"The term 'GNS' is moronic and annoying" – well this should be an interesting interview

[payn]

So far I've listened to 1.5 of the videos. I ... don't like Edwards. He comes across as pretentious.
"These are bad games."
"People don't play games correctly."
"You don't understand why you like playing TTRPGs."
Other than being a guy who wrote a game 20 years ago that I've never heard of, I don't see why his opinion should matter.

I'll admit I actually laughed out loud when I saw your post about 4 hours of content. Could be 4 min and I can tell from titles it amounted to nothing but bollocks.

 

[Retreater]

I'll admit I actually laughed out loud when I saw your post about 4 hours of content. Could be 4 min and I can tell from titles it amounted to nothing but bollocks.

The videos have been out for 2 years and have a combined 5000 views.

 

[Umbran]

So far I've listened to 1.5 of the videos. I ... don't like Edwards. He comes across as pretentious.
"These are bad games."
"People don't play games correctly."
"You don't understand why you like playing TTRPGs."

Ugh. Thank you for watching that so we don't have to.

 

[Alzrius]

So far I've listened to 1.5 of the videos. I ... don't like Edwards. He comes across as pretentious.
"These are bad games."
"People don't play games correctly."
"You don't understand why you like playing TTRPGs."
Other than being a guy who wrote a game 20 years ago that I've never heard of, I don't see why his opinion should matter.

To be fair, this kind of condescension is entirely in keeping with Edwards. Does anyone else remember his infamous comment about how "bad" games cause brain damage?

More specific to your question, Vincent, 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.]

He later doubled down on this idea:

Now for the discussion of brain damage. I'll begin with a closer analogy. 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).

If someone wants to take issue with my use of the term "brain" when I'm talking about the "mind," I just shrug. As I see it, the mind is the physiological outcome of a working brain. Mess around with the input as the brain/mind forms, and you short-circuit it, messing up steps which themselves would have been the foundation of further steps. You could be talking about an experience such as I mention above, or you could be talking about sticking a needle into someone's head and wiggling it around. Brain, mind, damage. I don't distinguish.

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. This type is only one game in terms of procedures, but it's represented across several dozens of titles and about fifteen to twenty years, peaking about ten years ago. Think of it as a "way" to role-play rather than any single title.

There are plenty of games that I don't care for, but I'd stop well before I'd compare playing them to child molestation.

 

[Emberashh]

Yeah out of all the big players that came out of the Forge I think Baker is the only one who never developed a terminal case of foot in mouth like Edwards or Crane did.

And in regards to Edwards brain damage comment, the irony is that despite the thinking that those games in the 90s were stunting people, the Forge ended up stunting RPG theory as a whole, making it a joke to pretty much anybody with a more hollistic view of game design.

He might now admit GNS was dumb, but the damage was done, and thats just the most visible thing that makes talking game design in regards to RPGs a convoluted mess half the time.

 

[niklinna]

I used to game with Ron, and love his weird brain (and MAN can he game!), but video content is just something my brain does NOT enjoy.

Talking-head videos generally aren't my thing, especially such open-format discussions—they can wander off-point so easily—but I got a lot of insight from these, even the digressions. Of course, I watched them at higher speed.

 

[KYRON45]

I watch things like this and read various forum posts and think....Is anyone having any fun with this stuff anymore?

 

[Retreater]

I watch things like this and read various forum posts and think....Is anyone having any fun with this stuff anymore?

I saw this today and your post reminded me of it.

I do remember enjoying the game a lot more before judging myself by the metrics of online communities (which I started over 20 years ago).

 

[kenada]

I watched part 3 a few weeks ago but haven’t watched the other two. I found it interesting and insightful (into Edwards thinking). My favorite part was when he talked fondly about 3e campaign he ran (yes, D&D 3e). I also found his comments on sim (and its being fundamental) interesting and surprising.

And in regards to Edwards brain damage comment, the irony is that despite the thinking that those games in the 90s were stunting people, the Forge ended up stunting RPG theory as a whole, making it a joke to pretty much anybody with a more hollistic view of game design.

He might now admit GNS was dumb, but the damage was done, and thats just the most visible thing that makes talking game design in regards to RPGs a convoluted mess half the time.

He touches on in the third video. He seems unhappy with how people would war over this stuff using his ideas when what he apparently wants is people to talk more about their play. He seems particularly annoyed when people try to classify themselves or games instead of talking about goals of play.

There’s a whole part about his dislike of storygames.com (for being an exclusive community that tended to encourage people to talk about only the designs the community wanted) and how people wanted to turn the Forge into a brand, which he also opposed.

He’s certainly a polarizing figure, but at least some of the problem seems to be the way the hobby acts. What even is the point of classifying a game as this or that when what matters is how people actually use it in play? It drives me crazy when people ask which of the categories my homebrew system is. My answer is always: it’s designed to do what I want (to support theI want at play my table).

Otherwise, I agree. The state of RPG design is a mess. There are some ideas out there that aren’t bad (e.g., I like a lot of what Baker says because it tends to be focused on design rather than play), but there are few examples of designs done from the ground up (particularly based on these ideas). So many people just take a game and rework it, and I’m not interested in that because if those games did what I want, I wouldn’t be designing my own.

 

[Pedantic]

Otherwise, I agree. The state of RPG design is a mess. There are some ideas out there that aren’t bad (e.g., I like a lot of what Baker says because it tends to be focused on design rather than play), but there are few examples of designs done from the ground up (particularly based on these ideas). So many people just take a game and rework it, and I’m not interested in that because if those games did what I want, I wouldn’t be designing my own.

This is really the thing I'd love to see change. As long kit-bashing is treated as a fundamental part of the hobby, it will always be an anchor on design. It both prevents designers from articulating a strong vision, and lets games with incomplete or weak designs slide.

There's honestly nothing wrong with it in any individual case, but homebrew as a norm is a problem.