Hopefully I'm posting this in the right place - I just wanted to give a shout-out to all and sundry. I dropped out of the game industry more than a decade ago and have recently decided to get back in. My "state of the industry" research led me here. I am overwhelmed by the amount of intriguing discourse going on here. It will take days if not weeks just to wade through all the stuff I'm interested in. Digesting it will take quite a bit longer. A pleasant suprise was the fact that my decision to create an RPG that doesn't fall back on simulation to resolve combat is not only not unique, it seems to be a movement of sorts. A lot of what I used to look for in games seems to have become an evolutionary "next step" in the indie gaming community. I can't wait to dig into the work you folks have been doing.

Alex "Mike Nystul" Gray

Hello Alex,

Welcome to the Forge.

You are one of the folks whose work inspired me to design games and publish them. My most successful game, Sorcerer, owes an incredible debt to The Whispering Vault and to much of your freelance work prior to that.

Your post here is tremendously valuable to me personally and on behalf of everyone, I welcome your posts and your willingness to participate.

Here are some ways to start which might be a bit better than pointing at one end of the stables and saying, "one end's as good as another, start shoveling."

1. One of the articles is called The Provisional Glossary. The first two pages, plus a diagram, are intended to be read by themselves; they explain what I've been calling the Big Model that's developed here over the past six years. All widespread claims that the Forge terminology is too whacked and variable and far-flung are false - it's seven non-self-referential terms and a picture.

2. The Actual Play forum is really the heart of the site. You can post about any RPG experience you've ever had, with an emphasis on the social features of the people involved, the basic imagery and imagined situations, the rules utilized, and so on (these are all parts of that Big Model). The point is to establish a critical, celebratory, and archived dialogue about our real experiences of play that, as far as I can tell, has been absent from the hobby until it was initiated here.

3. The games themselves ... there are the specialty publisher forums, like my Adept Press and many more, which are moderated solely by their owners; and there are the free games or the ones with free components which you can investigate out of pure curiosity/interest, and ask about in those forums.

Everyone, you know what to do when someone with an august history in role-playing design posts here. No fawning, maintain high levels of critique, but for damn sure, recognize the opportunity to learn from him.

Best, Ron