The Forge and Indie RPGs

I've been spending far too long reading essays and threads on The Forge recently.

The site is a great resource for ideas on game design. There's an attitude that game designers should take an engineering approach to designing RPG rules, rather than simply relying on trial-and-error or copying things that appeared to work in earlier games. They do have a really bad problem with jargon, such that the site needs a glossary to explain what they're on about.

In challenging assumptions, though, some Forgeites seems to be far too willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. They have developed a lot of games where they've thrown out virtually all conventional rules defining character abilities, and replaced them with very abstract meta-game mechanics allowing the players to affect the narrative. They also believe in redefining or reducing the role of the GM, which for me sucks a lot of the fun out of GMing. Some games even eliminate the GM entirely.

A case in point. There's a current thread on The Forge about doing a Forge-style version of Call of Cthulhu. If I've understood it correctly, the proposed games has an 'Investigation stage' where you collect rather abstract 'Plot Coupons', and at some point trigger the 'Endgame' where you spend those Plot Coupons to defeat the monster.

I'm afraid all I can say is "Ugh!". I find the original Chaosium Call of Cthulhu (I've managed to avoid the d20 version) works perfectly well for me, and I just don't see how this pseudo-boardgame approach is an improvement. I'm told it's very like the second edition of the boardgame "Arkham Horror". Why not just play Arkham Horror?.

A post in this thread succinctly sums up their approach.

In most games, there is Rules Stuff (where the rules arbitrate what happens) and Soft Stuff (where players co-create what happens, using a variety of social dynamics, but with multiple options all equally valid under the rules).

In Task Resolution, "What you do" is mostly Rules Stuff, while "What it means" is mostly Soft Stuff. The dice tell you that you slay the giant. Then the group decides whether you free the kingdom from tyranny.

In Conflict Resolution "What it means" is mostly Rules Stuff, while "What you do" is mostly Soft Stuff. The dice tell you that you free the kingdom from tyranny. Then you decide that you slay the giant to do it.

OK, So I can see what they're trying to do. But I don't think that style of gaming is really for me.

Someone once asked if so-called 'Indie games' had any parallels with Indie music. I know I'm biased as a diehard classic rock fan, but Indie music seems to be based around reduction in instrumental complexity, an awful lot of angst-ridden navel gazing, and music which is more interesting to write about than to listen to.

I'll leave it to cynics to decide whether there's any valid parallel. But one of forum founder and moderator Ron Edwards' posts in the thread I quoted from earlier had implied that once you've played these games, you'll never want to play conventional style games again. Which is too close to comfort to the "Once you've heard The Clash, you'll never want to listen to Pink Floyd again" line I used to hear from punk fans in 1980. I still love Pink Floyd today, and have never 'got' The Clash despite wasting money on a couple of their albums.

There's one big difference between The Forge and the punk and indie music scenes. Punk and Indie were both thorough reactionary, rejecting sophistication and devolving into cruder, more primitive forms. The Forgeite scene is at least trying something new. Like anything experimental, some ideas and games will work, and others will fail. I would expect some of their games still to have cult followings many years after the majority have been forgotten. Perhaps one or two games using Forgeite ideas will become major hits. And maybe the next generation of more mainstream games will incorporate some of their ideas in combination with tried and tested features of more traditional names.

I'm certainly finding The Forge useful for clarifying my ideas, even if all I'm trying to write is a Fudge port.

Update: Carl Cravens has some related game thoughts here, here and here.