Quote from: soviet;724524It doesn't say that they are mutually exclusive in that you can only have one or the other. It says that good play or design comes from focusing on one or the other. There will always be some element of the other agendas present, for instance in a narrativist game there might still be elements of tactics and competition in a duel with your character's enemy, or in a gamist game there might still be some fun parts where your character makes a stand for what he believes in or the like.
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I think this is where most of the disagreement centers though. If someone says, I like games with focused design, I have no objection. If they say the GNS agenda categories are helpful to my game design or play at the table, again no objection. When they say (often quite insistently) good design is focused on one if these agendas, that is where I disagree because it doesn't seem to be supported by anything other than a subjective preference for playstyles oriented around one of these agendas. I get that it is useful for some people, what i dont get is the idea that that somehow leads to GNS based design being better than others.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;724517I hear what you are saying, seperate the artist from the art. And to an extent i do agree. Like i said before, i have no problem with edwards personally, and i don't want to judge someone for one thing (or a few things) they said on the internet years ago. In the few interactions i had with him, he seemed like a nice guy to me. I also realize it isn't just Ron, that others were involved int he devleopment of the forge and many of them are nice people. My criticiism of this stuff is more about the concepts and how they are presented, rather than the individual personalities.

With the whole brain damage thing, you are talking about a foundational essay here. We are not judging lethal weapon, we are judging passion of the christ. I do think, having read that essay, and seeing how it appears to be pretty important to GNS theory, that it is entirely valid to criticize the brain damage remark (and really the spirit the remark embodied), and to wonder if the tone of that essay contributed to some of the problems down the road. He makes some pretty strong claims in that piece about playing the game a particular way leaving permanent effects on a person's ability to be creative. To me, that just takes playstyle debates too far. And I feel like there are echoes of it in some of the other forge stuff i have read. I do realize there was a whole forum there and it wasn't monolithic. However you have to understand, anyone who encounters the forge for the first time, the first thing they do is read essays like that and read over the GNS glossary. Those are the things you find when you look up GNS and the forge.

All that said, i do not have a problem with people finding GNS helpful. I will admit it annoys me though when folks advocate for its use too aggressively (which i have encountered). When I run into such discussions, i can't help but think about this essay.

Brendan, you are consistently the most thoughtful and reasonable poster on this site, and I mostly agree with you. Where we differ is the foundational quality of the brain damage stuff.

The brain damage stuff was said more than two years after the GNS essays were written. It was said by the writer of the GNS essays, true, albeit on some other site in a response to a blog post (I think?). It may be true that for Ron Edwards those comments are a big part of why he wrote the GNS stuff and it just took a long time to come out, I don't know. Or maybe he thought it up later as an extrapolation of his earlier work.

But when I read the original GNS essays I don't feel like I am reading some terrible diatribe against certain kinds of playstyles or players, and the game I designed with some inspiration from those essays is not a continuation of that war. For me GNS and Ron Edwards' brain damage comments (or indeed Ron Edwards himself) are separate things. Liking one doesn't mean I agree with the other.

Quote from: -E.;724525So, is Brain Damage part of the theory? Well, Ron says it is

So you think that Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, and Bird on a Wire are anti-semitic films?

I don't think it necessarily matters whether Ron Edwards says it is or not. The GNS essays are the essays that were actually written and published at the time. If he wants to publish some new ones that focus around brain damage or something then I will simply ignore them and continue to use the old ones.

I get that looney angry raving people feel the need to write long convoluted essays expressing their issues to the world at large, but what I don't get is why certain parishes constantly take them on board and try to live their lives by them.

Quote from: Benoist;724100That is just not true, as pointed out previously on this thread. As soon as you categorize Creative Agendas, you are categorizing gamers themselves and what they primarily seek in their game sessions, hence, games catering specifically to those needs, since "incoherence" from a Forgist point of view is bad and unacceptable.

Wait wait wait. The Ron Edwards quote that E posted supports what I said and disproves what Pundit said.

Quote from: Originally Posted by Ron Edwards2. I am on record as stating that I use the Creative Agenda terms to classify people. But that is not the same as saying the terms are defined for such a purpose. Nor is it the same as saying that any person can be matched to any one of the CAs.

Bolding mine.

I see it like film genres. Horror films are a thing. Most horror films are going to involve some elements of comedy, romance, political allegory, or whatever as well. But generally the best films pick one primary genre to focus on and use the others as spices. Most people like a variety of film genres as long as they are done well. Sometimes you're in the mood for Dawn of the Dead, sometimes for Punchdrunk Love. If someone primarily likes horror films we might say there were a horror film fan but we wouldn't mean that they couldn't ever watch other kinds of films or that any element of comedy or science fiction in their horror films would be spat on in disgust.

I like different types of films. I like different types of RPGs. I like different types of food. I think most people are the same.  

Quote from: Benoist;724100That's the kind of post of yours that makes me think you either lie, or don't know what the hell you are talking about.

Well, I think that's the lot of anyone who posts here who doesn't automatically take part in the two minute hate. Disagreeing with the common wisdom here doesn't necessarily make me a liar or a fool.

Quote from: soviet;724530So you think that Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, and Bird on a Wire are anti-semitic films?

I don't think it necessarily matters whether Ron Edwards says it is or not. The GNS essays are the essays that were actually written and published at the time. If he wants to publish some new ones that focus around brain damage or something then I will simply ignore them and continue to use the old ones.

I think GNS says that some games (some incredibly successful ones) create on-going power struggle and "something worse" for Narrativists.

That "something worse" is clarified to be brain damage

That's what the theory says and has always said. People who think that it says something else haven't read it or have ignored the actual words used to write it.

Which is common because there's lots of words and they're not all that well put together.

This isn't a case of tarring the theory because the guy who wrote it was bigoted. It's a case of the theory, itself being hilarious and indefensible.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: soviet;724529Brendan, you are consistently the most thoughtful and reasonable poster on this site, and I mostly agree with you. Where we differ is the foundational quality of the brain damage stuff.

The brain damage stuff was said more than two years after the GNS essays were written. It was said by the writer of the GNS essays, true, albeit on some other site in a response to a blog post (I think?). It may be true that for Ron Edwards those comments are a big part of why he wrote the GNS stuff and it just took a long time to come out, I don't know. Or maybe he thought it up later as an extrapolation of his earlier work.

But when I read the original GNS essays I don't feel like I am reading some terrible diatribe against certain kinds of playstyles or players, and the game I designed with some inspiration from those essays is not a continuation of that war. For me GNS and Ron Edwards' brain damage comments (or indeed Ron Edwards himself) are separate things. Liking one doesn't mean I agree with the other.

My unerstanding of the chronology is likely innacurate, since i only became aware of GNS after it had been around for years. If this is all correct, it certainly changes the foundational claim, but i would still make a couple of few observations here.

The brain damage comment is still by the same person who did write many of the foundational essays, so seperating the two is going to be difficult for people. It would be like a director commenting on one of his own movies years later, and revealing it was about something a lot of people find disagreeable. Some people can seperate those things, others can't. And others may not judge the director himself, but judge the work by the new comments.

Another thing to keep in mind, most people who encounter the forge, do so after it gets brought up in debates online. The chronology you point to isn't clear to people coming in after the fact. to me coming in at a later date, the impression I got was this was the genesis (simply because of how online postings and links tend to look).

A lot of us, have encountered enough proponents of GNS who seem to take the brain damage comment to heart, that it colors our understanding of the model itself and the forge. When I have bumped into it online, it is often as part of a forceful argument, declaring this approach the path to good design and others somehow out of date or non-reflective. And the jargon is dizzying and exlusionary if you are not familiar with it, so even just by speaking in forge-speak, it can come off as elitist to those of us who prefer to speak in everyday language.

Again, if people find that stuff useful, i have no objection. It is when I feel like someone is evangalizing to me or deriding design appraoches and playstyles i enjoy that i start to have a problem.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;724526I think this is where most of the disagreement centers though. If someone says, I like games with focused design, I have no objection. If they say the GNS agenda categories are helpful to my game design or play at the table, again no objection. When they say (often quite insistently) good design is focused on one if these agendas, that is where I disagree because it doesn't seem to be supported by anything other than a subjective preference for playstyles oriented around one of these agendas. I get that it is useful for some people, what i dont get is the idea that that somehow leads to GNS based design being better than others.

I'm not sure I have an answer for that really. I think that GNS based design (or at least, playstyle-focused design - I don't think it necessarily has to map to the actual essays) is better than other types of design. But you're right that's subjective, I don't mean to claim that GNS/focused games are scientifically superior in some way. Just that, for what I want out of a set of rules, focused games are more likely to achieve that.

For instance if you asked me to name the best band ever I would say New Order, but what I really mean is that they're my favourite band and that the qualities they exemplify are what i think are the best qualities for a band to have. It's not an objective assessment though.

Quote from: soviet;724530So you think that Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, and Bird on a Wire are anti-semitic films?

 ones.

I don't want to get sidetracked by politics here, but this is a relevant point. I grew up in a very jewish area and consider myself half-Jewish (though I know there are problems with that designation). While i still enjoy Mel Gibson movies like braveheart and lethal weapon, and mad max, i have to admit, I am uneasy about viewing them and feel a bit guilty when i do. i have Jewish friends who simply won't watch his films, regardless of the year they were made. I don't think his later statements make the earlier movies anti-semitic, but i can see how people have trouble seperating him from his work (just like some people have trouble seperating woody allen and his work). I think it kind of applies here, especially since ron was commenting on his earlier statements on the subject.

Quote from: -E.;724533I think GNS says that some games (some incredibly successful ones) create on-going power struggle and "something worse" for Narrativists.

That "something worse" is clarified to be brain damage

That's what the theory says and has always said. People who think that it says something else haven't read it or have ignored the actual words used to write it..

No that's wrong, you're adding later context to try to change the original work.

If Mel Gibson turned up and said 'hey remember that bit where I shot that guy in Mad Max? He represented all jews and I hate jews', would that magically mean that Mad Max has all this time been an anti-semitic film and that anyone who likes it is an anti-semite?

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;724536I don't want to get sidetracked by politics here, but this is a relevant point. I grew up in a very jewish area and consider myself half-Jewish (though I know there are problems with that designation). While i still enjoy Mel Gibson movies like braveheart and lethal weapon, and mad max, i have to admit, I am uneasy about viewing them and feel a bit guilty when i do. i have Jewish friends who simply won't watch his films, regardless of the year they were made. I don't think his later statements make the earlier movies anti-semitic, but i can see how people have trouble seperating him from his work (just like some people have trouble seperating woody allen and his work).

I think that's fair, and if people want to dismiss GNS because of Ron Edwards' later comments, then I respect that, and the same with dismissing Mel Gibson films because of his later comments. I'm just saying that it's possible to still enjoy those earlier works without buying into other agendas later expressed by their creators.

Quote from: soviet;724535I'm not sure I have an answer for that really. I think that GNS based design (or at least, playstyle-focused design - I don't think it necessarily has to map to the actual essays) is better than other types of design. But you're right that's subjective, I don't mean to claim that GNS/focused games are scientifically superior in some way. Just that, for what I want out of a set of rules, focused games are more likely to achieve that.

And this is an attitude i have zero objection to (i also understand that when people say something is good design, they often just mean "it is the kind of design i like"). In the past few years though, i have encountered so many people online pushing for specific metrics or models as good design that i get frustrated with it and one of those metrics i see held up is GNS. And in these instances, it is people saying not what you say here, but that their prefered approach is superior and mine is broken somehow. That can't lead anywhere but to hostility. So that is where the criticism comes in from me.

Quote from: soviet;724537No that's wrong, you're adding later context to try to change the original work.

If Mel Gibson turned up and said 'hey remember that bit where I shot that guy in Mad Max? He represented all jews and I hate jews', would that magically mean that Mad Max has all this time been an anti-semitic film and that anyone who likes it is an anti-semite?

It would certainly mean that Mel Gibson has always been a cunt.

Quote from: soviet;724537If Mel Gibson turned up and said 'hey remember that bit where I shot that guy in Mad Max? He represented all jews and I hate jews', would that magically mean that Mad Max has all this time been an anti-semitic film and that anyone who likes it is an anti-semite?

He didn't direct or write mad max, so as an actor his control of the subtext would be limited. So in that example you give, it would be him really just saying what he was thinking as an actor during the scene. But we are talking about an essay someone wrote and later commentary by the writer. So if mel Gibson came out and said, "Remember when I made braveheart? That was all about my hatred of Jews". You kind of have to factor it in, if the guy who made it, says that's what the film was supposed to be about.

This Mel Gibson line of argument is completely ridiculous.