Closure of the Forge

[vulpinoid]

Those of you who've been around for a while should know of the Forge; a forum that's been around for a decade or so, and has been a driving force behind the revolution in independent game design.

Apparently, it accepts it's final incoming posts today.

The creators have decided that it has run its course as a flagship for indie design principles, it has served its purpose, and it's time to move on. It's great to see people sticking by their principles in this regard...but it's sad to see such a pivotal forum in the history of RPGs come to its conclusion.

If you've got anything to say over there before the forge finally shuts it's doors...head over to

[vulpinoid]

..on second glance (and actually looking at the site rather than listening to second hand news), it looks like the Forge will be winding down over the next week.

[Onix]

I used to frequent the Forge, after a short while the debates never got anywhere, anyone with an idea for a game was shot down and told "thats dumb". I decided the forum was not a very useful tool to do what it was designed to do. I'm sad to say, I personally will not miss it. That may sound harsh, but in my opinion it utterly failed in it's purpose. It stalled the RPG community with endless and purposeless debates and a model while somewhat valid did not really advance the hobby at all.

[BubbaBrown]

Never cared much for the Forge. The most prominent members were quite rude and fairly arrogant that their ideals were the only right way. And they'd make you feel stupid, if you disagreed with them despite trying to give a fair argument in exchange. I hate to see the loss of a forum for designers to gather and debate, but the Forge wasn't much for that anyway.

[catty_big]

[vulpinoid]

I think The Forge served it's primary purpose well, but I get the overwhelming feeling we all got there too late.

It was a place to discuss new theories in game design, then put them into practice.

It created new ways to play games, and many great products now available can trace their origins to the theories developed on The Forge.

But once an idea gets accepted, it gets slightly solidified. To keep the idea pure, new ideas have to be kept under quarantine. Thoughts become ideologies, ideologies become locked in as dogma or persecuted as heresy. By 2006 when I first got there, the dogma of GNS and the Big Model was starting to stagnate.

This left people confused because the terms were ill-defined in the context of real-world language, so people just lashed out at one another with ideas that they thought they understood...only to realise they were arguing against people who had the same ideas but simply defined the terms differently.

Sure, the trolls didn't help either, but there weren't as many unrestrained trolls as you find on RPG.net, especially those trolls who end up on the knee-jerk admin team...and that kind of comment will get my account banned there in the next few days (even though it's a valid criticism on a completely different web forum).

The Forge had great potential to be something more...but I guess no one running it wanted that "more" to happen.

[Onix]

[koipond]

I never went to it, I know it's important to a lot of people and in that it should be noted.

*starts the dirge music*

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

I could have sworn I saw a notice about the Forge closing years ago. Its sad to see its true this time. Admittedly, I was never around there much - and had little intention of going through years of posts to learn the nuances of the discussions. But the idea of creating a framework for evaluating games is a good one, and I've used GNS in explanations to newcomers on these forums many times.

Perhaps we should start a game theory discussion on these forums to keep the spirit alive.

[Onix]