Ya know MJ. I bet you think this whole thing has been going on all this time because of the crash. Well, it hasn't. At the time of the crash, I was on a medication which was quite effective... at controlling the psychosis. Once I came off of it, the psychosis came back in full glory. This, being a psychotic episode, was blocked by the medication.
I honestly think I would still have been spazzing out about this, even if Adam said I rolled all failures on my TK pulses, and the MP never even knew I was trying that. Even if we got to the base in one piece, and the game was played as it was intended, I STILL would have been going on about this, once the medicine was removed.
(This is just my perception, and it is not to be argued anymore.)
My perception was that, sending the MP completely negated the question of "Would he get involved" because I WAS ALREADY involved when the MP got there. When I was on the medication, it wasn't a psychotic episode, so it didn't bother me. Once I came off the medication, it started to bother me. I think it would have no matter what happened. My perception STILL would have been that I was involved the minute the MP got there, so that negated your entire "Would he get involved" question.
I think I would have been going on and on about this, REGARDLESS of how the jeep ride turned out. Even if we got there in one piece. The medication was just preventing me from seeing it as I perceived it later.
So now you're thinking "Well, why didn't you stay on medication?" Which do you honestly think is better? A doctor-prescribed drug which offers (at best) temporary reduction of the psychosis, or all natural therapy which permanently reduces the psychosis? Honestly, which one is better? Yeah, I probably wouldn't have been going on about this, but it STILL would have been in the back of my mind, and would have just come forward the minute I came off the meds. Instead of it going on this long, it would have just waited a while, and still gone on as long. It would have happened even if the crash didn't happen. Now, the psychosis on it is reduced a lot. Therefore, the perception changed.
I honestly think this whole argument would have gone on no matter how the rest of the world played out.
Two Posts
Aside from this forum, I have maybe a half-dozen sessions of Twilight 2,000 on which to draw from my experience in gaming. That's it.
I remember there was a woman in our gaming group. She was easily the oldest and most experienced gamer there. Whenever she was performing an unspecified action, the first she said was "I look up, I look down, I look left, I look right." I asked her why she said that, and she said it was because she was used to playing with jerk referees who liked to pull dangerous things out of thin air.
The thing with that though is, The Character wouldn't be looking up, down, left and right. The Character was an army medical doctor. Why would a doctor be looking all around the room first thing? She was drawing on gaming experience.
In much the same way, I think an experienced gamer wouldn't state an action such as "I am going to be repeatedly TK pulsing the back of his head." Not because they wouldn't do it in real life, but because their gaming experience tells them not to. I think more people would be doing that in real life than would be doing it in the game.
Now you're thinking "So John, you're saying that people would risk their own lives pulling a stunt like that, but wouldn't risk the life of a gaming character?" Yes, exactly!!! As I've been trying to establish, you have gaming experience which tells you doing such a thing is a bad idea. You have no such real-life experience. I think people who are cautious as gamers wouldn't be nearly so in a real-life setting. They have the gaming experience on which to draw. No such real-life experience exists. I'll tell you right now, even though I could see myself doing that in real life, if I had known Adam was going to roll for it, I never would have done it.
I know, it seems like a contradiction. However, it's like I said. Gaming experience VS real-life experience.
Thing one.
- I think we've just managed to get the question misstated. We were not really asking, "Will John get involved." We were actually asking, "How hard will John fight to avoid becoming involved."
I think that if you accept that as the question, you can see that it would have been quite appropriate for the MP to be able to call a brigade of reinforcements had you resisted him. I don't know whether Adam would have attempted such a thing, but the point was to try to force you to become involved and see whether you would resist that.
So that worked.
Thing two.
- In one of C. J. Henderson's books, his hero needs reinforcements to go up against a Cthulu-like monster from another dimension. He calls upon gamers to do the job. He explains to his regular associates that these people have already imagined this battle dozens of times, and they aren't going to freeze when they see the horrors from another dimension coming at them because they've practiced what to do.
Now, whether it's appropriate for a military medic to exercise caution when entering an unfamiliar or unsecured area, I can't say with certainty. Most military and police personnel are trained in very specific personal safety procedures when they enter potentially dangerous situations, and that would include medics, and that would include many of the situations under the category you suggest. Just as we see police and similar professionals on television entering with guns drawn, giving each other cover, checking each potential hiding place as they move, so too I can see a professional military medic looking in each pertinent direction when he or she enters a potentially dangerous situation--and I can see those pertinent directions including up and down.
For me, though, I would get a file card and write on it:
Standard Entry Safety Protocol
As character passes into a room or unsecured area, he does a visual sweep of the room, including checking the floor in front of him and the ceiling and wall above him. He then focuses on any abnormality discovered in this sweep to identify it.
I would give a copy of that to the referee and keep one for myself, and whenever I went through a door I would say "Standard Entry Safety Protocol", and trust that the referee knew that I was doing exactly what the card said. It streamlines play; more than that, it makes the practice a routine, setting the tone for the character's general conduct.
--M. J. Young
"How hard will John fight to avoid becoming involved."
And in your attempt to ask the question, you effectively changed the answer.
I wouldn't kill an MP
Now I would.
I wouldn't die in the attack.
Now I would.
So, in your misguided attempt to get the question asked, you changed the answer. So, you still learned nothing about me, you just changed who I was.
Or maybe we helped you discover who you really are. Some people would have killed an MP to escape; some would have died in the attack. You explored not doing those things, and now have decided that's not who you are, and in the future you will respond differently.
--M. J. Young
No, I think what it did was open my eyes to the fact that I am no longer obligated to obey the laws of the land, since the land will be different everywhere. If I have no laws, then I can't be committing crimes, now can I?
Two Posts
And yes, I'm certain some people would kill the MP. However, how many people would kill the MP on their second verse? Unless their first verse is into Why Spy or something where they HAVE to kill people, most folks have never done that before. Committing cold-blooded murder doesn't normally come easy to most folks. It usually takes a catalyst for them to realize they're even capable of such an act. What I got there was the catalyst. Now, if it has a badge, the badge becomes a bulls-eye.
If you believe that being taken into custody could mean life imprisonment or worse, there's an argument to be made that the murder isn't cold-blooded.
As an aside, I doubt my character will ever reach a point where he would kill in that situation or any similar situation, law or no law.
As an aside, I doubt my character will ever reach a point where he would kill in that situation or any similar situation, law or no law.
Part of me is surprised I didn't kill the MP. (We're talking about a less than 1% part of me though) I didn't like police before I versed. I was still wired to believe that I have to obey the laws of the land. That completely shattered that belief.
I thing is though, I don't want to turn into Bob Thomas or somebody either. All I do have to say with any certainty though is I feel really sorry for the next cop who tries to arrest my character.
And, going in stride with the above posting, here's something that I find incredibly (Incredibly what? I don't know. Incredibly something) about this game.
I had all those guns. When I got stopped by the MP, I had an assault rifle in my hands, and a 9mm pistol on my hip. I could have outmatched that MP and 4 of his buddies just with what I had on me. So why did I set the guns down and get taken into custody? Because, prior to that point, I believed in killing for self-defense. If I had felt that I was defending myself, I would have dropped the MP in a heartbeat. There's a big difference between self-defense and cold-blooded murder.
This is why I kept saying that, had I known where I was ahead of time, I wouldn't have been taken into custody. If I knew where I was, then tried to leave peacefully, THEN they came after me, it would have been self-defense to open fire on them.
I'm no longer saying I should have been allowed to just walk away freely, what I AM saying is that I should have been told where I was BEFORE I had an MP shove a gun in my face.
What you successfully did there was take a guy who believed in murder for self-defense and turned him into a cold-blooded killer. I hope you're proud of that.
Then, I would have been appalled by the idea of taking a human life in cold-blood. Now, I am appalled that I DIDN'T take a human life in cold-blood. Good job MJ. You've designed a game that turns normal men into murderers.....
EDIT And just so you know, the above is said with the single most sarcastic tone of voice you have ever heard in your entire life. Reread it with a sarcastic tone.
Three Posts
Of course, as Colonel Trautman said in Rambo 2 (Paraphrasing) "We didn't make you the man you are. He was always there. We just removed the loose pieces" My character was always a killer. This game just opened my eyes to it.
Lots-o-posts (Like I keep saying, to you this is pointless, to me it is confusing)
You saying that I was forming a non-involvement philosophy actually added to it. I think historical worlds are a very bad place to test that aspect of a player's personallity, really. To offer an example:
Pearl Harbor, I let the bombs fall and die in the attack. MJ says "He really WON'T get involved"
Next world, you put me a week before The Battle of Little Big Horn, (hint hint) and expect me to stay out of it.
My response? Join forces with the Indians (assuming they don't kill me for being white) I lead their defense against Custer. AK-47 fire in concert with arrows.... After that, teach them boxing, teach them blacksmithing, teach them to make iron knives, iron crossbows, maybe even muskets. By the time it's over, the Indians are a force to be reckoned with, and instead of begging for their own land, they do succeed in driving the white man out of America.
And you thought I wouldn't get involved.....
What I find interesting here is that you would not kill the MP because it would be against the laws of the land, and now you would kill the MP because you do not feel obligated to obey the laws of the land.
I would not in that situation have killed the MP; Scott says the same thing. I think that I understand Scott well enough to say that his reason is much like mine: we do not not kill people because it is illegal, but because it is immoral. If it were perfectly legal to kill people, or some particular group of people, we still would not do so (except perhaps in extremely narrowly defined circumstances--I'm told that the Japanese had decided not to invade the West Coast of the United States because they knew that most Americans had their own guns, and I can certainly see killing an enemy invader).
There is a sort of maturing process in moral thought. It starts with "If I do this, I will be punished." It advances through such stages as "This is wrong so I won't do it" and "I don't want others to do this to me, so I will not do it to others" and "Doing what harms others harms me at least as much". You've revealed a level of "moral maturity" in which what matters is rules and punishment. Scott has revealed a level of moral maturity in which what matters is doing right for his own sake.
But as you've admitted, we did not make you a killer. Rather, we forced you to examine your own basis for morality, and you found it inadequate and so rejected it. That does not mean that there does not exist an adequate basis for morality, only that you didn't have one.
And perhaps as play continues you might find yourself in circumstances where you discover one.
I had really wanted to drop you into the sprite scenario that I'm using for Maxx, but it's not going to happen I'm afraid, since he's using it and it's not something I really can reuse for someone who already knows it. Too bad, really, as it is one that puts forward some genuine moral conundrums which might have been of value to you.
--M. J. Young
I had really wanted to drop you into the sprite scenario that I'm using for Maxx, but it's not going to happen I'm afraid, since he's using it and it's not something I really can reuse for someone who already knows it. Too bad, really, as it is one that puts forward some genuine moral conundrums which might have been of value to you.
MJ, I never read anyone else's game. I think it's an invasion of privacy of sorts. I glanced at it a few times, just to see about the development of the baby, but I know next to nothing about it, except that it does involve sprites.
In other words, no reason to NOT drop me into it. I know pretty much the same about it now as I did before. I don't read other's games, and I'm not going to start now.
Two Posts
I don't really even read other people's Behind the Screens either. Just my own. Unless something catches my attention about it. To read someone else's game would make it too tempting to use OOC knowledge (such as a skill I would never think of). I think it's an invasion of privacy. Go ahead, send me to the land of the clear, carbonated beverage (Sprite!!!!) I'm still unbiased.
That would be really cool, BTW. When I was a kid, I used to read about fairies. I used to imagine myself as an arms dealer in a fairy civil war. (Oh the fantasies you come up with when you're 10....) Go ahead and put me there.
Sorry, John--the very fact that you know that someone zygoted in as a sprite invalidates the option.
But I'll think of something, eventually, I'm pretty sure.
Oh, and if you want to learn to run this game, it will help to read the other threads and posts. I'm actually not that worried about players getting ideas from each other's games, particularly if they become skills learned at need. That is, if you see that Maxx figured out how to hear sound with his hands (which he hasn't done yet) and you say that would be cool I think I'll try that, that's not really good; but if you come into a situation in which it would be really helpful to be able to hear sound with your hands (I don't know, maybe to hear what someone is saying on the other side of a door without pressing your ear to it) and you remember that Maxx did it (or tried to do it), I have no problem with you saying that you're going to try that trick of picking up sound through your fingers pressed against the door. You don't get an example for it (because you never actually saw Maxx do it), but the fact that you think something someone else tried will work for you in a particular situation is sufficient for me.
If nothing else, those are the times when all those bits of information you're picking up from movies and books and fireside stories and other media as a character can be cited for ideas that actually come from movies and books and fireside stories and other game threads and other media as a player.
--M. J. Young
MJ, I'm still trying to get a handle on your logic. A player doesn't want to get involved fighting mutant insects when he has free reign to do so, so your solution to this is to force him into a scenario where not getting involved would be almost impossible? Isn't that like asking your newborn son to run a marathon right after he first learns how to walk? Shouldn't you have eased into that a little? A scenario where not getting involved is easier? It would be next to impossible to not get involved in Pearl Harbor when an MP shoves a gun in your face.
The problem here is you and MJ have a different idea of what 'not getting involved is'. I think MJ is saying that non-involvement is a commitment to never interfere in the natural course of events, meaning you would LET the MP do what he wants with you. You would never hurt an indig for any reason, nor would you help them.
Your idea seems to be more like 'Don't get involved unless you are forced to do so'. You see, you had many choices of what to do, but had you been committed to not getting involved, you would have not told them about the impending attack, and you wouldn't have hassled the MP.
I still think historical worlds are a terrible place to test that. All it would tell you is that I wouldn't get involved in that particular event. Any number of other historical worlds, I'd dive in headfirst.
(Doing Therapy)
Two Posts
It suddenly occurs to me that if I were truly committed to non-involvement, I would have emptied the MAK 90 into the MP. That way, I'm damn sure NOT going to get involved!!!!!!!
(Doing Therapy)
Multiple Posts
MJ, this should make you laugh....
I'm watching that show Dinosaurs on DVD. Earl and his *Hitler Woman, Ethyl, are driving on a 6 hour road trip. Ethyl is in the back seat, and keeps hitting Earl in the head with her cane. It was kind of funny to me (I'm laughing out loud) that I am, in fact, NOT the only idiot who pokes at the driver of a car in which they are secured.
*(Anagram of Mother-in-law)
(Doing Therapy)
You want to know what this is like for me? I wake up in the morning, and I scream "WHEN WAS I GIVEN THE CHOICE TO NOT GET INVOLVED??????????" Or maybe "YES GOD-DAMMIT, I WAS TOO FORCED INTO THE STORY!!!!!!" It won't get out of my head.
I understood having an MP come up on me in the situation, until you told me you wanted to see if I would get involved. Well, when was I allowed to NOT get involved? Please note: Not Getting Involved would be walking away and pretending like I was never there. In my mind, the way to see if I would get involved would be drop me right in front of a sign that says "Pearl Harbor" and see if I stay or leave. "Well, he left. He must not want to get involved. My question has been answered." In my mind, that's the way it should have gone down. Then I wouldn't have been involved, and no one could argue it.
Not arguing, no reason to get upset by it. I'd appreciate some thoughts, but it's not arguing so much as it is just expressing my frustration. Trying to make you understand it.
To continue from the previous post, and probably half of the players would do exactly that, and you would learn precisely squat about them. I understand it. I really do. It just won't get out of my head. Have you ever had something so deeply inside your head that it is consistently your first thought on waking up in the morning? This has been consistently my thought upon waking up for years. I mean literally, I wake up, and within minutes, I'm grousing to myself about how I was too forced into the story, and how I was too forced to get involved. (Since interacting with the MP is more involved than I would have chosen to get, in my mind, that point is inarguable) I was too forced to get involved, since I was forced to interact with the MP. In my mind, this is the way it plays out.
It's not arguing, it's more like a battle inside my head. The rational side that understands now what happened, and the irrational that still insists I should have been allowed to just walk away.
No matter how you define it, I was involved by going to the base. Whether I warn them of the attack is beside the point. I AM INVOLVED!!!!!!! In my mind, that's the way it plays out. NOT getting involved would be walking away. No one saw me, no one knows I was there, so, I am in no way involved. To me, that would be the ONLY thing that meant I wasn't involved. It won't get out of my head.
And besides that, where did you get the idea that I was "committed to non-involvement"? Because I didn't want to help some people clean up a mess that they made? (B Movie Monster World). You've seen how filthy my apartment was. Would you come and help me clean it? No? Why Not? It must be because you're committed to non-involvement, and has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that you have no interest whatsoever in performing such a task.
If I don't warn them at Pearl Harbor, it must be because I'm committed to non-involvement, and have nothing to do with the fact that I don't want to disrupt the single most important historical event of the 20th century.
Dancing Princess. I didn't go to the castle. It must be because I'm committed to non-involvement, and not because I don't want to go out of my way to compete with God knows how many other people to help some spoiled, rich girls who can't sleep.
Let me know when I make my point.....
This is just a note to myself to explain to myself that I don't remember the content of the three preceding posts because I did not do more than skim them briefly. I am satisfied that they have no content that should require more of my time than that.
--M. J. Young
Just answer me one question MJ. Have you ever had something in your head so deeply that it was consistently your first thought on waking up every day of every morning? If you have, then you have some idea of what this is like for me.
You spend at most 24 minutes dealing with this on the board. I spend 24 hours a day dealing with it. I wish I could be as lucky as you are....
Edit, and yes, I've said all this before. That's how the therapy works. It's getting there.
(Doing Therapy)
MJ, take the time to actually read this, it will be worth it, I think.
This behavior is mirroring something that happened when I was 19. It was caused by exactly the same sort of thing, too. A completely idiot, rookie mistake. I'll spare you the details, but I groused to one manager at work about it for about a year and a half. Then, it didn't get out of my head, but only stayed on the back burner for about another 8 or 9 years, before it finally broke, and I figured it all out. This is exactly that same behavior. This is mirroring that psychotic episode, in every detail.
(Doing Therapy)
Ya know, I just realized. I can actually think clearly about this for the first time in three years. It's no longer my first thought on waking up in the morning. I don't fly off the handle about it nearly as bad as I used to.
You think three years is bad? It took me THIRTEEN years to get my worst psychotic episode under control......