What is "The Forge?"

[eyebeams]

What of those who disagree? Do you consider viewpoints and insights that contradict yours, or only those that support them?

OK Alan, you win.

 

[eyebeams]

Yes, because a single game can only enable so much. We certainly don't want designers tryign to make each individual game into all things for all people, do we?

When there's a disjoin between what the players want and what the designer wrote, then the players have to deviate from teh rules to have more fun. But it isn't like the designer knows and can match what all players want ahead of time. So, there's some burden upon the players to chose the right game for what they want to do, and then to use the tools the designer created properly.

That's true, but you've got to be reasonable about what you demand of the player of you care about the form. If you, as designer, want everybody to play the game in one way, you may as well go the whole hog and write a novel or make a boardgame. The RPG form is dead without significant, individual player input on what mode we play in.

One of the outcomes of this is that rules heavy games sometimes allow more freedom, because I can ignore some rules or simplify them down to the core mechanic (like "Make a Jump check DC, uh. . . 20" instead of looking up the rules -- so as you see, you *already* do this). I can play D&D many different ways and get something out of the game that's different than somebody in the same game, because the options are there.

Anything less and again, I wonder if the designer is actually interested in RPGs.

 

[eyebeams]

Come on Paka, this ain't RPG.net. Eyebeams' assertion was no crazier than "we at the Forge have influenced every major RPG of the 21st Century and beyonnndddd-oonnnd-ooonnnd."

Actually, the big secret of successful game design (that someone actually passed down to me) is this:

Most gamers are really bad at gaming.

Lots of stuff proceeds from this, but we also can't directly tell gamers they aren't that good at it, because it sounds bad to say about one's audience. Disguising this while trying to solve it eats up a great deal of effort.

 

[Samuel Leming]

Actually, the big secret of successful game design (that someone actually passed down to me) is this:

Most gamers are really bad at gaming.

Lots of stuff proceeds from this, but we also can't directly tell gamers they aren't that good at it, because it sounds bad to say about one's audience. Disguising this while trying to solve it eats up a great deal of effort.

How much influence has this philosophy had on, say, White Wolf? :\

Sam

 

[Aaron L]

How can you be bad at gaming? Do you mean following the rules badly?

 

[eyebeams]

How much influence has this philosophy had on, say, White Wolf? :\

Sam

Well, they don't do enough work to disguise it

But I do believe this. There are huge disparities in the quality of play between groups. That's why the Forge exists. It's responding to a real problem. Gaming is easy to pick up but hard to get good at. I personally believe this has implications for the health of the hobby because without a minimum competence level in place, gamers will not tolerate the hobby as they age. This is why D&D is derided as being childish and nerdy. People see it played with minimum competency, which makes it look halting and socially dysfunctional.

There is also a lot of self-deception, frankly. Lots of posted play reports benefit from rather serious editing and paring down of a clumsy narrative. I discussed this with folks at Gen Con and they admitted that they often rendered this stuff down into an "ideal" version of game events, rather than what happened. Otherwise, you have interpersonal problems whose solutions area bit more blunt than a problematic creative agenda.

 

[eyebeams]

How can you be bad at gaming? Do you mean following the rules badly?

You either have no fun, have fun at the expense of someone else, or have fun in a way that destroys the ability of your group to maintain fun gaming.

That covers most people, but nobody will admit it.

 

[Aaron L]

OK. Yup, thats bad gaming alright. Had me worried there for a sec.

 

[Mark CMG]

Actually, the big secret of successful game design (that someone actually passed down to me) is this:

Most gamers are really bad at gaming.

Lots of stuff proceeds from this, but we also can't directly tell gamers they aren't that good at it, because it sounds bad to say about one's audience. Disguising this while trying to solve it eats up a great deal of effort.

How can you be bad at gaming? Do you mean following the rules badly?

You either have no fun, have fun at the expense of someone else, or have fun in a way that destroys the ability of your group to maintain fun gaming.

That covers most people, but nobody will admit it.

Well, that is a design philosophy that, in 30+ years of rpging, I haven't seen or heard expounded prior to now.

 

[Wayside]

There is nothing bonding players to a shared vision. Instead, there is a relationship between the interests of players that negotiates itself before, during and after play. Sometimes we think of "types" of gamers (powergamers, social gamers, etc) and sometimes we think of game features that some like and some don't.

The result is a much less "focused" design and one that thinks of a multitude of interests. There is no contract...

You either have no fun, have fun at the expense of someone else, or have fun in a way that destroys the ability of your group to maintain fun gaming.

That covers most people, but nobody will admit it.

So good gaming is having fun without impinging on the fun of the group or the game, but this always ongoing negotiation on the part of the players never has the force of a contract, not even in the categorical form you have given it here?

If I understand where you're going with this (and really I'm taking my cue more from the interest in poststructuralism you claimed earlier than from anything immediately visible in the text above), you want basically to do away with any totalizing concept of the game in favor of conversations about this game, someone's game, some group's game. From a design perspective I can see how that would take you to some interesting places, and it certainly forbids, as you said, a designer auteurism.

I don't know that I believe gaming has to be about fun, anymore than I believe art has to be about beauty, but the rest of what you're saying is interesting. The emphasis on fun, while no doubt necessary commercially, seems to conflict with it though. Then again, internal conflicts can be very productive as well.