Again, I'm not talking mainstream. I'm talking RPG.
So am I. When I say "mainstream RPG"; what I really mean is "that which I would define as an actual RPG, with everything ranging from GURPS and Shadowrun to Everway and Over The Edge"; as opposed to "unorthodox RPGs" which are games that claim the title of "RPG" even though they clearly are for playing a game that does not follow the same parameters of those others I've named.
Depends. If what I add is a taste that already exists to a degree in a martini, then we're talking differently. And "story" is a taste that already exists in RPGs.
Well, what you're talking about is sort of like a Vermouth fan saying he wants to "create Vermouth" from his Martini, and restricting the olive and the gin to try to get a more "vermouthlike quality". I'm saying that dude would be far better off just drinking Vermouth. A martini doesn't taste like Vermouth, and isn't meant to taste like Vermouth.
You seem to be trying to defend the core of the hobby - and I don't give a rat's ass about affecting the core of the hobby. I live on the fringes of it, I'm happy to do so, and what I do out here is stuff that people, in significant enough numbers to satisfy me, enjoy reading, talking about, and playing.
Bully for you. Now if the other 99.9% of the Game Theorists would pay more than lip service to the notion that they are the fringe, and would acknowledge and respect those of us in the core, rather than condemn us as ignorants and brain damaged abuse victims or unwashed masses, and stop trying to subvert the core by suggesting that we have to be re-educated to play like they do, we'd be getting somewhere.
"Forcing" assumes that the GM doesn't want them to do it, which is patently not what I'm saying.
Let me put it this way: if you're running an actual game, and three of your players decide that they want to find the RuneSwords of The High Dwarven kings and use them to conquer the Orclands; or want your NPC to decide that they're so cool that he'll have to build them their own superfortress, and you don't want to do this, would you say that you have to negotiate this with them? If so, you're in favour of the GM being forced.
Really? Theory says that, does it? Where?
Every time Theory suggests that D&D has "confused models" or is "simulationism at its worst" or that it doesn't allow for "Story now" or any of that crap. When your central, most famous model upon which the vast majority of Theory is based, derived from, or inspired by suggests that D&D is a fundamentally broken style of gaming, or whenever other theories pretend that D&D doesn't exist altogether.
In fact, with apologies to Clinton (sorry, man), I'll snag a comment he made about this thread from elsewhere:
First of all, i'd like to know where you got that quote from? I'd like to see the thread, if its a thread.
Second, bully for Clinton, but at this point talking about how Game Theory has really been about loving D&D and mainstream RPGs all along and the constant superiority-complex bashing of orthodox gaming was all... what -- meant to educate us about how to play D&D right? in good fun?-- is a bit like a baptist saying he "loves the sinner and only hates the sin".
So, uh, what the fuck are you on about? By your own claim, those people are Big Theory. And they aren't saying what you seem to believe they do.
I'm looking at their record, not their lip service. Since you quoted out of other threads, I'll quote out of a thread in this very message board:
(RPGPundit's) criticising an attitude which people don't tend to publically articulate. No one goes around saying "my hobbies make me smarter/more sophisticated than you", not least because it would be hard to pronounce that "/". In trying to prove that kind of attitude exists all you can really do is point to patterns of behaviour that reveal an underlying attitude, and that's always going to be vulnerable to a nitpicking "where did he actually say he felt that way" defence.
I think that problem is compounded if the best public example of patterns of conduct, rpg.net is ruled to be off-topic. I think that makes it impossible to nail-down attitudes among the "swine" without them actually publically declaring that they're better than everyone else.
(The other reason pundit's struggling to make the "people who like wanky rpgs are, themselves, wankers" argument stick is that Levi is obviously a very nice, balanced guy who clearly doesn't hold those views himself. In an important sense, Levi's is cheating by being so reasonable and pleasant)
I agree with all this, but note that despite this, I've already given a few very concrete examples of where the Swine let their hate-ons show.
And yes, part of the handicap against me is that you're a very nice guy, you're the token that Gaming Theory apologists always use; on RPG.net and elsewhere: "Not ALL Gaming Theory guys are stuck-up jerks.. look at Levi!"
But I'm not looking for you to say that you're a jerk, and I don't have to prove that all Gaming Theorists are jerks. I just have to get you to admit certain things, in order:
1. That the public at large views Gaming Theorists as a bunch of jerks.
2. That this view is not borne out of ignorance or "unwashed nature of our masses", but is based on truly bad behaviour on the part of some of your people.
3. That these people are not ostracized members of the Fringe of gaming Theory, but in fact they are some of the most influencial theorists around; including THE best known most influential theorist around.
4. That these people and their elitist pretentious attitudes and pseudo-intellectualism have, by virtue of these individual's influence, affected the fundamentals of gaming theory as a whole.
So, lets get to the brass balls here: do you deny that mainstream gamers view the Forge crowd as a bunch of elitist pseudo-intellectuals? Do you deny that this view is based on the actions of some of your own people, first and foremost of which is Ron Edwards and the crowd he rallied around him?
The problem is only compounded in the public eye when we see the vast majority of gaming theorists continue to treat the guy as a respectable figure in their movement.
I am willing to recognize that you and some others are trying to reform theory into something practical and useful rather than pseudo-intellectual jargon, but that means YOU have to admit that Theory has been based on pseudo-intellectual Jargon up till now. When you guys go onto fora and try to "educate" us about the Jargon, putting it in "laymans" terms, it strikes as nothing but patronizing, especially since most of us reject the soundness of the jargon and the theory in the first place.
Its NOT that we just "don't get it". We get what its about; and we think its about BULLSHIT. The point is not now to educate us, its about recognizing that and going back to the fucking drawing board. Or retreating back to your little world of theoretical claptrap and stop trying to spread your unwanted "wisdom".
Oh, so "My actual play" isn't a landmark. Again, what?
The term "Landmarks" refers to boundary points, definitions or standards that are unchangeable that serve as the fundamental structure by which the rest of a system is based.
So you have to start by agreeing on some landmarks.
Saying "All Theory should be based on actual play, rather than speculation" IS a landmark.
If you are now arguing that, you are in fact no longer arguing that we shouldn't "direct" Theory.
*Goes back and rereads*
Ah. Right. Got it now.
Cool.
By your method of defining things here, then, I've *already* given up on story in RPGs, and must consider it no more than a side effect.
Except, of course, I haven't, and don't.
If you are running a game where you've tried to make a story by front-loading, and it doesn't turn out to be a story (ie. the players pre-empt the story in some form or another), and you accept that ("Oh well, that's fine"), then you have in fact given up on story in RPGs.
If you do not accept that ("shit, there goes the story") but don't do anything about it, then you're still suffering.
If you do not accept that and try to change it ("well, I'll introduce GM-Fiat Character here, and Railroad over there, so that we can still make a story out of it") then you have effectively given up on the concept of the RPG, and have moved to some other kind of story-creation exercise, quite possibly killing the fun for those who want RPGs in the process.
If your whole party would care more about you making a story out of the game than about letting the game function organically, then your entire party has given up on RPGs, and you'd all be better off dumping the concept of RPGs altogether and starting a shared-world storytelling group.
Given that definition of "adventure", that's all good and well, then.
What exactly did you think I was saying before? That if it isn't a combat-laden hack n'slash D&D module then its not an RPG? Do you know me that poorly?
You've now successfully defined what I do as perfectly normal roleplaying, and a great many Forge games as perfectly normal games, except that they have this bizarre tendeency to talk about stories that they only "produce as side effects".
With the tiny difference being that the Forge crowd doesn't just talk about stories, they try to use RPGs to "Make" stories.
Let's say that a character has an "reputation" trait of some kind that they can use to get the effects of fame on a large scale. Let's say, further, that there are rules for things like attacking the reputations of others with indirect slander, whispering campaigns, and the like. Would you object to that?
It would depend a lot on the application. I use the True20 Reputation attribute, for example. I use a variation, in fact, in my Immortal Rome campaign, where each character has his "immortal reputation" (how well known he is among other immortals) and his "mortal reputation" (how well he is known by the world at large in this present incarnation). The two aren't necessarily connected in any way. Jong at one point was as well known as the Emperor Claudius among mortals, but wasn't very well known among immortals (enough that most immortals who didn't know him personally would have been suprised to learn that as well as everything else Quintus was one of them!).
But I digress; the mortal reputation in the game is indeed subject to a great deal of fluctuation, usually due to the character's own actions, though in theory another character could manipulate events to force the character to gain reputation or infamy (which was also reputation, but in a negative form that meant you were known in a scandalous context).
Now, if by a "mechanic" you mean creating some kind of guidelines to how this process is done, well, I don't have a big problem with that in general. However, there are two ways I can see this being done:
1. Making a bunch of mechanics and difficulty checks or spending points from some kind of attribute, or what have you, so that the whole thing is resolved on the mechanical level.
2. Making a list of things appropriate to the setting that would cause someone to gain fame or infamy, and then letting roleplay take care of the rest.
Obviously, I would think number 2 to be a vastly superior solution than number 1. Are you saying number 1 would be preferrable or necessary?
Nobody in my extended gaming group (as in, the people I could call up for a pickup game) is a teenager. More than half of them are female. Most of them are white, as it happens, but most isn't all. We have heterosexuals and homosexuals, office professionals and labourers. These people game.
If they do, great. I want everyone to game who wants to. My side is the one that anti-elitist and anti-exclusive. Whoever wants to play Call of Cthulhu, D&D, Shadowrun, Star Wars or any other RPG, be they male or female, gay or straight, young or old, be they a student or a doctor or a priest, I would say more power to them (as long as they are socially acceptable human beings, but we've covered that one to death already).
What I don't buy for a second is the idea that to intentionally try to bring more "diversity" we have to fundamentally change RPGs.
I don't buy it first and foremost because I don't think it'll work. Sure a lot of Goths who'd never played RPGs got into playing Vampire. Most of them left shortly afterwards when they grew up a bit and stopped being goths, and the vast majority of those who got into Vampire because they were goths never went on to play other RPGs. And when every RPG in the market tried to be more "like" Vampire in order to appeal to this crowd, it didn't work, and all that happened is that a huge percentage of the customers that these games already had felt alienated, frustrated and unwanted, and stopped roleplaying forever.
If you have to "Change" RPGs to be "more inclusive" you're not going to gain very many of that new target demographic, and you're going to lose a lot of the old target demographic.
And no, I'm not accusing you of a damn thing, because I don't think you are those things.
On this point, I simply think you're wrong. The market lacks diversity, and the core game that powers the industry doesn't address that lack.
Ok, to begin with, which of the two do you honestly think will have more success:
1. A new basic D&D game along with a massive ad campaign, with style and price range aimed at the teenage market, and the ad campaign targeted at teenage males?
2. Putting out a new edition of D&D with its themes changed from Tolkien-esque fantasy to New-age pagan thematics along the lines of Carlos Castaneda and Starhawk with strong elements of wiccan myth, and marketed with strong ad campaigns meant to target 20-30something middle class women?
In terms of sheer numbers, which will be more likely to revitalize gaming? Which would be less likely to lose more current gamers than it gains in new gamers?
As pretty and politically correct as the sentiment sounds, NO, we don't need to "address the lack of diversity" in the hobby.
First, when companies try to do that, they usually have to do it by redesigning the product, and they usually have no idea of how to do this right in the first place.
In the pipe hobby, for example, the Butz-Choquin pipe company in the mid-90s tried desperately to attract a new younger market by creating a line of "cool" pipes with bizzare shapes and multicolour glazes. This naturally alienated their old client base, since this approach violated a lot of the standards by which pipes are judged (primarily that a "good" pipe is judged by the quality of its grain, a lot of the beaty of a pipe's crafting is by how the pipe is carved to highlite patterns in the grain of the briar, and these painted pipes obscured the grain totally). It did virtually nothing to bring in a younger clientele, since most younger pipe smokers felt unbelievably patronized by B-C's actions. It did unbelievable harm to B-C's reputation as a quality pipe company, and they have only emerged out of that in these last few years by abandoning these boneheaded efforts and instead turning around 180ยบ to an emphasis on high-quality grains and traditional designs
at affordable prices, which have of course been a big hit among younger pipe smokers (older ones too).
Second, what we need to do in this time, when gaming is NOT doing enough to appeal to the traditional demographic that has been shown time and time again to be interested in RPGs as they are, is to focus on recovering that youth demographic, not engaging in ridiculous speculative marketing, especially when that requires changing the nature of the games we're playing. I mean fuck, you'd probably get more Frenchmen drinking british beers if the beer was made from high quality grapes from southern france, but then it wouldn't be beer anymore, would it?
Finally, the best thing to do in order to get new people of ALL stripes into the hobby is to emphasize what's good about the game as it is, to show what it does well and what can be done with it as it is, and let the chips fall where they may.
One thing living in south america has shown me is that latinamericans do not need "special RPGs made to their culture", they don't need RPGs to change their basic structure. What appeals to a 17 year old white middle-class kid in Hoboken will also appeal to a 17 year old hispanic kid in the slums of El Cerro in Montevideo. Exactly the same things. You just need to do things to make sure that RPGs can reach them in a way that they can play it and afford to play it, same as you have to with the white kid in hoboken.
How is that abuse? When I write a game, it's my perogative to write it the way I like. I'm not required to write it any way other than the way I like. Period.
Oh, it may not sell. And people may talk nine yards of shit about it, insult it, me, my mother, and a goat somewhere. But it's mine to write any way I like.
The only calling to account White Wolf will get from me on those loathsome little snippets of theirs that you've pointed out is very simple - no money. A whole lot of 'no money at all'.
Ok, that's fine then, we'll not call it abuse and we'll instead call it "asshattery which should not be encouraged". The problem is that far too many game designers seem to want to do this sort of shit these days.
My game isn't about showing of the gloriousness and brilliance of R. Bumquist Gamedesigner. I have no interest in playing a game to be some other shithead's cheerleader, and neither do my players.
All right, then. You believe that what theorists want is the destruction of the hobby, and want to include me in that number. I believe that they/we want, if they/we want any one thing as a group, is diversity, and not in the terms of "dismemberment and destruction".
Show me I'm wrong. Don't tell me. Show me.
If you are willing to admit those points I established above, then no proof is necessary.
If you aren't willing to admit that this bad behaviour is going on in Gaming Theory, then nothing I argue will convince you.
RPGPundit