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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9713113" data-attributes="member: 7023840">Very briefly- I think that the Forge did one very incredible and useful thing, and the rest of it .... I'll pass over in silence.Let's start with the basics. At its core, the Forge followed the Evan Torner model. Here's my summary as I described it previously:First, however, I'd like to start by summarizing Evan Torner's work in the book Role-Playing Game Studies- in describing another attempt to provide a coherent RPG theory, Torner correctly notes that the same rhetorical tropes are consistently used every single time someone proposes a grand unified RPG theory- first, the person provides it in a semi-professional form (zine, on-line BBS, personal blog, forum, wiki, etc.). Second, it continues the same debates we are all familiar with (e.g., realism versus playability; task resolution; game design and play advice etc.). It will almost always do so through the utilization of player and system typologies (what players enjoy about different games and how different games accommodate those preferences). Third, the author will almost always claim to be a "big tent" and unbiased observer of the typologies seeking only to end the prior debates, while actually looking to continue the debate and, more often than not, delegitimatize other methods of play through the seemingly-neutral goal of helping people design and play 'better.' Fourth, and finally, the author will inevitably make the same points that were made years or decades ago.While Torner was discussing something that was after the Forge, it works for the Forge as well.First, it was presented in a semi-professional form (on-line forum using professional-seeming terms).Second, it continued the same debates we were all familiar with through utilization of player and system typologies.Third, it claimed to be a "big tent" and was just saying that it was as unbiased observer of the field, seeking to end the prior GDS debate by using the GNS framework to end all prior debates (and claiming to have ended it so successfully that the Forge discontinued operation).But while it was ostensibly about ending debates and helping people design and play "better," it really was delegitimatizing non-Forge methods of play (in other words, it's real cute that you play G or S, but why aren't you playing N?).Finally, the Forge wasn't really new, but was recycling arguments that existed since the late '70s.I believe all of this to be true, and it's why I am not a huge fan of seeing that argument continue to this day. But I also simultaneously subscribe to a more charitable view of what the Forge did- in other words, if we don't view it as an attempt to create a grand unified typology of RPGs, but to instead look at it as a critique of the current modality of play. Viewed in that way, I think that one could state the following:The Forge pointed out that there were people who wanted to play TTRPGs that prioritized a certain style of play (we will call that the N style). The games that were being made did not have mechanics that supported the N style, and you really had to twist the games and the mechanics around in order to make the N style work.So how can we design N style games?And from that, you had people start focusing on creating N style games, and I would argue that this insight led to a revolution in TTRPGs and a flowering of new game types- most of them weren't completely new (we stand on the shoulders of giants) but it was remarkable. Eventually, the games began to move afield from what the Forge said (Baker went one way, storygames another, rules lite games went another way still) but it did create a lot of intellectual ferment that led to a really healthy, if small, branch of awesome and cool games that better support a different modality of play.But that's, like, my opinion man.</blockquote>

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