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You remember GenCon 1990? How WW thumbed its nose to the entire hobby and claimed it wasn't an RPG, but a Storytelling Game? And most D&D players didn't want anything to do with them or telling stories after the Dragonlance debacle? I have no problem with storygames being in a different hobby. I...

You bothered to read the rest of what I wrote right? Storygames aren't "gaming the fiction" as Edwards so derogatorily put it. They separate the game design from "the shared fiction" and from that point on pretty much fail to be RPGs instead of storygames. Obviously you didn't read what I wrote...

1. We play a helluva lot in our group. OD&D, Basic Blue Box, Pathfinder (a few), 3.5 (a lot), Necessary Evil, Deadlands Savage Worlds, original Marvel Superheroes, Silver Age Sentinals, Hackmaster, and some one offs of stuff like Call of Cthulhu, plus a lot of boardgames, some card games. Unless...

Gygax was making a game. One of the game designs in those games was labeled a "character" because he was accustomed to creating simulation games. No one was ever required or even expected to perform a fictional personality. He was trying to make games emulate the stories he loved. And like...

No, they are part of the imagination. Fictions are parts of stories. Both are obviously real as we experience them they are only unreal in reference (again, as stories). No RPG requires fictions. Only storygames will ever require fictions. There is more wrong with your quote than it seems you...

Then let's not have the manner I'm putting forth be the "whole sword" either.

I don't consider what I'm doing as presenting Toyland either. But let's be clear so we can understand each other. You are interested in "exploring" (actually inventing on the spot) the game world. Whereas I am setting up a predefined game world (of tried-and-true rigorous game design) for the...

Again, I think he left right away, but he was there at the beginning. Edwards himself talked about it. And it's well over ten years now since this has been relevant so I admit I'm having trouble finding my previous references. Now only Nixon and Edwards are easily found as co-founders. But I...

I think you're wrong here opening up story to "existing" like Edwards did (though he tried to step out of it later with Actuality). "Stuff Happening", the totality of existence is not a story. Story is a term limited to a specific cultural tradition (the narrative tradition) meaning both the...

No, not really. Forge theory never really touches on games or game play in any way. They are all about storytelling and only storytelling using literary theory terms to conflate every other aspect of life into storytelling. There has never been any game theory coming from that community. They...

Mearls was one of the three founders of The Forge though to his credit I don't think he was looking to design what they and you call narrativist games. The Gaming Den I've been unfamiliar with so that's news to me as to that term's original source. It still doesn't erase the prejudice with which...

I assume someone determines this at some point? What you are talking about isn't playing a game, but creating a story. You want to explore potential topics of shared discussion depending on what people feel like "exploring" (a postmodern term for invention) in that moment. Predefining these...

That was a misplaced "got" upthread which should have been a "for". As in, a bad experience for players treating games as games when with players treating the same as story. From the responses it sounds like the same Forge that hate-named D&D as "Calvinball" and "Mother may I" is considered a...

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I agree there is not always a hard solve. I mean, I can't prove that, but I couldn't tell you the one for Chess either, so... What games and puzzles definitely are not are stories. Games test pattern recognition. Stories are all about expression, not deciphering impression. Game can be played...

To me this is my biggest disagreement. Not just for D&D and RPGs, but any game or sport anywhere. I don't have a problem with house rules or homebrewing. I think hombrewing in fact is a temperature gauging the health of the hobby. But Rule Zero is bad game design in every respect I can think of...

Yes to those questions. Few people who lived in the 90s thought RPGs were being well designed in most respects. Okay, append all my posts as "I think this is the way the game was actually designed to support play and currently is my best understanding of why the rules are what they are." Btw...

Are you into wargames or the boardgaming community at all? My original post a page or two back is how I see DMing as defined for a least a couple decades or more. At wargames the DM would be the one measuring the battlefield and facing of the tanks. Tallying off points scored and hiding any of...

Are you compelled to respond to my posts? No, of course not. And can we agree to disagree about what Dungeons & Dragons and the hobby of role playing games actually are? I hope so. Is there an entire segment of the hobby not fooled into storygames by the current conflating of narrative theory as...

Let's not ridicule the actual hobby here. That is what a DM is and why they have rules to follow. They are a referee for the game, they are never a player. Like any referee they are never in a position to actually be a player. That's very true and true for DMs as well. There is no role in a game...