Dark Places

There is an amazingly interesting flurry of threads on the (lovely, but certainly strange) I Would Knife Fight a Man forum about how the Forge has affected people over the years. I've been meaning to write my own, because a lot of the reflective thoughts there mirror my own - sometimes they are even nearly identical.

Every new-comer to the Forge seems to have hit the exact same wall that is so special about that place. The Forge is by no means a forum where you post without thinking very, very hard about what you want out of your post. And before you think about posting at all, you research threads and articles to see if you are merely re-animating thoughts  or experiences that have been debated endlessly before. And there's no back-padding there either - expect full-on, direct response and critisism.

Frank Tarcikowski, from Germany and author of BARBAREN!, used to be a fierce opponent, like myself, of anyone or anything that would dare to suggest his GM-centered playing style was anything but awesome or fulfilling. Then he entered the Forge, and thought: "I'll show these self-centrered fuckers what's right and wrong. Reward system my ass. System matters dick." Etc. Anyway, to shoot down the Forge-idiots, he had to delve into the Big Model and the whole theory/practice complex that penetrate Forge debate on all levels. So he started to read. And guess what? It changed the way he thought about roleplaying, and how he roleplayed. Like so many others, including myself, before him.

In fact, Frank because so deeply understanding of Big Model/GNS that he could post this fantastic brief recap of the whole theory complex, originally targeted for a German website. So here goes Frank's translated awesomeness:

What are the main points of Forge Theory?

Role-playing is a social activity
RPGs are played by people because they want to have fun. Therefore, any sensible analysis of role-playing must start with the players as real persons, and not with the characters as fictional persons. The whole context of social interaction between the players has been called “Social Contract”.

Role-playing is creating fiction together
The participants of an RPG are creating imaginary events through play. To do that, the pictures in everyone’s head of what happens need to match to a good degree. These matching pictures have been called the “Shared Imagined Space”.

The Shared Imagined Space is created through negotiation
The players’ interaction at the gaming table is directed toward including certain situations or events into the Shared Imagined Space. The back and forth thus developing is best understood as a process of negotiation. Only if all players at least tacitly agree to a new piece of fictional content can play continue on that basis. This simile has been called the „Lumpley Principle“.

System does matter
”System” has been used to describe the rules by which the negotiation process is organized. These rules may be written or implicit. In some groups, they deter massively from what is laid down in the game text. Therefore, if someone tells you that system doesn’t matter, she is referring to the rules in the game text, and she is saying so because her group is not playing much by those rules anyway. The actual rules they play by are mainly their own, and they do matter indeed. These actual rules greatly influence two equally important things:

1) The fictional content shaping the Shared Imagined Space.
2) How players act at the table to create said content.

There is role-playing, and then there is role-playing
The way how people role-play (see the above points) may vary widely from group to group. That’s because different people have different priorities in playing RPGs. You get the best chance for a gaming group to be fun on a sustained basis when all players in that group follow the same or similar priorities when playing together. This has been called the Shared Creative Agenda.

Attention: Creative Agenda is the full picture! It is recognized when watching a group play for a longer instance, with special attention to moments where specific priorities may conflict with each other. That’s not to say that any action by a player at any time during play needs to fit a scheme or something.

The following three general categories of Creative Agenda have been identified in the GNS model:

1) Gamism: The players accept the challenges of the Shared Imagined Space, taking risks and showing performance (as players) and reaching or missing a certain goal. Sometimes all players may work together to a goal, sometimes they may compete.

Attention: Gamism is not the same as “Powergaming”, which represents a sub-species.

2) Narrativism: The players engage in the moral and human issues of the Shared Imagined Space, taking a position (as players) and thereby making a statement about their characters/the game world/themselves.

Attention: This is not what is commonly called „Storytelling“ or „Cinematic“. If functional (= fun), both is usually considered:

3) Simulationism: The players experience the Shared Imagined Space as something worthwhile for it’s own sake, something which they do not fully control because it follows it’s own laws. Experiencing the Shared Imagined Space and contributing to it is part of any role-playing, but in this mode, it’s the top priority.

Attention: Complex „realistic“ rules are only one style of Simulationist role-playing. More frequently, you’ll find features like style, atmosphere, acting, or dramaturgy.