Quote from: -E.An important note: since *no one* understands these terms (most of them aren't defined), any discussion of actual play or real game design will quickly abandon them -- so if you want to get involved with theorists, just ignore the theory terms and wait for them to start using English.

It's been a long time since I checked out the Forge, but I seem to remember there being a glossary of some sort tucked away on a back page. It helped a lot just trying to figure out which way was up. If only to figure out which words not to take literally.

As for waiting for English the tricky part would be trying to figure out when it is English and when they are just using words that look like English.

P.S. I personally think more of the goofy phrases than the single word terms because I find the phrases easier to pick out as slang.

Quote from: beejazzBut I thought computer slang was supposed to throw people off, and really served no purpose beyond showboating.

NUB, P#33R M'/ 1337 5k!11z!!!1!!!!1!1!!1!!11eleventyone!

I wouldn't consider that "computer slang", and r33t speak did come about with an actual purpose. Once apon a time (perhaps before you were born?) computers were primative things, software had only rudimentary search routines, and everything was in text. This was before the public internet, or perhaps soon after it's birth, when the BBS was still king. Software pirates started substituting various characters in the place of letters to make it harder to sift through the text to detect their nefarious activities. Now it has become largely a horendously cliche joke.

Quote from: beejazzBut I thought computer slang was supposed to throw people off, and really served no purpose beyond showboating.

NUB, P#33R M'/ 1337 5k!11z!!!1!!!!1!1!!1!!11eleventyone!

[same might be said of theory jargon, for that matter... not that I'd know... or care]

You got it in one.

RPGPundit

Quote from: blakkieNow it has become largely a horendously cliche joke.

I was going to write something else up about the Forge, but you summed it up perfectly for me.

I wish RPG theory were being developed more like music theory, i.e. a useful language for expressing RPG design concept while being value-neutral.  Music theory doesn't imply that baroque period chamber music sucks while romantic period orchestral rules.  It just gives musicians a way to express and interpret their ideas.

The unending confusion over definitions in RPG theory is enough to demonstrate that theory isn't as useful as it should be.  As it stands, the most valuable ideas in RPG theory are extracted despite the theory-talk.  There are some gems at the Forge, but the theory can't get out of its own way.  The attitudes with which it is sometimes expressed compounds the problem heavily.

I wonder if such a tool can actually be salvaged from the current state of RPG theory, or if it would be more useful to burn everything down and start from the beginning with terms that don't insult certain styles of play and don't seem designed to make the user feel like he's talking about something more important than a role-playing game.

I think that a great deal could be gained from a common language used in the RPG field.  I know that the Forge stuff has improved my gaming, even though I don't care for the tone and I think some of the actual theory is overwrought.  I just can't shake the idea that gaming theory can read more like a sheet of music than a polemic.

I've noticed a lot of Forge brand RPG theory discussion is heavily focused on taxonomy and establishing a new vocabulary.  If it's not new definitions for regular words, it's giving cutesy titles like the "Blah Blah Law" or the "Blah Blah Principle" rather than recognizing those concepts are pretty straight forward if you remove all the fluff. I mean... "The Lumpley Principle"  Give me a break.

I think it would be much more useful if people tried a little harder to use more straightforward language.  Trying to establish a "new" glossary of RPG theory talk is the wrong approach.

Quote from: Divine HammerI wish RPG theory were being developed more like music theory, i.e. a useful language for expressing RPG design concept while being value-neutral.  Music theory doesn't imply that baroque period chamber music sucks while romantic period orchestral rules.  It just gives musicians a way to express and interpret their ideas.

The unending confusion over definitions in RPG theory is enough to demonstrate that theory isn't as useful as it should be.  As it stands, the most valuable ideas in RPG theory are extracted despite the theory-talk.  There are some gems at the Forge, but the theory can't get out of its own way.  The attitudes with which it is sometimes expressed compounds the problem heavily.

I wonder if such a tool can actually be salvaged from the current state of RPG theory, or if it would be more useful to burn everything down and start from the beginning with terms that don't insult certain styles of play and don't seem designed to make the user feel like he's talking about something more important than a role-playing game.

I think that a great deal could be gained from a common language used in the RPG field.  I know that the Forge stuff has improved my gaming, even though I don't care for the tone and I think some of the actual theory is overwrought.  I just can't shake the idea that gaming theory can read more like a sheet of music than a polemic.

Really? I'd expect something more highly discriminatory. As in what sells and what doesn't. Because that's useful. As in "Decide what your game does then do it well" theory. Maybe "decide what your game does" should be neutral (mecha is not innately superior to cyberpunk or zombies), but "then do it well" hardly needs to be. Of course, that'd never stand as a theory because it only has two steps. WHY MUST ALL THINGS COME IN THREES!?

(And in regards to 1337... yup. Cyphers are generally intended to obfuscate meaning, rather than communicate.)

I'm with Brett.  I got my own theory, and I'll repost it here:

GFS THEORY
      Giant
Fucking
Spiders

The Basic Tenets:

• Holy Shit!
• Giant Fucking Spiders!
• We'd better do something, or we're hosed!
• Oh my god -- they got the professor!

This thread has helped me alot.

I do, however, wish for a large body of data. The forge stuff just seems like a lot of philosophy. Lots of navel gazing and some neat stuff but a vanishingly small amount of truly usefull stuff.

Is there anybody out there doing stuff like collecting observational data of gamers actually at play? Collecting surveys right after play and then a few days afterward?

I'm a big advocate of collecting lots of data, then trying to make a first wag guess at what it means, then testing your hypothesis. Rinse repeat as often as warranted. But in the end have real solid verifiable data and facts to back up any findings. Who is doing this with RPG's?

I get the impression that the forge hasn't done much if any of this? Am I wrong?

Does anybody publish their playtesting data and findings? (I mean the research data, not just the end resultant gaming product).

Does this belong in another thread?

Quote from: Dr Rotwang!I'm with Brett.  I got my own theory, and I'll repost it here:

GFS THEORY
      Giant
Fucking
Spiders

The Basic Tenets:

• Holy Shit!
• Giant Fucking Spiders!
• We'd better do something, or we're hosed!
• Oh my god -- they got the professor!

That's an awesome theory.  Can you expand on it beyond the basic tenets?  Perhaps in its own theory thread?

Quote from: darThis thread has helped me alot.

I do, however, wish for a large body of data. The forge stuff just seems like a lot of philosophy. Lots of navel gazing and some neat stuff but a vanishingly small amount of truly usefull stuff.

Is there anybody out there doing stuff like collecting observational data of gamers actually at play? Collecting surveys right after play and then a few days afterward?

I'm a big advocate of collecting lots of data, then trying to make a first wag guess at what it means, then testing your hypothesis. Rinse repeat as often as warranted. But in the end have real solid verifiable data and facts to back up any findings. Who is doing this with RPG's?

I get the impression that the forge hasn't done much if any of this? Am I wrong?

You're kinda wrong. The Forge's Actual Play forum has a lot of data, and either there or elsewhere on the site there's probably stuff on play of games in devlopment.

I can't speak to the overall quality, though. The best stuff I've seen is where people actually present problems in play or concrete examples of stuff that worked. The worst is where people post either "play logs" focusing on the fictional content of play (essentially a resumé of what would be the novelization), or where the post exists primarily to ask the question, "Is this Nar or Sim?" The GNS stuff isn't so bad when Ron uses it to diagnose problems, provided you're reasonably familiar with his definitions, because it's all really just an idiomatic shorthand for the way he thinks. But as soon as it all drifts into questions of "what is Nar?" or validating "theoretical conclusions", it generally breaks down. Similarly when other people try to use the terms, you generally get crap because they're unable to conform precisely to Ron's concepts. The conversation then turns into a series of explanations of how the person is "confused" on some point or other--which never would have been a problem if they hadn't used the vocabulary in the first place.

Hmmm... not really what I mean. The kind of data you describe is very subjective.

I want more objective kinds of data. The first thing I'm interested in is raw behaviorial data. Have you ever seen a biologist observe a creature out in the wild? That kind of meticulous data that then can be meaningfully compared to survey data of the participants in the observed event. The data would necessarily have to be anonymous. And there would have to be lots and lots and lots of it to even out any 'gaming' going on or any inconsistancies.

By your description, the data the forge uses is the kind of field reports that a football coach will get, often subjective and personal. A coach needs to be as much an interpersonal artist as well as a game tachtition in order to deal with it effectively. And then it is largely only as good as the circumstances stand and subjective opinion matches.

Quote from: darI want more objective kinds of data.

Then you're, uh, out of luck.

If you find it, tell us.

Well, there are audio recordings of sessions (some available as podcasts) but only a few, and I think that video recordings would be much more useful.

But lots of data...forget about it.

There are several posted IRC transcripts of play (with dice-rolls and everything). This is pretty much the *full* transcript of the game. Search RPG.net's actual play and look under the poster flyingmice for some of them.

Would that do?

-Marco

That could be huge. I think there is a whole branch of human study that insists on written transcripts. Thanks!

Now I just need that psycology degree I never started...