benlehman

So Clinton, Ron, and Paul are all unhappy with the Forge. They all have their theoretical reasons for this. Heck, Paul has been unhappy with the Forge practically since its inception.

I have another theory to put forth.

The Forge has changed a lot over the years. This development has been pretty much directly towards its mission objects -- design, promotion, play and review of independent role-playing games.

In practice, however, there's something really different going on.

The Forge, in its present state, has been converted into what is effectively a writing workshop. Workshop format is something I'm pretty familiar with, and I have to say that Forge is actually an extraordinarily effective writer's workshop, despite being plagued by all the problems that writer's workshops always have. In fact, for a public forum, it is miraculously good at what it does.

But a lot of folks, at least Ron and Paul, have a basic dislike and distrust for the writer's workshop premise that the site is designed around. This, on the surface is fine. Workshopping is a writer's tool, there's nothing particularly necessary about it, it's just another tool that can be used. Both Ron and Paul (and, say, Vincent) do better designing alone, outside of the workshop process. Clinton used the workshop for TSoY, but I think he's got other problems, which I'll get to in a second.

The problem is this: of course people who don't like workshops are going to be dissatisfied with the workshop! A basic distrust of the process means that every time Ron (say) looks at the site, he sees it failing. It isn't that it's failing, because it's basically successful, but Ron can't see the enormous benefit coming out of it because it isn't what he would want for his games (witness the enormous caution and downright fear going into the Doctor Chaos threads.)

There is not a great solution to this. Ron, who doesn't like workshops, has pulled together an excellent workshop. Either he's going to keep running it, with no psychic benefit for himself (which sucks), or he's going to shut it down, which basically removes the one good place for people to get started writing RPGs. Or he'll transfer it to someone else, which he won't do, and has a host of other problems.

There is a secondary "problem." At this point, we're a brand, and we've established a pretty good method of distribution and publishing for ourselves. This pretty much makes us not indie, in terms of adventure and experimentation, even if in the exacting sense of the Forge we still are.

All I can say about this is I don't think it's a bad thing. The basic model (short print run books, PDF sales seperately, personal interaction with players, use of centralized distribution only of our own make) is a good one. It took us a while to arrive at it, but it works, and damned well. (well enough that we make as much money as novel writers.) Does that mean we shouldn't experiment with other channels? No. But it does mean that the world isn't where it was five years ago, a place of crazy possibility where anything could happen. We found out: some things work, some things don't.

Also, the Forge exists as a pseudo-brand. Again, this is bad for indie in the purest sense. But it is damned good for the site's goals, and in practical terms of artist-trying-to-reach-audience-and-make-profit, it's really good for designers, too.

It's been cool to think the Forge is off-track and fucked up since at least 2002 (I've just been archive digging, you can tell.) But fuck that noise. We work, and we work well.