unforum

[classical]

As far as Brian Bricker goes, no idea. Right now, we're supposed to believe he's completely OOG, despite the fact that there are a lot of holes in his story as well as the fact that he types a lot like Ron did. In game, the characters kept trying to convince us that he was all OOG... not that I totally trust any of them. :B

That was the confusing part, really--what was in game and what wasn't. And how many questions we got without any sort of answer... all of which still remain now. Meh. I just want to know what happens!

[elfis]

[PinkCloud]

[classical]

[TTHSK]

I'm fairly sure "Becky" posted at least once.

Also, the PM twice pretended to be "the PMs" - first with a letter from a later IG email address apologising for driving people away from a 'student project' thing, and a second time as the 'guy' behind the fake bricker, who was part of a 'company'.

[Nighthawk]

It's official: I'm confused.

[BlackandBlue]

Who isn't/wasn't

[Pixiestix]

[Yo-L]

The biggest rule-break was the stuff about the writer I guess?
It all has been said before:

It appears that the PM involved his formal employer Brian Bricker in the story, and made him into a character. Without Brian Bricker knowing. He incorporated personal information without consent. Including hints to the current and former home addresses of Brian Bricker. He exposed old family photo's and other personal belongings. He involved the deceased mother of Brian.
Some photo's, a jumpdrive (was that Brickers?) and an old theater ticket got in the hands of the players.
All the source material from the story was stolen copyrighted work.
The PM had access to Brian Brickers website, and modified that to use it in the story.

All because the PM didn't get his paycheck.

If this is all true, it is an ARG-gone-wrong.
If it's all part of the Game, it had a really unsatisfying ending.
Either way, I find it an intriguing dark story. With a twist.


So Wulf, you got the photo's. Have you sent them back yet?

[kosmopol]

OK, now I see the sense of the uF rules rightly... Actually I was wondering for years why are the ARG rules here a little bit ehm conservative [as I thought] (sorry guys and gals): it's forbidden to cross the meta level and to post for an ingame character in the threads.

I for myself was always playing with the idea how to break this rule and to make a postmodern ARG or something like this, like Rachel Blake blaming LOST show crew in their ignorance about dangerous Hanso (surely, it was great, but it wasn't unfiction board). But now I will rethink this idea. It isn't conservativity behind this convention - it's safety for the players not to be fully irritated.

This case of "I'm sorry" shows the danger of such surely revolutionary PM acting (well, in literature such level crossings are always revolutionary, like Borges, Cortazar or Danielewski did it, also in theater, like Stanislavski at the one hand and Meyerhold at the another).

Perhaps we should remind the words of Daniel Farraday: everybody needs a constant. Especially if there are many realities we're acting in. And if also our reality begins to quake, the fun ends.

Even if ARG pretends to be reality, it should give the player a possibility to escape and to look at the whole scenario with distance.

(I am not a pm of this ARG btw, don't misunderstood me pls)

[imbri]

[classical]

While I want to say I didn't mind the crossing of boundaries... it got a little out of hand at times. Made the paranoia go rampant on our side. >_> We spent too much time trying to figure out who was a plant and who wasn't, rather than just going with it.

[Wulf74]

[BubbleBoy]

When I started and read the rules I was kind of torn because I was in the frame of mind that if my characters are supposed to be "real" and this board is real then it would only make sense that characters would end up here.

However, with time I have viewed these games in a different light.

Now I view the game as something that exists on another plain of existence. Something that, rather than reality bleeding into the game, the game may bleed into reality. While the game exists in our world, the narrative does not. We are only seeing a glimpse of what is going on in the world that is being created.

The rabbit hole is like a portal that allows you access into that world, in addition to allowing the characters into ours. Rather than e-mail being e-mail, it's more like a communication. A video is a visual transmission, so on and so forth.

It's as if our reality reaches out and grabs a piece of theirs.

RLE's are like seeing a ghost. They are there in our reality one minute, then they are back in theirs. They are like bringing the game world into our own for a while.

Packages sent follow a similar train of thought.

So it's not that UF doesn't exist at all. It just doesn't exist in their world.

Chat rooms are like streets, or conference rooms, or a place where the two realities touch for a little while, or whatever need they are filling. They reach out into the cosmos in the hopes of making contact with the other side.

I hope my explanation helps a bit. I tend to ramble.

[BlackandBlue]

Aftermath Meta