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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6727135" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, I only posted about Edwards/the Forge because another poster brought it into the thread.In some ways my comparison of Edwards to Durkheim is facile - only one of them is a giant of social theory - but I've nevertheless made it deliberately.There are many things wrong with Durkheim's social theory (in my view, perhaps most importantly, he has no theory of the state and he badly needs one for parts of his theory to work). But it is still a source of powerful insights, and if someone trying to understand contemporary industrial/urban society had the choice between reading nothing or reading Durkheim, I would recommend Durkheim every time.For me, Edwards was the first author I read writing about RPGs who actually theorised my experiences and helped me understand what I was trying to do, and why certain received techniques (eg nearly every bit of advice I'd ever read in any RPG book ever) were obstacles to that.I am not a game designer, and so I don't read Edwards from the perspective of someone looking for advice on how to make a game (in that respect, I've got every reason to think that Vincent Baker is superior). For me, he is a source of GMing advice. And personally, the only better advice I have read is Luke Crane's. (Robin Laws has interesting things to say in HeroWars/Quest, for instance, but I couldn't understand it until I had read Edwards' take on it.)The other thing that Edwards has done, for me, is to enable me to reread the advice from Gygax and Lewis Pulsipher and work out what they were getting at, why it worked for them, and why it was no good for me (given that I was not and am not interested in the Gygaxian "skilled play" approach to FRPGing).Anyway, that's why I personally regard Edwards as important, despite whatever flaws and limitations he might have.</blockquote>

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