Why RPG Theory has a Bad Rep- Part IV: The Fading of GNS

While GNS gained early success and spread at least a limited version of its concepts far and wide, in the end this was to be about as important as the latest Britney Spears hair cut. Sure it made the news. But to continue without becoming a joke it would need to produce something of worth to the common gamer.

This was the movement’s first failure. While a number of highly focused GNS style small press games were published, none reached any serious level of success. Most in GNS terms actually failed to support Narrativism as a whole, instead focusing on a single Narrativist theme. They were from the ground up designed to do one thing and only one thing. Examples include Life with Master and Dogs in the Vineyards.

Predictably the result of turning away from the wide open range of traditional RPG design was a narrowing of the game’s long term usefulness. Such work resembled more a ‘party game’, something to be played once or twice and then forgotten. And indeed, it was not uncommon to see the Forge crowd move from game to game the way one moves from one Hollywood release to the next.

To compensate for these one-trick-ponies, the Forge crowd attempted to hitch themselves to more traditional designs (Riddle of Steel, Burning Wheel) with a mechanic or two that supported at least in part some goal of Narrativism, but these was a thin and unconvincing dodge at best.

Perhaps the most serious blow would come from WotC, the makers of D&D. They commissioned a study of role-players that covered some of the same ground as GNS, specifically why people play and towards what goals. The results were from a GNS viewpoint back breaking. It seems that as far as goals and styles were concerned, System Didn’t Matter. Be it D&D, VtM or anything else, each game had roughly identical numbers of any specific style.

Thus the core concept behind GNS ‘that the best games would focus on one goal and reject others’ was proven false. Players didn’t care if the mechanics supported their goals. Rather it seems that they’d find them on their own (as Layers of Design would indicate- what isn't found in the Game Layer mechanics can often be found in the meta-game layers).

Faced with such a damning rejection of the core ideas of GNS, as well as not finding their new GNS based games making significant inroads in the market, Ron Edwards would take likely the worse possible response. He’d declare that RPG gamers who displayed such undesired tendencies to find Story anywhere other than GNS style games were in fact suffering Brain Damage.

"More specific to your question, Vincent, I'll say this: that protagonism was so badly injured during the history of role-playing (1970-ish through the present, with the height of the effect being the early 1990s), that participants in that hobby are perhaps the very last people on earth who could be expected to produce *all* the components of a functional story. No, the most functional among them can only be counted on to seize protagonism in their stump-fingered hands and scream protectively. You can tag Sorcerer with this diagnosis, instantly.

[The most damaged participants are too horrible even to look upon, much less to describe. This has nothing to do with geekery. When I say "brain damage," I mean it literally. Their minds have been *harmed.*]" Ron Edwards, 1-24-2006 Lumply.com Blog

Edwards would expand upon these thoughts, and find agreement echoed by much of the Forge membership.

The Internet firestorm was immediate and immense, and even caused former believers to condemn such statements. GNS had turned the corner from oddball theory to a nutcase spewing bile at those who saw the world differently. All that was left was a few more nails in the coffin.

Following on the heels of the Brain Damage claims was a turn by key members of the movement towards games intended to push the edge of acceptable game design- not in mechanics as such, but in what those mechanics were intended to inspire. The best example of this was Vincent Baker’s game Poison’d, which made a splash with an actual play report on rpg.net in 2007(http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=350453, starts at post 11).

By itself, that would have only indicated a rather sick group of players. Except of course GNS is all about the design influencing the players. Something Baker himself would agree with in the same thread. Other threads on other sites (including those by the author) would reinforce this image. Soon many were linking GNS with perverse gaming as well as ineffective theory.

In combination, these factors would doom GNS to the dust bin of the Internet. Now more a joke than a movement, little more remains than a handful of people claiming some worth in some part of the whole. The Forge still exists, and will likely continue to do so for a while yet. But the sun has set on GNS, leaving a long shadow over RPG Theory.

Next- the conclusion.

Parts I, II, III, V