The Winter of the Forge looms near

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

Ron, you've done an excellent job of recognizing when The Forge has needed a transition.  I feel my life has been quite enriched by the struggles and battles that have been fought out here.  I'm looking forward to the Winter phase, and especially the return of the Ronnies.  That was such an important time for me.  Thanks.  I, too, hope that this is a very productive season for The Forge.

I noticed that the Archive Forum is open for posting.  Does that mean there's an open-ended invitation to begin culling thread links and posting topics there?  I've read the sticky, but it didn't make things especially clear to me.

Peace,

-Troy

[lumpley]

Troy: there is. Please do!

- Vincent

[Jono]

Hello everybody,

I rarely post here since I rarely feel that I have anything to add to the discussion, but I've been reading the Forge and enjoying the hell out of many Forge-derived games, since 2007.  It's not an exaggeration to say that the Forge saved role-playing for me.  I probably would have dropped out of the hobby out of frustration by now if I hadn't found it.  So I too am sad that it's moving on to the end of its life-cycle, but it seems like the appropriate finale to end the site with decisiveness rather than letting it die with a whimper.

I was recently talking to Chris Chinn about the issue he mentions upthread: how to preserve the wisdom gleaned from the discussion here, in a form that makes it easier to share with, and explain to, the gamers of the future?

That's why I was very interested to read this:

5. I desperately want help in setting up the Forge Wiki we almost got going a few years back. What I have in mind is not a standard multi-user Wiki, but rather a means of understanding the ideas developed here through user-friendly explanations with organized linkage into the whole history of Forge threads. The Winter will be dedicated to making such a thing functional, perhaps including a Forge Forum specifically for bitching about the Wiki's contents once it gets going, not only for corrections purposes, but also so nuances and alternate views can be acknowledged as part of the resources too.

Ron, do you mean that you're looking for help with the web-development/server-administration side of setting up the Wiki, or are you looking for help mostly with writing the entries and organizing the links and information?

Either way, I think this is a fantastic idea and I'd like to offer my help.  I've been doing some Forge archive-crawling of my own lately, and put up a blog post here:  http://www.evilbrainjono.net/blog?showcomments=true&permalink=864  that attempted to summarize the old discussions about Illusionism/Participationism and Narrativism, in a way that would be easy to follow for my readers without assuming prior knowledge of theory jargon.  I want to do more along these lines anyway, and a wiki seems like an ideal format for that.

(The labels on my flowchart in that post are a bit snarky; I really dislike Illusionism, and I was in a snarky mood that day. I would think that the wiki articles ought to be from a more neutral point of view, without the snark.)

Ron, what do you think?  Can you tell me more about your plans for this wiki?

Thanks,
--Jono

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jono,

Good to see you again.

I don't have the time or energy to concentrate on that topic right now, except to say that some of the answers are in place and some aren't, and that I'll be able to refine my ideas about after finals. Resources like your link will definitely be involved.

Hi Christoph,

Sorry to forget your question. I realize now that the term "physical" is really loaded. I suppose "look and feel" is the meaning I was groping for, simply what the page looks like, the opportunities or options that are immediately visually obvious, and the mechanics of how one moves around the site and makes use of stuff there. Basic webpage design.

Best, Ron

[Mathew E. Reuther]

Aside from a question of organization of archived material (which a wiki tends to go a longs ways towards handling with relatively little effort from any one person) I at least  see nothing wrong with the format of the Forge.

One advantage of being set in a forums structure is that it is an almost "timeless" method of information exchange.

Look and feel for something like that is far less important than site formats which tend to evolve as technology does. Looking at forums from 10 years ago and those of today there are far fewer differences than you'd find between web sites of such disparate ages.

There's always room for improvement on any site of any type, but at least forums tend to stand the test of time far, far more easily, and I certainly don't see them becoming obsolete any time soon, no matter how much sites try to shift towards social networking models like facebook. There's a purity in the way forums do things that cannot be matched in many respects.

[Tomas HVM]

Hi Ron!

I find it refreshing, and kind of natural, that you do this. A good way to end it, and go on. Thanks for the years of insightful discussions!

[Ar Kayon]

Why is everyone happy that the forge is going to explode and die?

[Ron Edwards]

For the back-story, please read the posts Moreno has collected in the Archive forum. All of my rationale is present there, or at least I think it is. I'd rather answer questions that clearly indicate familiarity with that background.

Best, Ron

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

I, too, am just now back from Lucca, and I consider this great news. As a New Englander, winter is a time for me of furious weather and furious creation in its face. The beginning of Winter is also when everyone looks sexy in their sweaters and scarves.

Avanti al'inverno!

[Baxil]

I'm interpreting the announcement here as a signifier that, largely, all of the theory discussions that can be productively made, have been, and have been stated reasonably well.  Which makes sense to me - I'm familiar (via other communities) with the cycle of "shake out new ideas, refine them, and then endlessly answer newbies' same basic questions forever".  So breaking the cycle out of that fruitless last step seems a Good Thing.

Of course, as a newbie (found The Forge due to Game Chef 2010), I do need a crash course to get up to speed with what everyone here has figured out over the course of a decade.  Reading the articles has been eye-opening, but I think I'm starting to realize just how much I've missed, and the literally thousands of pages of threads are a little intimidating.  For example, I followed the link to JonO's blog post, and from that back to various discussions on Illusionism, Force, and Murk - all of which was new to me, and too new for the Articles archive. 

So - I'm asking here because it sounds like this is one of the Winter goals (if not, perhaps it should be) - is there some sort of "Best Of The Forge" list?  I see some of that starting to stir in the "Archives" board, but it's sparse as of this writing.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I should clarify that I don't claim that discussions here are concluded or their conclusions have been established beyond critique. With any luck my planned (and perhaps to be modified) means of summarizing them can serve as a decent foundation for later discussions without the current high bar to entry. It may help to know that none of the essays at the site were written for newcomers, but rather as "state of the art" pieces for fellow participants in the discussions.

Anyway, if you want to see some beginning attempts at summarizing interesting issues/threads discussed here, see the stickies in the Archived forums GNS Discussion and RPG Theory. There are some pretty good readings, I hope.

Best, Ron

[Emily Care]

Thanks for the continuing clear communication, and stewardship of the community, Ron. I hope these changes work well for you and Vincent, and that if anything is needed that you won't hesitate to ask for help.

Also, agreement and congratulations on seeing the change happen! My gratitude is endless, and my hat's off to all the Forge is, was and will be.

Best,
Emily

[Paiku]

Disbelief!  Dismay!  Reading past the Subject line.  Understanding.  Hope.  Tentative agreement with the plan.

I too like the idea of a wiki project.  There's a fortune of insights in this thing, some of which I've dug out and some I have yet to stumble across.  Even of those I've read, it would be nice to have a well-structured reference document/site.  I have a terrible memory, and like to re-read things.

Acceptance.  Enthusiasm.

What about the social aspect?  "Where" are Forge types going to chat and hang out after the planned transformation? 

-John

[M. J. Young]

Baxil--

There are probably many summaries of much of the theory, and I'm not certain how basic you want to be, but there has been a certain amount of praise for my Theory 101 series at Places to Go, People to Be, which attempted to capture some of the basics and make sense of them.  (The series has also been translated into French and will be published in a French RPG magazine shortly--but I'm afraid I don't recall the name so I can't point you to it there, if French even helps.)

The three articles are (in the original English versions):

• System and the Shared Imagined Space[/url] covering the Lumpley Principle, credibility and authority, stance.
• The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast covering referee styles.
• Creative Agenda wrapping up with explanations of GNS along with some links to other articles (not all of which are probably still good, given the nature of the Internet).

Ron, my concern is wondering what happens after Winter.  Between the forums and the articles, there is a great deal here worth preserving.  It sounds like the Wiki format is going to link to the existing threads, and thus that everything will be archived; since it also sounds like the forum will be closed, it must be the expectation that all posting will be disabled at some point (not merely that you will have asked everyone to stop posting).  That seems fine to me as a solution, but I would be concerned if it were to be threatened with erasure or even simply removal from the public view.

One alternative is, of course, to determine whether any other RPG site would be interested in "housing" the material as a reference resource.  I'm not sure of the feasibility of that, but it's not my area.

In any case, you continue to have my respect for all you've done here (and Clinton and Vincent).  Thank you for your contributions.

--M. J. Young

[M. J. Young]

What about the social aspect?

John, there is still a forum at Gaming Outpost.  I'm a bit embarrassed at how Multiverser-oriented it has become, but that's only because we're the only people who haven't emigrated.  Several posters are into game and scenario design, and all are into conversation.  (In fact, two threads were launched recently, one for Random Chat about all kind of things, and the other a Peanut Gallery for people to make comments about events in the game threads they're following without disrupting the game, so socializing is certainly part of the forum.)  It's also still small enough that we all know each other, but big enough that there's a lot of interaction, and we get new people often enough.

--M. J. Young