I'm not pro or con on any theory of gaming, but I am interested in understanding where people are coming from. Having said that, I'm confused on Forge Theory and OGL. Can somebody point me to a site, post or even give me a breakdown so that I have a basic understanding?
I will say it all seems like crap. If you like it, that is great and that is all that should matter. But, in I want to put in the effort because you never know everything. Thanks.
If I'm being stupid, just don't answer the post. Nothing I hate more than people who are not only unhelpful, but assholes about it. And dog will fight, but would much rather game.
BobManGM
Here's a very quick breakdown:
1) Back before there was a Forge, there was Usenet. It was a wild place. Many of the folks here, at RPG.net, and at The Forge participated in a news group calle rec.games.fantasy.advocacy (or something) -- r.g.f.a., for short.
2) R.g.f.a came up with some basic concepts that underpin a lot of RPG theory including "forge theory"
A sample would be the concept of "stances" and the idea of a "social contract" defining what's acceptabled / expected in a game, and so-on.
r.g.f.a also came up with the idea that "different people like different things" in gaming and even defined a taxonomy of how different GM's might make decisions based on their priorities.
Ultimately, as the web evolved, discussion moved from Usenet to forums like this one and The Forge.
NOTE: Almost *all* the good ideas in RPG Theory came from r.g.f.a. If you're talking to a theorist and he's making sense, it's a good bet he's leveraging r.g.f.a. ideas.
I didn't realize this when I started getting familiar with the theory. It was an eye-opener.
3) Ron Edwards created The Forge to develop & advance his own ideas -- he was one of several voices in r.g.f.a -- at The Forge, thanks to his moderation style, he was / is the only one that matters.
He created GNS, now called The Big Model, to explain what people like about gaming and how game systems deliver "fun."
Very simply, GNS/TBM posits that there are 3 agendas that a person might have in a game:
1) Gamist -- the person wants to impress his friends with his skill at the game. Usually Gamists, "play to win"
2) Narrativist -- the person wants to address some human-interest issue in the game and dislikes being railroaded
3) Simulationist -- used to mean the person was into exploring the world. Now, Forge Theory is kinda broken, and Simulationism is NOT DEFINED... which is a pretty big problem for the theory since the other agendas are often defined in terms of Simulationism.
According to GNS, everyone prioritizes one of these. Game systems (meaning the mechanics, the non-mechanical rules, the flavor text in the book, the setting, etc.) can facilitate these agendas in a way that is not and has never been well defined...
This leaves theorists with a bit of a ... hole in the theory: according to TBM, a game could be designed to facilitate, say, Gamist play... which seems to make sense at a high level (it would be more like a tactical war game, maybe, than like a story-telling game).
Thing is, the theory doesn't give any guidance or framework to help a gamer (or a designer, or anyone trying to actually use the theory) figure out exactly what, about a game, might make it gamist-facilitating.
Same absence of framework exists for the other agendas.
In practice, theorists who like a game and think it's "deep" call it Narrativist. Some of them will even make idiosyncratic arguments to explain why they believe that...
GNS/TBM has some other key and amusing bits:
1) Games that don't facilitate a single agenda are "incoherent" -- incoherent games will, most-likely end in on-going power struggle between the players and the GM
2) Narrativist players who play incoherent games will get BRAIN DAMAGE!!! That's right! Brain Damage! It's not a "metaphor" it's not a "figure of speech" -- the theory posits real, identifyable BRAIN DAMAGE!
Some people find the theory insulting because of this -- if you say BRAIN DAMAGE in ALL CAPS, though, it can actually be more amusing than insulting. I recommend you read the posts on The Forge describing the Brain Damage...
They're... a hoot
Anyway...
4) Even before the BRAIN DAMAGE things were falling apart. The theory never made a lot of sense, and The Forge shut down the forums for discussing them.
After the whole damage thing a lot of people who used to follow the theory moved even further away.
Now you get a lot of blogs and far less... ahem... coherent discourse.
There are, periodically, good ideas out there -- but fundamentally the theory (and the spin-off theories) are pretty flawed.
Forge Theory works well as *advocacy* -- if you want to call your game cool, you can say it's "Narrativist." If you're part of the community, you can be part of the "Indie Revolution" (this is like being an indie film maker or musician! Pretty cool, huh? The big-boys have sold out to their corporate overlords!)
Cheers,
-E.