Old Rant (Comic-based RPGs)
I can't really take credit for this one, it was originally written by an old buddy of mine.
There is a lot that can be said about comic games. They are a genre which has historically been one either sworn by, or sworn at. This seems to be nearly universal amongst its player base, as there are certain themes that are intrinsic to comic games that do not exist in the other genres of MU*dom. And I'm not talking about DC vs. Marvel here. I am talking about more social, interpersonal themes. These have been talked about at length, but rarely I think with the necessary level of objectivity that is necessary in order to gain some true and unfettered perspective on the beast that is 'Muta-Super-Wonder games'.
For starters, let's look at the nature of RP on a Muta-Super-Wonder game objectively. You are, as a player on a 'canon' game, expected to do one of two things:
a) Take on the role of an established canon character and portray them accurately yet uniquely. This is made especially difficult with the number of what I will call Comic Store Lawyers (CSL) that are out there. These are the people who, for one reason or another, know the canon of a character, team, or in some cases whole multiverse with the accuracy that only a powerful search engine like Google can hope to reproduce. I would be willing to venture, in many cases, that these CSLs believe they know the minutiae of canon characters better than the writers themselves. You know the ones I mean. "But Gambit would NEVER stoop to being interested in someone like because when faced with a similar challenge in X-Men Uber-Reborn #177 on page 17, he said no!!" This is usually followed by much gnashing of teeth, wringing of hands, consumption of anti-depressants with a Twinkie chaser, and ultimately the CSL in question storming off to start their own vengeance game. (More on this later)
b) Create a new, exciting, interesting character (also known as an OC or Original Character) that not only fits in with the existing canon of whatever multiverse you're currently in (DC/Marvel/Heavy Metal), but will also allow you as a player to express individuality and have a satisfying story arc with the canon characters (FCs or Feature Characters). This is more challenging than you would probably imagine for a couple of reasons, but most notably staff on Muta-Super-Wonder games tend to frown on OCs the way farmers frown on foxes in henhouses. OCs are historically twinks, have limited scope and suitability for a game, get either abandoned or worse, lorded over the rest of the game's participants as the best thing to happen to the game since ./Startmux. (If you don't get that joke, ask your headwiz. Unless they play an OC on a Marvel game.)
Now, because these are your only two paths, you run into a number of serious problems. But, it must be said that these problems do not emerge until the game on which you play has suitably grown to the point that there are enough people playing who didn't originally start the game that the criticisms will begin. Let me list these criticisms for you. Why am I doing that? Because they are exactly the same on every stupid Muta-Super-Wonder game out there, no matter what:
a) Staff are hoarding all the good characters. This is the primary complaint of every single canon comic game out there. Jean Grey, Superman, Batman, Spider Man, Wolverine, Cyclops, Gambit, Green Lantern, Nightcrawler, Daredevil, the list goes on. These are classically the characters played by staffers. To this, I have one simple response: No shit, really? Find me a MU* out there where the staff do not play FCs. Medieval MU*'s, the staff play Kings and Princes. Space MU*s, the staff play the captain of the ship/base, Pirate MU*s, the staff play the Governors, Lords, Pirate Captains. On every MU*, the staff play the FCs because the staff know which direction they want the storyline to go, and the FCs are the ones who drive the storyline of the game. If anyone has a problem with this, please sign off of every MU* on which you currently play, go sign up for tetherball or underwater basket weaving, or whatever you want. Please stop logging onto telnet-enabled, text-based games and bitching about the admins playing quote the best characters unquote.
b) The "good" characters are all restricted. Okay, let's look at this one. For starters, let's say you got past complaining about a) above, and you're looking at the list of available characters and trying to decide what to play. Of course, you want to play the strongest, "coolest", most powerful character you can. This is why people buy Ferraris, buy 90" plasma TVs, and wear Rolexes. You want the best. Again, no shit. And in this quest for the best, you see that the uber character you want to play is on the Restricted or Banned list. And you whine and you cry and you try and persuade the staff (who most likely don't know you from Bob) that YOU are the player to play Galactus responsibly. Sure he's the Eater of Worlds, could never really exist on the grid, and has no place being RPed in the first place, but come on! You played Rogue's second cousin for three whole weeks on !! If you can't accept that there are characters which, in the staff's opinion, are not appropriate for that game, then please sign off, go away, and shut the hell up.
c) The staff all hate me, because I'm not part of their 'Inner Circle'. Every MU* has an Inner Circle. These are the people that the staff know and (usually) trust. These are people whom the staff have played with on other games, who the staff may know in RL, and who the staff count on to form the core backbone of the game. This is no different than any other hierarchial organization that exists in RL, so shut the hell up and stop whining. If you prove yourself, deliver good RP, accurate character depictions, reliable logins, and don't fuck with either the game or the people on it, you will become 'Inner Circle'. You don't deserve it just because you're there. You deserve it because of what you do. Do it, or shut the fuck up about it.
d) All the staff do is TS with their FCs. Oh, this one is famous. Almost as famous as the 'Staff are hoarding all the good characters' from a) above. This comes about because staff will typically have two FCs in a room with low idle times. Therefore, assumptions are made about what these two character/players are doing. Because as we ALL well know, two characters cannot exist in a room together, alone, without typing out the horizontal hustle. After all, that's why we all MU* right? So that we can RP sex? Oh sorry, that's Shang. Please, people...staff aren't any different than you are. However, if you are one of the 0.01% of the population that ALL you do when you're in a room alone with another player is have virtual sex, then fine. Fantastic. Don't assume it's what everyone else does. I think the better summation of this particular complaint can be said in two words: Grow up.
e) This game is a sandbox. Let's define 'sandbox'. I have to give it two definitions here, because there's what it is, and there's what it is accused of being. Let's look at both. What it is: A sandbox is a game set up by a small number of people (possibly only one) whose sole desire is to pursue a particular storyline, theme, or method of playing/coding. Sometimes people are invited into this game, to play along with the creator's version of this alternate reality, and inevitably those people complain. (See a-d above). Then there's what it gets accused of being: A game where staff all hoard the good characters, the really good ones are all restricted, and all the staff do is have TS while hating on everyone who's not part of their inner circle. If this doesn't sound familiar, then you either haven't been paying attention, or you're probably one of the people which I'm complaining about.
Now if any of this sounds familiar at all, then you know that in the comic world there is that lovely process called the 'Vengeance Game'. If you're not familiar with it, or perhaps if you know it by another name, let me walk you through how it happens so that you can understand it clearly and fully. We all play happily on Marvel UberVerse Regenesis Reborn - The Next Chapter, part 3 MUSH. You found it on an ad, or because a friend said it was cool, and you came to play. The staff aren't bad, the code's okay, the grid's pretty cool, the news files are written up, generally it's a good place to play. Approximately 20 people log on regularly, and most of them can spell and type, so you don't mind playing there. Suddenly, Staffer Jane decides to start playing Felicia Hardy, aka The Black Cat. And ZOMG that is like, your favorite character EVAH! And so you have a scene with her. And she totally doesn't play it right! I mean, OMG, like she would NEVER do that, or say this, or act that certain way. She's a total Mary Sue! She's got it ALL wrong. And so you complain because you'd originally apped Black Cat, but were denied. And now a staffer is playing her.
So you talk to the guy who plays Colossus cause he seems like he knows what he's doing. And then you find out that Colossus is actually one of the admins, who then tells the wiz who happens to be playing Ms. Hardy that you're not happy with it. So then that staffer tries to talk to you about why the decisions were made the way they were. But you're not having any of it. Clearly, it's because you're not in the Inner Circle, and the staff are just hoarding all the good characters anyway! And since Black Cat's being played as a total Mary Sue, she must have just created her to have wild kinky costume sex with Spidey's player, who she's probably having camsex with in RL. And here is where the staffer playing Black Cat is going to get called a PHB.
For those of you not in the know (or who have never played on a comic game where this appellation is more common than typing WHO), PHB stands for Psycho HoseBeast. A PHB is a female player who you don't like. Plain and simple. Typically, PHB's are attributed with gross obesity, bad hygiene, sexual promiscuity, poverty, and clinical depression. Well, as soon as the staffer gets labeled as a PHB, the rest is just downhill. There's a snowball picking up speed and nothing will stop it. Here's how the process goes. You talk to as many non-admins as you can, and tell them how horrible everything is. You'll make up stuff to support your story. Every perceived injustice on the whole game is simply further evidence for how bad Marvel UberVerse Regenesis Reborn - The Next Chapter, part 3 MUSH is and how much better Uber DC Marvel Comicverse - The Next Generation MUSH is going to be when you start it.
And then, just to prove how much better YOU are at comic games than everyone else, you "borrow" the news files, descriptions, wiki/web pages of Marvel UberVerse Regenesis Reborn - The Next Chapter, part 3 MUSH, do a Ctrl-H in your text editor/word processor of choice and make them your own. And you take all (or as many as you can) of the players from Marvel UberVerse Regenesis Reborn - The Next Chapter, part 3 MUSH to your new game, and you start playing. YOU are the staffer now, and THEY are your Inner Circle. And YOU get to pick Black Cat, because YOU know how to player, since YOU are the best CSL that has EVAH existed and YOU will NOT make the same mistakes made on all other comic games, because YOU are so much better. Just ask you, you'll tell us. Loudly. On WORA and BRPS. Repeatedly.
And you recruit. And you advertise. And you get new players, who come and app for characters that you don't want to have on your game, or that are being played by other staffers. And they whine, and they complain, and they have sooper sekrit meetings with other players. And then they steal YOUR files that you worked HARD on and they LEAVE! Oh, the betrayal! And then, the worst possible thing. You find out that on WORA or BRPS, those bastions of objectivity and intellectual excellence, that YOU were called a PHB. Welcome to playing on comic MU*'s people. There's nothing new here.
I would venture a guess that there are maybe a half dozen "unique" comic games out there, that are well-staffed, well-played, well-run, and only have to deal with a minimal amount of this shit. And I would also venture to guess that of all of the other hundreds of comic MU*'s out there, all of them can trace their origins to one of these half-dozen, or perhaps one of the many that were ruined because of all of this whiny, juvenile, petty bullshit. I've been around MU*'s for over a decade. I've seen it all. There's no genre that is plagued by this quite as badly as comic games. Even the famous World of Darkness games didn't get as bad as I have seen comic games get.
In summary, the biggest problem with comic games is their players. They all think they know the world better than everyone else. They all think they can portray the characters better than everyone else. In short, they all think they are better than everyone else. No one actually takes the time to sit down and decide to do a good job by everyone's standards, not just their own. And when someone else doesn't live up to their standards, they grab their (and other people's) toys and run off to play in their own sandbox.
If you wouldn't deliver that kind of behavior in your job, on your community sports team, or in your family, what makes you think that it is acceptable to do it here? This is a community event as much as any poker tournament, golf game at a country club, or book review club you will ever go to. If you approach everyone and everything you do with the mindset that you're better than everyone else, no one is going to want to have anything to do with you. You will burn through all of your opportunities, you will alienate all of the people who could have worked with you to make your community a better place, and ultimately you will cause degradation and destruction of the one thing you thought you were trying to contribute to.
Grow the fuck up, don't be a whiny-assed pussy, type with your hands on the keys instead of in your pants, and remember that this is all PRETENDY FUNTIME GAMES.
Peace.
Now it's here for posterity! :P
There is a lot that can be said about comic games. They are a genre which has historically been one either sworn by, or sworn at. This seems to be nearly universal amongst its player base, as there are certain themes that are intrinsic to comic games that do not exist in the other genres of MU*dom. And I'm not talking about DC vs. Marvel here. I am talking about more social, interpersonal themes. These have been talked about at length, but rarely I think with the necessary level of objectivity that is necessary in order to gain some true and unfettered perspective on the beast that is 'Muta-Super-Wonder games'.
For starters, let's look at the nature of RP on a Muta-Super-Wonder game objectively. You are, as a player on a 'canon' game, expected to do one of two things:
a) Take on the role of an established canon character and portray them accurately yet uniquely. This is made especially difficult with the number of what I will call Comic Store Lawyers (CSL) that are out there. These are the people who, for one reason or another, know the canon of a character, team, or in some cases whole multiverse with the accuracy that only a powerful search engine like Google can hope to reproduce. I would be willing to venture, in many cases, that these CSLs believe they know the minutiae of canon characters better than the writers themselves. You know the ones I mean. "But Gambit would NEVER stoop to being interested in someone like because when faced with a similar challenge in X-Men Uber-Reborn #177 on page 17, he said no!!" This is usually followed by much gnashing of teeth, wringing of hands, consumption of anti-depressants with a Twinkie chaser, and ultimately the CSL in question storming off to start their own vengeance game. (More on this later)
b) Create a new, exciting, interesting character (also known as an OC or Original Character) that not only fits in with the existing canon of whatever multiverse you're currently in (DC/Marvel/Heavy Metal), but will also allow you as a player to express individuality and have a satisfying story arc with the canon characters (FCs or Feature Characters). This is more challenging than you would probably imagine for a couple of reasons, but most notably staff on Muta-Super-Wonder games tend to frown on OCs the way farmers frown on foxes in henhouses. OCs are historically twinks, have limited scope and suitability for a game, get either abandoned or worse, lorded over the rest of the game's participants as the best thing to happen to the game since ./Startmux. (If you don't get that joke, ask your headwiz. Unless they play an OC on a Marvel game.)
Now, because these are your only two paths, you run into a number of serious problems. But, it must be said that these problems do not emerge until the game on which you play has suitably grown to the point that there are enough people playing who didn't originally start the game that the criticisms will begin. Let me list these criticisms for you. Why am I doing that? Because they are exactly the same on every stupid Muta-Super-Wonder game out there, no matter what:
a) Staff are hoarding all the good characters. This is the primary complaint of every single canon comic game out there. Jean Grey, Superman, Batman, Spider Man, Wolverine, Cyclops, Gambit, Green Lantern, Nightcrawler, Daredevil, the list goes on. These are classically the characters played by staffers. To this, I have one simple response: No shit, really? Find me a MU* out there where the staff do not play FCs. Medieval MU*'s, the staff play Kings and Princes. Space MU*s, the staff play the captain of the ship/base, Pirate MU*s, the staff play the Governors, Lords, Pirate Captains. On every MU*, the staff play the FCs because the staff know which direction they want the storyline to go, and the FCs are the ones who drive the storyline of the game. If anyone has a problem with this, please sign off of every MU* on which you currently play, go sign up for tetherball or underwater basket weaving, or whatever you want. Please stop logging onto telnet-enabled, text-based games and bitching about the admins playing quote the best characters unquote.
b) The "good" characters are all restricted. Okay, let's look at this one. For starters, let's say you got past complaining about a) above, and you're looking at the list of available characters and trying to decide what to play. Of course, you want to play the strongest, "coolest", most powerful character you can. This is why people buy Ferraris, buy 90" plasma TVs, and wear Rolexes. You want the best. Again, no shit. And in this quest for the best, you see that the uber character you want to play is on the Restricted or Banned list. And you whine and you cry and you try and persuade the staff (who most likely don't know you from Bob) that YOU are the player to play Galactus responsibly. Sure he's the Eater of Worlds, could never really exist on the grid, and has no place being RPed in the first place, but come on! You played Rogue's second cousin for three whole weeks on !! If you can't accept that there are characters which, in the staff's opinion, are not appropriate for that game, then please sign off, go away, and shut the hell up.
c) The staff all hate me, because I'm not part of their 'Inner Circle'. Every MU* has an Inner Circle. These are the people that the staff know and (usually) trust. These are people whom the staff have played with on other games, who the staff may know in RL, and who the staff count on to form the core backbone of the game. This is no different than any other hierarchial organization that exists in RL, so shut the hell up and stop whining. If you prove yourself, deliver good RP, accurate character depictions, reliable logins, and don't fuck with either the game or the people on it, you will become 'Inner Circle'. You don't deserve it just because you're there. You deserve it because of what you do. Do it, or shut the fuck up about it.
d) All the staff do is TS with their FCs. Oh, this one is famous. Almost as famous as the 'Staff are hoarding all the good characters' from a) above. This comes about because staff will typically have two FCs in a room with low idle times. Therefore, assumptions are made about what these two character/players are doing. Because as we ALL well know, two characters cannot exist in a room together, alone, without typing out the horizontal hustle. After all, that's why we all MU* right? So that we can RP sex? Oh sorry, that's Shang. Please, people...staff aren't any different than you are. However, if you are one of the 0.01% of the population that ALL you do when you're in a room alone with another player is have virtual sex, then fine. Fantastic. Don't assume it's what everyone else does. I think the better summation of this particular complaint can be said in two words: Grow up.
e) This game is a sandbox. Let's define 'sandbox'. I have to give it two definitions here, because there's what it is, and there's what it is accused of being. Let's look at both. What it is: A sandbox is a game set up by a small number of people (possibly only one) whose sole desire is to pursue a particular storyline, theme, or method of playing/coding. Sometimes people are invited into this game, to play along with the creator's version of this alternate reality, and inevitably those people complain. (See a-d above). Then there's what it gets accused of being: A game where staff all hoard the good characters, the really good ones are all restricted, and all the staff do is have TS while hating on everyone who's not part of their inner circle. If this doesn't sound familiar, then you either haven't been paying attention, or you're probably one of the people which I'm complaining about.
Now if any of this sounds familiar at all, then you know that in the comic world there is that lovely process called the 'Vengeance Game'. If you're not familiar with it, or perhaps if you know it by another name, let me walk you through how it happens so that you can understand it clearly and fully. We all play happily on Marvel UberVerse Regenesis Reborn - The Next Chapter, part 3 MUSH. You found it on an ad, or because a friend said it was cool, and you came to play. The staff aren't bad, the code's okay, the grid's pretty cool, the news files are written up, generally it's a good place to play. Approximately 20 people log on regularly, and most of them can spell and type, so you don't mind playing there. Suddenly, Staffer Jane decides to start playing Felicia Hardy, aka The Black Cat. And ZOMG that is like, your favorite character EVAH! And so you have a scene with her. And she totally doesn't play it right! I mean, OMG, like she would NEVER do that, or say this, or act that certain way. She's a total Mary Sue! She's got it ALL wrong. And so you complain because you'd originally apped Black Cat, but were denied. And now a staffer is playing her.
So you talk to the guy who plays Colossus cause he seems like he knows what he's doing. And then you find out that Colossus is actually one of the admins, who then tells the wiz who happens to be playing Ms. Hardy that you're not happy with it. So then that staffer tries to talk to you about why the decisions were made the way they were. But you're not having any of it. Clearly, it's because you're not in the Inner Circle, and the staff are just hoarding all the good characters anyway! And since Black Cat's being played as a total Mary Sue, she must have just created her to have wild kinky costume sex with Spidey's player, who she's probably having camsex with in RL. And here is where the staffer playing Black Cat is going to get called a PHB.
For those of you not in the know (or who have never played on a comic game where this appellation is more common than typing WHO), PHB stands for Psycho HoseBeast. A PHB is a female player who you don't like. Plain and simple. Typically, PHB's are attributed with gross obesity, bad hygiene, sexual promiscuity, poverty, and clinical depression. Well, as soon as the staffer gets labeled as a PHB, the rest is just downhill. There's a snowball picking up speed and nothing will stop it. Here's how the process goes. You talk to as many non-admins as you can, and tell them how horrible everything is. You'll make up stuff to support your story. Every perceived injustice on the whole game is simply further evidence for how bad Marvel UberVerse Regenesis Reborn - The Next Chapter, part 3 MUSH is and how much better Uber DC Marvel Comicverse - The Next Generation MUSH is going to be when you start it.
And then, just to prove how much better YOU are at comic games than everyone else, you "borrow" the news files, descriptions, wiki/web pages of Marvel UberVerse Regenesis Reborn - The Next Chapter, part 3 MUSH, do a Ctrl-H in your text editor/word processor of choice and make them your own. And you take all (or as many as you can) of the players from Marvel UberVerse Regenesis Reborn - The Next Chapter, part 3 MUSH to your new game, and you start playing. YOU are the staffer now, and THEY are your Inner Circle. And YOU get to pick Black Cat, because YOU know how to player, since YOU are the best CSL that has EVAH existed and YOU will NOT make the same mistakes made on all other comic games, because YOU are so much better. Just ask you, you'll tell us. Loudly. On WORA and BRPS. Repeatedly.
And you recruit. And you advertise. And you get new players, who come and app for characters that you don't want to have on your game, or that are being played by other staffers. And they whine, and they complain, and they have sooper sekrit meetings with other players. And then they steal YOUR files that you worked HARD on and they LEAVE! Oh, the betrayal! And then, the worst possible thing. You find out that on WORA or BRPS, those bastions of objectivity and intellectual excellence, that YOU were called a PHB. Welcome to playing on comic MU*'s people. There's nothing new here.
I would venture a guess that there are maybe a half dozen "unique" comic games out there, that are well-staffed, well-played, well-run, and only have to deal with a minimal amount of this shit. And I would also venture to guess that of all of the other hundreds of comic MU*'s out there, all of them can trace their origins to one of these half-dozen, or perhaps one of the many that were ruined because of all of this whiny, juvenile, petty bullshit. I've been around MU*'s for over a decade. I've seen it all. There's no genre that is plagued by this quite as badly as comic games. Even the famous World of Darkness games didn't get as bad as I have seen comic games get.
In summary, the biggest problem with comic games is their players. They all think they know the world better than everyone else. They all think they can portray the characters better than everyone else. In short, they all think they are better than everyone else. No one actually takes the time to sit down and decide to do a good job by everyone's standards, not just their own. And when someone else doesn't live up to their standards, they grab their (and other people's) toys and run off to play in their own sandbox.
If you wouldn't deliver that kind of behavior in your job, on your community sports team, or in your family, what makes you think that it is acceptable to do it here? This is a community event as much as any poker tournament, golf game at a country club, or book review club you will ever go to. If you approach everyone and everything you do with the mindset that you're better than everyone else, no one is going to want to have anything to do with you. You will burn through all of your opportunities, you will alienate all of the people who could have worked with you to make your community a better place, and ultimately you will cause degradation and destruction of the one thing you thought you were trying to contribute to.
Grow the fuck up, don't be a whiny-assed pussy, type with your hands on the keys instead of in your pants, and remember that this is all PRETENDY FUNTIME GAMES.
Peace.
Now it's here for posterity! :P