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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 8412286" data-attributes="member: 177">Indeed.  Maybe the place we can see this best (but avoid our gaming prejudices) is in music.  There are a small number of musicians who are popular to the broad public.  There are other musicians who are extremely popular with a small set of the public (which we may say have "cult followings").  There is an entirely different set of musicians who are influential for other musicians.There is a point to consider, though - the fact that Edwards and The Forge influenced thinking, and from that thinking there came some good products and designs does not mean that Edwards or the Forge... were ever correct about much.For analogy, I will raise the ever-controversial H.P. Lovecraft.  Setting aside his problematic aspects, there's also the inescapable point that... his prose wasn't actually very good!  It's kind of dry and plodding, to be honest, and not terribly scary.  But, there are things in there that, filtered through better authors, can turn into something good.I find Edwards to be much the same.  At this point, the work influenced by him, but done by others, is far more valuable and instructive than his own work and writings are directly.In the end, if we are to look at Edwards' legacy, his theories and designs are (to my mind) much less important than the movement for independent publishing that he spawned.</blockquote>