Ya know, you said once that, because of this, we found out that I will grouse for years about something. That's the difference between you and I. You see this as pointless grousing and complaining. However, to me, it was probably the single most perplexing and confusing thing I have ever dealt with in my life. I wouldn't be lying if I said that it kept me awake at night. I wish you could see it through my eyes. Of course, you undoubtedly wish I could see it through your eyes.....
MJ, this morning when I woke up, I had what alcoholics call "The Moment of Clarity." For them, that's the moment when they realize they are alcoholics.
For me, it was this moment when all the pieces came together. You know that evolutionary theory that you could throw all of the pieces of a watch up into the air, and it would land and build a perfectly working watch? That's pretty much what this was like. It was like all the pieces to this puzzle just flew up into the air and landed perfectly. I was forced, but only because I wasn't willing to do what it would take to get me unforced. Now I would be. This really was probably the single most perplexing and confusing thing I've ever tried to deal with. I'd appreciate your thoughts.
I still think that was a terrible opener though.....
So apart from belaboring the obvious, what were you hoping I would say?I was forced, but only because I wasn't willing to do what it would take to get me unforced. Now I would be.
--M. J. Young
Like I keep saying MJ, if you could see it through my eyes, it would make more sense. You guys gotta understand. You've all been doing this for years. I haven't. I don't know what I'm doing. I mean really, how long did it take before you fully understood some of the things you do now? Am I really so different? I think you're right. I'm not as different as I believe I am.
At the very least, I think you should give the player SOME warning that the thing approaching is a possible threat. I mean advance warning, before the MP gets there. A guy in an army jeep is driving towards me. What's the threat there? (If I had been able to actually see the situation, I think I would have taken different actions.)
(Doing Therapy)
John, when you have entered a new world, absolutely anything and everything is a possible threat. Don't trust that bunny rabbit until you are absolutely certain it is not sporting razor sharp claws capable of delivering an electric jolt. (Yes, I encountered such a rabbit. Fortunately it liked me and used those weapons against the raptors that attacked us.)
--M. J. Young
All I know for certain is that I got the distinct impression that Adam expected me to know what I was doing in that scenario. A rookie player with a referee that expects him to know what he's doing can't possibly be a good combination.
I so wish you could see this through my eyes.
Or maybe what Adam wanted was to make it clear to you that you did not know what you were doing, so that in the future you would consider other options.
--M. J. Young
Like I said MJ, in terms of what I've learned, it was the single best world I've been to. I do thank Adam for that. All things considered, I really didn't have that bad of a time there.
(Doing Therapy)
I don't want to sound like I am blaming my psychosis, but I was talking to my aunt earlier today, and she reminded me of a time when I was only 7 or 8 years old. After giving it some thought and comparison, it was exactly the same kind of behavior I've been exhibiting about this discussion. Exhibiting very similar psychotic behavior now as I was more than 20 years ago. It's kind of profound for me.
(Doing Therapy)
Ya know, when I was a teenager, my mom got the notion that my two sisters and I should go to a Christian summer camp. It's a Christian summer camp, right? Even a psychotic can make friends there. First year, I had a terrible time. Second year was almost as bad, and all four years, somebody tried to start a fight with me.
My mom sent me there with the best of intentions. In comparison of what I learned, it really wasn't too bad. Kind of the same thing here. I just really wish you could see this through my eyes. You would be amazed that I was as civil as I was. (Or course, I'd probably be amazed at your civility as well.....)
(Doing Therapy)
(Doing Therapy)
Just to be clear, this is in no way an argument. It's strictly a question about the rules.
Is it within the referee's prerogative to let a player out of a botch? Is that something that's EVER done? I was curious about that.
(Doing Therapy)
Two Posts
Seriously, this was a psychotic episode for me. I'm not joking about that at all.
You must admit, it does kind of look like the player is forced into the story. I think the opener of the MP shows a lack of imagination. I bet you dollars to doughnuts, most players would submit to being arrested, when they would have wanted to know where they were and try to run. Why does the battle even have to be part of the player's story? Give the player a chance to run, if they escape, their face, and a description of the events of their escape is in the newspaper the next day. After the place is attacked, they are now on the FBI's Most Wanted list. You want to find out how far the player will go to stay out of events? That sounds like fine way to do it.
I just think that the MP shows a lack of imagination, for ANY player.
(Note to MJ, if you wanted to run me in it again, as long as I'm given the chance to figure out where I am and escape first, I'd LOVE this scenario.....)
(Doing Therapy)
There is no provision in the rules for turning a botch into anything else, save only that one of the botch options could be something the player would like.
For example, one thing I often include in high-powered mag botches in the magic anomaly. You'll find it described in the opening pages of the Magic Skills chapter. The first time I ran it, Ed's character was trying to do some spell just outside Narnia, I think an earth-moving spell or maybe a summon earth elemental. He wound up with a patch of ground a thousand feet on a side in which rocks would suddenly become animate, grow limbs, move (walk, run, jump, fly) to another place, settle down, and return to being rocks. As far as anyone knows, that magical oddity is still there. Also, his character has been trying to figure out how to do that on purpose ever since then.
The botch might be that you cast the wrong spell or use the wrong skill; in that case, depending on what you can do, the referee can pick something really funny, like firing flowers from your wand of fireballs.
A botch is always a botch: it's something really messed up. It is not always fatal, and it is not even always undesirable (botching such that you fall through the floor into the secret passage you would never have found otherwise).
--M. J. Young
Seriously though, why does the attack on Pearl Harbor even have to be a part of the player's story? What would be wrong with having them identified as being there, and then being hunted by the FBI in connection with the attack? Now you're going to say "But then, the referee has to come up with something else." Well, isn't that pretty much what happened to me anyway? What would be wrong with giving them a chance to escape and then hunting them as a fugitive? I seriously think that the opener of the MP shows a severe lack of imagination. Why does the attack even have to be part of their story?
Well, because the point of sending someone to Pearl Harbor is usually because there's going to be an attack. I could send someone to San Francisco Naval Base, or somewhere else. I could send someone to Pearl Harbor ten years before or ten years after the attack. The entire point of the scenario was to have the verser present just before the attack, and let him choose between helping oppose the attack or dying in it.Why does the attack even have to be part of the story?
Really, John, the question was how much you would risk to avoid being involved. Giving you an easy way to avoid it would defeat the purpose.
--M. J. Young
Really, John, the question was how much you would risk to avoid being involved. Giving you an easy way to avoid it would defeat the purpose.
Yeah, BUT!!!!!!! you MUST admit, it would have been a whole helluvalot more fun!!!!!!!!! If you want to see if the character will avoid being involved, what better way to do it than to have them involved from the start, and see how far they will go to escape arrest? I mean COME ON MJ!!!!!! That would have been a cool scenario, you HAVE TO admit!!!!!!
(Not yelling, just trying to be COMPLETELY clear)
(Doing Therapy)
(RD)
Two Posts
Just to be completely clear, I'm not arguing this point at all. Just giving my random thoughts on it.
Even though I completely understand why I wasn't let out of the jeep crash botch, I still say that, in certain circumstances, it would be a good thing to let players out of botches. A rookie who misunderstood some things would be one of those circumstances. Letting the botch stand is fair, no doubt about it. But letting the player off the hook for something stupid like that couldn't hurt, really. It's just a game, we're here to have fun. Bend the rules on occasion to make it more fun, ya know? Especially if you're trying to see what they will do in the situation. I could have just as easily versed out in that crash as ended up in the hospital. What would you have learned about me then? Not arguing it at all, just giving some random thoughts.
Now you're thinking "But John, you knew you could botch." Actually, no I didn't. Don't you remember how surprised I was that I botched on my P1@1 mind reading attempt in Dancing Princess? I thought TK pulse was so weak that you couldn't botch.
(No need to reply to any of this, BTW. It's just one of my occasional moments of pique)
So what you're saying is that you had to botch so that you would understand that you could.
So overruling the botch would have been a mistake.
That's what I thought.
--M. J. Young
Mistake.
I have to drop this. Take solace in the fact that, no matter how annoying it got for you, you weren't inside my head. You have NO CLUE how annoying it really was....
mistake
Ya know MJ, you said that, what you learned from that is that, if pushed hard enough, I would get involved. So, in other words, you learned precisely squat. ANYONE would get involved if they were pushed hard enough.
(Just so you know, I've got a smile on my face whilst I type this)
I've asked you this before, and thus far, I don't think you have answered me on it. Do you ever regret sending me there? Be honest. You won't offend me if you say yes. I prefer brutal honesty over tact. Better I be momentarily upset by you being honest than you being upset for a long time by you not.
John, my regrets to running players never attach to particular worlds. Either your constant (fill in your preferred word here) about it makes me regret ever having agreed to run you at all as a player, or it doesn't. It never comes to whether I regret having sent you to a particular world. Good players play all worlds well; bad players are trouble in all worlds. The jury is still out on you, in part because you are a new player.
There was one play tester among Ed's groups who was the single clearest inspiration for the suicide rule. He would spend about three minutes in a world and then kill himself if it was not the world he wanted. Ed tried all kinds of things--returning him repeatedly to different places in the same world, putting him in ever worsening worlds every time he blew himself out of one, sending people to stop him--and he kept doing it. That is an annoying player. The referee gives thought and invests time into creating a world for adventure, and a player who does not give the world a chance on its own merits only makes his referee unwilling to put any work into those worlds. So, too, a player who constantly complains about anything that happens in his worlds, or who won't let go of something he did not like that happened a long time ago, gets put on the short list of people who should not be invited to the next game session.
I don't exclude people from these boards, so I make it a rule not to give any thought to whether I regret their presence here. I refuse to answer your question because I refuse to consider the answer. Were I to decide that I regretted letting you play, it would detrimentally impact my ability to run your games.
So don't ask.
And for the record, I and not smiling.
--M. J. Young
That made more sense MJ. Just believe me when I say that, if you could see this through my eyes, my behavior would be understood.
Two Posts
Ya know MJ, I can't shake this feeling that I have. It feels to me, in retrospect, that what happened to me there was "supposed" to go like that. It's not Deja vu, more like knowing that you're taking the correct path, even though you have no idea where you are or which way you're going. I've had this feeling quite a bit over the past couple of years. I'd like to think that it's God leading me, but who is to say? I find it very intriguing.
The clincher to it though is that, if this feeling is correct, then I am going to marry a woman that I can hardly stand to be around. (an old girlfriend from high school) It feels like I am "supposed" to marry her. The details aren't entirely clear to me, but if this "supposed to go that way" feeling is correct, then that's what will happen.
Well, then, best wishes.
For what it's worth, in the first few months that my wife and I knew each other, we made every effort to avoid each other. I even wound up going out with one of her friends for ten months very seriously because I thought this girl was after me. Who knew?
--M. J. Young
MJ, you told me once that my run through that world was the only time you had ever seen it run. The one and only time you had ever seen it run, it ended disastrously. However, not only did Adam do the "right" thing, you would do the exact same thing.
I think it's blatantly obvious that sending an MP to pick me up upon arrival was most certainly the wrong thing to do. At least if you wanted to have a good time playing. Yeah, you found out that I will get involved if pushed hard enough. That tells you exactly nothing. ANYONE would get involved if pushed hard enough. The most staunch non-involvement player would get involved if pushed hard enough. So, you learned absolutely nothing about what would get me involved.
I don't think it could be any more obvious that sending the MP to pick me up was most certainly the wrong thing to do. Maybe I was the one exception, but as they say "It's the exceptions that prove the rules."
That's an old saying - old enough that it doesn't mean what most people seem to think. "Prove," in that saying, is meant in a somewhat archaic sense meaning "test" or "challenge", not in its now-common meaning of "justify" or "establish as true." (Or so I'm told.) Thus, the original intent is that "the exception that proves the rule" is something that makes you question the rule's validity. The saying is not meant to imply that counter-evidence should paradoxically be assumed to instead be evidence.
That's an aside, though. I'm not sure how to respond to the rest of your post, because it's a repetition of things you've said before. I don't know what kind of response you expect, or even what sort of response you want.
Actually Scott, I was using the saying in the context you use. Prove should be replaced with "Tests" in modern usage, but I was well aware of the original meaning and was using it in that context.
I proved that it's not always a good idea to send an MP to pick the player up on arrival, testing the notion that it was.
As I've said many times, it's pretty much straight now. Just give me the occasional moment of pique.
And ya know what else? In the actual situation, knowing what I knew, I think a lot more people would be "Repeatedly TK pulsing the back of the MP's head." I was just the only player dumb enough to actually say so. I think more people would be doing it than you'd expect.
All right.
Scott, I edited whilst you were replying. I just wanted to make sure you saw it.
Roger.
Ya know what else though? As I've said, this was a psychotic episode for me. The episodes are based on memories. The way that I beat the psychotic episodes was by setting my computer to repeat the same phrase over and over and over. The phrases were things which countered the memories. I don't know how many hours I had to spend listening to some of them, but I'd bet some I listened to for weeks total before the episode completely stopped. It's a lot more than I care to explain, and probably a lot more than you would want to know. My point is though that, repeating the same thing over and over beats my psychotic episodes. This discussion, repeating the same thing over and over is what it took to beat the Pearl Harbor psychotic episode.
So, annoying as it was, it was nothing I haven't been doing since I started developing the therapy. Only difference is, it was all of you who had to repeat the same things over and over, instead of my computer. (It's another one of those "You'd have to be inside my head to understand" kinds of things)
I don't know that it ended disastrously. I think it went pretty well. You learned that if you're cocky in the use of your amazing-in-effect but still very much amateur abilities, you'll probably get hurt. You learned that it's not always easy to explain to indigs how you know what you know. Your character developed significantly during that time.The one and only time you had ever seen it run, it ended disastrously.
Yeah, you found out that I will get involved if pushed hard enough. That tells you exactly nothing. ANYONE would get involved if pushed hard enough. The most staunch non-involvement player would get involved if pushed hard enough. So, you learned absolutely nothing about what would get me involved.
Au contraire, mon ami! We did indeed learn something: we learned how hard was hard enough. That is valuable information.
--M. J. Young
Your character developed significantly during that time.
Yeah, he went from being cocky with cops to killing them on sight. I wonder if this game does that a lot. Takes otherwise decent people and turns them into killers. A game that turns Christians into cold-blooded murderers..... That can't possibly be good.
Two Posts
For what it's worth, in the first few months that my wife and I knew each other, we made every effort to avoid each other. I even wound up going out with one of her friends for ten months very seriously because I thought this girl was after me. Who knew?
What I was saying about the "supposed to go that way" feeling. The girl that I'm "supposed" to marry, her mother hates me with a passion. I remember thinking that the girl's mom would have to be dead before there could be any kind of relationship there. I just found out her mom has cancer. Strange how that works, isn't it?
Ya know, I just think you people have some really backasswards logic.
You put me into a situation to see what I would do. Then, when I'm never given the chance to do what I would do (leave) I'm the only one that has a problem with it. Well, then why in the hell did you put me there to see what I would do, if you never intended to let me do what I would do?
And don't give me that "You might have been able to leave if you hadn't crashed the jeep" BS either. I was put there 2 days before the attack. If I'm put there 2 days before the attack, it's fairly obvious that I wasn't going to spend an hour being questioned and then get released. If that was the intention, why put me there 2 days prior to the attack? A matter of hours before the attack would have been more than enough, if that was the intention. It was intended for me to stay there until the attack. So, I wasn't going anywhere.
When was I given the choice to NOT get involved? Since talking to the MP is more involved than I would have wanted to be, the answer to that question is NEVER!!!!!!!!! But, for some strange reason, I am the only person who has a problem with this. Why is that?
Then, when I'm not willing to commit cold-blooded murder, I wasn't forced into the story. Raise your hand if you think you could, at this moment, kill a cop in cold blood. I don't mean your Multiverser character, I mean YOU!!!!! (Sarcastic tone) But NOOOOO, I wasn't forced at all!!!!!!!!!! And again, I am the only person who has a problem with it.
You guys have some really skewed logic patterns, ya know that?
It's an occasional moment of pique. You think you're tired of them? Spend a week inside my head.
And ya know what else? Sometimes this makes complete sense, sometimes it doesn't. When I wrote the above, none of it made sense. 20 minutes later, it did. Right now, it doesn't. I bet an hour from now, it will all fall into place again. Then it will fall out of place.
When we're all in Heaven, I'm going to make you all spend time inside my head. Then you will no longer be mad that I dragged it out, you will be amazed at how civil I was. Of course, I'll probably be amazed at how civil you were.
It's just a moment of pique. In an hour, it will all make sense again. On Friday, the whole world will once again come back into focus for me. (At least that's the plan) Let me have the occasional moment of pique.