My own trip to the forge was two steps removed from a yahoo search on storytelling for Mage. The first stop was lumpley's website , which had such cool games (particularly Otherkind and Before the Flood), that I read through almost everything on the site.

After the game descriptions, there was this blurb:

(Narrativism is a very cool philosophy of game design. The place to start is the Forge. I'm on there as lumpley, stop in and say hi.)

Hi! Good to see you!

I did a google on "free rpgs" or something back in 2001, and damn, the quality of discussion around here was so high that I stuck around.

-Vincent
(I'm a force for good! I'm a force for good! Yay!)

Actually, I have no idea how I got here. Who are you people???

Seriously, though - I really don't remember. Which seems odd to me; that's the sort of thing I normally would remember...

I came over from GO when the Forge forum originally started. Boy, it's been a while.....

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

I think that I started reading the Art of Game Design over at RPG.net and someone there linked to the Forge...

Stuart

Clinton mentioned the Forge in a post on a local board in Seattle, if I remember right.

Hiya,

Well, in 1999, I had posted my System Does Matter and The Nuked Applecart articles at the Gaming Outpost, and I was selling Sorcerer as a PDF at the time. I'd become pretty snarky about the idea of creator ownership in role-playing games, for a variety of reasons, and some discussion got going about setting up a website devoted to that topic.

My friend Ed Healy, who had helped me a lot at that point, a fellow named Mike Mearls, and I decided to put that into action. Mike dropped out almost immediately due to various other goals and so Ed and I wrote up Hephaestus' Forge. At the time it didn't have a forum, just links to the Gaming Outpost, and a lot of reviews and articles by me. We wanted to feature games monthly with Actual Play accounts, which turned out to be harder than we thought (be easy now, but back then, no).

So I guess the way I "found" the Forge was to invent it.

Best,
Ron

Oh, I don't think anyone really wants to know how I found the Forge.

In a nutshell, I was a naive young guy on the Gaming Outpost forums who really wanted to write RPGs. I thought Sorcerer was the bee's knees (although it'd be a few years before I really played it), and when the Sorcerer site and The Forge went down because of domain name issues, I used the only skill I had, networking knowledge, to help Ron keep them both.

So, the way I found the Forge was to accidentally end up running it.

Man, after Ron and Clinton, my story is lame.

Simple. I was a Gaming Outpost die-hard. Even after the several "reboots" of GO, and the switch to for-pay service, I stuck with GO and it fora.

But people on GO kept tlaking about the Forge. Went to it, bookmarked it, didn't do much.

But slowly, as GO continued in its death-throes, and shambled on in it's semi-undead state, I started going to the Forge more and more, because that's where the activity was... and is.

I got good feedback for Success here, thought-provoking (for me, at the time) stuff that challenged some of my preconceptions.

I never looked back... The rest is history... And other cliches. ;-D

It actually took me several attempts to actually find the Forge.

I distinctly remember reading Emily Dresner-Thornber's "Crunchy Bits" articles over a year ago. At the time, I was an In Nomine fanboy who was working on a game proposal for SJGames, but I never noticed the forums (which were, I have to say, buried among other less important stuff).

I finally got interested in indie rpgs several months ago, sick of the resurgance of D20 and the stupid, ultra-traditionalist thinking that came with it. My first Forge post was Indy RPG Anthology?: "Death to D20", followed soon by one on designing specifically for a PBeM format.

Now, I'm here to stay. The Forge is the best damn gamn design forum on the web, bar none. The community's not bad either, I must say...

Me, too, GO transplant.

Mike

Lets see how convoluted I can make this...

I discovered how much fun a good mailing list could be when Babylon 5 Wars from AoG was first released. That experience (a positive one despite how crappy the game was) convinced me to sign up for the 7th Sea mailing list...which was my passion du jour at the time.

Then John Wick and AEG parted company, the supplements for the game got really screwy (and obnoxiously frequent) but before I dropped the list (or the list just died...don't remember which) someone mentioned Wick's latest and greates project...Orkworld.

From his site I discovered his Game Design Journal, which was housed at some Gaming Outpost place I'd never heard of and couldn't care less about. Then I made the mistake of poking around some of the GO Forums like Critical Hit.

Then I discovered some madman by the name of Ron Edwards spouting some GNS gibberish and shilling some silly PDF RPG. What kind of crazyness was that...an electronic game book and an RPG with only 3 attributes...nonsense. I still resent the man...I didn't ask to have my paradigms challenged. I used to be quite happy killing orcs in the dungeon dammit...ok, well not really, but I digress.

Then GO imploded and I discovered that most of the quality discussions had moved over here, and Voila.

Ralph wrote,

I didn't ask to have my paradigms challenged

It's all that damn Jake Norwoods fault ;-)

The Riddle of Steel led me - nose first - to the Forge a year ago, after the RPG.net forum about the game eventually gasped it's last breath. To be honest, I still do most of my posting in the TROS area, but enjoy reading through the general forums as well, and poke my nose in with an opinion or comment fairly frequently these days. I don't tend to post in the other game forums much, although Sorcerer and Little Fears are other great games and I keep my eyes on their forums too.

Brian.

Pretty simple, really. I was reading rpgnews.com when I saw a post that referenced fantasy heartbreakers, with a link to Ron's article. Intrigued, I read it. Then I read a number of the other articles. Then I read the forum. Then I started posting.

JL

My path to the Forge started with Knights of the Dinner Table, and, in typical mythic fashion, led me here via two bridges of flame.

To wit: as a KoDT fan hanging out on the KoDT boards, I had been following the development, release, and market reaction to Hackmaster with some mild interest. As happens from time to time, word came to the Hackmaster boards that there was a flame war about Hackmaster going on on RPGNet. While checking that out, I got interested in a few other concurrent RPGNet threads, including a thread titled "what is GNS?" that developed into a half-flamey half-fascinating GNS discussion. That thread included many links to the Forge and posts by Forge members, which attracted my interest hitherward.

- Walt (who regrets that hardly anyone uses "to wit" any more)

Replace "Babylon 5 Wars mailing list" in Ralph's post with "Talislanta mailing list," and you've got me. Oh, and I'm not sure I was ever happy killing orcs in dungeons.

But other than that - what Ralph said. Interesting. 7th Sea/John Wick/GO/The Forge. Huh.

Gordon

So, I was reading the Planescape mailing list - or skimming it, anyway. I had become disenchanted with the poor signal-to-noise ration, but as a matter of policy I made a point of reading certain peoples' posts, because they tended to make insightful comments or otherwise provide valuable information.

So I was reading a series of Zak Arntson's posts on his Donjon Planescape game, which linked to Actual Play threads on the same topic. I read these for a while, content.

Then I noticed the consistent quality of the replies to these threads, and started to explore. Walt's Symmetry thread hooked me. That mechanic is bloody gorgeous, Walt.

DaGreatJL wrote: Pretty simple, really. I was reading rpgnews.com when I saw a post that referenced fantasy heartbreakers, with a link to Ron's article. Intrigued, I read it. Then I read a number of the other articles. Then I read the forum. Then I started posting.

I had been going to rpg.net for a few years. Every once in a while there were references to the Forge and GNS. About the same time The Riddle of Steel came out,I began to notice the people I usually disagreed with at rpg.net were also often the people who were critical of the Forge. So, I decided to post in the TROS forum and read up on the other stuff too.

Basically, I was in the process of getting back into RPGs after spending A LOT of time in the Interactive Fiction community. And quite frankly I was kind of frustrated with it. So, I started looking for RPG sites to see if I could find any good discussions that might help me figure out what the problem was but nobody seemed to be talking about the kinds of things I wanted to talk about; mainly, how to produce a punchy powerful thematic story via roleplaying, although I didn't have the vocabulary to articulate that at the time.

So, I pretty much narrowed my wandering down to two sites, RPGnet and GO. Well, over on GO there's this wack-job named Ron Edwards who seemed to be talking about precisely what I was looking for but his suggested methods for achieving it were preposterous, ludicrous and just plain WRONG.

So, I applied my Enraged Monkey learning technique. I grabed hold, banged my head and screamed a lot until I got the answers I wanted. Most of the banging and screaming and holding was done here on The Forge and now I'm more or less a permanent fixture.

Jesse

Oh, and I forgot to mention...

The very first post I read when I came here was Ron chewing somebody out for the lack of intellectual rigor in their argument. Really. (I just picked a first-page thread at random and clicked to view the most recent post.)

Just as well. It made me wary enough to avoid most of the usual n00b gaffes.

- Walt

Bit One: I've been an RPGNetter since like... 99?

Bit Two: I stumbled on Sorcerer waaay back. IIRC, it was a free download at one point (for testing/polishing purposes)... If I dig through my backups from when I lived in Japan, I've probably got it there somewhere. I don't know why, but I was totally unimpressed with it the first time I saw it. Same thing happened with Fudge, tho (one of my OTHER favorite systems).

Bit Three: Sometimes talk of The Forge came up on RPGNet. Usually in the "Avoid those froo-froo folks, they're too busy blowing themselves to talk shop".

So, of course, I checked out the Forge dozens of times. Was a wallflower. Even I thought it got a little bit pretentious up in here. Turns out that I was, most likely like those other 'netters (note: No East Side/West Side stuff here- not everyone there hates the Forge, and not everyone here hates it there), looking at this site with a "Let's talk about small press/indie games" perspecttive. Took me a while to realize that, when you consider that the aim of this site is not "Let's Talk About" but "Let's Make", it all Friggin Clicks. Paradigm shift. It's not pretentiousness, it's criticism. GNS isn't pseudo-philisophical blowhard speak meant to raise "N" and lower "GS", it's a mode to think about making the Best Game you can for the audience you're aiming for.

That clicking, for me, happened when I picked up Sorcerer and Sword on a recommendation and a whim (I think it was Jared who recced it to me, on teh RPGNet chat forums). I spent all night reading it. My first giddy post can be seen here:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=1883
(note: I'm still working on that game, on and off. Bits of it are even being worked into a Dread supplement I'm working on now, my first gaming product)

From that, my desire to actually make a game (at some point) started bubbling forth, and the "Forge shift' occoured. I registered my name, and have been a loose regular ever since.

Admittedly, sometimes I've blundered here, or found administration kinda heavy-handed, but looking back on it all it's been a great ride. I got a lot done in that year since I registered, and certainly got a hell of a lot out of The Forge. :)

-Andy

Back in my pre-computer, sit in front of the high school library terminal days, I did nothing but search for modules and read reviews at rpg.net. Then, I found GO; made a few feeble posts and generally got interested in all the theory talk. I found a link to some crazy Hephaestus' Forge site where I read Ron's System Does Matter article, and left the whole thing alone for a while. When GO went pay, I went Forge.

I'm with Ethan, I can't remember how I found The Forge. The memory is there dancing just out of reach, when I make a grab for it disappears in a poof of smoke like some unruly imp. Grrrr.

*looks around suspiciously*


-Chris

Short version: Ron said to me, "Hey, this site hasn't gone live yet, but check it out. Want to do a logo for it?" and, unh, so I checked it out.

Slightly longer version: Ron introduced me to the Forge back when it was entitled Hephaestus' Forge, before it even went live for the world to see, and well before there were forums here. I stayed through the server crash, the redesign into the Forge, and here I am.

Hum, I really fear that my "how did I find the FOrge" story is pretty lame...

Step 1: buy Little fears

Step 2: go to the Key20 website

Step 3: join the forum to discuss the game... and read about the session of a verbally proactive member of the board named R. Edwards...


...Read further... enjoy... learn... repeat.

Fabrice.

After getting back into role-playing after quite a while away from it (D&D 2ed) last year, I decided I might like to run a Supers game again. I had run a couple long term ones back in the 80's and there was some interest in me starting something.

I didn't want to go with Champions (our old game) anymore. I wanted to avoid its habit of going from a Social role-playing mode into a tactical wargame role-playing mode. Fun as it is, I have bad memories of a pitched Heros vs Villains plus agents battle that raged for about 6 hours real time (over a minute game time) (little agent buggers kept waking up).

So I went looking for some free rules-light games (Super or Generic). That led me to The Window, which really excited me. It had completely customizable characters, and minimal rolling. Yea!

But it had almost no support.

Looking for support I actually read the review here, before I knew what this place was. And I joined the Window mailing list. There I encountered Paganini and some others. Saw some attempts at the Cornerstone game, which was to adjust for some statistical flaws in Window. Their discussions about average attribute being unnecessary and story focus at some point included a link or two to the Forge.

Read those...needed to read System Does Matter to understand them well. Then things about FitM and Narrativism, all of GNS, and so on. And Threads on Theatrix and Clinton's Panels (I'll buy it)...then just read about everything I could find.

I realize now that some of the few things that went wrong in the old days games were mostly communication problems. Or some players wanted to play games that really only exist now.

My players are all busy with Life (Life Happens), so we've stopped the gaming for now. I now game almost exclusively with the Yahoo indie-netgaming crowd on-line.

While browsing for some game-design theory in summer 2001 while putting the polish on FVLMINATA, I stumbled across Hesphestus' Forge following some link from only Hesphestus knows where. Read something (can't remember what) that was different enough that the name stuck in my head as a place to come back to when I had time to think.

GenCon 2001, FVLMINATA is released. At the con, I hear that this Ron Edwards guy has bought a copy of it. He's selling his own game called Sorcerer. It rang the slightest bell. I think Jon Wick (who is the gaming columnist's god, in my eyes) mentioned something about it. In the interest supporting folks who are doing something different, I go to his booth, introduce myself. A strained "Hey, I bought your game." "Hey, I'm buying yours now" type conversation ensues. I get it signed and even pick up a mini-supplement from some guy named Jared Sorenson. The rest of GenCon is a whirl of Roman-themed dice rolls.

A few months later, I'm reading Sorcerer. This is something else ... I mean really something else. There's some stuff I don't get, so I check out the FAQ, and finally into the forum. Eventually I read the One Thread To Rule Them All: Art Deco Melodrama and I'm hooked. I stuck to lurking the Actual Play forum for quite a while, cause I'm no theorist. Ron's "Big Five" threads this past fall started me posting more, but work and RL have been hell the past month or so. Plus, every word I type here is one that ain't going in my game. So why am I even typing this???

How did I get here?

By way of www.rpg.net: First Andrew Martin recommended Sorcerer as something to read for inspiration for a magic system, and then Bailywolf said that this was "the place to be". So I decided to check it out...

I'm here because of Jesse. And I can never thank him enough for it.

He kept saying, "I really think you'd like the discussions on the Forge." It took me three weeks to think it'd be even worth my time to check it out. Boy was he right.

Christopher

I think I was doing some searching for Theatrix. Looking for information from people who had played the game, and to find out what their experience was with it. I ran across references to threads in Google and followed them and proceeded to get swallowed up with all the great conversation going on here.

The great thing was that most of the stuff I read spoke to me and my dissatisfaction with the hobby very deeply. It helped me put some words to ideas I had but hadn't been able to articulate about the hobby and myself as a hobbiest, as well as introduce me to some new ones.

On top of all that I found that people like Christopher Kubasik were posting here which I thought was just awesome as I have all but framed my tattered photocopies of his Interactive Toolkit articles. (Pleased to meet you Chris)

and finally there were all the great GAMES.... (happy sigh)

regards

Trevis

Well, my profile says I registered for the forum in Aug 2001, but I seem to remember nosing around here for a while before.

I think I followed some link from RPG.NET when looking for places to promote games (this was round about the first version of Lost Gods and the Agency).

One of my early posts was on an idea I had for a game about megalomanics in an asylum. The response was positive, the ideas inspiring, and the game evolved into Bedlam!

I've been here ever since.

-Matt

Also by way of rpg.net, but in my case it was a post (by Clinton maybe?) about kill puppies for satan. I read the game and decided that if anyone else at the Forge was doing anything even half as cool as that I wanted to know about it.

I posted an idea on rpg.net for a wild west otherworld where the American west was settled by Egyptians, Norse, Romans and Greeks. It got pretty zany and I was wondering which system I should use when Matt posted and suggested that I use Dust Devils, which I did.

Looked around the Forge and discovered and bought Sorcerer, InSpectres, octaNe and such. Most recent Forge-related game I've gotten hooked on is Riddle of Steel.

Fun stuff, but sometimes the GNS discussions give me a headache, but, ya know, in a good way.

Being married to Vincent helped. Gaming w/ him and EmilyCare helped too. Mostly I just put in a few words now and then when the topic of women&gaming shows up, or when Vincent or EmilyCare says "hey, check out this thread atthe Forge". Someday when the kids are older, I'll pick up the ElfQuest game I was writing back in 1992.

~Meguey

It's all Moose's fault. We've been friends for about a decade or so and all of a sudden I started to develop this itchy rash on my left butt cheek. Over a period of a month or so it kind grew and started leaking this viscuous puss and... Doh!! Wrong story. You guys are talking about the Forge...Silly me. Moose introduced me to the Forge too. :-)

,Matt G.

I had just recently been bitten by the gaming bug again, and started looking about for message boards regarding gaming. After a short time, i found rpg.net, and started reading reviews.

There i found some kind of thingie about some kind of GNS theory, and read some other article about Fantasy Heartbreakers. I wanted to know what this GNS stuff was all about, so i did a Google search on it, and found the article Ron had written. However, IIRC, it came up page not found, so i did some URL hacking and found it that way. Meanwhile, i was reading about some guys on RPG.net bitching about how pretentious everyone on the Forge was. I thought to myself "They've got to be better than you people calling each other f4gz0rz for not liking D20 games"

After reading several posts in GNS discussion, i was inclined to think that perhaps the RPG.net people were right, especially after i made a post and someone made an arrogant remark about what i wrote. This alomst drove me away.

But then i discovered TROS, and i stayed.

Now i want to check out Sorceror. That game sounds like it rocks.

Had been designing little games to no avail for several years, mostly to please my bored mind, and when I developed one I wanted actual outside opinoins on I looked upo Independent Game Design or something to that effect and viola. Now I'm still designing little games to no avail but at least I have a cool place to hang out :)

JOE--

Story: Been a player since the mid-80s. Lost track of gaming after college, 1996. Was bereft. Josh and I met in July 2002, and I was poking around in here because he had a link on Goblin Cartoons.

Lo and behold, Ron, Mike, Jurgen, Josh and I all ended up at Mike's house and did a Sorcerer and Sword pre-GenCon 2002 thing, and I was hooked. I had to have more.

I got the ovarios to sign up and start posting sometime between Josh's 1-on-1 Trollbabe and Mike's Hero Wars in Alternate Setting runs, and have been lurking and chiming in ever since.

By the way, I find the analysis and dissection to be edifying, annoying and amusing all at the same time.

I was referred to this place by Adam Jury, Editor of The Shadowrun Supplemental. I asked him for advice on pimping out my RPG to playtesters, and he sent me the link.



Othyem

Back in the day when I wanted to find every free RPG out there (now I don't even bother) I found Haphaestus Forge (God I hate that god's name!). Which as far as I can remember was just a list of free RPGs. It wasn't even as good as some other ones I found either. For some reason I later searched around for more free RPGs and found the Forge had changed a lot. Even then all I did was use the resource library.

I'm not sure why I started reading the forums here. I think it was because of some discussion on RPG.net.

-Joshua

Regarding my post above (too late to edit it and not look foolish), it was Sorcerer/SPACE, not sword. Can't let my faulty memory go uncorrected.

Hmm. I came by way of a half finished thought.

I was getting a bit bored with RPG's, and felt that they were all getting a bit same-y. So I was thinking that by describing games on a set of sliding scales, and looking for any gaps that I couldn't fit a game to, I'd find that elusive "something different" I was looking for.

The first step was to consider a lot of games - and a web search turned up the resource library, amoungst others. From there, I wandered about a bit, found the GNS eassy, skimmed it, looked at Sorcerer, had one of those "well, duh, of course!" moments that accompany truly understanding something new, and I had discovered Narrativism. My flaw in the idea was that I was only considereing Simulationism as the 'whole of the matter'.

Once sorcerer arrived, I ordered both the supplemts immediatly (Making them the 3rd and 4th supplments I've ever bought), and then started lurking a bit, and gradually grew to posting a little.

Fast forward to present: Still playing in some of the same games. Not boring anymore. Wierd, huh?

I saw the site mentioned on Adept Press and the Sorcerer site. Raided the library, stayed around when I tried the forums. Stayed on the Independent Forums for a long time, finally moved to Indie Games. Rest is history.

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.

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. :)

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.