Hey, guys.

Not a lot of time left in the Birthday forum. I want some nominations for Best Thread of the Year.

Here are mine, and why:

Writing for People an amazing discussion of how to write your game text. I need to read this again. And again. And again.

Are We as Cool as Shakespeare? a serious, and excellent discussion the place of the RPG as art.

Son of Iron Game Chef Which gave us The Mountain Witch, Chanter, Dance the the Dawn, Polaris, and a thousand other gems.

Bad News in the Alyria forum, where Seth gets the carpet pulled out from under him. Why do I like this thread? Because, it starts with a bad situation. Watch how everyone follows the request of the author and presents constructive ideas, rather than pity or anger. That is because we are awesome.

Also, the two threads I started in the summer:

CA Classifications and Game Systems
and
Wait, What Matters Again?

were really quite great for me, at least.

I'm sure I'm missing a ton. What are they?

yrs--
--Ben

edit: dropped a quote in my HTML

Nothing constructive to add except that your link to the Bad News thread seems to be wrong. It actually links back to this thread.

Nice idea for a thread though. Checking out some of those other links now, looking forward to more.

Kit wrote: Nothing constructive to add except that your link to the Bad News thread seems to be wrong. It actually links back to this thread.

Nice idea for a thread though. Checking out some of those other links now, looking forward to more.

Ralph's Shooting the Sacred Cow thread was one the best for me. It's come back to me time & again this year, and from the responses to it, it seems like it put into words what a lot of people have struggled with in game design.

edit: of course, it came from calendar year 2004, rather than Forge year 2004-05. Well, it'd top my chart for any year!

Chris Lehrich's recent Bricolage APPLIED (finally!) was a big one for me.

-Chris

Here were a bunch that I saved for review. I'm not sure they're the "best", but they at least were noted by me.

Mechanical Gender Differences (May 2004)
Water-Uphill World: Virtuality Examined (June 30, 2004)
New 3D Model (Aug 9, 2004)
It has to make sense" secret bane of the hobby? (Aug 14, 2004)
More on 3D Model (Aug 26, 2004)
A wild and untamed thing - how literature refuses gaming (Nov 30, 2004)
On RPGs and Text [LONG] (Dec 3, 2004)
Theory Without Jargon - Help for the Desperate - Number 1 (Feb 7, 2005)
Theory Without Jargon - Help for the Desperate - Number 2 (Feb 8, 2005)
Theory Without Jargon - Help for the Desperate - Number 3 (Feb 27, 2005)

[game design and psychology] was one of those thread that changed the way I think about play and design.