Is this place still active?

Crezth said:

You're all over the place, dude. I'm half-convinced your posting is accomplished by furious head-smashes into the keyboard. I'm not asking anyone to "fall in line" because I don't have a line. My position is "think for yourself" and if that offends you, then I definitely don't want you on my side, so good riddance.

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You said NESing needs defining. I say otherwise. Your position isn't "think for yourself", it's "think like me." Make up your mind.

The difference between the two of us is that I defend what we've already done and love while you insult that, say it wasn't ever fun, and offer no alternative that anyone wants to participate in in some silly, depressive, inconsistent downward spiral that no one can follow.

You should consider a congressional candidacy.

Crezth said:

Anyway my assertion from day 1 has been that nobody likes modding NESes, therefore it cannot be said to be a fun hobby for people. So either something has to change or NES is forever doomed. Pick your poison. Most of this lot have chosen the latter because the former is too hard. Me, I prefer hard alcohol.

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Fun differs based on the individual. Most people who play roleplaying games do not want to moderate/master the games. Why? Playing is what they got in it for. Some individuals much prefer the modding experience, like EQ. I might not agree with how he runs his games, but I do respect his discipline and ability to run them for years. Don't pretend those individuals aren't exceptional, because that undersells the difficulties.

If it was so easy and fun for everyone, then it'd be done. But it isn't, and never will be. Some folks like running games, but they are not the majority. Redefining NESing in a way that changes its fundamental nature is likely to fully alienate those who actually give a damn about it now. I'm sorry that you're incapable of comprehending that while people may love a hobby they lack the time, discipline, or desire to moderate their own games, and would prefer to play.

In other words:

I already built a consensus definition of NESing that most people agreed on and it didn't save the Frontier from dying due to lack of activity.

Crezth, when you decide you want to stop being a tsundere, you know you can come back on #nes and we'll accept you just fine. Everyone deserves their chance to rage against the system. Just know that we won't hold it against you when you decide to be civil and productive again.

Luckymoose said:

You said NESing needs defining. I say otherwise. Your position isn't "think for yourself", it's "think like me." Make up your mind.

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Yes, telling someone "you have no definition of a thing" is definitely actually saying "accept my definition of a thing." You will notice that I am not, in fact, sitting here and saying that CNES or anything like it is the future. I have never once touted my personal ego in this discussion, my own credentials, nor much my personal opinion on what the best "kinds" of NESes are, despite your persistent efforts to besmirch my reputation. That's not why I'm here.

Luckymoose said:

The difference between the two of us is that I defend what we've already done and love while you insult that, say it wasn't ever fun, and offer no alternative that anyone wants to participate in

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It is difficult to offer alternatives in a void; the very first thing that must happen is that discourse occurs to infuse further discussion with substance. But you have refused to even admit that such discourse is necessary. That means that even if I did have an alternative, you would be incapable of recognizing it as such.

But regardless of any alternatives I may have, is it not true that everyone has implicitly acknowledged that the current state-of-the-art sucks and requires a psychic Newtype to manage? It seems to be the consensus that NESing, as it stands, is so hard that it's practically impossible, and why activity is so scant right now. So I don't have an alternative, granted; but if the past two years and your own admission aren't enough to convince you to at least talk about changing the way we think about NESing and what NES is, then I'd say there's really no point. Persist in your ways if you must, it honestly means very little to me. I am satisfied by the effort I have given in attempting to persuade you, and that is all I needed.

Thlayli said:

I already built a consensus definition of NESing that most people agreed on and it didn't save the Frontier from dying due to lack of activity.

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"I already built a consensus definition of NESing that most people agreed on and it didn't save the Frontier from dying due to lack of activity."
- Thlayli, 1152 January 14, 2016

"NESing is a turn-based narrative roleplaying forum game. I'm trying to see the flaws in that definition, but I can't."
- Thlayli, 0414 January 9, 2015

*mic-drop*

The tone of our discussion here is really, really weird.

Apparently because something is hard we should not do it, despite it being what we enjoy doing when it is done well? So changing it to be something easier for immediate, if negated benefit and pleasure, is somehow a superior alternative? I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd rather something be hard and rewarding, than half-assed and not in any form the hobby I adore.

That moon is super far, guys, so, you know, let's just do something easier! ~ JFK*

*pretty sure according to crezth

Luckymoose said:

That moon is super far, guys, so, you know, let's just do something easier! ~ JFK*

*pretty sure according to crezth

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When JFK proposed the moonshot, he was talking about leveraging America's technical capabilities and scientific innovation to accomplish something incredible, in particular by setting forth an achievable - if difficult - goal with concrete steps and a plan to achieve it.

This opposed to some sort of Great Leap Forward which advocates that everyone just work really hard, because hard work makes everything possible, details be damned, and the yokels will smelt steel in their apartments if they have to.

Not all problems can be solved by putting your shoulder to the wheel. Sometimes you have to think.

Crezth, there's a word for how you're acting, but it isn't allowed on this site. You can be more civil and explain your points more politely. You used to be nicer than this. You aren't accomplishing anything by antagonizing literally the entire remaining community, and it's not like you fit in with the IOTers that well either. So just come in from the cold already.

Currently, any relevant points you have are being overwhelmed by your incredibly condescending behavior.

In fact, I'm not even sure what you're trying to say to me. I participated in the "defining NESing" discussion at Symph's behest, and it didn't fix anything.

Appeals to civility in the face of facts are the last refuge of the defeated, and come as rather cheap talk when invoked over the barrel of a gun. The "civility" you demand is in fact capitulation, for I notice the volleys launched by you and yours go unremarked upon. "It's not like you fit in with the IOTers that well." Now, why would you say that if you weren't trying to wound me? Of course, I couldn't care less, but I do find it very funny that I'm the one asked to be "civil" when it's you lot that keep attempting to breach my heart (in absence of any response to my arguments, it should be noted).

Anyway, I agree I'm being antagonizing. That is my purpose, here, to antagonize you into action. But I don't agree that I'm antagonizing "literally the entire remaining community" for I believe that to be IOT. But listen, if you insist on calling me that special word, you can always PM me. I hope it's one I haven't heard before so I can add it to my repertoire.

Back to the matter at hand:

Thlayli said:

I participated in the "defining NESing" discussion at Symph's behest, and it didn't fix anything.

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Perhaps, but it was you and you alone that did. In fact, the sentence I quoted remains the whole of your participation and supposed consensus definition, and thinking about it for more than fifteen seconds raises a whole host of new exceptions which I know didn't go un-raised. To keep it simple, here are a list of things and reasons that fit into NESing under your definition:

1. Draw Your Own Story (turn-based, on a forum, involved roleplaying, is a narrative, can be construed as a sort of "game")
2. Mafia
3. Risk
4. Diplomacy
5. D&D played on a forum
6. Any roleplaying game at all played on a forum
7. Choose Your Own Adventure

Indeed, many of these things have been called NES. There can be a Battleship NES or a Sorry! NEs or a UNO NES or whatever, and so the term "NES" becomes meaningless because it incorporates literally anything and everything. The "flaw" in that definition should be obvious to you, a man of science, because it specifies nothing whatsoever.

When we addressed this problem back then, the response was to throw arms up into the air and go "Then it's impossible! NESing is simply too nebulous to be defined," whereupon it was revealed that perhaps NESing wasn't a genre of game but a type of social club, which explained why the "game" never seemed to matter and why interactions persisted apart from and in some cases despite of said games, and even why there was an almost tribal, instinctual mistrust and hatred of the "others".

As Symphony said back then, unless we are content to call NESing a social club and abandon all pretense of our particular and special hobby, we must do some shearing of what can be allowed to be called NESes so that the term means something. Based on what were the first NESes and the "best" NESes, something along the lines of geopolitical gamery, simulation, and roleplaying seems to be the objective. In fact if you picture a NES as a D&D game with the DM as the moderator and the players as entire nations, not characters, it starts to become cogent; oh, but then LifeNES doesn't get to be a NES*, and that's just not fair so we'd better stick with the vague and useless before we step on any toes.

Can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

*Just an example, I know LifeNES fits the definition better than most.

Since when has being antagonistic been a good way of getting people to do things? More to the point, I am unsure exactly what you want us to do: why don't you spell us out a plan of action? That way we could see if we think it is (a) enjoyable, or at least not excessively unfun, and (b) practical - and we could do it if we like. (If no-one wants to do it, that is in itself an argument for its impracticality.)

As it is, you're not breaking any eggs at all, and no-one really knows what sort of omelette they're supposed to be eating.

Well, Spryllino, thank you for moreorless enumerating the problem for me: no one really knows what sort of omelette they're supposed to be eating. Once again, I'm not pretending to be anyone's savior, I'm merely callin' it as I see's it. Anyone who has been reading my posts thus far (or Symphony's posts for the six-or-so years that preceded this one) should have a rough idea of what needs to be accomplished. If I had to simplify it:

1. Define and make an effort to understand NESing and what it consists of.
2. Categorize different NESes and make an effort to understand what makes one NES different from another, what they have in common, what makes them unique.
3. Use this information to plan a guide of future development for new, improved NESes that have fewer of the weaknesses of the older NESes (I can't spell this out for you for the same reason I can't tell you how to miniaturize a fusion reactor for cars).
4. Learn. Grow. Improve.

This process already exists informally, but because it is informal it's difficult to communicate the lessons to other people. This is why you notice, always, an "elite" group of NES/UIT-crafters constantly working on the next big thing or whatever, with most of their workings an obscure secret to others, and with no effective lexicon for describing their systems to other people. It always consists of idiosyncratic, hand-wavy descriptions for this reason, and unsurprisingly that doesn't really inspire people to dig deeper unless they have some weird inwards motivation for doing these things by themselves (see: Disenfrancised, Sonereal).

In fact I sort of want to emphasize this: I have found that a lot of IOTers are "reinventing the wheel," as it were, by doing the same things that NESers did years ago, including recycling some of the work Symph et al did on describing different genres of NES (work that is so enduring that we still refer to NESes sometimes as Simulationist vs. Storyist, for instance, even though these labels were first applied in like 2008). As it happens even this was probably reinventing the wheel in a sense, but the point is that communicating our findings to each other is an important part of the whole process.

Anyway, you're right that if no-one wants to do it, that's an argument for impracticality. I think that's why Symphony D. (among others) left, you know, because he realized that there was no hope for any improvement, because there was no will to improve. As much as I'm the mean guy here, you guys can't really blame me for that.

The downfall of NESing was never caused by some existential failure to come up with a Platonic ideal of NESing because there was never a Platonic ideal with which to begin. The great philosopher of NESing, Wittgenstein, has already given us all the linguistic tools we need on this score.

Let me give a short illustration. When I am asked by a person "would you like to play a game" unless I am so bored that anything will do I would respond "what game do you want to play." I might be perfectly willing to play, say football, but unwilling to play chess. But unless I am unbearably pedantic, I don't try to argue that football is a game but chess is not.

Now say I really want to play football, but we don't have enough people to play. If I really want to play football, I have to build a coalition: Sarah just wants to do something athletic, so while she's would rather play baseball, if everyone else agrees she will play football; Jim will play anything Sarah plays (he is just in for the social club aspect of being around Sarah). Meanwhile Paul would rather play a non-athletic game, so he tries to build his own coalition with the ensuing compromises.

Even at its height, NES never had enough players and mods to give everyone their first choice game, everyone had to make sacrifices and build coalitions to cobble enough willing players and mods. One person preferred fantasy but was willing to play a non-earth/non-fantasy, another wanted 19th century alt-hist but was willing to play 20th century history. One person was only interested in writing stories but could work together with the person who liked "realism" because it gave them a stable setting from which to write stories, another person liked person-to-person competition but could work with the previous two because of the rules and mod allowed his good orders to be competitive with the other person's good story-writing. At some point people would decide that they compromised so much that they lost what made them fun- I quit my fair share of NESes for that reason.

All that to say, I am not sure what making a strict Platonic definition of NESing would accomplish. Maybe one person successfully creates a perfect definition that encompasses everything you enjoy about NESes, congratulations and good luck finding enough people who share your passion to make a great game (No, seriously good luck, I hope that everyone can find something they can enjoy). But I don't see why it is so important to insist that football is a game but not chess (or End of Empires is a REAL NES but LifeNES isn't).

Now if you merely want a mod to place a one sentence intro to their game: "I have designed this game so that people who enjoy writing stories and competing with others will have fun" to establish clear expectations for both mod and player, sure have at it, I support that. But that suggestion doesn't seem to me to be that controversial.

Crezth said:

If I had to simplify it:

1. Define and make an effort to understand NESing and what it consists of.
2. Categorize different NESes and make an effort to understand what makes one NES different from another, what they have in common, what makes them unique.
3. Use this information to plan a guide of future development for new, improved NESes that have fewer of the weaknesses of the older NESes (I can't spell this out for you for the same reason I can't tell you how to miniaturize a fusion reactor for cars).
4. Learn. Grow. Improve.

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You're implying NESing is anything definable, rather than a community with similar values making compromises (as Strategos said). Tons of folks around here showed up for NESlifes, for example, and did not care for even the most generic nation-building, political games. A lot more folks were around because they loved cradle games and alternate history, history in general, and immersive, cultural and political roleplaying games that tackled those pleasures.

The real NESing is just a group of people who like playing games with each other, because they have similar enough tastes to make that work. NESing is literally a community, not something that can be mass produced and dropped from bombers onto others. The reason IOT reinvents the wheel--in your words--has little to do with NESing as a hobby and everything to do with them being their own community, doing their own things, among people they like to play games with. Their tastes won't be the same as ours because they didn't develop out of the same backgrounds. And as Strat said, eventually the compromises become too much for anyone to have fun. And that applies to cross-pollination, and there isn't much you can do to fix that in the immediate future.

Just because you both like roleplaying games, for example, doesn't mean you both want to play the same types. Vampire isn't Call of Cthulhu, and Pathfinder isn't Shadowrun.

The Strategos said:

Even at its height, NES never had enough players and mods to give everyone their first choice game, everyone had to make sacrifices and build coalitions to cobble enough willing players and mods. One person preferred fantasy but was willing to play a non-earth/non-fantasy, another wanted 19th century alt-hist but was willing to play 20th century history. One person was only interested in writing stories but could work together with the person who liked "realism" because it gave them a stable setting from which to write stories, another person liked person-to-person competition but could work with the previous two because of the rules and mod allowed his good orders to be competitive with the other person's good story-writing. At some point people would decide that they compromised so much that they lost what made them fun- I quit my fair share of NESes for that reason.

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Yes, I think something like this is what the definition exercise winds up to. The futility of the exercise of seeking a common definition should indicate the "activity" itself is, to put it bluntly, screwed. Symphony addressed this very point years ago:

Symphony D. said:

Imagine you setup a car club in high school or college or something. People join your club and at the end of the day it turns out you have one guy that likes muscle cars, one guy that likes supercars, one guy that likes drag racing, one guy that likes NASCAR, one guy that likes Formula-1, and one guy that likes early steam-powered cars. In a perfect world, since they all still like cars, they would do things like rotate through their interests and each would in turn learn something new about other kinds of cars and they would broaden their worldview and sing Kumbaya. In actual practice, they probably don't care that much about the interests of one another and you will have a hard time getting them to agree to do anything of particular complexity because they all want different things.

And that's where NES is. It is this supposed group which is only a group in terms of defining itself against other groups, because most of the people in it want completely different things. That is the problem.

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I think the natural conclusion of the exercise is that there is no definition because it's not about the games, it's about the people, as has been said; so if you hate the people, there's no reason to say. Of course then you have to admit to yourself that by "NESing" all that time you really meant "writing ASOIAF fanfiction [with others]." And maybe that's cool, whatever; but it really should give pause to anyone asking themselves how to "save NESing" because what people understand as the shared hobby is, in fact, not shared among the participants; and so it is doomed.

This is only the conclusion I have drawn. I have presented my methodology so that others may see for themselves if it is the case. As it happens, I also think there is a distinct logic or science to writing rules and conducting simulations to the end of constructing interactive geopolitical roleplaying scenarios, and this captures my interest, but I've long ago made my peace that this is only "NESing" to me (and others that may think like me). Then it makes no sense to consort with "other NESers" who think differently from me, because in fact we have nothing in common but a shared past, which comes as cheaply as a coffee date.

tl;dr: if you see NESing as a social club and abandon the idea completely that there is in fact a concrete hobby-in-common, then the fall makes complete sense and you don't have to pretend to be "active."

Of course then you have to admit to yourself that by "NESing" all that time you really meant "writing ASOIAF fanfiction [with others]."

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What's with your repeated slandering here? It's childish and inaccurate. Your entire argument is some petulant, futile exercise in trolling the community for what, exactly? You hate us, belittle our work, tell us we're stupid and don't know how to have fun, that we don't have a hobby at all...

This is pathetic. Just because you have gone on a crusade to define NESing as something completely unconnected to the social aspects of a community of like-minded individuals (which is impossible, since the games only work when people are at least somewhat similar and get along) doesn't make it true. You're certainly going to have a hard time maintaining collaboration if you pretend community has nothing to do with it and call everyone who does an idiot.

Go run a NES without community interaction and see how far you get. Oh, wait, you ran more than one with community interaction and never did the work. Cry me a goddamn river, Crezth. If you hate socializing so much then go play Civilization.

Your posts delight me in ways that have yet to be named by human science.

I fail to see how saying that rather than being united in a Platonic ideal "NES," NESes are united in a family resemblance (ala Wittgenstein) leads to the conclusion that 1) It is only a social club and 2) that because it does not have a Platonic ideal definition the activity is therefore screwed.

Let me start with the second point first. In the car club parable you relate, the moral of the story isn't that the car club is screwed because its members have different desires and interests. The car club could have a long and healthy lifespan if either one of two things occurred:

1) The car club is large, so that there is a critical mass of people so that diverse activities all have enough people

2) People compromise so that one week the muscle car guy and NASCAR guy both find something in common that they like and the next week the muscle car guy and steam-car guy find something in common that they like.

Both those situations show that there is no need to atomize the car club, turning it from a "car club" to a "NASCAR club" to keep the club from being screwed.


Now to the first point, I agree, the social aspect is probably the most widely shared similarity between NESes. And by all means, if you hate the people engaging in NESes it will affect your enjoyment of the games and make you want to quit, just like if you were in a baseball team and hated everyone else on your team you would probably want to quit. Now I suppose if you want to insist that our hypothetical baseball team is therefore only a social club rather than a social game, be free I guess, though I don't know what you gain from it.

Of course then you have to admit to yourself that by "NESing" all that time you really meant "writing ASOIAF fanfiction [with others]."

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I am not 100% sure what you mean by this. I don't know what ASOIAF is, so if I was writing its fanfiction I am sure I did horribly! But yes, for some NESing is about writing a story with others. And if some wrote mediocre writing, it is no more a legitimate complaint than to say that because they aren't as good as LeBron James, no one should ever play in their local basketball rec league (And of course, how to you get to being a good writer without first going through the stage of being a mediocre writer and learning from it just like LeBron didn't spring from his mother's womb NBA-ready).

Then it makes no sense to consort with "other NESers" who think differently from me, because in fact we have nothing in common but a shared past, which comes as cheaply as a coffee date.

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In the "family resemblance" definition of NESing, while two extremes may have nothing in common with each other, there is an overlap with others. For example:

ABCD
BCDE
CDA
EZF

The first and the last have minimal overlap, but share in common characteristics with the others. In NESing terms someone who prizes realism may have little in common with someone who prizes creativity to the extent of making silly things, but each share common ground with those who prizes collaborative writing. Now maybe (to go to the above example) you are "XYZ129" but in that case your family resemblance is so tenuous maybe it would be better for you to find a "new" family. But that's not really the family's fault, is it?

So if I've got this straight, you've gathered us all to marshal our energies for the purpose of defining NESing, only to then conclude that NESing is indefinable, for the purpose of...saying that NESing is doomed? Come on Crezth, this isn't who you really are. We all know you go through months-long emotional phases of self-alienation and subsequently feel bad about them, and this is more about your inner life and your personal psychology than any concrete attempt to improve (or disband) NESing.

NESing is a roleplaying game that can take many forms which shares elements of strategy and story-writing. Roleplaying strategy games with a stronger narrative element than Risk, but a stronger gameplaying experience than collaborative fiction.

The problem with Symph's thought experiment is that car enthusiasts can, and do, like multiple types of cars, and I personally can have fun in a CNES and an EoE and a SysNES and all sorts of other things. Strat already said in more words and more intelligently than me that the problem is not definition, it's activity, which I've said from the beginning. And that, essentially, seems to be the conclusion you've logic-ed your way around to with far too many words, so...good work?

But if it really is about the friendships (and the people) more than it is about the games, or at least about any individual game, let's be friends and stop fighting. I'm honestly more interested in being your friend than winning any argument, which is something you don't seem to believe. And I'm sorry for that.

The Strategos said:

Let me start with the second point first. In the car club parable you relate, the moral of the story isn't that the car club is screwed because its members have different desires and interests. The car club could have a long and healthy lifespan if either one of two things occurred:

1) The car club is large, so that there is a critical mass of people so that diverse activities all have enough people

2) People compromise so that one week the muscle car guy and NASCAR guy both find something in common that they like and the next week the muscle car guy and steam-car guy find something in common that they like.

Both those situations show that there is no need to atomize the car club, turning it from a "car club" to a "NASCAR club" to keep the club from being screwed.

Click to expand...

Sure enough, we can all imagine a scenario in which a car club remains a club; and the shared characteristics of the cars are sufficient to bind them. But I think this is where the car club parable breaks down, because we all know what cars are and simply advertising a "car club" is sufficient to attract people. This property exists in other things which have a mass awareness, like anime or video games. It is relatively simple to build the critical mass (rqmnt #1 you identified) because half the work, that of building people's interest, is already done. Nobody who looks at "Never Ending Stories" from the front page will have any idea at all what the name means, and anyone who dives in will have quite a bit of learning-by-example to do to understand what it is that goes on in a NES. I think that people become attracted to NES because of a combination of natural curiosity and an affinity for what could be said to be the "core aspects" of the hobby, which shouldn't elude definition and yet almost always do.

You don't need a Platonic ideal that fully and perfectly articulates the concept of NESing, it's probably sufficient to do rules-of-thumb and broad-strokes. But NESers consistently refuse to do either and seem to resist efforts to think about the complexities of what we all acknowledge to be a very complex activity. So the definition problem, as it exists ideally and as it has been regarded practically, has two major snags:

1. It has in fact proven difficult to define a NES, even in broad strokes, and;

2. People don't want to.

The combination of these is where the definition problem shows the activity to be endangered. I'd be satisfied if, as you said, mods placed their expectations firmly at the beginning of the thread, because that'd show they'd at least thought about it, and probably stoke the fires a little bit. Such as it is we get "it's an ARTOR-like" as a description for some games and not only does that annoy me, it's very limiting in its scope.

Strategos said:

In the "family resemblance" definition of NESing, while two extremes may have nothing in common with each other, there is an overlap with others. [snip]

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I appreciate the illustration, but surely you must acknowledge this doesn't really describe the situation? Such as it is, people hardly want to acknowledge that NESes have elements at all, much less identify which elements they have in common or have a serious discussion about them.

The forums are now active again, how's about someone starts one of the many games that are supposed to be in the cards?

@Crezth, what you propose would necessitate that moderators of certain excluded game types take their games elsewhere, effectively exiled certain types of players from the community. You're just trying to clear the way for your new clique,

by your own admission