A tale of yesteryear
This is a story from years and years ago. I'm going to say
around 1998 or so.
The first internet RPG I ever played in was in many ways also
the best. I pine to this very day for stuff we did in this game and
which I have never seen since. It was a PBEM-style game,
based upon Evangelion, which those of you old enough to recall
the time may remember being pretty hot shit back then. It was
100% AU; none of us were interested in simply reprising the
events of the TV show or movie, and the folks running the game
wisely decided to avoid people squabbling over canon
characters. Therefore, 100% OCs, in a setting and story loosely
based upon those in the show. We had NERV, we had angels,
we had EVAs, but everything else was fundamentally different.
The style of play, which I mentioned, was one I've never seen
since. Each player, naturally, had their own character. We were
all free to do what we wanted to do with NPCs, though, and
even one anothers' characters. There were a number of provisos,
of course: The mod had full veto power over anything, and
could re-write or "void" a post if he saw it as necessary, and any
given player could do so if they didn't care for what was being
done with their characters as well. As a result, there was a lot of
mutual respect among the players, and a lot of VERY creative
scenes. I would KILL to play in a game like that again, but have
never seen it since.
Anyways. All of this preamble is necessary to understand the
first big suck to come out of this game in my experience.
I was playing a character named Dr. Jun Ogami (the game is so
long gone that I don't think there's much need for anonymity
here). I created him to fill a niche which no PC was playing in
this game, which was that of the sinister and manipulative
company man scientist within NERV, advancing their mostly-
evil agenda at the expense of the pilots, and, basically, everyone
else not in the inner circle of the organization. The mod loved
my application, and offered me this role in the story: He would
be the head of NERV's German branch, which was presently
being shut down and folded into the Japanese branch, where he
would become the head of research. He would be introduced
into the game when the fleet of ships carrying all of the German
branch's key equipment, personnel and - critically - Unit 02
rendezvoused with the main cast of player characters out in the
ocean.
This part of the story was in large part being handled by a fellow
who I shall call "Martin Bignuts", who had devised the specifics
of the big monster we would encounter out there, and a number
of other key plot points. Mr. Bignuts was a touch overzealous
and a bit inattentive to details when it came to things not dealing
with his own fancy mechamonster, and wrote my sour old man
of a character as a pleasant and deferential woman. After some
revisions, I was off to the races with my character.
After a few weeks of puttering around on the boat - a couple of
other characters were being introduced at the same time, and
some good roleplaying and introductions were happening all
around - we came under attack by Martin's big bad: A sort of
quasi-evangelion-ish device called the Tinspanner; a crab-like
mechanical beast with an organic core which was based upon
the angels. It was in many respects actually kind of cool, though
Mr. Bignuts got a touch carried away in writing up some of the
specifics of its design, as we would gradually learn.
As the pilots of Unit 02 (in this game, it was a two-seater, which
was kind of cool) suited up and got ready to fight this thing on
the deck of the aircraft carrier, things got a bit weird. My
character and that of my friend Colin, who was playing another
scientist named Tenshu, managed to get the specs on this thing,
we learned that it was built with a massive nuclear warhead
within it, and the AI was designed to set it off at the first sign
that it was about to lose. Naturally, our characters immediately
responded by instructing the pilots to fight it defensively only.
The mod at this point stepped in, and had some exposition
establishing that this thing was "merely a prototype", and
therefore did not have that feature installed. Mr. Bignuts vented
some significant OOC displeasure at this, feeling it unfairly
crippled "his" machine. Nevertheless, our mod was a fascist,
whose will could not be swayed (which is what any good mod in
these games should be like), and so we progressed.
The fight got a bit bogged down after a short while. The
Tinspanner had something quite like an AT-Field (basically an
organic/supernatural force field which can only be neutralized
by another body with a similar field in its immediate proximity),
that was making fighting it quite difficult, since the Evangelion
was on reserve power and couldn't deploy its own AT field to
fight it.
And then two weeks passed without any progress being made in
the fight. Nobody seemed to know what to do or how to
progress. This was a game where, when things were going well,
we'd have twenty or more posts per day, and so this screeching
halt to the main plot wasn't so great.
Finally, Colin and I decided we had had enough, and employed
some crazy audacity. Sitting down together, we wrote out a four
page post which would see the battle through to its conclusion.
We noticed that the Tinspanner was only designed to function
up to 20 feet below water, and so we had our characters come up
with the plan to push it at least 21 feet below the waves. We
gave all the characters involved their moments of glory, as the
pilots carved away a huge section of the deck of the carrier on
which the Tinspanner was standing, and then tilted the whole
section over, so that the Tinspanner would be buried under all
that falling metal and under the water, where it would sink away
into the murky depths.
Everyone was actually really pleased by the outcome, and the
moderator only made a few small revisions, dealing with details
which we were not aware of. The pilots' players liked the heroic
treatment of their characters, and it was all good, right?
Not so much!
Martin Bignuts just exploded! His precious machine, which he
had built so many failsafes and `cannot-be-defeated' devices
into had been... beaten! Somehow, he had not foreseen this
eventuality, and was mortally offended. He ranted, OOC, about
how "the scientist" killed it in just one post (which, it was
pointed out, was not "the scientist", but rather "Dave and
Colin"). He railed on and on, threatening to quit the game if we
newcomers were not punished for what we had done to him.
Pleasingly, not a single voice was raised in protest of his
promise to leave, and the moderator said he was perfectly happy
with the outcome and the fact that the two week impasse was
now at an end. One epic rage quit post later, the game
progressed smoothly... for a while. Until we were joined by
another character. A teacher at the high school where the
students went, with an inappropriate libido. But we'll come to
that later.
around 1998 or so.
The first internet RPG I ever played in was in many ways also
the best. I pine to this very day for stuff we did in this game and
which I have never seen since. It was a PBEM-style game,
based upon Evangelion, which those of you old enough to recall
the time may remember being pretty hot shit back then. It was
100% AU; none of us were interested in simply reprising the
events of the TV show or movie, and the folks running the game
wisely decided to avoid people squabbling over canon
characters. Therefore, 100% OCs, in a setting and story loosely
based upon those in the show. We had NERV, we had angels,
we had EVAs, but everything else was fundamentally different.
The style of play, which I mentioned, was one I've never seen
since. Each player, naturally, had their own character. We were
all free to do what we wanted to do with NPCs, though, and
even one anothers' characters. There were a number of provisos,
of course: The mod had full veto power over anything, and
could re-write or "void" a post if he saw it as necessary, and any
given player could do so if they didn't care for what was being
done with their characters as well. As a result, there was a lot of
mutual respect among the players, and a lot of VERY creative
scenes. I would KILL to play in a game like that again, but have
never seen it since.
Anyways. All of this preamble is necessary to understand the
first big suck to come out of this game in my experience.
I was playing a character named Dr. Jun Ogami (the game is so
long gone that I don't think there's much need for anonymity
here). I created him to fill a niche which no PC was playing in
this game, which was that of the sinister and manipulative
company man scientist within NERV, advancing their mostly-
evil agenda at the expense of the pilots, and, basically, everyone
else not in the inner circle of the organization. The mod loved
my application, and offered me this role in the story: He would
be the head of NERV's German branch, which was presently
being shut down and folded into the Japanese branch, where he
would become the head of research. He would be introduced
into the game when the fleet of ships carrying all of the German
branch's key equipment, personnel and - critically - Unit 02
rendezvoused with the main cast of player characters out in the
ocean.
This part of the story was in large part being handled by a fellow
who I shall call "Martin Bignuts", who had devised the specifics
of the big monster we would encounter out there, and a number
of other key plot points. Mr. Bignuts was a touch overzealous
and a bit inattentive to details when it came to things not dealing
with his own fancy mechamonster, and wrote my sour old man
of a character as a pleasant and deferential woman. After some
revisions, I was off to the races with my character.
After a few weeks of puttering around on the boat - a couple of
other characters were being introduced at the same time, and
some good roleplaying and introductions were happening all
around - we came under attack by Martin's big bad: A sort of
quasi-evangelion-ish device called the Tinspanner; a crab-like
mechanical beast with an organic core which was based upon
the angels. It was in many respects actually kind of cool, though
Mr. Bignuts got a touch carried away in writing up some of the
specifics of its design, as we would gradually learn.
As the pilots of Unit 02 (in this game, it was a two-seater, which
was kind of cool) suited up and got ready to fight this thing on
the deck of the aircraft carrier, things got a bit weird. My
character and that of my friend Colin, who was playing another
scientist named Tenshu, managed to get the specs on this thing,
we learned that it was built with a massive nuclear warhead
within it, and the AI was designed to set it off at the first sign
that it was about to lose. Naturally, our characters immediately
responded by instructing the pilots to fight it defensively only.
The mod at this point stepped in, and had some exposition
establishing that this thing was "merely a prototype", and
therefore did not have that feature installed. Mr. Bignuts vented
some significant OOC displeasure at this, feeling it unfairly
crippled "his" machine. Nevertheless, our mod was a fascist,
whose will could not be swayed (which is what any good mod in
these games should be like), and so we progressed.
The fight got a bit bogged down after a short while. The
Tinspanner had something quite like an AT-Field (basically an
organic/supernatural force field which can only be neutralized
by another body with a similar field in its immediate proximity),
that was making fighting it quite difficult, since the Evangelion
was on reserve power and couldn't deploy its own AT field to
fight it.
And then two weeks passed without any progress being made in
the fight. Nobody seemed to know what to do or how to
progress. This was a game where, when things were going well,
we'd have twenty or more posts per day, and so this screeching
halt to the main plot wasn't so great.
Finally, Colin and I decided we had had enough, and employed
some crazy audacity. Sitting down together, we wrote out a four
page post which would see the battle through to its conclusion.
We noticed that the Tinspanner was only designed to function
up to 20 feet below water, and so we had our characters come up
with the plan to push it at least 21 feet below the waves. We
gave all the characters involved their moments of glory, as the
pilots carved away a huge section of the deck of the carrier on
which the Tinspanner was standing, and then tilted the whole
section over, so that the Tinspanner would be buried under all
that falling metal and under the water, where it would sink away
into the murky depths.
Everyone was actually really pleased by the outcome, and the
moderator only made a few small revisions, dealing with details
which we were not aware of. The pilots' players liked the heroic
treatment of their characters, and it was all good, right?
Not so much!
Martin Bignuts just exploded! His precious machine, which he
had built so many failsafes and `cannot-be-defeated' devices
into had been... beaten! Somehow, he had not foreseen this
eventuality, and was mortally offended. He ranted, OOC, about
how "the scientist" killed it in just one post (which, it was
pointed out, was not "the scientist", but rather "Dave and
Colin"). He railed on and on, threatening to quit the game if we
newcomers were not punished for what we had done to him.
Pleasingly, not a single voice was raised in protest of his
promise to leave, and the moderator said he was perfectly happy
with the outcome and the fact that the two week impasse was
now at an end. One epic rage quit post later, the game
progressed smoothly... for a while. Until we were joined by
another character. A teacher at the high school where the
students went, with an inappropriate libido. But we'll come to
that later.