Quote from: Brad J. Murray;721882I don't know how original this is since it reeks of heavy revision but it certainly explicitly disavows using it to label people: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/1/

Edit: sort of; and it's clearly commenting on some prior work that I can't find.

Yeah it's the prior work I'm thinking of, from some time in the late 90s. I read it here too.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=24.0

QuoteSomewhere, some place along the way, someone got the idea to defend G/N/S against the trolls by saying, "We don't use it to classify actual gamers."

Bullshit. *I* use it to classify gamers. G/N/S is about role-playing DECISIONS and PRIORITIES, and it is expressed in many ways. One of those ways is game design. Another of those ways is via a person's actual role-playing behavior.

This is not to say a person cannot demonstrate more than one of the priorities. However, in my experience, a person WILL tend to emphasize one of them, or have a favorite among the three. At that point, I say, "You are [fill in]."

(Credit to Gleichman for making this easy to find, via http://whitehall-paraindustries.com/Theory/Threefold/GNS.htm )

RE developed the theory and wrote the articles, but people around him including Vincent Baker and Paul Czege were in the core group who contributed to the theory's development.

Quote from: Haffrung;721877That analysis is more useful than the sum of everything put forward on the Forge, because it speaks in plain English about things that people see in real play.

Thank you!

Quote from: Arminius;721891http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=24.0

Still not the original piece which was hijacked by ronnie. If I cared I'd hunt it down but I've better things to do with my evening. It wasn't on indie-rpgs though.

Again, if you're confused about the roots of GNS, the place to start is John Kim's site. As a minor participant in the discussions that led to GDS, I can say his account basically matches my memory. The bridge from GDS discussion to GNS is some talk at The Gaming Outpost that's no longer available afaict and which I only stumbled across a few years after The Forge was in full swing.

Gleichman's site is also good although it mixes analysis and opinion with neutral factual accounting.

Quote from: Arminius;721894Again, if you're confused about the roots of GNS, the place to start is John Kim's site. As a minor participant in the discussions that led to GDS, I can say his account basically matches my memory. The bridge from GDS discussion to GNS is some talk at The Gaming Outpost that's no longer available afaict and which I only stumbled across a few years after The Forge was in full swing.

Gleichman's site is also good although it mixes analysis and opinion with neutral factual accounting.

Without getting into my opinions of either kim or gleichman, their grasp on history or lack thereof doesn't really bother me. At this point shared narrative gamers have their own seperate hobby and everyone else has roleplaying games, and that's fine by me.

Got no idea what you're implying now. Gleichman is a traditional gamer. Kim has more eclectic tastes. Both were involved in the discussions that led to GDS, and GDS is the main inspiration for GNS. Well, that and a play-writing book by Egri that Edwards read one time. You keep alluding to Ron Edwards cribbing his ideas from somewhere, and I'm giving you the answer so you can stop guessing and speculating and half-remembering.

Quote from: Arminius;721906You keep alluding to Ron Edwards cribbing his ideas from somewhere, and I'm giving you the answer so you can stop guessing and speculating and half-remembering.

Your ignorance is likewise not my problem.

Oy, going back I can see the likely point of confusion. Blacow's Aspects of Adventure Gaming: http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/models/blacow.html

At most a minor influence. The n-fold nature of RPGing keeps being discovered, but the GDS afaict was spontaneous and largely independent of other theories, while GNS had an acknowledged debt to GDS.

Right, classic case of leading an ass to water.

Quote from: Arminius;721910Oy, going back I can see the likely point of confusion. Blacow's Aspects of Adventure Gaming: http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/models/blacow.html

At most a minor influence. The n-fold nature of RPGing keeps being discovered, but the GDS afaict was spontaneous and largely independent of other theories, while GNS had an acknowledged debt to GDS.

Nope, there were three distinct classifications of gamers. It ended up with something like "yes I know this isn't perfect but come up with your own better model", which The Ent has kindly provided, and didn't require dozens of pages of essays to do so either.

Quote from: Arminius;721911Right, classic case of leading an ass to water.

At least I know not to drink from a urinal.

Quote from: Haffrung;721875But the problem is that most indie games aren't supported with setting and adventure material. They're great if you're committed to creating all the content besides the system and maybe the outline of a setting. But if you're trying to manage a D&D game once or twice a month between taking your kids to soccer and building a back deck, or if you simply don't have the inclination to make your own material, then indie games are little more than thought-inspiring curiosities.

I think at one point that was true, but for a lot of them, the whole notion is that setting arises through play as a joint creation of players and GM.  The *World games basically are about leaping into play right away.  Blood & Honor has you build your key conflicts as you go.  Other games are specifically designed to tell /a/ story, but you define a lot of the variables out of the box.  

QuoteMy impression is that most indie games are owned by hardcore RPG enthusiasts who have 10-50 different game systems sitting on a shelf. Some people love that variety. But a lot of people just want to play the same system for years, and have it supported by all of the adventure, setting, monster, treasure, map, and sourcebook material that they need to run the game with as little work on their part as possible.

Sure, that's definitely the case.  I think that a lot of indie designs are trying to bridge the gap between party game and standard RPG campaign.  I think that's why Laws' Hillfolk is trying to bridge that new gap, between indie-style length and story focus and conventional RPG time-scheme.

QuoteThere are only a handful of companies in the RPG industry with the heft to provide a steady flow of professionally-produced support material. If those companies fail, the hobby will shrivel to the hardcore forum crowd. It's not just that FATE only sold 10,000 copies. It's that most of those went onto the shelves of collectors, and most of the rest were played once or twice by a group of existing, long-time RPG players. I doubt the game has brought in more than 100 new players to the hobby. A new edition of D&D brings in tens of thousands. Not as many as the 70s and 80s, but still enough to keep the hobby commercially viable.

I don't know that a new edition of D&D brings in new players, though.  I think one of the problems -- and since I don't have access to Wizards' numbers, I don't know what the reality is -- is that D&D is cannibalizing an ever-smaller fanbase.  And I don't know how important regular support is -- I mean, back in the day I played Star Frontiers and support dribbled out, and its sales were probably very impressive by today's standards.  Same with MSH, or Traveler, or CoC, or heck, various stripes of D&D.  

Now, that dribble of support won't support game stores when combined with low sales -- I mean, you can have a dribble when 10 times as many people buy the games, you can support a store that way -- but I know precious few game stores supported by RPGs anymore.  I'd guess boardgames and CCGs and TMGs do the bulk of the heavy lifting.

Quote from: Benoist;721857I reject Forge terminology and theory as qualifying both of gamers AND games. The real problem to me is that these terms and the concepts behind them have become popular enough in some quarters of the industry and community that people refer to them as ubiquitous - they are not. The concepts they are trying to pin down are artificial and grossly stereotyped, in the absolute best case scenario.

As it stands, I reject it as well. Perhaps I should rephrase myself entirely:

While we discuss games, same arguments and judgement scenarios often raise, when we often judge our preferences of games based on complexity of rules, simulation of game world, simulation of genre, ease of play/GMing etc etc. And for me, this is what GDS/GNS could have been about - extrapolate from gaming discussion, to suggest a frame of classification that'd be according to how most people classify and understand certain mechanics in games. A gaming theory that'd not be a gaming ideology.

Quote from: Ravenswing;721560Seriously, the market share element is a huge, huge deal.  D&D has been the overwhelming market leader for the entire history of the hobby, and the posters who've pointed out the painfully obvious fact that it's the only RPG with any name recognition outside the hobby have been dead on.  WoD's been a distant second place over the last couple decades.  A couple other games have had 5%, at best.

As far as the Mouse Guards and Dogs In The Vineyards of the hobby go?  I doubt more than one gamer in ten has ever heard of them, let alone played them.

D&D, WOD and Rifts.

Interestingly Board Gamers mention Mouse Guard ever so often. Not sure why. Ive bumped into several board gamers who quip Forgesque lines about storygaming with board games.

So there is some drift. But no clue how extensive.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;721596QFT.

This reminds me of boardgamers who absolutely adore Reiner Knizia's designs.  Reiner designs these games with a pasted on theme that remind me of doing math problems for fun; I really don't like them very much.  

But the fans...  They are very much evangelical about Reiner's boardgames, but I've found that if you mention them to non-boardgamers they'll respond with "so it's like Settlers of Catan" or "Is it like Apples to Apples?" or "you play something like Monopoly..."  You can almost hear the grating of teeth when that pops out.

ooooh Kinza... The hands down master of pasting themes onto the damndest of games. Really. Im surprised there isnt a "REINER KINZA'S MOBY DICK" which is tic-tac-toe.

I occasionally wonder if he is the reason for the little anti-theme faction amongst board gamers.