What is "The Forge?"

[Jim Hague]

If you reject it 100%, it implies you reject each and every little bits they say.

They say that role playing is a game. You rejecting 100% of what they say imply that to you, RPGing is NOT a game. I'm stretching it, but my point is that I'm emphasising on the 100% part. not the rejecting/agreeing/whatever.<

What I find disgusting in this thread is that people reject what the guys at the forge has to say because of their attitude rather than their ideas. Most people on this thread comment on hearsay. That's low IMO. And the thread is pointless because we can't really argue about their ideas themselves because they are so badly presented on the forge (IMO at the very least).

And yet here we are, discussing the ideas. And again you're pursuing ideas that are literally unsupportable. Considering the attitude influences the ideas and contributes to the occult jargon that the Forge employs, I think the attitude's very important to address. Sorry you're disgusted, and sorry you disagree 100%. The rest of us, meanwhile, will continue to put lie to your assertion and discuss things like civilized folks.

 

[Wil]

I think you are mistaken Wil. I think being a Forgeite wouldn’t be a desirable identity if it were available to everyone. How can people who play these games know they are superior if any old gamer might purchase, appreciate and, heaven forbid, understand them.

Heaven forbid, I think it's as bad as the rivethead subculture...

 

[fusangite]

If you reject it 100%, it implies you reject each and every little bits they say.

That's not true at all. I believe in God and think the Bible is a holy book. I still reject Wahabi Islam 100%. Why? Because accepting it excludes things I hold sacred; and mainly because Wahabi Islam's own criteria are that you accept 100% of it or none of it.

Edwards has been very clear that people cannot modify GNS to suit their own purposes; they must accept the theory as a whole, not piecemeal. In that sense, he has placed some individuals who might not have rejected his thinking 100% in a position of having to do just that.

And the thread is pointless because we can't really argue about their ideas themselves because they are so badly presented on the forge (IMO at the very least).

Where are they presented well? If you are suggesting that we can't argue about the Forge because the Forge hasn't equipped us with the necessary information to do so, I guess we can't because we've all now agreed that they're asshats.

 

[Paka]

If you are suggesting that we can't argue about the Forge because the Forge hasn't equipped us with the necessary information to do so, I guess we can't because we've all now agreed that they're asshats.

That isn't very nice.

 

[jdrakeh]

Like games, not all folks at the Forge are built alike.

This is true, but the most vocal authority figures at the Forge - their 'public face' so to speak - are guilty of exhibiting all of the negative traits that the public has come to associate with the Forge community. Just dig that thread on RPGnet - the public need look no further than that to see The Forge at its worst. Sure, the Forge has grounded members, but they aren't the ones making public appearances, thus the fact that they exist does little to sway public opinion where the Forge is concerned.

[Note: It is also my informed opinion that the same individuals responsible for defining the Forge's negative public image are not a minority, but a majority, on the Forge forums. That is, I find that Softspoken Reason and its standard bearers regularly get trampled by the legions of Crazy, Self-Obsessed, Propaganda at the Forge.]

 

[Teflon Billy]

They say that role playing is a game. You rejecting 100% of what they say imply that to you, RPGing is NOT a game. I'm stretching it, but my point is that I'm emphasising on the 100% part. not the rejecting/agreeing/whatever.

Yes, you are stretching it alright, by using an patently false example to "prove" that your claim is true.

What I find disgusting in this thread is that people reject what the guys at the forge has to say because of their attitude rather than their ideas.

The very eseence of "Polite Conversation" and "Civilized Discourse" is that the message be delivered with an appropriate attitude. If someone is expecting me to "listen to what they have to say" they had better delvier it with an attitude that doesn't alienate me right from the get-go.

I feel like I am explaining--again--basic social courtesy 101 (I do that a lot here, ask around ).

To imply that someone who invents their own arcane (and poorly defined) terminology for fairly basic concepts...

And to then imply that when disagreement occurs during the discussion of their ideas that the proper response is for them to come back with nonsensical academic rheotric like "Gaming doesn't have to be about gaming" or "If you 100% reject our ideas its because you don't 100% understand them"...

Then I think I fairly say that I find that disgusting. well, maybe not disgusting.

"Childish" is a better term.

Marshall Macluhan is famed for his statement that "The Medium is the Message". Anyone out there who feels that their ideas can be conveyed with poorly defined terminology and a crappy attitude would do well to think on why Mcluahn's sound bite is considered a truism in today's world.

Most people on this thread comment on hearsay. That's low IMO.

If both sides weren;t here doing it, I would probably agree with you.

And the thread is pointless because we can't really argue about their ideas themselves because they are so badly presented on the forge (IMO at the very least).

The thread isn't pointless at all. It's not a particularly good tool for discussing Forge theory (for the reason you state), but so far it's been an excellent answer to the original poster's question "What is The Forge"?

 

[LostSoul]

Maybe? Maybe!? The fact that a term means something radically different depending on whether it’s capitalized!?

Well, I had no idea what "Story Now" or "story now" meant when I first read that, so I went in with a blank slate. So the definition wasn't a problem for me, but maybe I can see your point.

Prime Time Adventures, as I understand it, can be played equally well by people choosing to conceptualize the choices they are making, as players, about the challenges their characters and those of fellow players face as moral or ethical and those who conceptualize them based solely on aesthetic criteria. I see no great conflict within a group comprised in equal parts of players who conceptualize the choices and situations they play out in different ways.

I can see a possible conflict.

As I was recently told about Mage (this may or may not be true about Mage, but it's what I was told): I wanted to deal with issues about responsibility, to myself and others. My idea was to come up with a playboy-type who got in all sorts of trouble because of his self-destructive patterns, and who continually alienated other people he cared about in order to satisfy his desires.

One of the other players, who is interested in collaborative story-telling, told me I couldn't do that. "That's not what Mage is about. You can't make a character like that."

I think I see the conflict there as "This is my story" vs. "This is a Mage story".

I could have misunderstood what you're getting at though. ("Aestheic criteria" has me confused.)

Everybody in my example has a “story now” agenda but because half of them aren’t using the game to explore human ethics and morality, the game can’t be classified as “Story Now.”

I don't think you can classify a game using any of the creative agendas. You can say that half your players are about "Story Now" and the others are about "story now". Will they come into conflict? It's possible.

 

[Umbran]

If we don't agree on the mousetrap analogy, then we're not going to agree, because I define superior products by what the market wants, and especially in this day and age, the market can find what it wants.

Ah, I think might see our fundamental difference here - "in this day and age, the market can find what it wants."

I don't think the market has gotten one whit or jot better and finding what it wants. The naive first guess would be that the internet would allow us to find what we want. But:

1)Given the memberships of sites like EN World, the conclusion is that most gamers don't use the internet as a source of gaming information. From what I've seen here about WotC research, there seems to be a couple million gamers, but only a few tens of thousands of internet site members. So, most gamers are gaining little from the information available. These guys are finding what they stumble upon.

2) Between the much larger number of available games, the horrible signal to noise ratio, and the multitude of conflicting opinions, even folks who use the internet don't have the ability to find what they want. It's needle in a haystack time, and what hobbyist has time for weeding through the haystack?

 

[Eridanis]

Time to rein in the rhetoric, folks. Please keep it civil toward one another.

 

[Paka]

So, most gamers aren't very good at gaming, says eyebeams.

And

The games with the best sales, in a sub-culture that eyebeams says is inept at its own gaming process, are the best games, says d20 Dwarf.

Forge aside, that's interesting.