Pundit-Notes From the Great Forge Reunion Battle of 2015
Wherein Ron Edwards Complained That People Still Remembered "Brain Damage", and Were Still mad at him for it;
and Wherein Ron Edwards Tried to Take Credit for the OSR
Part 4
and Wherein Ron Edwards Tried to Take Credit for the OSR
Part 4
The Real Solution to the "GM as Author" Problem
The point of an RPG isn't to 'simulate reality'. Emulation isn't realism. I could be like Ron Edwards and refer you to the essays and threads about this on theRPGsite.com, and say that if you don't read those 4 threads of 30 pages average each spread over 6 years, you can't really engage in meaningful discussion about this.
But I'll make it simple: no set of RULES can create a "realistic" game, and realism is a nonsense-word that means whatever someone wants it to at the time (usually to argue about how science and all logic tells us a Katana should be able to "slice clean through" a tank, or other such completely unrealistic things).
But a well-trained GM can create a virtual world. And that world can approach levels of internal consistency and verisimilitude that allow players to achieve an Immersion-state in it.
That's the fundamental flaw of the entirety of Forge Theory and everything Edwards and his followers and successors (including all Storygames) did. They looked at shitty games (vampire) run by shitty GMs who'd been trained in the "GM is Author" style, where the players are little more than observers of the 'genius artiste' GM weaving a tale for them, and understandably felt it was total crap. One thing Edwards and I never disagreed about was just how shitty White Wolf's entire philosophy of RPGs was.
But the answer Edwards came up with (and everyone after him followed) was INSANE.
The right answer to the atrociousness of the White Wolf era would be to say "we need to go back, and make the game NOT about 'making a story' and instead about playing in a virtual world like it used to be". But Forge's answer was "we need to change the fundamental way RPGs work so that they can actually do story!!".
The right answer to "GM as author" would be "we have to train GMs in what their job actually is, and show them how to create worlds, and generally encourage the role of the GM and the skills needed. The GM shouldn't be an author, he should be the fair Architect-God of a world; and we need to show people how being a God is more fun than being a pseudo-author and will please your players more, because then they have the freedom to actually be active agents in a world".
The Forge's answer was "we need to castrate the GM and make him completely powerless so he can't hurt our games ever again. he should get to do NOTHING other than be the delivery-boy for the game designer's rules".
The emphasis with the Forge and Storygamers is always "the Gm cannot change the rules as written, he's not allowed to!", with the sole exception of when it suits them to lie about it to try to win an argument or deceive regular gamers into thinking their products are rpgs.
RPGPundit
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"But I'll make it simple: no set of RULES can create a "realistic" game, and realism is a nonsense-word that means whatever someone wants it to at the time (usually to argue about how science and all logic tells us a Katana should be able to "slice clean through" a tank, or other such completely unrealistic things)."
ReplyDeleteSo you've played with some idiots that don't know shit about Japanese swords or the English language and from that you conclude you need a different word for games that include elements of reality, i.e. realism.
It is ironic that you insist on using a different word to try to fix your problem of playing with idiots in the very same article in which you criticize Ron Edwards for trying to fix his problem of playing with idiots by using different words and changing the rules of the game. Neither of you would need to change your vocabulary if you just did not play with idiots.
Except "realism" can never actually mean "a game that perfectly imitates reality". It can, at most, mean "a game that includes elements of reality" as you said, but that isn't what people think of when they use the word "realism", that's what you want Emulation for.
DeleteRealism implies that RPGs are a Simulation, and they are NOT.