The Forge's Reputation on the Line

[Mike Holmes]

So over on RPG.Net there's this monumental discussion about how the Origins Award is messed up that turned into a war about the quality of HackMaster. Anyhow, if you look at it somewhere about page 20 or so, folks start coming over from the HackMaster forum, and start laying into RPG.Net as being poofy art-haus types who prefer d20 and just don't understand a down to earth game like HackMaster.

So, my question is, what are we doing wrong to have lost our title as the mocachino-swilling, beret-wearing, froo-froo RPG design site?

I think we need to redouble our efforts!

Mike

[Bankuei]

Mike,

We could always start a thread over there about making awards based on GNS, including the hybrids, and an incoherent award of the year, simultaneously scaring, confusing and drawing a flame war equivalent to bathing nations in napalm.  Or perhaps we can issue forth a "manifesto"(I love that word), in which we claim the future of roleplaying lies in telepathy, or cave wall carvings or crop circles.  

Just some ideas :P

Chris

[DP]

I vote we go the way of some French film critics: we actually side with the Hackmaster fans, using GNS terms to praise it as trés Gamiste, condescendingly explaining how D20 barbarians can't possibly understand such a puissant gaming experience.

Dave

[C. Edwards]

I like the way you think, Dave.

So, can I get a turtleneck, dark sunglasses and jackboots at Cafe Press. ;)


-Chris

[Jake Norwood]

oooh, jackboots...

[Gordon C. Landis]

The point being (yeah, I'm gonna be mildly serious) that a website is, in fact, itself - not the sterotypes that others apply to it.  Be that website RPG.net, the Forge, or a place where Hackmaster fans hang out.

But if we really want to retake the (psuedo)intellectual "high" ground - follow through on that cafe/bistro theme for the Gencon 2003 booth.  Have a long list of scheduled speakers, but none of them ever show up.  If anyone asks about the list, simply nod, smile, and walk away . . .

Gordon

[clehrich]

While there's lots of fun to be had being purely pseudo-intellectual, I think it also wouldn't be all that hard to invade such a site with pure theory and the tools we've got.  If you really want the beret-wearing rep. to stick, combine the very occasional use of GNS terminology (mostly as a self-identifier) with lots of perfectly legitimate but abstract words.  Do pure theory, and act as though you think everyone will quite naturally understand what you're on about.

As an example:

We must recognize that these critiques by and of HackMaster remain essentially bounded.  By shifting to a more labile (if more abstract) perspective, we should gain critical ground in both analysis and synthesis.  In particular, there can be little question that d20 systems follow up from the soi-disant universal(ist) models of GURPS et al., and that in pushing the centrality of an isolated mechanism they have moved beyond reductionism and into what amounts to essentialism.  But at the same time HackMaster only inverts the same Sim/Gam pseudo-hybrid incoherence, relying on one form of quantitative extremism rather than another.  It is perhaps worth considering why this concern with mere quantity seems to provoke explicitly sexualized stereotypy.

Urg.  I think I did too much theory in grad. school.  :p

[Walt Freitag]

Hmmm. "Social Text: The RPG"?

I won't say how close I came to adding a post on that thread that would have filled Dave's prescription (well, except for the ignorant barbarians part). I like Hackmaster, and I can explain at length why I like it, using way more GNS terminology than any audience could stand.

- Walt

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I don't know about the rest of you but my beret is in the shop.

Seriously, I guess people like the frequenters of the Hackmaster board might not know about the forge, and even if they did they would probably quickly get das boot if they behaved in such a manner. Beside would you rather be thought of as artsy-fartsy or simply be artsy-fartsy and let them think what they want.

[clehrich]

I, for one, am not artsy-fartsy.  I resent that.  I am an airy-fairy theory-head pencil-neck, damn you!

But semi-seriously, is there actually any reason to re-establish the Forge as the premier intellectual-theoryhead RPG board?  It might encourage traffic, but we get a lot as it is, and if things expand wildly someone's going to have to pony up more money for webhosting.

Incidentally, as a question of history (very recent history, that is), did the Forge ever really have that reputation to any tremendous degree?

[Mike Holmes]

Chris, the Forge has the artsy-fartsy rep with sone of the folks on RPG.net. Or did, last time it came up; since then the moderators of both sites have worked to get their memberships to reach a detent. I'd say that, at this point, there's at least a grudging respect between members of both boards, and many people post both here and there.

Anyhow, it's this turn of the tables which I thought it was quite ironic; that someone should refer to them as artsy-fartsy, when they call us the artsy-fartsy site. I guess that makes us, what? Uber-fartsy?

BTW, your dialectic is great.

I am in no way suggesting that The Forge is more intellectual than any other site, much less that we should project ourselves as such. I just wanted to point out, like Gordon said, how perceptions are perceptions, and how reputations like this are completely,

um,

labile.

Also, I should mention that the HackMaster folks were really mostly polite. They were just zealously defending a game they love. Ironic that the attack to which they responded was mostly (there were a few on RPG,net who attacked it more visciously, and probably are doing so right now)percieved and not real. Most of the people on RPG.net were just saying that Hackmaster, while a fine game, did not deserve to win the Origins Award for Best Game of the Year (Bruce Baugh defended his own Adventure!, and the other games including Little Fears as objectively superior). That's a far cry from saying it's a terrible game. There was a claim that perhaps the ballot-box was stuffed, as nobody on RPG.net seemed to claim that HM was good enough to win. That's when the HM fans started showing up (partly at Jolly Blackburn's request) to say that they had voted. Well, before long shots were fired, and the HM fans wanted to know what was wrong with their beloved game.

A lot of the objection to HM boils down to the fact that some people can't see how it can both be a satirical joke, and be a playable game simultaneously, and that it's not innovative. Well, apparently that sort of opinion makes you artsy-fartsy. Baugh did have one odd point. He said what amounts to "the best game isn't neccessarily the one that's the most fun." This makes me want to throw in with the HM folks.

Guess I'm not as artsy-fartsy as I thought.

OTOH, that was the point of the entire thread. As it stands the Origins Awards only reward the most popular games, which means that small, technically brilliant games like LF are unlikely to ever win. His point was, all along, that the vote should be given back to the academy (which at this point is apparently a sinecure good only for getting free stuff; or so says Mearls). So that the Award can come to promote innovation, and other qualities that aren't neccessarily things for which the mass public would vote.

Mike

[clehrich]

I know we're drifting here, but before Ron comes down like a ton of bricks (can Ron be a ton of bricks? is that an ontological issue?), I just have a question about this artsy-fartsy rep.

What is meant by artsy-farsy, do you think?  I mean, I usually think of that as referring to the sort of people who think a film is inherently brilliant because it's in early proto-Estonian.

To reformulate simpl(isticall)y, this putative (and, it would appear, actualized) bounded inscription of the Forge as "artsy-fartsy" seems at variance with the normative formulation of said term within the langue of the RPG as discursive field, making parole expressions or speech- (typing-) acts inconclusively resolvable as analytical expressives.

(Well, you did say you liked the way I talk.)

[Mike Holmes]

They mean that they think that all the theory here is just talk, and that it doesn't add to the role-playing experiences of anyone. Or adds little. That the level of discussion here is kept arcane specifically so that we can applaud ourselves and not be subject to outside scrutiny. Yadda, yadda.

All the connotations of Pseudo-Intellectual. Or even of Intellectual for some there who are anti-Intellectual.

And before anyone points out the irony, yes, me saying that all RPG.netters are anti-intellectual, or even see the Forge in the way I'm describing would be to commit the same error in return. This is just the opinion of some small, and perhaps now non-existant subset of RPG.netters who prevously made this opinion known. As I've said, RPG net has become an ally of The Forge more than anything else lately (hmm, perhaps that's how they got their new rep; rubbed off).  ;-)

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

The comedic value of the post was way fun, but right about now is the time to close it.

For future reference, "them over at RPG.net" threads aren't Good Forgin'.

Best,
Ron

[Kuma]

Hullo all.  :)

As one of the moderators over on RPG.net, I thought I'd take a moment to say that I, personally, don't mind the artsy-fartsiness of the Forge.  I spend a great deal of my time on RPG.net (it's my pseudo-job) - but I come here when I want to take a long gander at more high-handed discussion.

I don't consider this a dis on either board - the Forge has a much higher bar in terms of content, and a different voice.  It would stink if it didn't, or if every board had the same character.

I don't necessarily have any grudge against the Forge coming to RPG.net and joining in the discussion - even if GNS isn't my thing.

Just 2¢.