[Origins] "Is this a Forge game?"

[taepoong]

So I went to Origins to man the NerdNYC/Burning Wheel/Forge booth. We had many Forge games available including Universalis, My Life with Master, Octane, Inspectres, Kill Puppies for Satan, Bulldogs!, Fulminata, Burning Wheel, and Pax Draconis. There was definitely a lot of interest in these games and most people had heard of The Forge.

The number one question asked was "Is this a Forge game?" I routinely answer yes and go on to pitch them from there.

I did this in front of Luke and he freaked. He freaked right in front of the guy I was trying to sell a game to. He then went on to explain to the buyer how his game is and isn't a Forge game and that there's no such thing as a Forge game. Telling someone he is wrong and then lecturing him is not exactly the best way to pitch a game, in my opinion. Sure, this guy proved to be a designer himself and enjoyed the conversation, but had he had this debate with a regular gamer, I think it'd have the opposite effect.

Later, Luke explained to me that most Forgites dislike associating their game with the Forge, even though their game is associated with the Forge. So sure, there are no Forge games, but people know all these games as Forge games.

Being a Forge game proved to be a good selling point out there on the floor. So I continued to sell all the games (and we did sell a lot of them!) as "Forge" games. Heck, we had a placard that read "The Forge" behind all these games.

So, despite all The Forge's efforts not to label Forge games as "Forge Games," the public already has labeled them as such. A rose is a rose is a rose, after all.

At the selling booth, I refuse to do anything but make the buyer feel like they know what they are talking about in order to get their money as quickly as possible. I'll leave it to you guys to straighten them out.

[taepoong]

Oh, and P.S. - whichever of you Forgites hit me with that dodgeball, I will find you! Muahahaha!

[Valamir]

I have no issues at all with the idea of my games being associated with the Forge.  However good they wind up being is in large part thanks to people I've met and conversed with here and hopefully they are a positive reflection on the collective creative brilliance found here.  On the other side of the coin, the Forge and specific members thereof have made something of a splash in the industry the last couple of years, so in a sense, being a "Forge Game" is free publicity.

I have heard of/from a couple of designers who dislike the association, as if such an association detracts from their own individual creative brilliance.  They'll make a dramatic effort to point out that their design predates the Forge (as if subsequent revisions didn't benefit from their experience here and their sales didn't heavily benefit from promotion here).  But to each their own, so Luke is right, at least to a degree, that there are some who prefer to distance themselves from the Forge.


Ron and Clinton's concern is to avoid any implication that the Forge is a company, or has any ownership involvement or control over the game's made by our members.  So if you do refer to something as a Forge game its important to make sure that you aren't implying "Forge Game" in the same sense as "White Wolf Game" or "WotC Game".  That would be both factually and conceptually incorrect.

But "Forge Game" as a sort of image connecting various publisher's games is perfectly acceptable.  To me its very similar to bands being associated with various music festivals.  A Lallapalooza band means something very different from a Lillith band which means something very different from an Oz Fest band.  There's no ownership issues implied, its just a bunch of similar (on some levels) groups getting together periodically under a collective banner.  A banner which, over time, has acquired a brand identity of its own.

[M. J. Young]

I'm with Ralph on this one.

Multiverser has been called a Forge game; my response is actually to be a bit embarrassed. Certainly my understanding of games has been influenced by The Forge (and the Gaming Outpost discussions that predate it), but I had no involvement at all with the Internet prior to publication of the game, and it has not been revised. The Second Book of Worlds has been positively influenced by such discussions (and the next will be as well, I hope), but to impute Forge influence on the core rules through later supplements or current support is a bit disingenuous or something.

Still, if "Forge Game" means a game designed by an independent who is serious about doing something new within the hobby, I'm not going to argue the label. It's an honor to be thought part of such a group, really.

Besides, I agree that you should never argue with the customer. If someone says, "Is this a Forge game?", the correct answer is probably, "Yes, this is a game from one of the designers from The Forge."

--M. J. Young

[anonymouse]

It'd be cool if, next to that Forge placard, there were a stack of flyers with Ralph's analogy. A simple colored piece of paper titled, "What is a 'Forge Game'?" with the Lalla/Lillith/Oz thing (while completely avoiding attributing a Forge Game to, say, Lalla, or d20 to Oz). Maybe some other odds and ends on the paper as well (designers + their games who want to be known as 'Forge authors', et cetera).

[Eero Tuovinen]

Huh, not to offend, but someone needs a reality check. It's not even stupid per se to hang a Forge placard behind you and then try to disassociate yourself from it; it's schitchophrenic. What's the point of going the route of using a name, essentially a label (which the name becomes the minute you use it for distinction), if you don't want to be associated with it?

It could certainly be that there's some kind of logic here. Does Luke perchance fear that someone gets the impression that Forge is a game company? I'd have thought that if someone already knows what Forge is there is no danger of that, and if someone doesn't, well, that's an opportunity to explain. I'm sure he has a coherent position on this one, but it escapes me right now.

[DevP]

The fact is that if we're so very lucky, the phrase "Forge game" will be commonly used but also necessarily "xeroxed" or "tylenolled", if you will. I can see some gamers twitching their nose about my PrentensityDiceless game and sneering at "another Forge game", or my friends eagerly saying "let's get together and play one of those Forge Games!" (when they simply mean something like those fantastic short-form works that run through here so often), or perhaps another gamer referring to it as a school of thought, perhaps as specific as 1955-1960 Cubism, or as wide as Surrealism (or, um, Asbtraction).

And there are indeed some games that evolve very heavily from the online fora; some more than others, and some of these just wouldn't be without it.

I can understand an individual artist (among other things) not wanting to subsume their work under that perhaps from dislike of label, disbelief in the label's accuracy, or because it's more of an individual work from before the Forge (like BW or Sorcerer or Multiverser).

I'm not convinced that we all (collectively) suffer if some of us informally call ourselves "Forge games". (This is different from stamping a FORGE SEAL OF APPROVAL on our games, which is better to stay away from.)

Besides, I agree that you should never argue with the customer.

Within limits, agree. I mean, I'd probably agree to whatever the customer's aesthetic considerations to some extent. "Yes, my game was indeed borne out of a post-colonial primitive imagination cast into a ritualizing space! You've hit the nail right on the head."

[taepoong]

If someone says, "Is this a Forge game?", the correct answer is probably, "Yes, this is a game from one of the designers from The Forge."

This is good advice and I'll use it next time I'm hawking Forge wares.

[jdagna]

I'm going to back up Luke on this one.  Representing games as "Forge games" is not a good idea.  Here are some of the reasons why:

1) The Forge is just a forum/community for dicussion.  There are a lot of people who post here, but would you call Nobilis, Amber, and Green Ronin's products "Forge games" based on writers or publishers posting here?  I'm sure you didn't explain that my products are also "RPG.net games" just because I post over there (and about five times as often as I do here).

2) Call me old fashioned, but I believe that lying to sell a game is still lying.  Agreeing that something is a Forge game is not only misrepresenting the game, but the Forge itself.  Whether the misrepresentation is helpful or not, it's still dishonest.

3) What di people mean by "Forge game"?  Since it's a term that has no real definition, you should really find out what they mean.  If they mean "Is this a free-form, experimental narrativist game?" (a definition I've heard people use for "Forge games") then you're misrepresenting my products anyway and probably many of the others.

MJ's suggestion is definitely better, though point #1 is still an issue, but at least it gets the facts right and clarifies the positions.

[JamesSterrett]

Off-topic...   Where were you in the dealer's hall?  I failed to find the booth.  :(

Admittedly, my brain was mush while in the hall, since I was spending most of my time running demos for Attack Vector: Tactical, so my trips into the dealer's hall were either business (to our booth) or were mental-health strolls with my brain in neutral - but I did have a weather eye out for the Forge and/or groups associated with it, and failed to find you.  :(

[taepoong]

When you entered the dealer's hall, we were on the far left corner. It wasn't the greatest location. We had our BW banner and NerdNYC t-shirts prominently displayed, though.

[JamesSterrett]

Ouch.  We were nearly in the far-left corner, sharing a booth with Timeline.

I think I never wound up further into that corner.  Oh well...  there's always GenCon, where Ron's booth should be right across from ours - leaving no excuses for me, eh?  :)


Will you be at DexCon in July (New Jersey)?

[Mike Holmes]

Oh, and P.S. - whichever of you Forgites hit me with that dodgeball, I will find you! Muahahaha!

That was Dav. He managed to peg most of the industry (look ma, no quotes) people as he made his rounds.

Good seeing Luke, Dro, and yerself.

Mike

[taepoong]

::scribbles "Dav" in black book::

[Andy Kitkowski]

Can someone tell me what this Dodgeball thing is all about?  Cause I loves throwing some of those red recess balls at people, I do.

Feel free to PM me, or start a thread in Conventions called "Origins: Dav and Dodgeballs", or Actual Play called "Getting Beaned in the Head". :-)