also resulted in maybe two to three spin-off threads in Trouble tickets and 3 to 4 bannings .

- Ed C.

Yeah, my last post to that thread where i said the lasting legacy of the Forge would be division seems to be prophetic.

Quote from: BWA;414043Must every single thread on this forum devolve into people rending their garments and rubbing ashes in their hair over The Forge and its sinister dystopian collectivist conspiracy to Destroy All Fun?

No. But a lot of threads have someone coming up and asking if every single thread on this forum must devolve into people rending their garments and rubbing ashes in their hair over The Forge and its sinister dystopian collectivist conspiracy to Destroy All Fun.

Quote from: One Horse Town;414052It's been more restrained than the RPGnet one - which has been closed.

That thread is MADNESS. So much blood ...

To quote a poster from StoryGames, commenting on that thread a couple days ago: "In the grim darkness of the 41-page thread, there is only war."

Not sure how many pages it actually got to before it ended in ruin.

Quote from: Reckall;414063No. But a lot of threads have someone coming up and asking if every single thread on this forum must devolve into people rending their garments and rubbing ashes in their hair over The Forge and its sinister dystopian collectivist conspiracy to Destroy All Fun.

Shit is meta, yo.

To be fair, the only threads here I follow all that closely are the ones where people rend their garments over the Forge and its diaspora, so I'm a self-selecting audience.

Quote from: Koltar;414056WOW.

It also resulted in maybe two to three spin-off threads in Trouble tickets and 3 to 4 bannings .

Heavily-moderated, restricted speech leads to more frustration and aggression than lightly-moderated, free speech. It's almost as if people could just say what they think, even if it's a bit rough and nasty, then get on with the discussion and forget any nastiness later, like adults.

Who'd've thought?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;414144It's almost as if people could just say what they think, even if it's a bit rough and nasty, then get on with the discussion and forget any nastiness later, like adults.

Does that, in your opinion, describe TheRPGSite? It doesn't in mine, not anymore.