"The term 'GNS' is moronic and annoying" – well this should be an interesting interview

[niklinna]

I just want to say that both AD&D 2e and Vampire are two of the games I had most fun playing.

Where they're a good fit, they're fine games. I think Ron Edwards's big issue is that those games (Vampire at any rate) promised one thing and generally delivered quite a different thing. Or perhaps that enough people he knew expected one thing, and didn't see that pan out in play.

 

[kenada]

Aren't games meant for play (consumption), though? Consumption of one or niche or mass is irrelevant to me here.
Conversation always gets bogged down on that line and that is another frustrating facet of these conversations I could fold into the bullet points above!

It needs to be read in context, which was as a response to a dichotomy being presented between designed and is art. There isn’t. A game is designed, and it is art. When played, a game may evoke certain emotions in the players or prompt them to examine certain ideas they have. How to do that and do that well is the domain of game design theory. One of the important things you need to consider are the intended experiences, which includes goals of play for a tabletop RPG because your game is going to be used as input into their play. Ideally, you don’t want to waste a lot of their time making them change your game to fit the outcomes they want.

 

[Atomoctba]

Where they're a good fit, they're fine games. I think Ron Edwards's big issue is that those games (Vampire at any rate) promised one thing and generally delivered quite a different thing. Or perhaps that enough people he knew expected one thing, and didn't see that pan out in play.

Well, I took it for what it promised. Personal horror game. I must be a monster to do not become a monster. I am dangerous to every mortal I love, specially if I am hungry. Our group never brought the "superhero that cannot walk by day" that some people gamed. Even so, if those "night superheroes" group had fun playing the game that way, who am I to tell them that it is the "wrong" form to play it?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Where they're a good fit, they're fine games. I think Ron Edwards's big issue is that those games (Vampire at any rate) promised one thing and generally delivered quite a different thing. Or perhaps that enough people he knew expected one thing, and didn't see that pan out in play.

While I think Edwards had some serious hyperbole here, I think its pretty defensible that most of the design of Vampire was relatively trad with nothing leading to the kind of game it claimed to want, and a single system--Humanity--bolted on to lean toward that. That meant that in practice, for a lot of people they were trying to play a different game than the one it avowedly was, and just working around Humanity as best they could to do so.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It needs to be read in context, which was as a response to a dichotomy being presented between designed and is art. There isn’t. A game is designed, and it is art. When played, a game may evoke certain emotions in the players or prompt them to examine certain ideas they have. How to do that and do that well is the domain of game design theory. One of the important things you need to consider are the intended experiences, which includes goals of play for a tabletop RPG because your game is going to be used as input into their play. Ideally, you don’t want to waste a lot of their time making them change your game to fit the outcomes they want.

Of course it can be hard to do that reliably when this hobby is full of people who will try and pound nails with a wrench.

 

[Maxperson]

There seems to be an issue with your quote. It’s missing the last sentence in that paragraph about constraints. That’s an important one because it’s the one that introduces his comment about Mad Libs. I think he’s right on that point. If you’re just making up stuff unconstrained, what preserves causality? What’s to stop silly answers from ruining the game? People could declare they have a million bucks or can just jump to the moon. Maybe the guy watching from the shadows is here to deliver my pizza. Without constraints, they’re all good responses.

From my perspective, I thought it was a good reminder than when a system tasks you to introduce consequences, they have to follow. Whenever I’ve screwed that up, my players never liked it. You rolled a partial success, then a guy wanders into the area where you’re fighting to get in the way. You get a mixed success while persuading someone, then a guy in the background wanders off. You’re trying to discern realities, then suddenly ogres.

The social contract. Unless of course the players want a silly game, then it really doesn't ruin it and the social contract requires silliness.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I think it's hard for most players / DMs who haven't tried a multiplicity of systems to articulate what they're striving for or what they feel is lacking. 5e for example is like the Skyrim of TTRPG rulesets - the base game is alright if a bit buggy, and can feed some great moments, but then you can go mod it to all hell and back to get to a remarkable spread of experiences. But, the combat will never be as visceral and complex as something focused on that from teh ground up like Dark Souls (despite there being mods to try and hack that sort of thing into Skyrim!). Without trying a game like that, if you were always craving a more tactical and dangerous combat system you'd lack the point of reference to really land on what you felt was missing beyond a vague "I wish combat didn't feel like flailing away with nerf bats."

Likewise you can mod all sorts of things into 5e (I know people who play it as nearly pure ERP, near freeform RP, gritty combat, classical dungeon crawling, 4e-alike); but the core design decisions do mean that things fray around the edge compared to a system built ground up to focus on what the player might want.

Finally, I think it's harder for players to take the step towards criticism because there's so many players and relatively so few DMs / scheduling availability. I have a couple players who have been trying to get into additional games without luck for quite some time.

There are plenty of DMs on startplaying.game !

 

[aramis erak]

So far I've listened to 1.5 of the videos. I ... don't like Edwards. He comes across as pretentious.
"These are bad games."
"People don't play games correctly."
"You don't understand why you like playing TTRPGs."
Other than being a guy who wrote a game 20 years ago that I've never heard of, I don't see why his opinion should matter.

He's written several well acclaimed games 20 years ago. Socerer, Trollbabe, Cartoon Action Hour.... and more since.

Socerer is one of the most laser-focused designs I've read. His goal is clear, in one's face from the moment one starts reading it, and the game is built to follow-through on it. It offended half my regular group when I found it. The rest when I ran it.

I really recommend Sorcerer, at least as a read. See if you can check it out via inter-library loan.. because I don't advocate piracy, but don't want to put money in his pockets...
...as my experiences with Ron himself are pure toxicity. The man was then a total «bleep»-«bleep». I hold out no hope that he's changed.

He is one of the first English-speaking/writing academics to apply the academic approach to RPGing. (Brasil and Argentina have been doing so longer, in Portuguese and Español, respectively.) He's historically important for the encouragement of the storygames movement, the independent publishing movement, and wide adoption of PDF as a publishing medium.

His historical impact is up there with likes of Marc Miller, Frank Chadwick, Steve Jackson, Steve Jackson, Ian Livingston, Loren K Wiseman, Jordan Weisman, L. Ross Babcock III, Greg Stafford, Steve Perrin, Ken St. Andre, and Rick Loomis.... (MM, FC, LKW: Game Designers Workshop; SJ #1: best designer for Metagaming and founder of SJG; SJ #2 and IL: Games Workshop; JW, LRB: FASA; KSA: T&T, Flying Buffalo, some Chaosium titles; RL: Flying Buffalo; SP and GS: The Chaosium, especially RuneQuest and Pendragon).

 

[aramis erak]

I had to find the right people and the right structure/system.

Until I had a conversation with Ron I was still putting too much emphasis on the system to facilitate things. Afterwards I focussed on finding the right people and it worked out. Part of that process was realising I couldn’t just play with friends because some of them wanted fundamentally different things than me. I mean it seems blindingly obvious in hindsight so maybe I’m dumb.

That is the key takeaway of the original GNS article...
... but not the full extent.
There are multiple things about it:
1) the group having similar preferences is important
2) the game and the GM having similiar approaches is important
3) The stories being played/generated need to be in line with both game and group.

At the time, it was the most profound set of observations in print.

His biggest problem there was assuming that they were each exclusionary goals, rather than a three axis points on a 2d graph in a triangle shape.

The closer a game is on the graph to one's preference point on that graph, the more likely to enjoy the experience it will be. There are a couple other factors that could be included, but then we get 3d space from 4 points... the most overlooked being randomization.

 

[kenada]

The social contract. Unless of course the players want a silly game, then it really doesn't ruin it and the social contract requires silliness.

I elaborate a bit more in post #69. Yes, silly (or out of tone) replies can be regulated through the social contract: we agreed to play a game with X tone, and the GM is screwing that up by being (too, not enough, etc) silly. It’s well-meaning but inappropriate responses that are the problem. I gave some examples of that at the end of my original post. However, I do wish Ron Edwards had named the game, so we could judge the move for ourselves.