So, how'd you find this place?

[anonymouse]

A Donjon review - I can't remember where I heard of it, maybe it was just something random - at www.rpg.net. This was months ago; I looked into the game, then sort of got busy with d20 stuff. Sounded kind of interesting, though..

Month and a half ago or so, I picked up it and Paladin at www.rpgnow.com on something of a whim. Lurked the Anvilwerks forum for a bit, then started branching out.

[Piratecat]

I met Jared at the house of a mutual friend, and he mentioned that he was active here. Six months or so later, I swung by - and noticed that one of the last people to register was actually my first DM from high school!

That's pretty cool, if you ask me.  :)

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I had first found the Forge back when it was (sp?)Hephastus' Forge from the links section at Gaming Outpost but for some kooky reason, I thought it was a company's website. I'm sure I was further confused by the game Forge: Out of the Chaos. I joined shortly after the name change and they can't get rid of me.

[Thomas Tamblyn]

When I was scouring the net for free rpgs, i found a link to sorcerer, this was back when it was a for-sale pdf.  I downloaded the apprentice version, liked what I saw and discovered the forge via that site and have lurked on and off here ever since until I finally registered a week or so ago.

[Malechi]

I was reading a post at enworld about A Song for Fire and Ice that said something about TROS... read about it liked what I saw/read but didn't go much further with it.  Then I read something about these fancy techniques called "Kickers, Bangs, Scene-Framing and R-Maps" on another site that also referenced protagonist play..whatever that was ;)  Found the references in Actual Play and some stuff about TROS...never looked back..

if only i could remember where i read those kicker bang references... thats the one thing i hate about the internet - if you lose something it can be damn hard finding it again..

Jason K...

[joshua neff]

How did I not post on this thread the first time around last year? Well, it rises from the crypt & here I am...Let's see if I can recall...

I was doing data entry-type work &, being bored, I surfed the web a lot. Somehow I stumbled onto...either Pete Seckler's site at the time or Jared Sorensen's. One led me to the other, though. I was really impressed with Jared's stuff, as it seemed similar to a lot of thoughts going through my head, so I emailed him. He emailed me back & invited me to join Gaming Outpost. There was some crank named Ron Edwards posting there. At first, I thought his stuff was just so much intellectual twaddle--overthinking something that didn't need to be overthought. But little by little it seeped in, & I found myself reading his posts & thinking, "Oh, so that's why I haven't enjoyed RPGs in the past, & that's why I have!" He also had some really good GMing advice (that apparently had sod all to do with his GNS stuff) which I took to heart, as I had taken a long break from gaming & was going to start GMing again.

Eventually, GO...collapsed or something. And in the habit of regularly checking out Ron's & Clinton's sites, I discovered they had kicked off a forum here. I signed up & the rest is...the history that gets left out of the history books.

[Andy Kitkowski]

heh. Flashback!

Yeah, I pretty much stick to what I said last year (refreshing read, that).  I just recalled a thing or two:

I was an RPGNetter. I loved the days of friendly rivalry and ribbing and cross-polination with GO. My first interaction with Clinton was something to the extent of me laughing on RPGNet about the thing where the GO guy forgot to re-register the domain name, and I was laughing about the idea of getting the domain name and posting pics of my dog or something.  His first words to me were something to the extent of "Fuck You". Funny how things worked out. :-)

I also remember when Gleichman took off from RPGnet or something and populated GO, and kept going on about his victimization.  That was before, when I thought he was:

* A possibly victimized person, but in any case an intelligent person with an inferiority complex.

And before I realized that he was:

* Completely batshit insane.

....and I posted for him on GO to give RPGNet another chance, to come back, etc.

Unfortunately, he did.

Apparently he has stopped using the Internet because of all the people who victimize him, and has turned his attention to other pressing matters.  Perhaps drawing with feces on his padded cell walls.

[John Kim]

I was aware of The Forge as a home for independent RPGs from early on (2000?).  I acknowledged it in my Free RPG List, as I recall.    And I knew about GNS when Ron told me about it a while back -- but I thought of it really as an adaptation of the Threefold that came with the Sorcerer RPG.  (And from the "System Does Matter" essay, it seemed pretty similar to the Threefold.)  I had never been aware of the Gaming Outpost.  

But I never knew about the forums and discussion until I think January 2003 when Chris Lehrich told me about them and what was going on there.  So I signed up and have been active for over a year now.

[Christopher Weeks]

I'm at GenCon in 2003.  I'm very, very busy with LEGO gaming, but a soft spot remains in my heart for the dealers room from way back when I actually found more stuff to buy than I could afford (starting in say, '81).  So I made the effort of walking up and down every aisle.  The Forge booth caught my eye and I tried to get close enough to check out the wares but it was too crowded.  I eventually make time to go back in, specifically to look at the Forge (I'm really not sure why), but my wife is coralling the two year old and she's supposed to be playing board games so I'm in a hurry.  I butt to the front of the mass, look at a few books and this guy starts talking to me about the game I'm looking at, Sorcerer -- turns out he's the author.  We sit, someone else joins us, he talks the game up and answers questions.  Then I make some meta-gaming theory points of a caliber of what a drunken three year old might make compared to some of the discussions that happen here.  Ron dives in and sweeps me away, indicating that the Forge has lots of discussions like this.  I bought all the Sorcerer books including Charnal Gods (and Dust Devils) and away I went with a Forge card or something in the bag.  A few weeks later I checked it out and here I am.  I've bought five more indie games over the year and expect to buy more this summer.

Chris

[Lxndr]

I first heard about The Forge on rpg.net.  Given what the rpg.netters said about it, I sorta went "huh, another rpg place.  okay."

I was then asked about game-type stuff by a friend of mine (Faunus, ejh on these boards).  Topos, it was.  Through him I joined the indie-netgaming mailing list to talk about it, and eventually stumbled into their IRC network.  Played a few games, and lurked on the Forge but didn't, y'know, post anything.

From there, eventually, to post about Topos and about the games we'd played, I signed up on here.  And the rest is history.

[Shreyas Sampat]

I think I found the Forge through Zak Arntson's posts to the Planescape mailing list (which I have long since left) regarding his play experiences with Donjon variants, complete with links to Actual Play posts.

[Bill Cook]

I stumbled onto this site through a chain of events: a player in my AD&D 1st ed. group brought a THAC0 wheel he'd downloaded from RPG United to a game session -> a guest player shared his involvement with a number of RPG groups on campus, suggesting that kids these days still get the bug and that M:TG and Blizzard PC Games haven't driven us off the table -> I did a search for RPG anything and found the rec.games.frp.advocacy forum -> I refined my search to RPG theory (there is such a thing?) and found The Forge.

That's from my first post.  Last August.  It's crazy what an impact this site has had on me.  The RPG flame had really died.  And I use to obsess well into the night on D&D fixes.

The idea of playing every RPG under the sun really struck me as odd.  All the time I spent trying to fix D&D, it never occured to me that someone else had already done it.  And that someone had given a name to my pain (conflicting creative agendas) and a context for it (GNS).

Now I have to make an effort to keep from thinking about the ideas and innovative games that have a home here.  It's better to have an issue with restraint than to have no love at all, I guess.

I'm most grateful to have a place to unload, substantively.  To really be rigorous and intense.  I'm glad there are people here who can take it.