In this thread, Pemerton is a Forgist and trying to argue that The Forge was a success and a cultural movement and "the preeminent influence on contemporary RPG design."

I didn't want to get into it with him and just disagreed, but he decided to go ahead with it anyway (repeatedly) singing the praises of The Forge.

So, now I want to make a genuine and comprehensive reply to him.  And, I could use some advice.

Any thoughts on how best to approach this topic?

Welp, the Forge didn't impact anyone I know in gaming.  I didn't quit playing AD&D, I didn't lose players to forge games, the AD&D reprints and module re-releases weren't modified to reflect storygame ideals, and ultimately that's all that matters.

If you're worried about what they've done to the hobby, find out if your group(s) of choice have shrunk because your players rather than D&D-whatever or Traveler or Ghostbusters or whatever it is you play would rather play Dogs in the Vineyard or Nicotine Girls or Poison'd etc.  If the answer is no, then, no, they haven't had a significant impact.

And no this isn't "confirmation bias"; this is examining the very real world impact of what they've done.  It's all well and good for them if they say "We now control the tone of the hobby" (they don't), if you look around and don't see that then their words are hollow and meaningless.  "Aha!" so they say, "We've gotten our ideas into mainstream RPGs!  Therefore: victory!"...no, they haven't.  Them writing and publishing stuff doesn't mean their ideas have "gotten" into mainstream RPGs, it means they've written and published stuff and said "We're part of the hobby, too!"

I, as a fan of AD&D would like to believe that the re-releases of the AD&D rulebooks by WotC took the world by storm and now AD&D is the preeminent RPG; likewise the other old-school games.  But I know that's not the case.  People by and large still prefer Pathfinder and 3.5.  And I'm OK with that.  Some OS stuff has gotten traction, the AD&D re-releases were noteworthy, people do buy the module PDFs, the re-releases did sell, and some design aesthetics have gotten into new stuff.  Dungeon Crawl Classics is a shining example of OS production values and design ideas framed with new rules.  WotC keeps (successfully) revisiting the well for module ideas dating back to Gygax's classics.  That is far more significant than someone having a "confrontation" stat in their rules.  Look at 5e.  5e isn't a storygame nor does it have storygame elements.  It's a move away from modern ideas (whether you think that's a good thing or not I leave to your own consideration).  You can argue that Pathfinder is itself a "bigger" RPG than D&D is now but, and remember this, Pathfinder is ultimately still D&D.  Which means that D&D is still the big dog on the yard.  And since the big dog isn't playing with story-game rules, their notions are false.

Just ask them to show you where the market leader uses storygame rules.  In either PF or D&D.  I mean uses them in a big, significant, paradigm-shaping way.  'cause it's not there.

Quote from: Mistwell;721243In this thread, Pemerton is a Forgist and trying to argue that The Forge was a success and a cultural movement and "the preeminent influence on contemporary RPG design."

I didn't want to get into it with him and just disagreed, but he decided to go ahead with it anyway (repeatedly) singing the praises of The Forge.

So, now I want to make a genuine and comprehensive reply to him.  And, I could use some advice.

Any thoughts on how best to approach this topic?

Use lubricant and wash your hands afterward.

Quote from: Mistwell;721243In this thread, Pemerton is a Forgist and trying to argue that The Forge was a success and a cultural movement and "the preeminent influence on contemporary RPG design."

I didn't want to get into it with him and just disagreed, but he decided to go ahead with it anyway (repeatedly) singing the praises of The Forge.

So, now I want to make a genuine and comprehensive reply to him.  And, I could use some advice.

Any thoughts on how best to approach this topic?

I think in a lot of ways the Forge did meet a lot of the goals it set out to do. Don't agree with all of it's goals but I'd still rather have "story" mean "Forge stuff" than "failed novelist GM sets up a railroad."

Just hop over to RPGNow and look at the number of OSR products versus the number of Forge Products. You can't get more opposed than that?

Or look on Hoard and Hordes for products targeting classic editions only up to the mid 2012s.

Quote from: Daztur;721255I think in a lot of ways the Forge did meet a lot of the goals it set out to do. Don't agree with all of it's goals but I'd still rather have "story" mean "Forge stuff" than "failed novelist GM sets up a railroad."

Perhaps Forge stuff are not railroads but they really work at making narrowly focused one-note wonders. Stuff that would be a supplement or adventure for a traditional RPG.

I read some wiki page about them once, that is how I know they even existed.

Quote from: Mistwell;721243. . . Pemerton is a Forgist . . .

Y'know, pemerton is one of the few FoR (Friends of Ron) with whom I actually enjoyed conversing, when I was still active on EN World.

Quote from: Mistwell;721243Any thoughts on how best to approach this topic?

The edition of the hobby's all-time most influential and pervasive roleplaying game which most embodied the principles of the Forge was also it's least successful edition and the most soundly rejected by its own company.

The Forge was very good at producing games written by game designers who write for an audience of other game designers and a small circle of sycophants who salivate at their hairy genitals.  As far as market penetration and changing how people play roleplaying games, it's success is a mixed bag at best.

Quote from: PemertonThe most prominent Forge designer would be Vincent Baker (Dogs in the Vineyard), who appears in the acknowledgements for games ranging from Burning Wheel to Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.

Vincent Baker is acknowledged in a range of games which, in their entire runs, sold less than pretty much any single Paizo adventure path ever.

And by the way, I'm not suggesting that market share determines weather a game is successful and influential - I think RuneQuest was one of the most influential roleplaying games ever written, but it certainly never sold or was played at anything like D&D numbers.

Quote from: J Arcane;721247

J Arcane has given the best answer.

Quote from: Mistwell;721243In this thread, Pemerton is a Forgist and trying to argue that The Forge was a success and a cultural movement and "the preeminent influence on contemporary RPG design."

I didn't want to get into it with him and just disagreed, but he decided to go ahead with it anyway (repeatedly) singing the praises of The Forge.

So, now I want to make a genuine and comprehensive reply to him.  And, I could use some advice.

Any thoughts on how best to approach this topic?

Well....in a lot of ways he is correct. So many newer games ARE full of forgist crap and they are somewhat popular.

What he doesn't seem to get is that there just as many (if not more) active gamers who don't give two fucks about what is hot in "contemporary" game design.

So for a portion of the hipster gaming community he is correct. For gamers as a collective whole, not so much.

Ignore him.

Okay.  BESIDES sheer crabyness (always fun) the reason you need to ignore him is this:

You can't disprove anything.

See, when I read Ron's first three essays, what I mostly got out of them (other than "Crom's hairy nutsack, this syntax is tortured") was "Know what you like, and play that."

Now, that's hardly Earthshattering, but, on the other hand, if a Forger points to ANY game that says "play what you like," and screams "AH HA, PROOF!" there's no way you can convince him/her/it/them/xu/splerg otherwise.

It's a mug's game, so don't even ante up, is what I'm saying.

I've met all kinds of gamers, but I've never met a Forgy in real life. I think they actually live inside the Internet somehow, perhaps something similar to the "Digital Wildlife" of Peter Watt's cyberpunk novels.  

I used to think the same thing about Furries until I actually did meet two of those (Both of whom turned out to be fine people).

The Forge was successful.  There is a thriving indie-rpg scene out there, where people design and release very specifically built RPG games.  In addition, if I were going to self-publish today, the first place I'd stop to find out how to do it is The Forge's archives or a storygames website.  That doesn't matter if I were looking to publish a Dungeon World character pack or a supplement for Pathfinder or the OGL -- there's a lot of support by the creators there for how to get stuff done and release it independently.  Did Forge GNS theory really survive?  I don't think so, but I suspect it's take on indie publishing has had a truly measurable impact on the hobby.

Now, that said, it's not something that every gamer deals with or will have heard of.  But then again, neither is the OSR or any of the other shit that gets talked about online.  The vast majority of gamers play D&D or some offshoot, White Wolf, Star Wars of some stripe or another, or some 40K RPG.  All the stuff that everybody gets up to in this super-sekret clubhouse or another is nonsense to the majority of gamers I talk to.

Quote from: Old Geezer;721314See, when I read Ron's first three essays, what I mostly got out of them (other than "Crom's hairy nutsack, this syntax is tortured") was "Know what you like, and play that."

I think it was Clinton R Nixon who summed up the real lesson of Forge game analysis as, "A game encourages what it rewards."  When people talked about this game being dysfunctional or that game doing something wrong, I was able to understand what they were saying -- a little -- by thinking about it in those terms.  Obviously, I disagree with a lot of where that criticism headed -- I think a good critical theory will tell you why Vampire: The Masquerade worked, and not that it was broken, but I was able to figure out a lot of that latter stuff on my own.