What is "The Forge?"

[The Shaman]

Thanks very much to everyone, especially jdrakeh, for explaining The Forge and the concepts engendered by it (and not ridiculing my weak gamer-fu in the process... ).

I read the linked thread at RPGnet (and I'd like to know who I talk to about getting my lost SAN points back... :\ ) and wanted to briefly note a couple of things: (1) the statement by Ron Edwards (I think...) explaining the closure of the theory forum should probably have been posted at the start of the thread instead of somewhere around page 38 - it might have saved some of the rather pointless squabbling that appeared in the thread (yeah, not bloody likely, but a man can dream...), and (2) based on his posts I came away with the impression that Mike Mearls was a supporter of the concepts espoused by The Forge - his comment on 4e Dungeons and Dragons was interesting.

I was inspired by the thread to check out a couple of the games mentioned, specifically My Life with Master and Dogs in the Vineyard. Both games seemed like they offered interesting premises, but in each case I found myself thinking the same thing: both could be interesting campaign settings for a d20 Modern game (adding Sidewinder: Recoiled for Dogs in the Vineyard).

I'm not enough of a gamer - excuse me, A Gamer - to get too hung up on systems. I look for games that play fast, are versatile, and are popular enough so that I can find other players. I'm past the point where I want to teach and/or learn a half-dozen different systems: there's a very practical limit on the amount of time that I can afford to spend on this hobby, and I'd rather devote that time to writing adventures and characters than learning the intracacies of different games - what I look for in gaming products are things that make that part of my gaming experience easier, by minimizing the work for me as the gamemaster (and honestly, learning a new system is work).

IRL I am an applied scientist, and while I appreciate theory, I am most interested in where the rubber meets the road, that is, how theory translates into practice, so I'm curious to check out the Actual Play forum, to mine for ideas for my own games. Theorizing is fun and interesting in its way, but theories that inform practical action are pure gold.

Again, thanks for the replies.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I'd more say that the problem is when the jargon doesn't actually equate to a defensible idea. In the context of the Forge, you get these baroque semantic games thet go like this:

Baroque...yeah, that's a really good adjective in this context. It captures exactly the kind of atmosphere that kind of discussion always generates...one of the reasons I confine my message-boarding to heavily (neutrally) moderated boards.

 

[diaglo]

There is such a thing as a RPG "Think Tank" you say? Man o man...

it was made popular by Thomas Crapper. it is the tank you put the goldfish in when they float to the surface of their bowl.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I don't participate at the forge, but I've read most of their stuff and found it very helpful. The most useful thing that happened was that I became aware of different ways of playing. It gave me a lot of new option for things to do in RPGs. I didn't really find the material all that hard to follow, either, but that may just be because grad school required me to become used to dealing with jargon and obtuse writing.

 

[Joshua Randall]

Thanks very much to everyone, especially jdrakeh, for explaining The Forge and the concepts engendered by it (and not ridiculing my weak gamer-fu in the process... ).

Well, then, allow me to be the first:

/me points at The Shaman, stifling a laugh at his weak gamer-fu.

 

[LostSoul]

I was inspired by the thread to check out a couple of the games mentioned, specifically My Life with Master and Dogs in the Vineyard. Both games seemed like they offered interesting premises, but in each case I found myself thinking the same thing: both could be interesting campaign settings for a d20 Modern game (adding Sidewinder: Recoiled for Dogs in the Vineyard).

Just a quick note on Dogs: the setting isn't what's important. It helps keep the game focused, and it totally reduces prep-time for the GM (to about 30 minutes per 4-hour game), but the game is all about the mechanics.

 

[Umbran]

No. Ron is an engineer. In fact, the Forge community doesn't really know much about intellectual trends in the wider world. In fact, I'd say Forge theory is specifically designed to appeal to people who feel alienated by more relevant intellectual trends.

Not being employed in academia does not prevent one from behavign like an "academic type". Convergent evolution happens, you know. One can view The Forge as a sort of mixture mini-university and journal publication in some regards. The same modes of behavior may develop.

And, of course, what a thing is designed to do, and what it actually does do, are not necessarily as related as one might hope...

 

[Bastoche]

I was inspired by the thread to check out a couple of the games mentioned, specifically My Life with Master and Dogs in the Vineyard. Both games seemed like they offered interesting premises, but in each case I found myself thinking the same thing: both could be interesting campaign settings for a d20 Modern game (adding Sidewinder: Recoiled for Dogs in the Vineyard).

I'm not enough of a gamer - excuse me, A Gamer - to get too hung up on systems. I look for games that play fast, are versatile, and are popular enough so that I can find other players. I'm past the point where I want to teach and/or learn a half-dozen different systems: there's a very practical limit on the amount of time that I can afford to spend on this hobby, and I'd rather devote that time to writing adventures and characters than learning the intracacies of different games - what I look for in gaming products are things that make that part of my gaming experience easier, by minimizing the work for me as the gamemaster (and honestly, learning a new system is work).

I think that the most important contribution by Ron et al to the gamer community is that RPGing goes way beyond "learning a system" and by doing what you do (ie. sticking to one system to play "all" games) *might* be a recipe for trouble. For a specific example, playing "dogs in the vineyard" with d20 modern (or past) rules will be a game eons away from the dogs in the vineyard "feel". That's what the big model tries to teach: before choosing a game, identify your gaming priorities as a group and then find the game that fits (and if it does not exists, create your own )

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Oh yeah -- I hear strong AI is just around the corner! *chortle*

Oh god. I can't read American philosophy because it's all about this crap. Just a bunch of people who aren't neuroscientists and aren't computer scientists going on about the brain and AI.

There are a few exceptions, of course, but in general it's all just, as someone put it, a "circle jerk" by a few people who made a name for themselves and who are now "important" in the discipline. I could go on, but I won't, because it would be a huge off-topic rant. But yeah, this kind of behaviour is certainly not confined to RPG design.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I was inspired by the thread to check out a couple of the games mentioned, specifically My Life with Master and Dogs in the Vineyard. Both games seemed like they offered interesting premises, but in each case I found myself thinking the same thing: both could be interesting campaign settings for a d20 Modern game (adding Sidewinder: Recoiled for Dogs in the Vineyard).

I can't speak to Dogs In The Vineyard, since I haven't played it, but My Life With Master is a good system for what it seeks to accomplish. Play involves essentially sitting around and narrating scenes without regard for the mechanics of the character. The character's actual abilities are left abstract, and their traits are essentially purely narrative ones, by which I mean, only things that can change the outcome of a scene are included, and these are heavily abstracted. The character's traits are also all based on conflict-inducing factors, specifically, Fear, Self-loathing, Weariness and Love, which means that paying attention to the game mechanics turns you back toward the narrative thread of the game, which is essentially interpersonal conflict.

The dice mechanic is there so that no matter what you do narratively during a scene, you won't know how the scene will end (although you have some influence on it by calling for bonus dice), which performs the role of keeping an objective check on a system that is very subjective. i.e. the rules say whether you succeed or fail, regardless of how you think the scene should end, so roll with it dramatically. That way you avoid that problem with very narrative games where the characters always win because that would be in their idiom.

It is taken for granted that someone will win, which is important, because you know how the game will end. That takes the focus away from the outcome and puts it on the struggle. The important bits are: the relationship between the master and his or her minions, the relationship between the minions and the town, and the relationship between the minions and individual townsfolk. To a lesser extent, minion/minion relationships come up, but this interaction is not the focus of the game, and the rules actually manage to downplay it to a certain extent.

I can't see this kind of play working as well in a system like d20 modern. The reason for this is that the MLWM system is pared down to include only what you need to get the kind of game that MLWM provides. Adding more rules on top of it would complicate the game unnecessarily, and with many things that don't need to be there. Not to say you couldn't play that game, but abstracting away the details of conflict allows you to focus on the conflict and not the details. There is no reason why a MLWM character needs a constitution score. That simply doesn't matter to the outcome of the game. If I were going to play MLWM using a different system, I'd probably pick another heavily-abstracted system like FUDGE, rather than a detail-laden system like d20 Modern or GURPS.

My point is essentially that the MLWM rules contain only what is necessary to play a game that elicits the kind of game that MLWM seeks to generate. A problem with this is that MLWM has limited replay value. Eventually all the games start to feel the same. There are only so many variations on the master and the minions that are original and interesting. But it's really good while it's still fresh.