What's the most...

[Mudge]

Interesting thing that you have discovered here at The Forge??

The most innovative?

The most memorable?

[Brian Leybourne]

The best (err.. innovative? memorable?) thing about the Forge AFAIC is that the people here are (mostly) very tolerant, friendly and reasonable. Some other notable RPG forums suffer fools gladly, and you can't open your mouth or express an opinion without 20 other people telling you you're wrong/stupid.

I know some people consider the Forge to be pretentious. It's not, it's just a bit more mature than some other sites out there.

IMO of course.

Brian.

[ethan_greer]

Hi there!

Most Interesting:  Ron's articles.  Very good stuff, well-written and thought-provoking.

Most innovative:  Holy crap.  I have to narrow it down?  Okay.  I guess I'll give Universalis the nod.

Most memorable:  This is tough.  I guess I'm not sure how to answer this one.  Maybe just the act of participating here - This community is one of the best experiences I've had on the Internet.

[jburneko]

I'm kind of with Brian.  The most innovative thing about the Forge is the academic approach to its subject matter and what, I think, Christopher Kubasic refered to as its "editorial agenda."

You ask a question here and you don't get 100 kneejerk opinions laden with assumptions and habits about the hobby.    You get a concrete critical thinking level analysis of your problem down to fundamentals and basics, offen accompanied by specific references, and then a reconconstruction upward to a satisfying answer that isn't just, "whatever."

To sound really nerdy, it's basically everything I loved about being in college.

Jesse

[Valamir]

I spent alot of years in the greater DC area where every other person it seems like is attached to the Department of Defense somehow.  In fact, some of the friends I made there are regular presenters at the Origins War College.

As a result they were very much a "Conflict Simulation" crowd...a term they adopted to distinguish themselves from people who Usurped the term "Wargame" for Axis and Allies, Pudding Workshop, and Clix.

Hense they were very much into gaming and gaming theory.  They would disect designer notes to try and determine the logic behind individual rules and spend hours discussing whether other rules would have met the stated design goals better.  I'm still a member of the SF Consim list where Game Theory and intellectual discussions were the watchword (not so much any more, unfortuneately, many of the important topics have already been through the wringer so the list has strayed a bit in the past months).

So what's the point to this ramble? Well for me the most interesting and memorable thing about the Forge is finding a place where the same degree of intellectual analysis is applied to RPGs.  Given most hard core Conflict Simmers would summarize the bulk of RPG rules as being "sloppy" I didn't expect to find a similar level of analytical exellence going on in this field.

[Mike Holmes]

Two words, man.

Quantum Lactator.

Mike

[Spooky Fanboy]

Interesting? That there was a Forge to begin with, where people actually took the time to treat this hobby with the seriousness it deserves.

Innovative? I would have stuck with Universalis, which gets my nod for Best-All-Purpose-System out there, but recently I've seen Best-Horror-RPG which is currently Le Mon Mori. It's a game so creepy I can' t currently imagining myself playing it, much less finding some other suckers to play it with me. It's close to the feeling I had when I first read Kult.

Memorable? The first time I tried to be helpful with my questions on a game someone was designing...and was told I was helpful. That felt so good.

[Fabrice G.]

Here we go...

Interesting ?

The discussions going on the bards, it's the most low-noise high signal I ever encoutered on the net (not that I have a huge presence, but none the less).

Innovative ?

The kind of game I became aware of by haunting this place : Sorcerer, Universalis, Dust Devil, The Pool, Trollbabe, Le Mon Mouri, Little Fears ... do I need to say more ?

Memorable ?

The warn welcome I got from the old guard as I only posted in the Key20 forum, when I read Ron post and I didn't know he was one of the two Forge creator... the shock, ohhhh the shock !!! when I found WHO that man was !   : )

Fabrice.

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings,

Interesting thing that you have discovered here at The Forge??

That the people are friendly and willing to help but, like Solomon said, there really isn't anything new under the sun.  Which means we have a lot of jade to polish when we post looking for feedback.

The most innovative?

Innovative.   Innovative?  Hmm...

Well the first thing that popped into my mind was 'Universalis', though I couldn't tell you why since I've never really played, but obviously something about it must be special if it just jumped into my mind.  Next would probably come Zak's mini-game creations.  And that one game from the iron game chef competition, 9 clouds??

Lot's of neat and crunchy stuff to be found here.

The most memorable?

Next to the religious discussion threads and how that relates to the game world, I'd have to say the way everyone responding to my first thread about a game idea.  True, I still need to create the tiles for the board to actually get to play it but, hey, without The Forge who could say if I'd even have had the idea, much less written the rules!


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius