unforum

[Shadow E. Coyote]

 Here to play nice!

[CrispyG4]

Right, but if people have to go into secret messages in order to communicate without the characters finding out, that's VERY inconvenient. And what you're not understanding is that this forum is essentially a bunch of people sending private messages.

I still don't see what you're trying to argue, or what this has to do with socialist ideals vs american ideals. I wish I could list all the fallacies in your argument, but I don't have the wherewithal to do so.

[Pixiestix]

More than just that, if a game has over 100 people, heck, if a game has over 20 people, It is a pain to PM each person the same info to make sure everyone is on the same page. And what if you are playing multiple games, your pm box might just get full REAL fast.

This isn't a place PMs are not allowed to visit, it is a place that we respectfully ask PMs to treat as OOG. They can take what they know OOG and help usher in game things along in other ways, but their chars can't reward/punish for what happens here.

Say we can't finish a puzzle, the PM can READ the thread, see we aren't getting anywhere, and find an in game way of helping us.

Now, while i see how having chars on these forums might help in that situation, it may not be a plausible.

As for the part where role playing doesn't come in - hold the phone, we email, fax, meet in person, and play make believe with characters. We just leave that at the door to try to figure it all out.

ETA: {half a post, but i needed to eat dinner, and watch lost, and after some family time here at home realized, i just don't care enough to continue to feed the trolls tonight - tomorrow may be another story.}

[jamesi]

Re: Here to play nice!

[Rogi Ocnorb]

Maybe if we take a theological tack...

Think of a PM as God in most any religion.
They are omnipotent, seeing and hearing all.
But their actions are almost invariably a mystery to their followers.
They never communicate directly with their subjects, who are left in awe knowing only that their prayers have been answered.

I was hoping ndemeter or one of the other LARPers would be able to communicate the difference between those types of experiences and the typical ARG (Which may lean heavily on LARP practices).

[ndemeter]

This will be my last attempt to debate this argument. Shadow, since you are trolling for points go ahead and give yourself another notch.

So why is blurring the lines so bad, eh?

Shadow, I work in law enforcement. Part of my daily duties require me to carry a gun. Yet, I play ARG's (albeit, to your disapproval since I should be clearly looking for another hobby) and love them. For years not and in every game that offers them I have attended live events and choose to leave sometimes my badge and all the times my gun at home since I'm not working anyways.

Example time for your benefit:

But you Shadow decide to a) include me into YOUR game without my permission or even knowledge and b) completely blur the lines of reality because it's SO MUCH FUN!

So you send a call for help since you are really a player. You don't say anything about any ARG since you don't want to spoil the experience and you use everything in your power that says "this is very real" to me, all the while giddy of all the fun we are having.

So I answer your distress call because a) I'm local to you and b) hey, helping people is part of my job after all. I come to your aid and I have zero reasons to believe I am playing a game at this point. Your thinking is that when this is all over we'll have such a great laugh. So in the grand finale you have planned for someone to charge at me from the shadows wearing a mask, holding a plastic toy gun, and screaming "YOU'RE DEAD!".

Shadow, I assure you, I will not wait to figure out if this is really a very realistic game before using my very very real firearm to defend myself from what, in my perception, is mortal danger. We have a term for this, it's called "officer perception" and it leads to "justifiable use of force to include deadly force".

So what happens then? Will we all say at the funeral "Well this guy is dead but gee golly wasn't that relistic stuff Shadow pulled SO MUCH FUN?" Do you think our community and the genre would benefit from an incident like this or something similar? Will the newspapers report it but say "...but at least the ARG genre changed to accomodate a complete blurring of the lines or reality" and hail your project as a success?

Like I said, this will be my last word on this issue. Take care Shadow and I hope you never have any misfortune due to your misguided attempts and philosophies when it comes to gaming.

[ndemeter]

[Rogi Ocnorb]

[rose]

Maybe if people had actually played games actively as a player, these points would be more clear. Some things have to be experienced to be understood, if you aren't willing to take the word of more experienced people.

I don't honestly believe that you are interested in learning what we think and why - its been explained clearly. We also made it clear that you aren't even close to being original in your ideas - we've covered this ground repeatedly. It tries our patience. There are clear reasons this forum has the minimal rules that it does -they are well thought out and based on years of experience and various types of games; part of the reason we care so much about enforcing that rule, is that we really only have one:"DON'T POST AS A CHARACTER ON THE FORUM" and well the second is "place nice', which I would argue you have also violated.

Personally, I think you are interested in convincing us that you are right, rather than listening to us...or even better, as been suggested... creating your own play space somewhere else. Create the space you want...maybe some of us will even come and play with you there. Personally, I think that would be a great option and good luck with that.

If you are interested in understanding where we come from, then play some games with us and see how it looks from a player's viewpoint. That is the last constructive suggestion I have to make. i\I literally can't think of any other way to get through to you.

That is, I'm assuming you read all the threads that SpaceBass, the site owner, so carefully researched and posted for you. That was a lot of work done solely for your benefit.

[Nighthawk]

I'm not going to try to debate this, but I figured I might as well chime in.

Shadow, I don't know if you have an alias or a "real" name on these forums, but it does appear to me that you at least haven't been around long enough to see the downside of what you are suggesting. This place would be a zoo (well, moreso than it is already, anyway ).

As far as my personal handling of this forum... from a game standpoint: I, several other PMs and several other players simply pretend that this forum DOES NOT EXIST.

What exactly does that mean?

1) The word "unFiction" or "UF" will *never* appear in an "in game" site. Usually they refer to it as the "other place". I know that in Project Ophiuchus (sp?) they even had a crazy name for it; I don't remember what it is.

2) You, as PM, are more than happy to read your thread, but don't even think about posting in it, either as yourself or as a character. Not only is it an immediate violation of Terms of Service, but it will cause all other players (who are well aware of the Terms of Service) to hate you to no end.

3) Do not directly use any content you see on your UF thread in game. Again, this site DOES NOT EXIST; sure, you may derive inspiration from it based on analysis of the player experience, but don't do things like (1) quote from it, (2) refer to people by their UF name (unless it's their in game name, too), etc...

4) Do not use this site's Private Messaging for in game communications. 'cause, after all, this site DOESN'T EXIST.

5) If you're looking for player interaction, create a means to do so outside of this forum. This includes possibly creating your own forums (48HIP had their own forums which pulled all the traffic from here), or going as far as creating your own communication systems (I've created chat rooms, mail services and more for my games), using IM, IRC, Twitter, etc... Just because you can't use this forum doesn't mean your shut out from ever talking with your players. Learn to accept that.


On a side note, I'm not thrilled about the term "PM" either. I refer to myself as an "Implementor" (a throwback to the Infocom days). But usually nobody knows what the hell that means.

[Shadow E. Coyote]

 No hard feelings?

[Shadow E. Coyote]

 Cont...

[notgordian]

Re: No hard feelings?

[Shadow E. Coyote]

 Lies Lies Lies...

[Agent Lex]