What is "The Forge?"

[Staffan]

If I can just bring up a point here: The first edition of WEG Star Wars did not have the wild die! It was an additional rule that entered with the 2nd edition game. My group had been playing SWd6 for a campaign of two years standing beforehand, and the Wild Die was greatly disliked. It complicated a game that had been working well as a lighter system beforehand.

Going off on a tangent here...

I think the greater change in paradigm were seen in the chase/vehicle combat system. In 1e, vehicle fights were based on a simple one-on-one deal, where you simply had range bands - short, medium, and long (possibly something like "almost touching" and "very far" as well). Every round, you rolled the speed ratings of the two vehicles, adding Pilot skill if the pilot took an action specifically to get away/catch up. The one who won got to choose whether to increase or decrease range by one step. Shooting also used these range bands - someone at Medium range was at Medium range whether you used a light laser, an ion cannon, or a proton torpedo.

In 2e, you instead had a system where you tracked the position of each ship on a grid, with difficulties for various maneuvers. Weapons had ranges in units, and vehicles had their speeds rated in units as well (as opposed to dice). The way to use your greater skill to move faster was to use more actions for moving (up to four). In other words, a far more "crunchy" system.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I don't really want to talk about game quality. I've not read much of the Forge's actual games, and I'm not here to bash creators for their work. If we don't agree on the mousetrap analogy, then we're not going to agree, because I define superior products by what the market wants, and especially in this day and age, the market can find what it wants.

You don't think the market wants crap and trite? Because that's 90% of what people seem to buy. There are small sections of the market that actively seek out superior products, and they often have the cash to keep those products in production. I might go so far as to say that the RPG industry is driven mostly by people looking for quality, and that people looking for crap don't usually play RPGs, or at least don't look for crap in RPGS. But I'd have to be convinced, hard, that superior products in general are exactly what people buy.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Unfortunately it's exactly the opposite. For years my friends and I used gaming as an excuse to do other things. We'd always start out gaming, but we never finished any game we started. To jump back to mythusmage, he replaced eyebeams' "fun" with "engagement." I still don't buy it.

Not engagement, enjoyment. If you're not playing a game because you enjoy it, why are you playing? People might work a job they hate, but they usually don't have hobbies they hate.

 

[mythusmage]

Not engagement, enjoyment.

The latter precludes the former? The latter contradicts the former? The former cannot be a prerequisite for the latter?

To paraphrase an old punchline, first you get their attention.

 

[Wayside]

No. Going to the movies for a date is not not about going to the movies it's just also, more importantly, about going on the date. Things can be "about" more than one thing at a time. Gaming is always about gaming; it's just also about other things too most of the time.

I'm going to disagree with you here and say that yes, while the aboutness of things can certainly be multidirectional, no, it doesn't have to be. A good example would be certain kinds of allegory. Now, if you want to say that I'm wrong, that I'm not gaming without my gaming being about gaming, that in fact I'm simply not gaming at all, or that I'm gaming incorrectly, then you can keep on trucking with that one. I happen to believe that on the one hand there's a concept in our culture, "going to the movies," and then there's an actual practice where I go to a movie, and in my case there's no requirement that the two should overlap.

That's just not true. How can the word "gaming" have any meaning if it can potentially refer to anything and everything in in the entire world?

Philosophically speaking, the word gaming can already do that. We've been talking about language games, the construction of social reality and the concept of play for half a century. And none of this is that chaotic evil continental philosophy you and Akrasia seem to despise so much; it's all of the upstanding analytic variety (which doesn't mean it's not poststructuralist, since most analytic philosophy is).

The moment you bound/define gaming, you introduce the possibility that people will do it wrong. Take "walking" for instance. If I drag myself somewhere with my lips, I'm walking wrong.

No, you just aren't walking. The idea that you're walking wrong here is absurd. Do snakes walk, but just do it wrong?

Look at it this way: in order to say that someone is doing something wrong, you have already to have a set of beliefs about a number of things. The most important of these is that you have to believe that they're trying to do right what you believe they're doing wrong in the first place, i.e. you have to believe that they're trying to walk by dragging themselves somewhere with their lips. If they're just in a "drag yourself somewhere with your lips" race, they can't be walking wrong; in fact if they were walking as you or I do in that same "drag yourself somewhere with your lips" race, they'd be doing that wrong. Here the wrongness is determined by the immediate context of the race and its participants, and not by any transhistorical notion of "drag yourself somewhere with your lips" wrongness.

But, you might say, it would always be wrong to walk as you or I do in a "drag yourself somewhere with your lips" race, and that might be true, because that's already a very specific practice we've laid out, and it's difficult to break it down further into subsets of practices that might emerge and transform the sport of "drag yourself somewhere with your lips." I maintain, however, that it's still possible for this sport to change drastically through technological advances, cultural shifts, even through reassessments of what is significant in the sport--perhaps to the point where walking is no longer wrong when running a "drag yourself somewhere with your lips" race. I want to go on with this quite a bit further but I'm starving, so I'm going to finish this off and grab some food.

First let's take a quick moment to think about how we might try and define gaming here. I think this is where eyebeams has a lot to say that some other people just aren't registering. On the one hand, you can try and come up with your totalizing definition of what gaming is right now, today, and then flip it from a description of current gaming practices to a prescription for all "correct" gaming practices forever. On the other hand you can--and this seems to be eyebeams' big issue with The Forge, because they don't do this, don't even seem to grasp why it might be important--take a step back from this totalizing, culturally isolated concept of "gaming" and look at the larger socio-political factors that are responsible for producing such concepts.

How does anyone fail to see that the latter simply makes more sense? If you'd defined gaming by what everyone was doing in 1970, then we'd all be gaming wrong today. So why, exactly, should today be the standard for tomorrow? And, to take this a step further, why shouldn't designers like eyebeams attempt to anticipate these shifts in how gamers go about doing their thing, or why shouldn't he attempt to develop games that even encourage certain shifts in gaming, based on his understanding of current and developing social contexts? Why shouldn't he, in other words, try and design the next Vampire:tM on purpose, try and capture the disillusionment of a generation, or anything to that effect?

Glad you have come up with conditions under which I can be wrong. Clearly, then, the word "define" has parameters; why doesn't the word "gaming"?

If you couldn't tell, I was parroting your statement back at you. Still, you or me saying "you're wrong," and saying "Jimmy over there is gaming wrong," are two completely different things. While it may seem like an insane conceptual leap, even the idea of defining something can and has changed over time, can and will continue to change over time. Anyhow, tuna!

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

The latter precludes the former? The latter contradicts the former? The former cannot be a prerequisite for the latter?

To paraphrase an old punchline, first you get their attention.

Well, you know, you can be quite engaged by the experience of being in a car crash. Doesn't mean you enjoy it. I think the reason why people do stuff that is supposed to be "entertainment" like playing games is because they enjoy doing it. I don't think this is the most controversial hypothesis in the world. People only do things they hate if they're being forced.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I guess we're getting back to Humpty Dumpty now?

 

[mythusmage]

Well, you know, you can be quite engaged by the experience of being in a car crash. Doesn't mean you enjoy it. I think the reason why people do stuff that is supposed to be "entertainment" like playing games is because they enjoy doing it. I don't think this is the most controversial hypothesis in the world. People only do things they hate if they're being forced.

It therefor follows that you can't encourage people to do something they hate.

Get their attention, draw them in, and then present them with an experience that makes them want to come back. But it need not be done with empty rewards.

It is possible for the players to have a good time, even if their characters failed. What's important is the feeling they had a chance, while playing in a world that's well presented with interesting characters to interact with, interesting situations to get involved with, and interesting problems to solve.

The players don't have to always win. What they do need is a chance. And not always then, for sometimes there's just something about a lost cause that gets people roused. There's a stanza in an old filk (to Men of Harlech that goes ...

In the stories ancients hoary
Knew defeat was generally the price of glory
Still they fight in masses gory
Yes, they are full of ose.​

A sharp sword, a stout shield, and I shall go to Heaven with an honor guard.

But that calls for a good GM who knows what he's doing, and can get his players excited about what they're doing.

There are many ways to enjoy a game, and in the long run trinkets and doodads are a poor substitute for a good adventure.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

It therefor follows that you can't encourage people to do something they hate.

Get their attention, draw them in, and then present them with an experience that makes them want to come back. But it need not be done with empty rewards.

Who's proposing empty rewards? I seriously have lost track. Anyway, when you "present them with an experience that makes them want to come back," you are causing them to enjoy the game. If they come back, it's because they enjoyed the first experience and are looking for more enjoyment. Of course, this is just a truism. If they happen to enjoy watching their characters get phat loot, it's the same as if they happen to enjoy a deep roleplaying experience. They could be capable of enjoying both, but latch onto whichever happens to be handy at the time.

My thesis here, such as it is, is that the reason people game is simply and concisely that it pleases them to do so. Someone might start gaming thinking that it will please them, and find out that it doesn't, but they won't keep at it for long if they're not getting some kind of enjoyment out of it, much in the same way that most people don't slam their fingers in a door and say to themselves, "yow! That sucked! I guess I'll try it again and see if it gets any better."

It is possible for the players to have a good time, even if their characters failed. What's important is the feeling they had a chance, while playing in a world that's well presented with interesting characters to interact with, interesting situations to get involved with, and interesting problems to solve.

Yup. So long as you enjoy the experience of trying to succeed and failing, you'll enjoy a game that gives it to you. You'll come back for more and enjoy challenges that you might or might not overcome.

 

[evileeyore]

How does anyone fail to see that the latter simply makes more sense? If you'd defined gaming by what everyone was doing in 1970, then we'd all be gaming wrong today.

I think this statement and attitude is the crux of the problem.

As far as I'm concerned we are still gaming the same way we were in 1970. We gather with like-minded people and play games that we enjoy. Just as we did in 1970. We just play different games.

If your doing anything else... you aren't gaming.

Your socializing, your gathering, your ... whatever. But it ain't gaming. I think your looking at the back of the cave and declaring the shadows reality when in fact they are but the two dimensional images of what makes up reality. In this case your trying to deconstruct 'gaming' and the idea is falling apart. Deconstruct games systems, genres, people preferences as you like. But gaming is gaming is gaming.