Originally Posted by tesral
That's just it, though. They're different, but they're not all completely different. There are no hard and fast qualifications, true, but there are deep norms at play, consciously or not, when enthusiasts use the terms. And norms are informative.
Of course, I second the motion to have Farcaster set the terms as he wishes. I also enthusiastically second the fmitchell's suggestion that we turn the conversation to the games we consider exemplary. However, in doing so, I think it's a little unfair to think of Farcaster's potential judgement--or anyone else's (if they've thought long and hard about the issue)--as being hopelessly subjective.
This forum is barely a week old and already there have been recommendations that I, for one, am grateful to have been made aware of, including yours Tesral. I'm like a kid in a candy store--and this despite the fact that others may have different (yet overlapping) ideas about what qualifies as candy (is gum candy?--how about soda?--popsicles?--why are large sugar crystals recognized quintessentially as rock candy, but a packet of sugar is just, well, sugar?)
Of course, there's always the risk that our favorite treat won't be given the shelf-space that we feel it deserves... Nevertheless, even if it is only of theoretical interest, I'll wager that if we took a sizable poll among self-described "indie" enthusiasts, even though we would witness much variation in the examples given, we'd also be left with a core set of common prototypes, potentially even normative of a much larger sample.
In fact, if pressed to guess, I believe we might find many of these features already put forth by trechriron and other individuals in this very thread, some posed as objective benchmarks and others blatantly subjective. But, if we take the title of this thread seriously--What is an indie RPG?--I think a more useful way to approach the question posed, as compared to eliminating or despairing over what is subjective, would be to ask: what is the norm that binds the differences?
And this calls for a discussion, again to echo fmitchell and trechriron, of the games themselves. What are they? What do they have (mostly) in common? Looking at the games already put forth as exemplars throughout various venues and threads at PaPG, a nonexhaustive selection would be:
The list goes on. And I'm sure I'm neglecting many! Yet, just based on the quick compilation above, we can already see "potential" commonalities--and culled, as if data from a survey or poll, we can also see that while none of them individually escapes subjectivity or qualifies as a necessary or sufficient exemplar of the terms small press or indie games, they are collectively very useful.
Burning Wheel, Mouse Guard, Dogs in the Vineyard, Suzerain, Sorcerer, Colonial Gothic, Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, Fringeworthy, Don't Rest Your Head, Silvercord, Polaris, Dread, Montsegur 1244, Dead Inside, Sign In Stranger, Primetime Adventures, Shock, Spirit of the Century, Steal Away Jordan, Houses of the Blooded, Unisystem, Incarna.net, Victoriana, Beach Bunny Bimbos with Blasters, Shooting the Moon, Witch Hunter, Grey Ranks, Storming the Wizard's Tower, The Dark Eye, Thou Art But a Warrior, Kill Puppies for Satan, OSRIC, Basic Fantasy, Wushu, Spycraft, The Shadow of Yesterday, Hellas, My Life with Master, FATE, Donjon, 1001 Nights, The Mountain Witch, Bureau 13, In a Wicked Age, Agon, Nobilis, Mist-Robed Gate, Labyrinth Lord, Misspent Youth...
If it were a truly representative list, we could then ask what do the core games themselves have in common? And again I can't help but point out that, when we compile the second-order list below, we can see that they are almost all restatements of observations that have already been offered by trechriron and many others. Also noteworthy, some observations appear to be directly contradictory (e.g. #7 and #8); and that's not necessarily a problem, since such contradictions underscore the unappreciated fact that, as abstracted from how most enthusiasts use the term, there are multiple paths to "indie-ness". Many paths, but not arbitrary paths.
Games whose creators eschew the traditional 3-tier model of distribution;
Games whose creators communicate regularly here at PaPG (Bless 'em!) or who are equally accessible at other sites whose purpose is discussion of ideas within the so-called "indie scene", i.e. there is little communicative distance between the designers of a game and its consumers;
Games not published by the largest (top 5, you name it) game-publishing companies or their subsidiary imprints; nor published by companies whose market penetration in table top gaming can be leveraged by virtue of an "established brand" outside the market, i.e. Sony or "Second Life";
Games whose mechanics or system as a whole, at least at the time of their arrival on the scene, are considered to be innovative, thought-provoking, boundary-pushing, possibly controversial, but always fresh, even when freshly retro (as many attempt to resuscitate older "neglected" systems in innovative ways);
Games designed deliberately to be experimental, or otherwise to subvert rpg traditions or popular conventions that are deemed moribund or else too constrictive (e.g. diceless, more story-driven, GM-less, etc.);
Games which are imported and/or newly translated from their designers' home nations, yet without a popular audience abroad;
Games that are just plain cool, made by "the little guy", which may not get the attention and respect that aficionados think proper, dammit;
Trend-setting games that seem to come out of nowhere, the source of whose buzz is mostly word-of-mouth within a specific gaming community, but yet eventually come to exercise noticeable influence on other games or systems outside that community;
Games created by individuals whose primary motivation does not appear to be profit;
Games or supplements made freely available, or else are offered provisionally as free works-in-progress, where anyone may playtest and offer feedback directly to the game's creator(s);
Games that tend NOT to be entryways into rpg gaming for most players, but rather tend to be discovered later, often as part of a deliberate search for "new" ways of role playing.