What is "The Forge?"

[LostSoul]

By agenda, do you mean 'creative agenda' or something broader? I would suggest that there are two ways to handle this:

I think I meant b), using (what I understand as) Ron's definition of creative agenda.

I am willing (at least for the moment ) to go with a), because of the points you outline.

snip excellent points

I got it, and I agree with you. I can see that in my own, personal case; if I were to play with a group in a genre we all agreed upon, it wouldn't matter if I was looking for "Story Now" as I define it and the others were looking to create a cool story. I don't see how there would be any conflict.

Thanks for the insight. I'm mostly interested in the GNS theory because it pointed out exactly what I was looking for ("Story Now") and gave me techniques to avoid the problem I was having in my own play: I couldn't see how to get a story without railroading. (I have a very broad definition of railroading.)

edit: I have a question. The type of campaign where a GM is telling the story (and the players are spectators) isn't part of your redefined definition of narrativism, is it? That's what you mean when you are talking about "collaborative", correct?

 

[fusangite]

I got it, and I agree with you. I can see that in my own, personal case; if I were to play with a group in a genre we all agreed upon, it wouldn't matter if I was looking for "Story Now" as I define it and the others were looking to create a cool story. I don't see how there would be any conflict.

Thanks for the insight. I'm mostly interested in the GNS theory because it pointed out exactly what I was looking for ("Story Now") and gave me techniques to avoid the problem I was having in my own play: I couldn't see how to get a story without railroading. (I have a very broad definition of railroading.)

Glad things worked out. My normal mode in these threads is to try and rip everyone's head off, mainly because all my periods of substantial ENWorld posting are when I have writers' block, am trying to finish an essay, and am hopped-up on caffeine. (I'm currently two pages away from finishing this one.)

edit: I have a question. The type of campaign where a GM is telling the story (and the players are spectators) isn't part of your redefined definition of narrativism, is it? That's what you mean when you are talking about "collaborative", correct?

You've got it. No it's not. Although I don't personally like it, in my definition, narrativism is truly collaborative storytelling. Illusionist games (although I hate the concept) are, like simulationist and gamist enterprises, ones where only the GM may act, unmediated, on story.

 

[fusangite]

That sounds very interesting. Have you written about this anywhere? I'd like to check it out.

Nope. The sum total of my expression of this idea is ranting to two friends of mine about it over breakfast. MAybe I will write something... eventually.

 

[Greylock]

Here's my "Lemme think about it for a night" take on the different types of RPG gamers. Think Meyers-Briggs for Gamers.

Simulationist - Pretender
Socializer - Gamer
Themeist - Player
Stratigist - Simplist

joe b.

Hey! I'm all five of those.

/counts fingers

Four! All four of those!

 

[LostSoul]

Nope. The sum total of my expression of this idea is ranting to two friends of mine about it over breakfast. MAybe I will write something... eventually.

Well, come on man! Get on it! Put down that essay and write!

 

[Wayside]

"Gaming doesn't have to be about gaming"... :\

I'm not even going to ask for claification.

I will, however, point out that this is the kind of ivory-tower academic rhetoric that made me think of The Forge in the way I do.

It's perfect example actually. A link to that post mght well become a standard inclusion in future posts on the subect.

Unfortunately it's exactly the opposite. For years my friends and I used gaming as an excuse to do other things. We'd always start out gaming, but we never finished any game we started. To jump back to mythusmage, he replaced eyebeams' "fun" with "engagement." I still don't buy it. I don't think a game that fails to engage players in the game is a failure as a game--because maybe the point was never to engage the players in the game in the first place; maybe the point was to engage them with one another in some other context.

In my example, the only real purpose the game served was to get us all to the same place at the same time, yet I don't regard those games as failures in the least. In fact they were pretty much the most fun I've ever had gaming (so they were in line with eyebeams) despite being totally unengaging as games (so they aren't in line with mythusmage).

Calling this ivory-tower rhetoric is rather disingenuous, since I'm only concerned with specific gaming practices here, and not with any abstract set of beliefs about gaming writ large. If you're concerned with formulating a homogenous idea of gaming that most people (back to eyebeams) are actually failing at (!), I have to say I think you're the one in the tower. But that's a big if. Probably you just interpreted that one sentence of mine in the exact opposite way it was intended.

I admit I'm not phrasing things to either of our satisfaction, but I'm on the tail end of lot of writing here and my brain is groping for the right formulations, so you'll have to be a little generous and not assume the worst right off the bat.

 

[Samuel Leming]

Yeah. That's how I ended up at the Forge. I put forward a similarly-based theory suggesting that one could categorize types of play based on how they functioned predictively. Players decide their characters should take actions based on a reasonable belief that the action will produce a particular outcome; I suggested games could be categorized based on what the player's predictive model centred on. It produced a threefold model that sounded superficially like the GNS system but, on closer examination, wasn't that much like it after all.

There was a rules-centred one where the player's main predictive tool was the rule book. There was a story/world-centred one where they player's main predictive tool was flavour text about the world and his character's lived experiences. And there was a symbolic/literary one where the player's main predictive tool was symbolic resonances between in-game events and literary and mythological tropes in the real world. The superficial parallel was further enhanced in that I was a proponent of the third, highly elitist, snobby kind of play that required a lot of explaining and showing off.

The rules for type one and the setting text for type two would certainly be set up ahead of time, but these symbolic meanings of in-game events would be so conditional and open to interpretation. How could they not predict any thing you wanted? Would there be ‘interpretation rules’ available so the player and DM would be on the same page or would this be for players with advanced literary degrees only.

Aside from not being GNS, however, was the problem that my whole idea of a balanced game is to have an equal blend of players emphasizing each predictive model and that all the predictive models pointing towards similar actions was a sign of a successful game. Furthermore, I suggests that players could move happily from on mode to another and should do so.

Well, having your rules, setting & mythological symbolism in harmony would certainly be balanced. From my casual view it kind of looks circular(balance because it’s balanced). Being a nostalgia-based Castles & Crusades game master, it looks like a bunch of extra work.

Anyway, this would be one way of getting balance, but there are certainly balanced games that don’t follow this method, so this isn’t going to be a general theory like GNS tries to be.

Not trying to be a jerk, just fishing for explanations and more info.

I've since gotten kind of bored with this theory and instead try to minimize differences among different conceptions of play by trying to universalize the idea that rules=physics, regardless of how one plays, and that narrativist games are just simulationist but with post-modernist physics.

Is that Ron Edwardsian Narrativist or Mearls/Awkward Narrativist?

I agree that GNS Nar is just Sim with metagame methods of acting on situation. If I hadn’t said something similar in one of my earlier posts, I had intended to.

By rules == physics are you implying the rules shouldn’t be overridden by sort of GM fiat? Or maybe with a balance system a DM wouldn’t need to resort to ad hoc nasal demons?

No. But it's in the GNS articles. The first time I read them I missed them too; I re-read them last October and noticed Illusionism that time. Edwards was arguing that games by White Wold weren't really games because the players had no free will but were only conned into thinking they were playing, when, in fact, they were spectators. Just go through the GNS explanation with a Find/Search thing and you'll find it.

Oh, I remember reading that now. I just took it as Edwards venting because he felt ripped off. He’s being kind of bogus about that. Just because it’s a storytelling game that doesn’t play out stories the way he prefers doesn’t mean they’re not really games. It just adds more fuel for the “his way or the highway” accusations.

Sam

 

[Wayside]

I hate to tell you this but yes it does. I can write all kinds of forum posts in this space but what I can’t do is write a post that is not about this post. It is impossible for a thing to be itself and not pertain to itself.

The problem you're running into is this idea of a thing being itself. It makes sense and is absolutely fine, in casual conversation, to talk about things this way (I'm sitting at a desk; that's what it is). It's posed a problem for thinking, though, since the beginning, which is why you get, say, Plato coming up with that ridiculous separate world of forms. Do you believe in that world? Because I don't believe in this transcendental idea of gaming that people either hit or miss with their own practices. So no, my game, as I pracitce it, is not about gaming as you think of it. Sometimes it's not even about gaming as I think of it, anymore than going to a date at the movies has much necessarily to do with actually seeing a movie! Is that clearer?

Wrong again Wayside! You’re wrong. Right now.

If taking part of a sentence out of context without bothering to understand it in its entirety is the best you have to offer, TB gave you way too much credit. I'm sorry but there is no right or wrong way to game, no right or wrong definition of what gaming has to be. You could come up with a definition that extends to every game (and we're talking about people playing here, not rulesets) out there, but next week some kid will come along and do it in an entirely new way, and then your definition won't be worth much. Ideas and practices change over time--is that really news? If you believe otherwise, you're wrong. It's an issue of description v. prescription.

 

[Aaron L]

I would just like to say that game rules = game world physics is the best way to express my view of gamng that I have heard.

 

[mythusmage]

If you want eyebeams to doubt that you are wrong, posting things like this isn’t exactly feeding into your grand strategy.

Not that sort of doubt. [grin so evil it makes tyrannosaurs plotz.]