Not a Conspiracy Theory: Moving Toward Better Criticism in RPGs

[Micah Sweet]

Absolutely not a requirement, but arguably the way D&D is "supposed" to be played from AD&D 2nd Edition onwards.

What does it say on the back of the 5th edition Players Handbook? Genuine question, since I don't know.

Pathfinder 1st edition says "The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game puts you in the role of a brave adventurer fighting to survive in a world beset by magic and evil. Will you cut your way through monster-filled ruins and cities rife with political intrigue to emerge as a famous hero laden with fabulous treasure, or will you fall victim to treacherous traps and fiendish monsters in a forgotten dungeon?"

I'm taking it to mean "heroic" in the traditional sense, which doesn't necessarily imply that the hero is a good person, but as soon as we start using words we end up arguing about what we meant by them!

I suspect 5th edition D&D does describe itself as a game for heroic adventurers. I included it in my description in the hope of distinguishing it from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, LotFP and the like.

Yeah, my mindset for D&D is forever fixed in 1e and by extension OSR philosophy, regardless of what rules system I'm playing. Heroism, if desired, is up to the players, not the DM or the setting.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Interesting. I think I agree that my group doesn't tend to explore the world for its own sake, and that PCs go about pursuing their own goals.

Nevertheless, we do at least sketch out the world, or at least the parts of it that seem likely to be relevant. Part of that is that my group genuinely enjoys worldbuilding. (For us, it isn't a solo activity of the GM.) But also because that sketch tends to inform play.

If I don't know what the neighboring lands to the starting area are like and what their relationships are, I can't create character goals involving them. And if they're created on the fly as we visit new areas, we're likely to introduce inconsistencies and I'd guess things would feel a lot less organic. Not that any of that has to matter to you or your group, of course.

Always nice to get player input on worldbuilding. I find building a setting the most enjoyable part of being a DM personally.

 

[BrassDragon]

I feel a lot of innovation and codification in this space is happening away from the large shadow that D&D casts; for example, playing a few years of Forged in the Dark, GUMSHOE and Powered by the Apocalypse games gave me a lot of concepts and words that help me better describe stuff that's going on under the hood of Pathfinder and D&D. Examples that come to mind are fictional positioning, narrative time management, failing forward, player and GM 'moves', playbooks. From the OSR I learned a lot about evoking versus describing, emergent narrative and 'just in time' rather than 'prepared' story detail.

That's not to say that these concepts don't emerge in D&D (more than likely they emerged there first) but everything gets immediately viewed through the lens of its own current ruleset which hampers the discussion of RPG critical theory and game design. Also, it's not that these games are inherently 'better' (yikes don't want to start a gamist versus narrativsit debate) but they make explicit what D&D mostly keeps 'behind the scenes' so it's very illuminating to explore directly for a bit.

TLDR; playing games with entirely different core mechanics than D&D helps to have a clearer technical and critical lens to examine the hobby.

 

[Emoshin]

This is no different from the way criticism works in the Humanities, to be fair. Different methodologies and approaches, a heirarchy of texts, competition and rivalry along the lines of: You're doing it wrong and Blah isn't worth studying, No you're doing it wrong and Yaddayadda isn't worth studying.

I don't recall if this was already discussed upthread, but is there an equivalent of carrying a sign above your head that says "I want to talk about blah-blah which I think is worth studying" and those with a sign above their head that says "I want to talk about yada-yada which I think is worth studying" and never the twain shall meet?

I know that creates wall gardens like The Forge I suppose, except that the Forge actually did spill over to the wider community, and that's because the wider community did NOT have a sign above their heads saying "No Forgist terminology pretty please".

And so while that could/would create walled gardens, could it not improve the chances of a productive conversation within each garden that doesn't devolve into an echo chamber. Is that even possible?

 

[JAMUMU]

I don't recall if this was already discussed upthread, but is there an equivalent of carrying a sign above your head that says "I want to talk about blah-blah which I think is worth studying" and those with a sign above their head that says "I want to talk about yada-yada which I think is worth studying" and never the twain shall meet?

I know that creates wall gardens like The Forge I suppose, except that the Forge actually did spill over to the wider community, and that's because the wider community did NOT have a sign above their heads saying "No Forgist terminology pretty please".

And so while that could/would create walled gardens, could it not improve the chances of a productive conversation within each garden that doesn't devolve into an echo chamber. Is that even possible?

Well, academia is both incredibly bitchy and people (especially in the humanities) are forever chasing the same pots of ever-dwindling research funding, so that plays into it. And sure, there's inter-disciplinary research and open dialogue between people. But I'm not sure that could happen in the online RPG space without the bunker/silo effect coming into play. Or really, really spot-on moderation keeping everything above board and real friendly, like.

 

[Campbell]

Fundamentally The Forge was not an academic institution. It was a creative movement born out of the Sorcerer mailing list. Was it respectful? No. Was White Wolf Magazine and 1990s design culture? Also no. Few creative movements are respectful of what came before because they are trying to tread new ground. I was at the Forge during those early days. It was raucous. It was contemptuous. But never any more elitist than any other corner of our hobby. I came into our hobby in the midst of the White Wolf Revolution. Those were heady days. Like brother against brother. The Forge was nothing in comparison.

Besides one or two rude things said don't cross out every contribution someone has ever made. It certainly does not diminish the work of innumerable people who have built on top of those contributions. The honest truth is that if you play the games most people play The Forge does not have all that much to say other than to remind you to please consider looking at your game as game from time to time. However it certainly had a lot to say about the type of play born from its movement. Strong elements of which have began filtering into more normie games.

Sure it was born out of frustration about its forbearers, but so was Punk Rock, Gangsta Rap and Heavy Metal. Also what we call Trad now came from its own revolution.

 

[JAMUMU]

Fundamentally The Forge was not an academic institution. It was a creative movement born out of the Sorcerer mailing list. Was it respectful? No. Was White Wolf Magazine and 1990s design culture? Also no. Few creative movements are respectful of what came before because they are trying to tread new ground. I was at the Forge during those early days. It was raucous. It was contemptuous. But never any more elitist than any other corner of our hobby. I came into our hobby in the midst of the White Wolf Revolution. Those were heady days. Like brother against brother. The Forge was nothing in comparison.

Besides one or two rude things said don't cross out every contribution someone has ever made. It certainly does not diminish the work of innumerable people who have built on top of those contributions. The honest truth is that if you play the games most people play The Forge does not have all that much to say other than to remind you to please consider looking at your game as game from time to time. However it certainly had a lot to say about the type of play born from its movement. Strong elements of which have began filtering into more normie games.

Sure it was born out of frustration about its forbearers, but so was Punk Rock, Gangsta Rap and Heavy Metal. Also what we call Trad now came from its own revolution.

Preach it! The Forge's contribution to the hobby far outweighs the silly rhetoric of some of its participants. I think the reason it keeps coming up in this convo is that it would be great to have a similar set of discussions, but with a more neutral tone. That'd be great.

 

[pemerton]

The honest truth is that if you play the games most people play The Forge does not have all that much to say other than to remind you to please consider looking at your game as game from time to time. k Rock, Gangsta Rap and Heavy Metal. Also what we call Trad now came from its own revolution.

I disagree with this.

At the time I discovered The Forge, and Ron Edwards's essays, I had been GMing long-running Rolemaster campaigns for over a decade. I continued to do so for another 5 or so years.

Edwards's stuff was a bigger help for my RM GMing than anything I ever read on any RM board, in the Guild Companion, or on any D&D discussion board. In my view it's absolutely indispensable for anyone interested in character-heavy purist-for-system RPGing. As well as RM that could be Champions, other HERO games, other supers, GURPS, even some approaches to AD&D.

 

[dragoner]

Fundamentally The Forge was not an academic institution. It was a creative movement born out of the Sorcerer mailing list. Was it respectful? No. Was White Wolf Magazine and 1990s design culture? Also no. Few creative movements are respectful of what came before because they are trying to tread new ground. I was at the Forge during those early days. It was raucous. It was contemptuous. But never any more elitist than any other corner of our hobby. I came into our hobby in the midst of the White Wolf Revolution. Those were heady days. Like brother against brother. The Forge was nothing in comparison.

Besides one or two rude things said don't cross out every contribution someone has ever made. It certainly does not diminish the work of innumerable people who have built on top of those contributions. The honest truth is that if you play the games most people play The Forge does not have all that much to say other than to remind you to please consider looking at your game as game from time to time. However it certainly had a lot to say about the type of play born from its movement. Strong elements of which have began filtering into more normie games.

Sure it was born out of frustration about its forbearers, but so was Punk Rock, Gangsta Rap and Heavy Metal. Also what we call Trad now came from its own revolution.

White punks on hope. I have become largely disillusioned with that as I have grown older. I value utility over theorycrafting.

 

[Umbran]

I don't recall if this was already discussed upthread, but is there an equivalent of carrying a sign above your head that says "I want to talk about blah-blah which I think is worth studying" and those with a sign above their head that says "I want to talk about yada-yada which I think is worth studying" and never the twain shall meet?

You can do this on the level of individual threads using the (+) thread concept. If you dedicate a thread to discussion of theory without Forge terminology, for example, that would allow a space in which to explore theory without folks stomping in with the old standard boots.