(This entry is bigger than usual because Mr. Teal proved rather hard to read. Fortunately he's probably rare, or I'll make him change color - Mr. Silver)
Mr. Teal
blogging huh?
Mr. Silver
In a half cheating sort of way, yes
Mr. Teal
follow sc2?
Mr. Silver
Not well enough to know what it refers to...SC2?
Mr. Teal
starcraft2, the grand finals of a large North American tournament were broadcast this afternoon
good show.
Mr. Silver
Ah...played 1, never even saw 2 in action except for some YouTube stuff.
Mr. Teal
some of my housemates play, its fun to watch though
its really blossoming as an e'sport
which i like the idea of.
Mr. Silver
I'm still waiting to play Fallout 3...a game I swore I'd buy...
(being a fan of Fallout 1 and 2, and NOT tactics)
Mr. Teal
I haven’t played any of them, you’ve mentioned them before though...
Mr. Silver
I'm glad the age of "Tactics" games was short and is over...bleh
Mr. Teal
grid turn-based?
like Final Fantasy Tactics? Disgaea?
Fire Emblem?
Mr. Silver
Yes.
Mr. Silver
“Hey guys...I have an idea for a game."
"What's the story?"
"Story?"
"Yeah...who's the hero and what's he doing?"
"Does that matter?"
"Kinda...what was the idea?"
"Just...you know...putting a bunch of characters together to fight a lot and advance."
"Sounds horrible."
Mr. Teal
oh, its fun.
The titles i can think of generally lend themselves towards having the player generate an internal
monologue.
Mr. Silver
Eh...for some I'm sure. They certainly sold. I'm foremost a tabletop RPG player. The tactics ones I saw and played were like the end of a bad evolutionary path.
Mr. Teal
Ah, i cant speak to tabletop gaming
Mr. Silver
you can a little, i know
I still have rules I wrote for you
Mr. Teal
heh
well then, the life of a tabletop piece extends over a great span of time
Mr. Silver
The "fun" of old school D&D, for instance, is talking with the group and occasionally checking the
mechanics.
the mechanics are secondary to the social event
Mr. Teal
whereas the life of a virtual character is more immediate
and there is scripted feedback
so the player isn’t entirely responsible for their development.
Mr. Silver
Yes. and you can't walk out of the rules
The computer stuff improved immensely over the years, and by the time the MMORPG stuff took off, it was
nice
You could chat again.
But you were and still are bound to the engine and the scripts
Ever hear of a MUD?
Mr. Teal
nope
Mr. Silver
"Multi-User Dungeon"
Mr. Silver
Generally all text
College kids and peeps with jobs that had computer communications in ancient days of computing would "telnet" into a mainframe, make a rudimentary character, and move from location to location doing text MMORPG stuff
Played a fair amount of them in college
I always kinda sucked at them because of two things:
#1. Little sense of artificial direction
N, S, E, W, U, D didn't mesh with the descriptions and I'd get really lost
Mr. Teal
heh
Mr. Silver
#2. They were all engineering. Cleverness was nearly impossible to use.
So I wouldn't advance by mechanics
Wasn't a total loss though, because I used to have enormous fun discovering things to do.
Like with real people, by exploiting parts of the system.
For instance, the "emote" system allowed you to type anything you wanted in it as an action.
So I'd create scenes in emotes
Mr. Teal
hmm
Mr. Silver
I had a few people I'd hang out with. We'd pick a room with several people in it and I'd emote.
"All (one of my characters...story there) pulls out a large bag and starts rooting around in it."
"All pulls out a large silver tray with a steaming tea set."
"All pulls out a plate of cookies"
"All says 'Tea, anyone?' "
We'd start passing around cookies and filling cups and generally having a good time
all in emotes
Strangers would sit in.
Mr. Teal
heh
Mr. Silver
None of the stuff existed or had impact in-game
No one minded about wasted game time...you could tell who the creatives and the pen-and-paper RPGers were because they'd "play".
Anyway...next story.
The character "All".
Here's a story about exploiting mechanics...
"All" was a thief character in a world in which typing fast and making macros was king...neither of which I was any good at, and the latter I considered "cheating".
The most common post-fight command was: "Get all from corpse" to collect items.
People'd ninja stuff constantly, both in and out of your group
"Ninja"-ing as a term likely came from this utterly invisible thieving in MUDs...I remember people using the term WAY back then.
Though the Gods (game admins) had banned all the dirty name choices, they didn't think of things like "All".
So "All" was named because I couldn't type fast and as a test. Sure enough, if I was in the room when "get all from corpse" was used, the player would get an error. They'd have to actually look in the corpse inventory and type what they wanted to take, item by item.
Mr. Teal
heh
Mr. Silver
I got somewhat infamous for that...before I was destroyed.
One day there was a system crash. It was one of the most popular MUDs...hundreds of long term players suddenly lost all their stuff and there was no restore file.
The Gods decided to grant every player a few of their best items back as compensation.
It took a long time.
Their method was to summon the character, ask what they wanted, and then send them back to the starting location of the game.
People were logged in for hours waiting.
I was even IN a tabletop D&D session, waiting, with one of my group's players designated to watch for our names to come up and a list of the stuff wanted.
My friend Mike was on watch...he walked in, looking disturbed.
"What's up?"
"Uh...the Gods want to talk to you...like now."
"Why? what happened?"
"Well...your turn came up, and I said you were ready, and he typed 'summon character all'. And everyone in the game ended up in his room at the same time. The place exploded. He had to turn off all player communication because everyone was bitching at once, and then all he typed, to the whole world, was
"All, you're DEAD!"
Mr. Teal
heheh
perhaps you should have been named “from”
Mr. Silver
heh
perhaps
Mr. Teal
Its an interesting point. The most fun I’ve had in MMOs are instances in which I’ve beaten the system in some small way
Mr. Silver
:-)
The gods maintained their own communications net...a lot of MUDs were just customized copies of base versions they all passed around. The name "All" was banned on every game within a day.
Mr. Silver
I used a similar trick afterward. Two characters named "The" and "A"
Mr. Silver
“The” and “A” were in a MUD that let you pick your own title.
I'd find a fairly quiet spot, change my title and people would walk in and see:
"The Glowing Sphere is sitting here"
or
"A Magical Fountain is here"
and I'd just sit quietly and watch as they'd try to interact, unsuccessfully
Mr. Teal
:-P
Mr. Silver
"What does it do?"
"I don't know, I've never seen one."
"Pick it up."
"I can't."
Mr. Teal
heheh
and you could issue them commands?
Mr. Silver
Yeah. Anything I could emote
"The Crystal Sphere changes from green to red."
"Woah! What the hell?"
"What did you do?!?"
"Nothing!!!"
Mr. Teal
heheh
Mr. Silver
"I can't Look it."
"Me either. I tried Look Sphere, Look Crystal, Look Crystal Sphere...nothing"
Mr. Silverif they'd done “Look The”, they'd have seen me.
(Pick a color...this'll probably go in the blog)
Mr. Teal
it almost reminds me of my housemate Jason’s dad
Mr. Teal
who, when Jason was a child, made a living winning sweepstakes contests
Mr. Silver
Made a living at it? Cool...how?
Mr. Teal
(teal)
he's a programmer
Mr. Silver
Mr. Teal it is.
Ah. Figured the games out, eh?
Mr. Teal
and is the reason for a lot of validation measures
Mr. Silver
do time?
Mr. Teal
nope
Mr. Silver
hired as a security consultant, perhaps?
:-)
Mr. Teal
i forget his specific exploits. You’d probably get along with Jason
but he (Jason again), has stories about a strange period of his childhood in which he'd fly all over the
country to miscellaneous movie screenings and studios
His dad does some sort of AI consultation
and lives in rural Maryland, shotgun fishing in his pond
Mr. Silver
interesting mix
Mr. Teal
supervillain
Mr. Silver
heh. I had a plot to go that route
Ranted at work one day about boring criminals
Mr. Silver
"This world needs a ridiculous super villain, dammit! I'm going to do it! Who's with me?"
"What's the plan?"
"Oh...OK! We clean out a Sharpie factory! All the pens! I'll be the infamous "Semi-Permanent Marker!"
"We'll build a giant pen, roll up to the Crayola factory and write 'Crayons Suck!' on it!"
"...I'm in..."
"Me too."
"Bwahahaha! Then we'll draw a mustache on the Statue of Liberty or something!"
"Yeah!"
Mr. Teal
heh
There was that duo driving across the country a few years ago robbing convenience stores with hot coffee
which is pretty brutal, but not diabolical.
Mr. Silver
Interesting MO
We were going to advertise, of course
Supes get “screen time”
(News anchor) "The giant dirty limerick written on the PNC Park field is certainly the work of The
Marker...since he left a video of himself, and his costumed cohorts, laughing a lot on the field."
Mr. Teal
lol
Mr. Silver
"Police are seeking a man dressed a magic marker and a gang of guys in harlequin masks wearing T-Shirts
with nicknames like "Finetip" and "Ballpoint" written on them in small block capitals...like from the 60s Batman show."
Mr. Silver
So...you in?
Mr. Teal
despite my fashionable take on gaming, I'd like to take a shot at being my own supervillain
:)
Mr. Silver
We could form a league
"There's just two of you."
"SO???"
"Not much of a 'league'."
"Well we can't be the DUO of Evildoers."
Mr. Teal
I was recently in a discussion of dressing up in a frog suit and forcibly liberating all of the tanked frogs in Chinatown
Mr. Silver
I like it!
Mr. Teal
same idea for crabs as well (bubbled out of a conversation on the zodiac signs, cancer)
Mr. Silver
I suggest leaving a few behind with tiny weapons and little mind control helmets just for added confusion
