At 08:13 PM 4/13/98 -0400, Jim O'Brien wrote:
Well, nothing against Jim, but I really shouldn't respond to this... As he
says, this has taken enough bandwith already, and it's an old war that's
been fought before (and will be fought again). But, I've never been good
at knowing when to stop with an argument, so here it goes...
>>
>>
>That's really too bad, Brian. IMHO you're missing out on a lot of the fun in
>this kind of game, but just because you don't want to role-play, you
>shouldn't feel like you need to spoil other players good time by treating
>messages from a character as messages from a player, which is what Eric
>began to do to Greg in the recent Azrain messages.
I don't feel the need to spoil other players good time at all. I simply
treat messages I recieve or see in a way that makes sense to me. That is,
by treating everything I recieve as from the player that sent it, without
regard to any 'character' considerations. Will this spoil the fun of
others? Well, it's possable that that will be a side effect. And that's
unfortunate, certainly. But to do otherwise would be to play this game in
a way that, honestly, I really do not wish to do. I'm not trying to spoil
anyone's fun, I'm just not going to play in a style I don't find enjoyable.
Because that would spoil my fun.
I appreciate there is a difference between a player and a faction, but to
me, that is just that the player is an actual person, while a faction is
the tool the player uses to further his goals in this game (persumably, to
do well, or at least better then enemy factions). I make no distinction
between player and character, because I don't see one. I don't do this to
ruin anyone's fun, I do it because that's how I percieve matters, and
that's what you'll get when you deal with me.
In my defense, I don't usually go out of my way to point out my opinions to
people who like to remain 'in character'. At one point in this game I
recieved several messages from a player that were 'in character', and I
said nothing about it, though I would have preferred to talk to the player,
not some fictional entity (though, of course, I was talking to the player,
just with a bunch of flowery text obscuring that point). But, I feel that
Greg (yes, Greg) went too far by calling this a roleplaying game and
insisting upon being called by some nickname. If people want to roleplay
in Olympia, go ahead. I'd prefer you didn't, but that shouldn't matter to
anyone. Just don't expect everyone (or, at least, me, if no one else) to
play along. This is certainly a wargame. Some may consider it a
roleplaying game in addition to that, but the matter is certainly
debateable.
Brian Enright