a Forge greater than the sum of its parts

[hardcoremoose]

Following the B-day party theme...

You know how sometimes you get drunk and brutal honesty follows.  This is that thread.  Remember, it's the booze talking.

My posting here has been way down.  Almost non-existent, actually.  It makes me sad, because I love this place.  I love many of the people here.  But shit, I just got nothing to say.  I'm not designing anything.  Well, I try, but it's all shit.  I'm not playing much either.  And when I try, it turns out to be shit too.  I could join in the theory discussions, but you know, for me it's not a suitable surrogate for the other two.

But hey, what's that got to do with The Forge, right?  Well, I'll tell ya'.  I think many of you are having the same problem, and choose to soldier on anyway.

For starters, look at the Actual Play forum.  Or don't...there's not really any point.  Nothing new is getting played.  I'm happy for The Riddle of Steel, Sorcerer, InSpectres and Burning Wheel.  The fact that those games are getting posted about is great, and I don't begrudge them it a bit.  We need to keep playing and posting about those games, because they are the success stories of the indie movement.  But increasingly it appears to me that they are the indie movement, at least as far as The Forge is concerned.  Gone are the days of experimental game play, aimed at broadening horizons.  Gone are the days of the X-game.  I rejoiced in the return of our own Zak Arntson, but he's just one person.

And when someone does post about a really interesting play experience – http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=4599&highlight=wraiths">Wraiths, for instance – it goes largely ignored, or at best becomes a conversation between the poster and maybe one or two other people.

Maybe I'm just being wistful here.  Maybe the old days were never as great as I remember them.  Maybe it was just Ron and Zak and Blake and a few others crutching up an otherwise lackluster forum.  I don't think so though.  Why aren't people here – especially people like John Kin, who has clout to spare – pioneering new frontiers, rather than playing games where http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6543&highlight=lotr+horse"> horses try to have sex with player characters?

And then there's game design.  http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewforum.php?f=2">Lots of ideas floating around out there .  No new games though.  Off the top of my head, I can think of maybe three – Robots & Rapiers, Dogs in the Vinyard, and 9 Worlds – that move forward with any level of earnestness.  But knowing their designers, that's not a surprise.  Where are all the rest?  Where are the games moving towards publication, even if that publication "just" means a freebie for download?  And if you say "mine's right here", I want to know, why aren't you playing and posting about it?

Mind you, I'm not saying design more games.  The forum is clogged with stuff already; it's no wonder people can't get good feedback there.  I want to know who has something to say, something they feel passionately about.  I want to know who those next great couple game designers are going to be.  Are they Forge people?  Right now it sure doesn't seem like it.

So what's the point?  Am I just talking about the "noise to sound" ratio?  Maybe.  Do I want to redefine what "noise" is?  Not really.  Do I want an indie game community where people actually play and design indie games rather than just theorize about them?  Yes.

- Scott

[Lxndr]

One game of mine, Snowball, is available on the web and getting tossed into the "No Press Anthology #1" to boot.  As a variation of The Pool, I'm not sure if it's a full and complete "game", but I like it anyway, and it's something that' both been created and been played.  The threads for it are mostly, at the moment, in the ROCG forum, and a new one was created recently in response to some Actual Play over in Italy, of all places.  Those threads should be moving to my company forum, if/when it becomes a reality.

Another game of mine, Fastlane, will soon be available as a for-sale PDF and a published product.  You haven't seen much in the way of posting for it recently because the playtests of the game have completed themselves (the Actual Play threads are still out there), and there's been no NEW play since then, and nothing to speak about since the rules have crystallized and are off in layout.  

Fastlane has been moving forward for months, mostly quietly, not really making a big splash for whatever reason or reasons (maybe 'cause it uses a Roulette wheel, maybe 'cause it's just sort of "out there") but it will be for sale this month, barring catastrophic real-life issues from Matt Snyder, the man doing my layout (and god forbid he actually experiences catastrophic real-life issues).

And yes, I've been playing Burning Wheel and The Riddle of Steel in person (one, then the other, really) - TRoS concurrently with Fastlane as a player, and BW subsequently as a GM, and have dropped the ball on making Actual Play posts about it, possibly because it hasn't really inspired me to make Actual Play posts.  I've been running a Sorcerer online through play-by-post, which doesn't inspire making a lot of posts solely because it's already a bunch of posts.  But there are Actual Play posts about Fastlane, small though they are.  I'm not playing it right now because I like variety, and frankly I had too much Fastlane during the playtesting phase.  I'm not posting about it because, well, it's out of the design process, I've got my publishing ducks lined up in a row, and there's no new Actual Play to discuss.  There's nowhere else, really.

(There's one other designed game on my site that's more than half-baked, a redesign of the original Creeks and Crawdads, an out-there concept that, while fun, doesn't really attract the players.  The one time it was Actually Played, there was a post about it too.)

And I'm ashamed to admit, I've been slacking and stagnating on designing some of the other ideas that have popped into my head, working towards turning them into actual roleplaying game products (and some of them are truly meant to be future products for Twisted Confessions, my game design label/company/whatever).  I've been waiting for two goalposts - Fastlane to turn into a published product, instead of an on-the-cusp project (and I jokingly blame Elfs for the delay, 'cause Matt Snyder had some sort of writer's block on the layout, and it was in line before Fastlane), and for Twisted Confessions to get its own forum (which is more an empty excuse than an actual reason).

Anyway, now you know the reasons why I'm not playing or posting about either of my big games, although one (Snowball) is at least getting SOME posting from others.  If there was a place where I could post "hey, look, I'm finally published!" I would certainly do that when my game was complete.  But none of the forums really look suitable.

Besides my games, however, I would like to point out the first game that pops into my head (besides Robots and Rapiers, and my own works) when I think of games that are happening and progressing here at the Forge:  "Great Ork Gods."  Heck, I've seen enough excitement over that game to be jealous.  What's Dogs in the Vineyard?  I can't say I've even HEARD of that one...

[Ben Lehman]

Well, I have a microgame being published and I'm working on Tactics as well as I can whilst juggling a couple of other creative projects and intensive schoolwork on top of that...

I mean, is Tactics going to be the next Big Commercial Success Indie Game?  Probably not.  At this point in my life I don't have the internal or financial resources to publish and distribute a paper-press game, and I honestly don't know if the life of a game publisher is for me.  But I do intend to design it and get it out there, because its a good game, and I want people to play it.

So the Forge is not perhaps as dead as all that.  It's different, sure -- different audience, different people -- and it will never compete with the force of nostalgia.  But, even if it could, I wouldn't want it to.  There's a lot of great stuff going on here, in terms of recongnition of a lot of different types of play and game designs, and I think that it's really grown since the "old days."

(I am slightly bitter about how everyone always bitches about how quiet Actual Play is but *never posts questions* about play experiences.  So go on.  Post there.  If you build it, they will come.)

yrs--
--Ben

[greyorm]

READ MY SIG. IT IS TRUE! PEOPLE ARE READING THE FINAL DRAFT VERSION RIGHT NOW COME TOMORROW MORNING! I AM GOD. ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!

[Rich Forest]

Hi Scott,

I agree and I don't, here's why:

There are games in real development, really moving toward publication, if ever so quietly--my case in point, before each and every author stops by to point out his game individually, is the No Press Anthology. There's over half a dozen Forge designed games in there. All of the games have been through editing. Layout, final proofreading, and final layout are all in the immediate future. This thing is coming out. Soon. For real. It might have been under your radar--most of the grunt work happens outside of the Forge. But the initial game developments were all almost entirely done here, in Indie Design.

That said, I still see your point. Not that I'm sure there's much that can be done about it. I mean, everybody comes here for different reasons. Ron has often stated that Actual Play and Publishing are the two forums that he sees as being absolutely central to the Forge. But you know, they're not the most popular ones. RPG Theory and GNS dominate most discussions.

Now when I first found the Forge, the only thing I cared about was the Indie Design forum. I read it, I sought out the games, and I picked up theory as a side effect. But I didn't post much--I didn't have anything substantial to offer, as far as completed or even really seriously in-development games. And at the time, I didn't feel like I had a lot to offer from a feedback perspective. I feel differently about that now, but here's the rub--I can't be bothered to post much in Indie Design. Even though I think it's great. Why? It is a lot of work.

Reading through a game or portion of a game for development and giving good feedback is just a lot of work. It's time consuming. And then what happens? The game never sees the light of day. It's dropped. Left to the side. Now this doesn't happen all the time, but it happens often. When a game does make it to web-published status or for pay status, playtested and revised by the author, that's cool. But most games don't.  

It's a lot of work to reply to those games in there, and I have a ton of respect for the people who manage to do it consistently (Mike Holmes has been doing this for a long time, and he still keeps it up. Other people are great in there as well). So it's work. And then there are the obvious idea dumps, which I tend to ignore, and then there are the games designed by folks who just haven't encountered many games yet. Those are really hard--you know, usually you bang your head against the wall trying to open their eyes to the possibilities only to frustrate them, or annoy them, or get involved in a long discussion saying the same things over and over that you've said a million times, or something. And then what? You never hear from them again. Ever. Have any of those games ever been transformed from heartbreakers to games that know what they're doing and why? Have any of those games ever been published? I don't know. I suspect not. I wonder if the effort people put in to giving feedback might have been better spent in other ways. Would the Indie Design forum be more productive if, say, we all went in and said, "Today, I'll only reply on Indie Design thread. And only the one I think is worthwhile. The one I think might have a real chance of being published." I don't know. I'm tempted to do this one, but I can't imagine I'd manage to post consistently enough. If throwaway ideas, and people who are all talk and no design, and so on were just ignored in the Indie Design forum, the threads allowed to drop off to oblivion, while everyone focused only on replying to the really juicy stuff, would that help? Again, maybe. But for some people, I suspect, that would ruin what Indie Design means to them.

Indie Design could be seen as something on a continuum with Publishing. Each is at one end of the process. But right now, I don't think it functions that way. And you know, there's only so much that can be done about that. It's up to the people who use it to make it work. Now what if a few people, say you and me, said OK, let's just go into Indie Design every day and reply only to substantive games and encourage them toward publication, would we make a difference? Maybe so. But only if we did it instead of talking about it, and frankly, I'm pretty busy. My own answer was to sign up as free editor for the No Press Anthology. Sending in a game submission to us was a promise to complete it and work on it, so I knew my efforts wouldn't be wasted.

Anyway, some people, many people, I think, are here for the RPG theory discussions. And those discussions, at least to me, feed good design and good play, so I see them as very valuable. But yeah, they dominate the Forge. They have become in a sense what the Forge is and does, primarily. Whether you see that as a good or bad thing is your call. I'm not too bothered by it. Partly, I think it's fairly natural. A game design is a focused project that requires prep time to get involved with, even to give feedback. Theory, hell, anyone can jump into a theory discussion with no prep time. On top of that, most conversations thrive on disagreements. A lot of theory threads burst into action fast because people disagree, they want to say they disagree, and they don't care that somebody's already said it. Now it's done pretty socially around here, it's pretty friendly, and it happens all the time in normal day-to-day conversation. So I don't see it as a real problem, either. If everyone agrees, well, there's not much to talk about :-)

Rich

[hardcoremoose]

Guys,

No, the No Press Anthology isn't off my radar.  I'll buy it when it comes out.  I'm glad that the people involved with it have made a committment to seeing it completed, and that alone makes it a success story.  Kudos.

I'm glad Orx is coming out.  I'm happy about Fastlane.  I hope Tactics sees print.  My definition of success has nothing to do with whether those games make a "big splash", or whether they're even in print.  Freebies in html on a webpage are fine.  We used to have those all the time around here; not so anymore.

What does qualify as success for me, and I should think it would for all of you too, is whether or not your game is being played.  At the very least you should be playing it yourself.  Because if you don't have the enthusiasm for it, no one else will.

Game Design and Theory have the same agenda.  They both attempt to address issues with play, hoping to create a better, more enjoyable play experience.  And if you accept that as true, then Design and Theory can only follow from Actual Play and to Actual Play.  Without it, you are going no where, and worse, you're coming at it from no where.  Think about that last part a little; you might be trying to say something with a given design or bit of theory, but if you're not coming at it with personal experience derived from play, then where's your enthusiasm coming from?

And that's what I'm really getting at here.  Indie games by people who don't play usually fail, because the apathy is evident to the audience.  Theory from those who don't play rings hollow, because they have no cred to back up their arguments.  These may still be good games, and the theorizing may still be sound, but they lack enthusiasm, vitality, conviction, and urgency.  

And that's The Forge for you, by and large.

- Scott

[Rich Forest]

Scott,

I'm with you on the importance of actual play. Play your game, love your game, and then publish it. Absolutely. And by the same token, play feeds good theory. Again, absolutely. I just assume that the people here who talk a lot of theory also play a lot. I could be wrong in that assumption. I play as much as I can. I get an IRC game with friends back home in bi-weekly or more (currently the Marvel Universe RPG, with a recent two week Street Fighter game thrown in). I also have played D&D 3, AD&D 2: Player's Option, Risus, and Hero Quest with people I've met here in Hong Kong over the last couple months. And I've played fairly often--we played Hero Quest just yesterday, and had a lot of fun. But I don't talk about it much. I assume the same of other posters--a lot of play, but they're not posting about it for whatever reason.

Of course, you'll note that none of the games I listed in new Indie games. And none are my own. But that's something that comes and goes. Both groups, both my friends back home and my new group here, are open to trying out games (they're interested in different kinds, but generally). And I've played most of my own game designs with my friends back home even though I haven't posted about any of those play experiences or even about the design of the games in the Design forum.

But I have no idea if I'm representative. Does everyone play a lot? And yet not post about it?

In which case the question becomes, why aren't I, why aren't they, posting in Actual Play? Because you know, I can definitely see its value. I don't know that I can say why, but I have a couple guesses. For me, time is an issue, often. But that doesn't completely explain it. I guess there's also the issue of positioning. You know, when someone posts to Actual Play, they're in this position of having to open up. In order to get the most out of it, you have to be willing to say, "This is what we did, this is where it might have worked, this is where it might not have worked." So you have to open up, let loose, and let people know where you might not have gotten it right. If you're trying to position yourself as a heavy-duty theorist, I can imagine this could be difficult. You have to be vulnerable to critique. Or, alternately, you can go in there as the guy who knows it all and is sharing techniques. This doesn't work either, and in any case, posts in the Actual Play forum don't seem to get many replies. What do you say? That's the problem. People don't usually use it to set up a question. Instead, it's used to summarize either events (not so interesting) or techniques (more interesting) and issues. Of these, usually it's only dysfunction that gets a lot of feedback. I suppose it's harder to have something substantial to say about the others, and you know, when you post something in Actual Play and it gets little feedback, again, it becomes kind of a "why bother." At least, that could be part of it.

I'd love to hear what other people think about that, though.

Whether the Forge has really lost its edge or not, I dunno. It certainly isn't as edgy for me as it was when I found it. But is that the Forge that got less edgy or did I just get used to it? I don't know.

Rich

[Ben Lehman]

I feel that, in regards to Actual Play, the threads that don't have dysfunction get *very* little traffic.

Case in point, Xiombarg posts some sweet logs of his IRC games and gets *no* response.  *none*

This is just one of many.  I think that if there were more room for discussion of Actual Play, there would be more traffic.  And for that, we need a more robust Theory than Nesting Dolls, by which I mean we need a theory that does more than target and eliminate dysfunction, but can also be used to deconstruct and examine positive play experience in a way that others can learn from it and we can understand how it happens uniquely each time.

So -- who's up for the theory?

Wow, this is topic drift.  I feel bad.

yrs--
--Ben

[Rich Forest]

Hi Ben,

I think it's pretty well on topic, actually, Ben. At least it's one of the threads that Scott talks about in the first post, which has some links to Actual Play. And I think it's a good point, though I'd pose it as a question--what do we need to get more people to post in Actual Play? (This assumes that we agree it's valuable, and useful, and so on, as Scott is arguing, and that it would be good if more people posted in there.)

Now your answer is an angle on theory that focuses less on fixing dysfunction and more on dissecting successful play. I'm open to any theory suggestions, but I'm hardly going to be the guy to get behind doing something like that. But what's more, I wonder if that's really what we need. I don't know. It could have an effect, but is there a quicker way? (Is this thread part of the answer?)

I think Scott is implying that, among other things, people need to actually recognize the value of the Actual Play forum. That's definitely something, too, but I don't know how to convince people of it.

And then there's the issue of what makes a good post in Actual Play. Sure, there's a real responsibility for people to reply. But the initial poster has a responsibility to get the thread off to a good start.  

Given the example of a post of an IRC chat log, I just don't know where to start with it. Usually, it's very one-sided. It only presents the "narrative," devoid of the "game." It's not a post of an RPG session, in a sense. It's just another version of "in our game, we did this, and we did that, and then we did this." So it's not approachable as an RPG, not given what we know about RPGs and how we play and the importance of the rules. What's more, like any recount, it doesn't offer any questions. It doesn't offer any issue to deal with. It doesn't offer any advice, either. It's just there. You know, and all I can say is, "Great, looks like you guys had fun." Or something like that. So I don't bother. So the initial post, in order to engage conversation, has to also pose a question, or an issue, or even a theoretical point related to the play. Otherwise, no one is going to respond. No one is going to know how to respond. No one has anything to respond to.

But then, of course, people have to take Actual Play as a forum seriously as well. Once the post is made in Actual Play, other people have to bother to read it and then think about what they have to offer. They need to treat a recount post like an Indie Design game that is offered with little info--they need to ask meaty questions. Some people do this, actually. I've seen recounts transformed into real play issues by people who respond to draw things out of the initial poster. And actualy, this is where the "Techniques" part of the model does fit in. There are so many possible techniques topics that could be addressed via Actual Play but rarely are.

On the other hand, I think a lot of RPG Theory posts and GNS forum posts are informed by actual play. They aren't devoid of it. They sometimes even bring in immediate examples from "My game this week." So there may be some "covert actual play" that isn't getting posted in the actual, Actual Play forum. These things feed into each other, so that makes sense as well.

So ok, we have one suggestion, which is another angle on the theory. We also have this thread, which is a kind of "what do you think" consciousness raiser about the importance of Actual Play to the Forge. What else?

If I'm pushing this thread off topic with all this, Scott, feel free to set me straight :-)

Rich

[Michael S. Miller]

Not quite discussion... more of a contrary datapoint, really.

I play a few times a month. I almost never post about it because 1) I only get around 30 minutes on the Forge a day and 2) I'm trying to finish up a playtest version of the game I'm working on.

I'm working on a superhero game called Excelsior! Never heard of it, that's likely 'cause I've never posted it to Indie Design or anywhere? Why? Because, since I only have 30 minutes a day, I never read Indie Design. How could I possibly read people's game designs and comment on them, as well as read other threads that intereset me in a half hour? Can't do it.

Therefore, I can't bring myself to post to Indie Design. It's getting something without giving something back. It's jus tplain wrong. But, Scott, if you want to read the playtest version, I'll gladly send it to you.

I don't play as many experimental games as I'd like 'cause I'm the only one in my group that likes 'em. My indine gaming group only meets once a month or so, so we don't go through games very quickly.

Can't speak for the rest of the site, but that's where I'm at.

[Judd]

This is just one of many.  I think that if there were more room for discussion of Actual Play, there would be more traffic.  And for that, we need a more robust Theory than Nesting Dolls, by which I mean we need a theory that does more than target and eliminate dysfunction, but can also be used to deconstruct and examine positive play experience in a way that others can learn from it and we can understand how it happens uniquely each time.

So -- who's up for the theory?

That paragraph should REALLY by its own post on the RPG Theory board.

You might be on to something there.

[Matt Snyder]

Scott,

Hey, man, good to hear from you. How the hell are you. The other day, I was thinking, "Gee, what the hell is Scott Knipe up to? We never hear from him." Seriously!

I'm right there with you. So, this is a Hell Yeah post.

Now, I've got to get back to two things: Finalizing Lxndr's Fastlane layout and writing Nine Worlds -- good to see it was on your radar screen!

Later,
Matt

[Paganini]

Scott,

Well, I was just about to post that I don't have no truck with you, beause there (points) are my boys over in indie-netgaming playing like mad.

Only, we really aren't, any more. I mean, we still play. There's a HQ game, there's a Sorcerer game, there's talk of a TROS game and a Pool game. And that was your point all along.

I remember the old days (a year or two ago... gee) when we had new games constantly coming out. Indie-netgaming was one of the first non-Zak groups to play Shadows. Same with Otherkind. James himself did the TQB playtests there. We played Noches de las Vampiros (it was broken as heck, but we still had fun). We played Otherkind. We played Trollbabe. It was like the first time you get a library card.

So, yeah. You're right.

[xiombarg]

Given the example of a post of an IRC chat log, I just don't know where to start with it. Usually, it's very one-sided. It only presents the "narrative," devoid of the "game." It's not a post of an RPG session, in a sense. It's just another version of "in our game, we did this, and we did that, and then we did this." So it's not approachable as an

Hmmm, I dunno what thread you're reading, but when I post IRC logs, I post both the narrative and the "ooc" logs, that let you know about the "game" as it's going on. Everything is captured.

And I try, tho I don't always succeed, to come up with some points for discussion. But people rarely respond, except for my players.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

I have a lot to talk about in this thread, but for this post, I'll restrict it to one topic: posting about fun and successful play, and why it receives less discussion.

You know something? I don't think that's a problem, for the goals of the Forge and for (in my view) healthy-minded people. A brief discussion with a few people, in such a case, has a huge impact in terms of readership. It's inspiring. It generates sales. It helps people in their games in the long term, affecting them perhaps even under their own perceptual radar. It provides an archive for people to refer to when helping someone who is having problems.

What it doesn't do is feed the fucking ego of the initial poster. It doesn't generate controversy, higher post-counts, opportunities to sound off, and pages of responses. No - it does a good thing, and it's done.

So you know what? I'm disgusted. I think folks should post about their successful play as much as they can.

How about me? I'm constrained, people. If it's not moderating, it's Adept Press. If it's not Adept Press, it's clarifying theory. Then it's Publishing and Actual Play, and only then, after that, is it Indie Design. That's me and the Forge; my posting choices are severely limited compared to yours.

I have been drafting, in moments of spare time, actual play posts about Elfs, Extreme Vengeance, Pocket Universe, Star-Lit Hell, and as of yesterday, The Great Ork Gods. You'll see them eventually. But you guys are not as constrained as me in terms of just keeping this place going and (in many cases) in terms of keeping my business viable. You have no excuse.

So put aside your internet-egos and freaking post in Actual Play. Your good experiences will become a thousand people's desperately-needed help, over the course of just a few months.

Best,
Ron