Not a troll attempt, I honestly don't know. From what I can tell from all the allusions to it in various threads, it seems they are a group of people who try to design games, that Pundit hates for some reason, and calls swine because he thinks they think they are the shit.  A  bunch of people I've never heard of make the list of swine.  Only one person I have heard of, Nicole Lindros, seems to make the list.  

If you don't want to get into it, shoot me a link so I can read about it somewhere else.

Quote from: Joethelawyer;322914...they are a group of people...that Pundit hates for some reason, and calls swine because he thinks they think they are the shit.

Complete tanget:
I thought that when something is "the shit," it's good, not bad.

They're evil.

EVIL.

So evil that you have to say eveel. Like they're the frueets of the deveel.

Most of the Forge have very peculiar ideas about game design. They believe in designing games around ideas that don't apply to the vast majority of game players. Only to a small subset that think just like them. They tend to support designs that fit their ideas, even when the games are implicit NOT what they read into them and apply after the fact. (Reign of Steel was something they were fond of that had one application of an idea that vaguely resembled their ideas as I understand it.)

IN shortest order many (not all) of the Forge are intellectual snobs--who feel people are playing games wrong/writing games wrong. To the point that one of the founders of the Forge (Ron Edwards) said RPG players are brain damaged. Despite numerous people trying to re-explain his point to ameliorate his meaning and soften his stance, he has stood firm in saying he thinks most of us ARE damaged.

 Much to our surprise since WE are having fun with the games. I won't go so far as to say much more on this, but to say simply I am always reminded by the passage out of the bible about the splinter in the eye.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;322918Complete tanget:
I thought that when something is "the shit," it's good, not bad.

Yup.  That was my meaning.  Pundit thinks they think they are the shit.  He hates their arrogance and doesn't share the opinion they share of themselves.  Is that accurate?

Quote from: Joethelawyer;322925Yup.  That was my meaning.  Pundit thinks they think they are the shit.  He hates their arrogance and doesn't share the opinion they share of themselves.  Is that accurate?

My mistake; I misread what you had written.

I've been around this site since even before Pundit, and I have to say that the Swine/Forge thing is one of the defining elements here, almost as much as the RPG.net-in-Exile motif. Please, join me as I pull on my smoking jacket, lovingly light a cigar, fill a brandy snifter, and sit in my high-backed, overstuffed leather chair beside a roaring fireplace, and enjoy the tale about to unfold.

Quote from: Joethelawyer;322925Yup.  That was my meaning.  Pundit thinks they think they are the shit.  He hates their arrogance and doesn't share the opinion they share of themselves.  Is that accurate?

But don't forget that Pundit is one with the gaming universe. As his health waxes and wanes so does the health of the entire hobby.

When he stopped playing for 3 years or so in the late 90's, the entire hobby collapsed. TSR went out of business. The Swine were on the move.

He's like King Arthur.

Or Man Thing.

Anyhoo, then he returned, the hobby got healthy, 3e came out and many former Swine, like Mike Mearls and Johnathan Tweet were drawn back into the light.

But Pundit noticed out there, in the creeping murmur and pouring dark, that the Swine were starting to organize again and he knew he had to ACT!

After being banned from several forums for what was right, he finally found a home here, at TheRPGSite and began to wage his righteous war.

I can explain the Forgers. I leave it up to Pundit to explain his Swine Theory.

TheForge "This site is dedicated to the promotion, creation, and review of independent role-playing games." Run by Ron Edwards and Vincent Baker.

Edwards' GNS and Other Matters of Role-playing Theory - "My straightforward observation of the activity of role-playing is that many participants do not enjoy it very much. Most role-players I encounter are tired, bitter, and frustrated." He goes on to generalise from his personal experience to develop what he considers to be an overweening theory of rpgs in play.

Since this theory, Edwards said, was not clearly understood by most of those reading it (both those in favour of and those against it), he created the provisional glossay. This was further clarified (?!) by The Big Model,



When people still criticised the theory and its adherents, Edwards proclaimed that gamers are all brain-damaged.

   "[...] protagonism was so badly injured during the history of role-playing (1970-ish through the present, with the height of the effect being the early 1990s), that participants in that hobby are perhaps the very last people on earth who could be expected to produce *all* the components of a functional story. No, the most functional among them can only be counted on to seize protagonism in their stump-fingered hands and scream protectively. You can tag Sorcerer * with this diagnosis, instantly.

[The most damaged participants are too horrible even to look upon, much less to describe. This has nothing to do with geekery. When I say "brain damage," I mean it literally. Their minds have been *harmed.*]"

* Note: Sorcerer is an rpg written by Ron Edwards. He's not saying that Sorcerer fails to let you be a "protagonist", rather than its players are unable to use it properly... because they're brain-damaged.

Lest we be unsure what he meant by that, he went on to explain that gamers are like child sex abuse victims.

   "Consider that there's a reason I and most other people call an adult having sex with a, say, twelve-year-old, to be abusive. Never mind if it's, technically speaking, consensual. It's still abuse. Why? Because the younger person's mind is currently developing - these experiences are going to be formative in ways that experiences ten years later will not be. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the characteristic behaviors of someone with this history, but I am very familiar with them - and they are not constructive or happiness-oriented behaviors at all. The person's mind has been damaged while it was forming, and it takes a hell of a lot of re-orientation even for functional repairs (which is not the same as undoing the damage).

[...]

"All that is the foundation for my point: that the routine human capacity for understanding, enjoying, and creating stories is damaged in this fashion by repeated "storytelling role-playing" as promulgated through many role-playing games of a specific type."

"My father raped me as a child."
"I know how that is. The DM once wouldn't let me get a +1 sword."

That joke just there is really the difference between Forgers and most of us. Most of us consider rpgs to be essentially trivial. Fun, but not important. Forgers consider rpgs to be things of great profundity, worthy of serious and lengthy study. Which may or may not be so; but I do not think their drivel constitutes serious and lengthy study. It's just plain old gamer nerds saying, "my favrit game roxxorz, ur favrit game suxxorz," with the added thing of the favourite game being written by the guy.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;322930I've been around this site since even before Pundit, and I have to say that the Swine/Forge thing is one of the defining elements here, almost as much as the RPG.net-in-Exile motif. Please, join me as I pull on my smoking jacket, lovingly light a cigar, fill a brandy snifter, and sit in my high-backed, overstuffed leather chair beside a roaring fireplace, and enjoy the tale about to unfold.

I know. That's the main reason I'm asking the question.  Judging by the amount of times the words swine and forge are thrown around in threads here, it's evident that people without a clue what it means are a bit left out when it comes up.  

So I googled Ron Edwards and brain damage and read the pieces in question.  Sounds like a pompous professor type.  I kept having the phrase "Those who can, do.  Those who can't, teach." running thru my head as I was reading his pontifications on why we are brain damaged, have no fun, and can't tell a story, but we just don't realize that when we are laughing and having a good time at the gaming table with our friends while enjoying telling a good story as a group.

The whole Forge thing is like this guy?  What is it, a web site blog/board type thing where a bunch of people like this guy throw out bullshit like this and develop games based on these overly articulated principles?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;322939I can explain the Forgers. I leave it up to Pundit to explain his Swine Theory.

.....

Thanks man.  OK, so I think I get the gist of the Forge.  Just a guy who thinks he's smarter than everyone else and has big scientific sounding words, phrases and charts to prove it, but who's just full of shit.  Apparently he has some follower types, who praise what he says and his approach, and they try to develop games along these bullshit batshit principles.

Now Pundit, whats the Swine thing all about?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;322939That joke just there is really the difference between Forgers and most of us. Most of us consider rpgs to be essentially trivial. Fun, but not important. Forgers consider rpgs to be things of great profundity, worthy of serious and lengthy study. Which may or may not be so; but I do not think their drivel constitutes serious and lengthy study. It's just plain old gamer nerds saying, "my favrit game roxxorz, ur favrit game suxxorz," with the added thing of the favourite game being written by the guy.

Sounds like a bunch of wannabe academics.

Maybe their days jobs involve writing boring papers on postmodernism.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;322939I can explain the Forgers. I leave it up to Pundit to explain his Swine Theory...

An excellent summation, good sir!  Jolly good, in fact!  I daresay, a more erudite treatise on the subject has yet to be penned!

To clarify for the audience:  My approximation of Victorian speech patterns demonstrates that Pundit's continued rage against the Forge-machine bears about as much relevance in the current gaming sphere as continued vehement opposition to the Whig party bears to the current American political sphere.

BORING. I think the largest danger the Forge possess is driving normal people insane with the boring-ness of their screeds.

Some of the games they claim as their own are pretty good imo, most are shit.

Which is about the same thing I'd say about OGL games.

isn't Ron Edwards some sort of academic who did a paper on Bat penis's