Funny that soapboxes were brought up...
I was thinking about soapboxes.
Those of you that knew me back in the day know that I could soapbox like no other. I could (and would) bring a LARP to a screeching (sometimes shrieking) standstill. To this day a lot of those instances were deserved, I think. A lot of them probably weren't. Or at least (and I can kinda hear Steph in my head) I coulda handled them a LOT better. I think my last great soapbox was when one of the assistant storytellers in Scott's Sabbat game decided to, in the middle of a PVP combat that he was moderating, bust out his plot-controlled NPC as some kind of guardian angel to his buddy's PC.
I think the exchange was something like: "And then SupercaptiancoolnpcX appears from thin air to save this turdling that you are killing!" Me: "The fuck he does! This is bullshit; either you're a ST or a player in this scene, not both! Where the hell is Scott!?" Which continued into a rant/freakout on my part.
I remember having at least six separate rants about Summon. Probably six rants per version of the rules with Summon in it.
To this day there's a marshal at SL I fear that I'm going to have that kind of an interaction with. I don't want that to happen so I avoid them at all costs.
There's a couple of reasons I think, for why I haven't had a good freak out yet:
The games we played back in the day had too many house rules to be inter-related; it would be like if "Slay" did one thing in Indiana, and when you got to Michigan, it did something else because the Michigan team didn't like how it was worded. There was also a lot of resentment of travelling players; it wasn't just our paranoia that the Indianapolis and Muncie plot teams hated the Fort Wayne crew; it was true. SL's a much tighter rules system, and the fact that marshals can and do run either/both games avoids most of the "their game/our game" crap.
I also kinda changed how I played games; I used to relish being the loyal opposition-psuedo villan. Then I got tired of being killed, especially when I went through like 4 vampires in a row just because they were played by me. I'd still love to play that, but there's just no way in SL to cover that kind of niche that lets you be worth more as a living bad guy than you are dead. I prolly should've played that kind of character since everyone is a giant pussy when it comes to PvP at SL anyway.
The point of all this I guess is that I saw something of that old me when Jim B. went berserk Friday night/Saturday morning. He made a complete ass of himself and now probably realizes that certain parts of what upset him aren't as bad/broken/imbalanced as he thought.
And the format of the game can certainly lend itself to players shooting off; going through everything we did Friday night - regardless of whether it was balanced or not - add in not being allowed to go to bed - by 6:30 am I was getting pissed off enough to have a rant too.
Those of you that knew me back in the day know that I could soapbox like no other. I could (and would) bring a LARP to a screeching (sometimes shrieking) standstill. To this day a lot of those instances were deserved, I think. A lot of them probably weren't. Or at least (and I can kinda hear Steph in my head) I coulda handled them a LOT better. I think my last great soapbox was when one of the assistant storytellers in Scott's Sabbat game decided to, in the middle of a PVP combat that he was moderating, bust out his plot-controlled NPC as some kind of guardian angel to his buddy's PC.
I think the exchange was something like: "And then SupercaptiancoolnpcX appears from thin air to save this turdling that you are killing!" Me: "The fuck he does! This is bullshit; either you're a ST or a player in this scene, not both! Where the hell is Scott!?" Which continued into a rant/freakout on my part.
I remember having at least six separate rants about Summon. Probably six rants per version of the rules with Summon in it.
To this day there's a marshal at SL I fear that I'm going to have that kind of an interaction with. I don't want that to happen so I avoid them at all costs.
There's a couple of reasons I think, for why I haven't had a good freak out yet:
The games we played back in the day had too many house rules to be inter-related; it would be like if "Slay" did one thing in Indiana, and when you got to Michigan, it did something else because the Michigan team didn't like how it was worded. There was also a lot of resentment of travelling players; it wasn't just our paranoia that the Indianapolis and Muncie plot teams hated the Fort Wayne crew; it was true. SL's a much tighter rules system, and the fact that marshals can and do run either/both games avoids most of the "their game/our game" crap.
I also kinda changed how I played games; I used to relish being the loyal opposition-psuedo villan. Then I got tired of being killed, especially when I went through like 4 vampires in a row just because they were played by me. I'd still love to play that, but there's just no way in SL to cover that kind of niche that lets you be worth more as a living bad guy than you are dead. I prolly should've played that kind of character since everyone is a giant pussy when it comes to PvP at SL anyway.
The point of all this I guess is that I saw something of that old me when Jim B. went berserk Friday night/Saturday morning. He made a complete ass of himself and now probably realizes that certain parts of what upset him aren't as bad/broken/imbalanced as he thought.
And the format of the game can certainly lend itself to players shooting off; going through everything we did Friday night - regardless of whether it was balanced or not - add in not being allowed to go to bed - by 6:30 am I was getting pissed off enough to have a rant too.