Swine is just a shortcut word for "pretentious motherfucker", really, borrowed from Hunter Thompson.  No real mystery there.

For the Forge, I'll just repost the most recent summary I've posted from the last thread the question came up with:

QuoteThe Forge is a website whose core theory basically states that everything about every game made in the last 30 years is wrong, and bad, and that people who play them are brain damaged, and that those who run them are basically child molestors. Ironically these same people then make games about Mormon's lynching adulterers, pirates neckraping cabin boys, and I'm seriously not making this up, an actual game about killing puppies for Satan.

Despite the utterly abominable core belief and message, and the laughably poor construction of the theories surrounding it (all of which, predictably, boil down to "Our games are good, everyone else is badwrongfun"), the appeal of a pseudointellectual take on the RPG has nevertheless persisted with people who want to hear big important words like "art" and "theory" and "transgressive" in relation to things they like, because they think talking about them like that will make them grown up and other people think they are grown up.

Said people usually find the site by accident or, I'm ashamed to admit, through discussions like this, skim the surface of the discussion without really bothering to analyze it or read deeper into the body of work, and so assume it to be some grand intellectual pursuit, and eager to be associated with such a thing, leap in with both feet without stopping to look what muck they're diving into.

Next thing you know, they're marching from site to site spouting party line, and defending from all comers that which cannot be defended, and doing their best to ingratiate themselves to moderators and positions of authority, in order to ensure that any criticism of their badly conceived and deeply offensive theory is generally silenced. For example, on RPGnet, at one point, Ron Edwards' own words about the "brain damage" were banned from discussion under the argument that bringing them up made him look bad and thus constituted an attack on his person. Again, seriously not making any of this up.

It's a laughable, disgusting, and deeply offensive cult, but one with a remarkable amount of dedication and political cunning, which has thereby gained a level of influence in some spheres of this hobby that is absolutely staggering given how few actual faithful exist and how few of their games actually sell in any remotely appreciable amount.

Long story short is, though, that you'd probably be better off having never known about them. As would the rest of the RPG hobby.

Short version:  They're the Scientology of RPGs.

Quote from: Joethelawyer;322914Only one person I have heard of, Nicole Lindros, seems to make the list.  

When did Nicole Lindros do work for The Forge? I thought she worked at Atlas Games, and then got out of the gaming business.

For years she worked on Feng Shui, Ars Magica... uhh... Penumbra?

I thought she was with Green Ronin, and had something to do with Blue Roses and Magic Deer.

(Incidentally, I love venison.)

Quote from: GameDaddy;322963When did Nicole Lindros do work for The Forge? I thought she worked at Atlas Games, and then got out of the gaming business.

For years she worked on Feng Shui, Ars Magica... uhh... Penumbra?

Swine =/= Forge.

Or, put another way, almost all Forge are Swine, but not all Swine are Forge.  They are seperate classes, that overlap.  Like a Venn diagram.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;322964I thought she was with Green Ronin, and had something to do with Blue Roses and Magic Deer.

(Incidentally, I love venison.)

Ahh... OK. So she didn't leave gaming. Blue Rose had magic deer in it? That was the game everyones in a fit over? I thought that was written specifically for girl gamers?

Quote from: GameDaddy;322963When did Nicole Lindros do work for The Forge? I thought she worked at Atlas Games, and then got out of the gaming business.

For years she worked on Feng Shui, Ars Magica... uhh... Penumbra?

Her name was mentioned by someone in another thread in a less than positive light, i think in relation to swine, and i thought swine = forge, so its just me trying to figure it out.

For the record, I don't know her,  but she was very helpful to me in handling a customer service thing for Green Ronin.  S I have nothing to say bad about her.  I was just trying to figure out why she was mentioned in the other thread tonight.

Hey J. Arcane when you said this:

"It's a laughable, disgusting, and deeply offensive cult, but one with a remarkable amount of dedication and political cunning, which has thereby gained a level of influence in some spheres of this hobby that is absolutely staggering given how few actual faithful exist and how few of their games actually sell in any remotely appreciable amount."

What did you mean specifically?  What's their influence?

Quote from: Joethelawyer;322970Her name was mentioned by someone in another thread in a less than positive light, i think in relation to swine, and i thought swine = forge, so its just me trying to figure it out.

For the record, I don't know her,  but she was very helpful to me in handling a customer service thing for Green Ronin.  S I have nothing to say bad about her.  I was just trying to figure out why she was mentioned in the other thread tonight.

I knew her when she worked over at Atlas. She put in lots of extra hours helping run conventions and stuff, and was released from Atlas when they switched their focus from d20 into other gaming lines, after the fallout from the first d20 glut. She was always really good at marketing even before she left Atlas, and my take on her departure from there was that she got an unplayable hand dealt to her by some of the folks she was working with.

WOTC isn't the only company that throws out the baby with the bath water, and it certainly won't be the last to do so.

In any event, GR puts out quite a few really good games and supplements. I'm glad she found a home there.

Quote from: ggroy;322946Maybe their days jobs involve writing boring papers on postmodernism.

In one of the linked threads, Edwards disses postmodernism.

One bit of pseudointellectualism cannot coexist with another.

More seriously, their thoughts are actually opposites: postmodernism removes meaning where it exists, and Edwads finds meaning where there is none. Postmodernism takes a profound experience, and as John Morrow once put it, dismisses all details until nothing is left and then proclaims it all meant nothing all along; Edwards takes a trivial experience, fabricates details until he has constructed a rhetorical house of cards, and then proclaims it was profound all along.

Quote from: Joethelawyer;322970Her name was mentioned by someone in another thread in a less than positive light, i think in relation to swine, and i thought swine = forge, so its just me trying to figure it out.

For the record, I don't know her,  but she was very helpful to me in handling a customer service thing for Green Ronin.  S I have nothing to say bad about her.  I was just trying to figure out why she was mentioned in the other thread tonight.

Actually, my bad. The person mentioned was Nicole Landroos, who I assume is a different person.

From here:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=322396&postcount=29

and here:

http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=322487&postcount=48

Sorry about that bit of confusion.

Quote from: GameDaddy;322969Ahh... OK. So she didn't leave gaming. Blue Rose had magic deer in it? That was the game everyones in a fit over? I thought that was written specifically for girl gamers?

The accusation levelled by some at Blue Rose was that the setting details essentially detailed a totalitarian leftist regime, trojan horsed in behind the claim of being "romantic fantasy".  The "Magic Deer" in question was also specifically targeted because of it's rule as final arbiter of all regime change in the main protagonist nation, essentially removing any ability for the PCs to alter the political course of the nation.  Other sources of gripe were the presence of an opposing nation that was little more than rebranded Christianity, cast as evil villain and opposed to the leftist utopia of the home kingdom.  There was also complaint that although the core system was a solid D20 variant, they'd deliberately tacked it onto their political statement disguised as a fantasy setting, because without the core True20 system it never would've sold.  

Lindroos, et. al. are generally referred to as Swine because of these factors.

Quote from: Joethelawyer;322971Hey J. Arcane when you said this:

"It's a laughable, disgusting, and deeply offensive cult, but one with a remarkable amount of dedication and political cunning, which has thereby gained a level of influence in some spheres of this hobby that is absolutely staggering given how few actual faithful exist and how few of their games actually sell in any remotely appreciable amount."

What did you mean specifically?  What's their influence?

I believe that a number of designers influenced by Forge philosophy have managed to weasel their way into jobs working on otherwise traditional games, so as to further their own asinine cause, most prominent among them D&D 4e, which basically seems to have been deliberately designed to be every "gamist" stereotype of what these pretentious wankers have always believed D&D was, basically a game solely about killing things and taking their stuff, to borrow RPGnet parlance.

Quote from: Joethelawyer;322971Hey J. Arcane when you said this:

"It's a laughable, disgusting, and deeply offensive cult, but one with a remarkable amount of dedication and political cunning, which has thereby gained a level of influence in some spheres of this hobby that is absolutely staggering given how few actual faithful exist and how few of their games actually sell in any remotely appreciable amount."

What did you mean specifically?  What's their influence?

There's a lot of designers who either spent time at the Forge, have said they were minorly influenced by GNS, or designed games Pundit doesn't like.

Since Pundit is the personification of all that is good in gaming, designing a game he doesn't like makes you swine, this is very important.

Anyway, Mike Mearls and Johnathan Tweet are the two who come to mind.

Mike spent time at the Forge, and Johnathan Tweet designed a game Pundit didn't like.

They both actually started working for Wizards during the 3e days.

Quote from: J Arcane;322977Lindroos, et. al. are generally referred to as Swine because of these factors.

Really? One game out of a whole lineup?

I actually really like Mutants & Masterminds, and Eternal Rome, those are both great games! I heard Black Company was really good too, and of course the whole Freeport line... though I already had an awesome Pirates & Buccaneers game already with Twin Crowns, so never ended up picking up that particular line.

Quote from: GameDaddy;322982Really? One game out of a whole lineup?

I actually really like Mutants & Masterminds, and Eternal Rome, those are both great games! I heard Black Company was really good too, and of course the whole Freeport line... though I already had an awesome Pirates & Buccaneers game already with Twin Crowns, so never ended up picking up that particular line.

I love their Freeport stuff.