The Bleeding Edge

[Asrogoth]

In the thread Perceptions of Civility at the Forge, the discussion turned to the bland-ness of "recent" rpg design, especially here at the Forge.

If considering the rpg design as a work of art, I'd say, "fortune-in-the-middle" is a safe, obvious solution worthy of a yawn. Tell the truth: Greg Stafford broke the mold when he did it, but everybody else is a copycat. Even then, fortune-in-the-middle is still fortune, inevitably a tired and unoriginal means of resolution. So, you can use it. No one will blame you for using it, but you'll never break the mold by going that route.

So, let me ask this: Why should we ever feel comfortable assuming that f-i-m, or any fortune for that matter, is necessarily the best or only way of solving a given design problem? Jonathan's approach shows his intent. He wants to break the mold. If that's his primary purpose in design, I say more power to him. And I ask you, who says breaking the mold can't or shouldn't be the primary purpose of design? Do we really need more tired, unoriginal game designs? I think not.

Of course, as Jack points out,

Bleeding edge is so transitory. What is bleeding edge today is old hat tomorrow, pathetic the next day, but nostalgically retro-cool the following week.

He's right, but that really doesn't diminish the value of the effort.

I cannot say that my ICG submission had any significant innovation or bleeding edge type of mechanic -- so I would agree that it very well may be bland.

But my contention about The Bleeding Edge would be that it relies as much on approach as on mechanics.  What makes games like Sorceror still near that cutting edge is not the mechanics -- it is the unique application of mechanics within a system to present a desired type of play and experience for the Players.

So...

In order to find the Bleeding Edge, we probably need to focus on "System Does Matter" as a blanket concept whereby all things in the system must gel in order to create that sweet game that gets everybody pumped up and wanting more.

Where does that leave us then?

Where can we find that edge today?

The path to innovation does not rest necessarily upon the creation of something new as much as it depends on the right application of several things in concert to produce a magnum opus.

I suggest that The Forge, while not ignoring "new" ideas, must pursue quality within our RPG theory and design in order to affect the RPG community and present it with the "next big thing".

With that I leave you my humble (or perhaps hubristic) submission. ;)

[Jonathan Walton]

Ralph said (paraphrasing) in the last thread that you shouldn't look for innovative mechanics, you should look for the "best" mechanic.  Unfortuntely, I feel like "best" doesn't mean anything unless you explain it further.  The best for what, exactly?  I'd argue that there are many "best" solutions for any problem, based on what exactly your qualifications are.  Often times, your solutions won't seem clearly better than each other, just different.  In which case, I'd chose the more interesting and original one every time.

Honestly, I also don't think Bleeding Edge design is that connected with "System Does Matter."  I think it's all about creating play experiences, which can be System re-enforced, but could also re-enforced in other ways, such as play descriptions, color text, or trying to get everyone in the same headspace.  After all, freeform design is pretty Bleeding Edge, especially here on the Forge.

I also think you can't expect play on the Bleeding Edge to be regularly successful.  That's not the point really.  I mean, it's cool when you can get it to work, but the point would more likely be to challenge yourselves and explore new concepts together, instead of creating really satisfying play experiences (at least, in a traditional sense).  Once you get used to it, though, the Bleeding Edge stops being so Bleeding, and the weird becomes comfortable.  Then you can either stay on the Not-Bleeding-Anymore Edge, or move on to find another Bleeding Edge.

[Callan S.]

Is that a descision between enjoying new techiques themselves, or enjoying the fruits themselves of older techniques (which last session may have been new ones)?

[Valamir]

If you create a game that's so innovative and so exotic and so surprising that 2 people in the world declare it the most brilliant thing they've ever seen and no body else will even play it?  Is that successful?  More relevant --  is that part of the mission of the Forge?

The Forge features prominently an actual play forum.  We are all about promoting actual play.  There is a value to creating an experimental design in order to test bed some concepts, but that should always be with the eye towards how to then apply those concepts in a design that people will actually want to play.  Similiar to how the auto industry will create concept cars and then incorporate some of those features into the next line of production models.  

So its fine to challenge the threshold, I'm not saying its not.  But its not fine to challenge the threshold just for the sake of doing something that hasn't been done before.  The end result needs to be something that people will want to play...because that's part of the mission of the Forge.


The Forge is also about publishing.  While publishing doesn't have to include sales for money, that is certainly a desireable end result even though not every game is expected to get there.  Its ok to dance with the bleeding edge from time to time, but quite frankly the bleeding edge doesn't sell.  Since part of the Forge's mission is to encourage publication we can't as a group be dedicated to nothing but the bleeding edge.  Like the concept car we have to take the elements that work and incorporate them into games that customers will actually want to buy and play.


Exotic is an element in design.  It cannot be the goal of design.

[Jonathan Walton]

...but quite frankly the bleeding edge doesn't sell.

Not to traditional gamers, no.  But, quite frankly, they're not my target audience.  Everything changes when you begin looking outside of existing roleplaying culture.

[Hunter Logan]

Asrogoth wrote,

But my contention about The Bleeding Edge would be that it relies as much on approach as on mechanics. What makes games like Sorceror still near that cutting edge is not the mechanics -- it is the unique application of mechanics within a system to present a desired type of play and experience for the Players.

So...

In order to find the Bleeding Edge, we probably need to focus on "System Does Matter" as a blanket concept whereby all things in the system must gel in order to create that sweet game that gets everybody pumped up and wanting more.

I'm reluctant to enter a debate of what Sorcerer is or is not. In it, I see a highly competitive, dice-based game that leaves a lot of power in the hands of the GM and promotes a tense, if not adversarial, relationship between player and GM. This is capped with a lot of Author handwaving, explaining that, although the GM is supposed to hose the players at every opportunity, and although dice decide the outcomes of everything, this really is a very different sort of game. None of that makes Sorcerer a bad game. Parts of it are flat-out fucking brilliant. But other parts are not quite so brilliant, and it seems to me that conventional GM's plot-driven railroading has been sort of replaced by mechanical, dice-driven railroading. At the end of the day, it's still a dice-based game with a high degree of randomness in its outcomes and a complex, brutal combat system. None of that seems especially cutting-edge to me, but the best material isn't in the base game; it's in the supplements.

As to "System Does Matter," rgfa three-fold, and GNS (which can all be lumped into one really big ball for this argument), I don't know that any of that will result in a cutting-edge design. Those blocks of theory aren't aimed at innovation; they're really aimed at explanation of what already exists. As I read them, they are more an attempt at finding a desirable approach to playing games that already exist than they are an attempt to open the field to new ideas and innovations. Even DFK is limited in scope, and mostly applies to Everway and traditional rpgs. But none of this should be surprising. Tweet is an excellent commercial designer and he knows his market, which leads me into the next phase of discussion.

Ralph makes interesting statements about concept cars and the auto industry:

Its ok to dance with the bleeding edge from time to time, but quite frankly the bleeding edge doesn't sell. Since part of the Forge's mission is to encourage publication we can't as a group be dedicated to nothing but the bleeding edge. Like the concept car we have to take the elements that work and incorporate them into games that customers will actually want to buy and play.

First, let me say, I don't think I necessarily know what the "bleeding edge" of rpg design really is. I don't know for certain that I would recognize it if it walked up and bit me on the ass. I hope I would, but I might be too jaded. Examples: People say good things about Extreme Vengeance and we always hold up Puppetland as an example of something different, but I find EV is a surprisingly D&D-like game with an unusable experience system and a tone that is so, um,  flavorful that it obscures the instructions for how to play the game. Puppetland is different to a point, but as a primarily drama-based game, it falls into a trap common to drama-based games: In the absence of a mechanism to enforce any sort of player authority, all the real power, credibility, authority (pick your term) to determine what happens defaults to the GM. Certainly, Universalis has enough new and different stuff going on to be a cutting-edge game, but some people actually question whether Universalis really is a roleplaying game.

Now, I hate to jam Ralph with his own game like this. He's always come across as a good guy, but Universalis completely deflates his own point. Universalis is a cutting edge game, a game designer's version of the concept car if ever there was one, and Universalis sells quite well, doesn't it? Was number 5 on RPGNow, lots of happy players, etc. Doesn't Universalis kind of prove that innovation can sell? Obviously, not every bleeding-edge design is going to do that, but why do we hear so much resistance from an innovative, conceptual designer about the idea of openly discussing, if not excessively promoting innovative, conceptual design? No one says, "Do this to the exclusion of all else," but seems to me, the Forge, more than probably any other site on the web, should be open to and interested in these sorts of topics.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Of course, as Jack points out,

Bleeding edge is so transitory. What is bleeding edge today is old hat tomorrow, pathetic the next day, but nostalgically retro-cool the following week.

He's right, but that really doesn't diminish the value of the effort.

I'll respond to this here because it fits this thread better than the original.

Strange how for all of these discussions I find myself quoting McKee. That's actually a little disturbing.

What bothers me about a focus on the bleeding edge, or whatever you call it, is is seems, to me, to be overlooking a certain amount of craft that must be learned in art.

"For talent without craft is like fuel without an engine. It burns wildly but accomplishes nothing."

"Anxious inexperienced [student] obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled [student] break rules. Artist master the form."

William Strunk Jr wrote:

"It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. ... Unless he is certain of doing well, he will probably do best to follow the rules."

What I mean by all of these odd quotes taken out of context (but I think they still make sense) is that there is a craft to any art and to be able to break the rules, to be on the bleeding edge, to shake things up, one must master the form of that art. It is tempting to reach immediately for the new idea hoping to be bleeding edge. But the results can be laughable ("My game has an innovative spell point system instead of fire and forget magic"). An artist masters the form of their art and then violate tradition because they understand their art well enough to know how to do it.

[Jonathan Walton]

Jack, I feel like all of your quotes apply much better to centuries-old mediums like writing and painting, rather than roleplaying, which has barely even begun to accept itself as a medium for expression.  I mean, right now, I have only the vaguest idea of what the form of roleplaying is capable of.  I don't think we've even begun to scratch the surface.  So to say that we should master the form, when the boundaries of the form aren't even clear...  I don't know, it just seems problematic to me.  Am I supposed to put off doing "out there" things until I've written 3-4 Heartbreakers, published some One Trick Pony indie games, and proven that I've mastered the medium?

[Hunter Logan]

Am I supposed to put off doing "out there" things until I've written 3-4 Heartbreakers, published some One Trick Pony indie games, and proven that I've mastered the medium?

Absolutely not. I think you should do what you're driven to do, for the reasons you've already stated. We don't know the limits of the form. We do know what has already been done, and that has been done so many times, over and over, that there is no point at all to doing it again. So, to conform is limited by definition.

To Jack, I can only say that the art world does not agree with you. Art academies (universities and university-level art programs) teach foundation courses, but afterward, you are encouraged, even expected to distance yourself from that and find your own mode of expression. Craftsmanship is not a requirement. Insistence upon it may even be a hindrance. Craft is for craftsmen, skilled laborers, artisans, and illustrators. At least, this is the argument as it has been presented to me. In principle, I agree with what you're saying; but in our world of photography, digital imagery, and cgi, the sort of craft you're talking about is losing ground. Indeed, painting and sculpture lose ground to TV, movies, and video games as fine art loses ground to art for the masses.

Roleplaying is a weird little hobby, one of the few places where one can experiment and be a lone genius creator. Why resist the people who would do that on the grounds that they are "not commercial enough?" Let's remember, the definition for "indie" here is "creator-owned," and the supported modes for publishing here run from free download on a website to fully printed books distributed in stores. Simply stated, we should encourage Jonathan and everyone like him to continue their work and look forward to seeing their published designs.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

but in our world of photography, digital imagery, and cgi, the sort of craft you're talking about is losing ground.

Funny thing about cgi. I recall seeing something with Barry Sonnenfeld about the first Men In Black film. He was sort of griping about the CGI guys. Such as they animated a character throwing a punch and he said "The punch is not funny." They reply, "Do you want more muscle movement under the skin?" He said, "I don't know. Is that funny?"

So, sadly, I am in agreement that craftmanship is becoming lost.

[Valamir]

Now, I hate to jam Ralph with his own game like this. He's always come across as a good guy, but Universalis completely deflates his own point. Universalis is a cutting edge game, a game designer's version of the concept car if ever there was one, and Universalis sells quite well, doesn't it? Was number 5 on RPGNow, lots of happy players, etc. Doesn't Universalis kind of prove that innovation can sell? Obviously, not every bleeding-edge design is going to do that, but why do we hear so much resistance from an innovative, conceptual designer about the idea of openly discussing, if not excessively promoting innovative, conceptual design? No one says, "Do this to the exclusion of all else," but seems to me, the Forge, more than probably any other site on the web, should be open to and interested in these sorts of topics.

Well, yes and no.

See Mike and I didn't set out with the goal of seeing how cutting edge we could be.  The first draft of the game was very much traditional and it was only after many rewrites of peeling back the layers that we arrived at a final game that actually surprised me at how "out there" it was.

At every stage we were focused on our goal...which for alot of the development was something of a moveing target...but every decision boiled down to trying to find the best way to deliver the play experience that we were going for.  

I can't remember a single decision that we made that was the result of thinking "ok, how completely non traditional can we do this".


I certainly have zero against innovation.  I LOVE innovation.  My favorite games in Indie Design are those that show me something I haven't seen before, or something I have seen before applied in a new way.

I love watching guys like Jonathan and Shreyas brainstorming up new stuff.  Some of the things they come up with is truly mindboggling.  I'd hate for the them to stop doing what they do.

What I was initially protesting is the idea that the Forge at large should be dedicated to that same brand of game design.  I love that there are folks here doing that.  But I do not accept that it is (or should be) the Forge's mission to focus on more of that.

I am not ready to simply discard Fortune-in-the-middle as a color in my pallette simply because we've already seen a lot of games using it.  There are still new and great things that can be done with it.  We don't have to abandoned the concept as being too passe.


In the days of western expansion there were a group of frontiersmen, who continueally sought to push on as civilization closed in behind them.  They were largely fur trappers and buffalo hunters and whenever settlers starting moving in, they moved on.

I think its fantastic if Jonathan et.al. want to me RPG Mountain Men continually pully up stakes and moving ever west towards new uncharted territory.  For myself, I think the mission of the Forge is to be the Pioneers.  The first few waves of settlers who bring civilization to the west.

I like to think I've done a stint as Frontier Scout (to push the analogy) and did some things with Universalis that hadn't ever been done before.  But I'm pleased as punch to see some of those concepts trickle out into other games and influence other designs.  Those other games and other designs, building on what Mike and I did with Universalis, to me represent the primary purpose of the Forge.  Its the settlers who start to till the soil after the frontiersmen have scouted it out (to really stretch the analogy) that is and should be our primary constituency.

[Hunter Logan]

Hi Ralph,

I understand what you're saying, and I agree to a point. But the Forge already has a mission: To support the publication of creator-owned games and to promote actual play of rpgs, not necessarily in that order.

Seems to me, the Forge is certainly big enough and diverse enough to support anyone with a genuine interest in publishing creator-owned games, and I don't understand why anyone needs or wants to discriminate based on creative goals. You want to make commercial games? Cool! Someone else wants to do something else? That's cool, too.

It's not like the Game Police will came around to say, "Mr. Mazza? You're game is too conventional. Come with us please." Or "Mr. Walton? You are not designing within the official constraints of commercial appeal. Can we see your game designer's license?"

So, what is the real issue here?

[greyorm]

Funny. I was going to make the same point Logan did...if the mission of the Forge has changed, someone should tell Ron. Natch.

Point is, I want to feel comfortable producing anything here, as long as I own it, write it, and produce it. If I want to write and publish my own d20 supplement, I should feel comfortable discussing its design and difficulties here (well, other than fearing Dav sending some inhuman midget thugs to my door!), because that's well within the Forge's mission statement.

By comfortable, I mean that I (should) feel I would recieve the same level of help and interest regarding that project as I would recieve with some wild, bleeding edge design. If anyone here is saying I wouldn't, for whatever reason, I'd suggest that's a warning sign about failiure of the Forge's mission by it's participants. Take a step back and consider: what is the Forge about?

It isn't hard to answer. "Supporting creator ownership."
If we start making distinctions about what we're going to help out with, because a product isn't "original" enough, I think we fuck ourselves, and not in the good way.

Now, I'm not saying we are doing this, or that the Forge is guilty of this secondary, unstated exclusion, I'm putting it up there as a question each person is going to have to ask of themselves, and ask of their reason for participating at the Forge. Now, that's between you and yourself, I'm not looking for answers, defenses, or anything else.

[Asrogoth]

To quote myself from the beginning of this thread:

I suggest that The Forge, while not ignoring "new" ideas, must pursue quality within our RPG theory and design in order to affect the RPG community and present it with the "next big thing".

Anyway, my contention is that The Forge's mission is not to remain on The Bleeding Edge so much as to remain at the forefront of promoting quality games.  Through the elevation of quality and substance over "tricks", we will see our "industry" (had to put it in quotes.... muhahahaha) become a greater medium of entertainment and "artistic" expression.

How's that?

[M. J. Young]

Honestly, I also don't think Bleeding Edge design is that connected with "System Does Matter."  I think it's all about creating play experiences, which can be System re-enforced, but could also re-enforced in other ways, such as play descriptions, color text, or trying to get everyone in the same headspace.  After all, freeform design is pretty Bleeding Edge, especially here on the Forge.

I think you're misunderstanding system here.

What I'm hearing in your words is that you could create a role playing game that was "freeform", meaning that all resolution was drama-based by mutual agreement, and that you could present this game by describing play sessions and providing color text.

You've still created a system, and the system is still the basis for play. What you have done differently, primarily, is find a creative means of communicating the system to players. Secondarily, you've used an unusual drama resolution system.

To illustrate, you could create a game by in essence saying, "Watch all three seasons of the original Star Trek series, and attempt to copy the kinds of things that happen within it as accurately as you can" and "whenever you are uncertain about the outcome of any particular action or event, name four possible results, one of which is a disaster, one a negative outcome, one a positive outcome with complications, and one a complete success, and then roll these dice against this table to determine which happens". Now, one of the rules of the game is "play to make it seem like Star Trek". That's an extremely complicated rule.

That is in principle the same rule as "make your play similar to this flavor text". Then by including examples of play you're saying "accomplish it by using these illustrated techniques".

That could be a very effective way of communicating the system to the players; it is still system.

--M. J. Young