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<blockquote data-quote="Old Fezziwig" data-source="post: 9296948" data-attributes="member: 59"><p>So I finished William White's <em>Tabletop RPG Design in Theory and Practice at the Forge, 2001–2012: Designs and Discussions</em> last night (technically, this morning, as I was having trouble sleeping and wrapped it up at 3 am or so). With the caveats that (1) I was not present or involved at the Forge when it was active, though I'm familiar with many of the games and some of the theory that came out of it, (2) I have no background in White's academic discipline and don't know if it's insightful or engaging with texts within his field intelligently or interestingly, and (3) my conclusions are probably not novel, here's the TLDR — It's half a good book and half a weird book.</p><p></p><p>The oral history pieces (interviews with and writings from people who participated in or were in the orbit of the Forge) are very interesting and do a great job of both contextualizing the Forge and its aims and critiquing them. My sense is that former Forge members have some complicated feelings about the Forge (in part and in whole) and also that, although they were aligned on the broad project, the idea of the Forge members as a monolith is incorrect. It seems like participation was a lot more fluid in real-time than it seems to have been when looking at the archives and website. There was an extended discussion of the Forge's moderation policies that was eye-opening to me as a different way to handle online discussions. And finally the summary of the Big Model was helpful to me as a bit of a primer on the theory, as it's hard to play catch up, even reading all of Edwards's essays that are posted on the Forge.</p><p></p><p>What made the book strange for me? The big thing was the absence of Edwards as a current-day person in the oral history (and to a lesser extent Vincent Baker, too). I don't blame either of them for not wanting to participate, as I imagine that they might feel (not unreasonably) they've said everything they want to say about the Forge, with much of it available online, to boot. But there was some weirdness to have people talking about the Forge and Edwards retrospectively while Edwards's presence in the book is historical. It's just a noticeable tension in the project. But I also found these things jarring — (1) the use of first names for Forge members in the book, (2) the long discussion of Edwards's "brain damage" comments was gossipy and tiresome (and a little funny, albeit unintentionally — there was a chart!), and (3) the exegeses of a couple of Forge threads for the purposes of showing how the Forge worked were interesting but mostly showed how dominant (domineering?) a presence Edwards could be in the conversations. And I skipped the last chapter entirely — I thought it was weird when he mentioned it in the introduction, and I could not have had less interest in an RPG about indie game designers in the Oughts as a capstone by the time I got to it.</p><p></p><p>Anyhow, after I finished, I picked up <em>The Longest Minute</em> by Mike Davenport about the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. I'm still trying to learn about my new home's history.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Old Fezziwig, post: 9296948, member: 59"] So I finished William White's [I]Tabletop RPG Design in Theory and Practice at the Forge, 2001–2012: Designs and Discussions[/I] last night (technically, this morning, as I was having trouble sleeping and wrapped it up at 3 am or so). With the caveats that (1) I was not present or involved at the Forge when it was active, though I'm familiar with many of the games and some of the theory that came out of it, (2) I have no background in White's academic discipline and don't know if it's insightful or engaging with texts within his field intelligently or interestingly, and (3) my conclusions are probably not novel, here's the TLDR — It's half a good book and half a weird book. The oral history pieces (interviews with and writings from people who participated in or were in the orbit of the Forge) are very interesting and do a great job of both contextualizing the Forge and its aims and critiquing them. My sense is that former Forge members have some complicated feelings about the Forge (in part and in whole) and also that, although they were aligned on the broad project, the idea of the Forge members as a monolith is incorrect. It seems like participation was a lot more fluid in real-time than it seems to have been when looking at the archives and website. There was an extended discussion of the Forge's moderation policies that was eye-opening to me as a different way to handle online discussions. And finally the summary of the Big Model was helpful to me as a bit of a primer on the theory, as it's hard to play catch up, even reading all of Edwards's essays that are posted on the Forge. What made the book strange for me? The big thing was the absence of Edwards as a current-day person in the oral history (and to a lesser extent Vincent Baker, too). I don't blame either of them for not wanting to participate, as I imagine that they might feel (not unreasonably) they've said everything they want to say about the Forge, with much of it available online, to boot. But there was some weirdness to have people talking about the Forge and Edwards retrospectively while Edwards's presence in the book is historical. It's just a noticeable tension in the project. But I also found these things jarring — (1) the use of first names for Forge members in the book, (2) the long discussion of Edwards's "brain damage" comments was gossipy and tiresome (and a little funny, albeit unintentionally — there was a chart!), and (3) the exegeses of a couple of Forge threads for the purposes of showing how the Forge worked were interesting but mostly showed how dominant (domineering?) a presence Edwards could be in the conversations. And I skipped the last chapter entirely — I thought it was weird when he mentioned it in the introduction, and I could not have had less interest in an RPG about indie game designers in the Oughts as a capstone by the time I got to it. Anyhow, after I finished, I picked up [I]The Longest Minute[/I] by Mike Davenport about the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. I'm still trying to learn about my new home's history. [/QUOTE]
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