Sooner or later, this domain name will house a big wiki. Its main page is a graphic of the Big Model. You can click on any layer and that takes you into the standard wiki pages with explanations, including nested terms, cross-references, and links to the original discussions. The current Forge and the pre-2008 Forge Archive will remain exactly as they are (including articles), but closed to posting, and the wiki basically dips into them, and you can navigate around in them just as you can now, if you want.
I'd like to generate access to some publishing insights and to some "how this game started" thread families as well, but I'm still thinking about how to do it. Maybe those will be part of the wiki, maybe not.
I'm also not psychologically able to stop forum-style posting, I think. So the Adept Press forum will be housed at my own site, and I think I'll have both Actual Play and Game Design get rolling there too - but more in a personalized, Anyway style of discussion format. I'll be posting about my own play experiences and my own game designs, and encourage others to do the same if they feel like getting my input or input from anyone else who happens to frequent the site. I have no idea what sort of demand for this may exist out there.
Obviously I will not be able to post here the link to the closing message, but it should be easy to find, just click on View the most recent posts on the forum..
The Forge got me back to rpgs after a decade out, thinking there was nothing back there for me, or at least no way back. It enriched the way I look at systems, besides. Thanks to all for making it what it was.
"This thing I'm doing" which is such a big part of my life can be serious stuff for grownups, fully worth the effort I'm putting into it, and not merely a self-serving escape into my childhood memories.
I learned to be critical in how I thought about gaming.
Thanks, especially, to Ron, Clinton, Vincent, Emily, Ben, Paul, Mike, Ralph and Eero. To Joe Prince, who through the Ronnies became such a very close friend offline. And to everyone I was on a Forge Booth with, particularly Nathan and Kevin.
And the quote that chimes with me most about the stuff I read on the Forge?
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." —Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788–1860)
2. The amazing things I always suspected RPGs could be (without any concrete proof!)... it's true, they can actually be like that.
Thanks to everyone who helped make this place what it was, is, and will continue to be. My life is immeasurably better because The Forge was a part of it and the relationships made here will go on and on.
You don't need anyone's permission to make the game you love. But you do need to love it, and you do need to connect with other people who love it as well.
