I’ve always had mixed feelings about The Forge. On one hand, they’ve got some very good ideas about game design, particularly when it comes to questioning assumptions and sacred cows. And they have come up with some interesting games. On the other hand, they do sometimes come over as insufferable elitists.
But when Ron Edwards comes up with something like this, I do have to wonder if it’s still possible to take him seriously. Is he becoming the Sid Vicious of RPGs?
I’ll say this: that 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.*]
The structure of lumpley.com makes it difficult for me to determine the context in which Ron made those comments. But it did result in a further posting by Vincent Baker
The purpose of this blog is to judge people’s fun. We begin by judging our own fun, but in doing so we will and always will judge others’ fun too.
I hold standards of quality to be independent of individual tastes. Accordingly, everyone who participates here must do so with the understanding that the fun that suits their individual tastes might be called crappy, broken, lame, sucky, wimpy, stupid, or even pathalogical. You may feel free to defend your favorite fun if you’re so moved, but you should do so in terms of its objective quality, without falling back upon “everyone likes what they like,” “all tastes are equal,” or “judging my fun makes you an elitist.”
I expect each of you to have the self-understanding and emotional maturity to make your own decisions about your participation here, given this. My experience so far has overwhelmingly borne this out, and I expect this post to make the process only easier for us all.
Which is why I’m responding on my own blog, where I set the rules. I think Ron Edwards’ post is a blatant troll, and I have every right to take offence at the idea that I’m somehow ‘brain damaged’ by the fact that I enjoy ‘simulationist’ style games. While I’ve also enjoyed Forge-inspired games like ‘Primetime Adventures’, Ron Edwards’ hubris-filled attitude is likely to make me take Forgeite-Narrativist stuff less seriously.
(Link from The Phoenyx Gamers List)
