[AE.Gamedev] Reading Ron Edwards
It's become a very common tactic these days among the "opposing oppression means opposing freedom" crowd to claim that all of us who refuse to associate with TERFs and Nazis are missing out by dint of our choice to live in echo chambers where we never have to encounter anyone who holds an opinion we disagree with.
The same Orwellian facileness that allows them to equate upholding oppression with upholding freedom makes it easy enough to dismiss this argument. One can refuse to treat with one's oppressors while still entertaining all manner of disagreement on things that are truly a matter of opinion and not one of life and death.
As a case in point, while I would never seek to learn at the feet of skinhead Ron Edwards, the notorious imperial wizard of the Imperial Klans of Ameria, I will happily spend a morning reading the game design theories of another Ron Edwards, the game theorist and designer of several indie tabletop roleplaying games going back to the mid-90s.
Reading archived articles by RPG design theorist Ron Edwards on The Forge and snickering every time he mentions “bang-driven roleplay”.
— Alexandra Erin (she/her) (@AlexandraErin) February 24, 2022
I have been aware of the work of Mr. Edwards for decades at this point, but in my younger years... by which I mean pretty close to right up until my 41st birthday... I did not have much use for him.
Mostly I think this was a consequence of how I encountered his work.
Many people who are in the indie TTRPG scene might be shocked to know that I wasn't already deeply aware of his work or that I could possibly be as interested in TTRPG design as a hobby as I am and not have been a member of his old indie game design The Forge, where so much of his thoughts were collected, but it's mostly a matter of not having been in the right circles at the right time in internet history.
Having missed out on the firsthand experience, my introduction to the thoughts and theories of Ron Edwards came in the form of other people who I don't think actually understood it reading my Livejournal posts about how playing, running, and designing tabletop roleplaying games, proceeding to tell me that I was what they termed a "Narrativist" and saying I should therefore leave behind both dragon and dungeon and go play a game called "Dogs in the Vineyard", where you pretend to be a Mormon Inquisitor in a theocratic fantasy vision of the Old West and you get to add +1d4 to your roll to shoot heretics if you pretend that you're sad because the gunfight reminded you of your childhood teddy bear, because that's how Narrativist games work: you win by telling the most story.
They were referring to GNS theory (or Game-Narrative-Simulation theory), which is far from the extent of Edwards's contribution to the theory discourse of tabletop game design and play, but the most well-traveled, likely because easy misapplications of it appeal very strongly to the human desire to sort ourselves into teams or signs or houses or whatever.
I was not interested in playing Dogs in the Vineyard both because my idea of a good time did not involve pretending to be an old-timey theocratic enforcer and because my idea of putting more emphasis on the story in gaming did not involve challenging players to string together adjectives or emotions to get bigger numbers on die rolls in order to win an in-game conflict.
Without representing that any of these terms are being employed with the actual meaning or purpose that Edwards articulated his theory for, the divide was this: I was posting about using game elements as a framework for narrative, and my learned correspondents of that time were trying to sell me on games that use narrative elements as a framework for gaming.
In any event, when I read the Wikipedia article on GNS theory to find out what the heck they were talking about, my response was basically: well, I guess this makes sense, but so what?
I did not disagree that you could sort gameplay moods, methods, and modes into these three categories, and it might be that there were situations where they provided a useful shorthand for understanding what a game or person is going for, but as my introduction to the topic had demonstrated, the model could also be used in a reductive way that hampers understanding in a such a way that people could see me talking about a more story-based or character-based approach to sword-and-sorcery action-adventure gaming and conclude, "Ah, I see you are a Narrativist! What you want is a game where players make up Mormon gunslingers and then trade sob stories to the GM for extra dice to use when they shoot at heretics and apostates."
All of which is to say that my first impression of Mr. Edwards was not kind, and did not incline me to seek out his actual work or writings. When I came across them anyway over the years, that initial response of Well, I guess that makes sense, but so what? frequently made a reappearance, sometimes joined by its friends this guy is being awfully precious with his definitions and that seems like an odd hair to split.
I don't recall now what exactly changed this pattern last summer, but it was some kind of late-night internet rabbit-hole that likely started on Wikipedia or TVTropes and definitely crossed between those sites multiple times, and which led me to deciding it would be worth a modest outlay of time and money to check out his seminal TTRPG work, Sorcerer, and when I went looking for it I found that there was an annotated edition he'd put together that used a two-page spread format where the lefthand page had the original text and the facing page had his notes on it, which were a mixture of deeper explanations, development trivia, and also observations about where his thinking had evolved or moved on.
This was my first experience reading the game design thoughts of Ron Edwards in his own words, and they changed my mind on several points of theory. I didn't always find his reasoning persuasive in the sense that I agreed with it, but I frequently found it to be compelling in the sense that I wanted to know more.
It's not that I've lost my skepticism about the applicability of the bulk of his theory, or that I find the terminology less twee or the need to invent it less precious. It's not that I agree with him on every point, or most points.
But I find it useful to read his thoughts on the various angles and elements and facets and aspects of tabletop roleplaying games because he has thoughts about such things, and he takes the time to work his way through them and write them down.
To make a long story short (TOO LATE!), it's useful for my thought processes to be able to see how somebody else thinks about the sorts of things I like to think about, even if we're not thinking the same things.
Especially if we're not thinking the same things.