Are We Going Anywhere?

[Valamir]

This thread is somewhat winding to a close, so please don't let this post be throwing a bucket of flammable material on it, but I feel the need to make one HUGE point.

Great Idea:  why don't you look into pulling some stuff together and assembling such documents...YOURSELF (refering to those who've expressed a strong desire to see such things)  Then pop them up, the community will comment and suggest etc, and things will get done.

But in all honesty what I'm seeing is this:  

"wouldn't it be great if..." <wait for Ron to do it>

Ron's a hell of a guy, but my god, he ain't Moses coming down off the mountain to present us with tablets of stone.

If there's some tablets that need writing, write 'em.  And if you happen to come up with the Golden Calf instead of the 10 Commandments (to really squeeze that metaphor hard) the rest of us are around to help you get it straight.

But here's the thing that bothers me.  A few weeks back there was a general hue and cry to develop a Forge glossary.  Ron and Clinton both came on and said "great idea, but we're not going to do it...who wants to take ownership of it".  So far, I've seen zero evidence that anyone has.  What the hell are you waiting for.  If the Forge can be "something better, something more" then get to work and make it that way.  

A month or two ago I wrote a 6 page Primer on GNS to fill a need I perceived.  Ron didn't ask me to do it, I simply did it.  It may not be fabulous, and I'm sure there are faults to it that still need to be ironed out, but I made an effort.  One day or another I'll make another one.

Hell there's enough pearls of wisdom scattered around in various threads already.  Want to make a contribution?  Pick a topic...then use the excellent search features to find and print out every single thread on that topic you can find.  Compile it all together as an article summarizing the topic in one place for the betterment of all, and post it up for commentary.

When you make a call to action, put your own name at the top of the volunteer list.

[Nathan]

Valamir,

I completely agree.

In fact, I am going to start compiling threads in Publishing.

BTW, here is the thread Ron is referencing:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2261

It seems like the timing was not right for the first try.

Thanks,
Nathan Hill

[Fabrice G.]

Hi,

Ron : no problem, send 'em, I'll be prepared. :)

Ralph : dully noted. You're right. To work then !


Fabrice.

[Gordon C. Landis]

Gordon: where do you see your game design in five years?

and

. .  but what about a document which walks a budding game designer through a series of design questions about their project?

How about if that document had a basic system embedded, designed to support mostly Narrativist play?

And I hope it takes a lot less than five years . . ;-)

Gordon

[xiombarg]

As a sort of epilogue to this thread, Nathan and I were talking on #IndieRPGs about the whole "every organization needs to re-evaluate its progress" thing, and I think the best way to understand the Forge is this: It's a think tank, not a church, or a corporation. As long as something useful comes out of it every year or so, it doesn't matter if it's insular, circular, or filled with "misfit games". So long as something useful comes out eventually. And I think the Forge has a better "track record" than that, even.

Oh, and to annoy Jared: It's all good as long as we're having fun.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Kirt,

As long as something useful comes out of it every year or so...

I want to address the possibility that people might perceive this as stating a "just let it run and it will do its thing" position. If so, I personally think that's a misperception of the level of attentiveness people need to pay to communication in order for useful things to actually get produced. For instance, one of the things I learned from the "saturation" thread was that not everyone on the Forge shares my personal design goal of producing games people play. A number of people consider some of their designs to be art objects. Despite that twice now people have said they don't think they could play or that anyone will play Nicotine Girls, my design objectives were to create a game that people played. And I have continued to devote design effort to the game's mechanics to that end.

So when time and energy are a limited resource, me knowing who's only interested in games people play, and whose scope includes art object games, is helpful in informing how I distribute my attention to threads in Indie Game Design. In short, not only do I appreciate having that information, I've learned that I can't function effectively at all by just assuming others share my sense of purpose. So I think attention to communication and conversations about personal objectives and shared sense of purpose is greatly facilitative to the smooth running of our community. It certainly is for me.

Paul

[Matt Machell]

How about if that document had a basic system embedded, designed to support mostly Narrativist play?

Why limit it to Narativist play? A good general document would make it easy to avoid repeating ourselves whenever somebody comes to the boards. An interesting thing would be to cover some similar concept in a Narativist, Gamist and Simulationist way, to show how the techniques are of benefit to all types.

Matt

[Gordon C. Landis]

Matt,

I agree that a general doc like you describe would be a good thing - it's just not what *I'm* working on.  I'm trying out System Does Matter, and so if I've just got one set of mechanics, I'll only best support one mode . . .

Gordon

[Matt Machell]

it's just not what *I'm* working

Fair enough. Should be an interesting read. The other idea interests me though, so maybe I'll get around to writing something like that. I'll add it to my list of projects.

Matt