Back in September of 1979, I was wandering aimlessly on the third evening since my family had helped move me into the dorms at Syracuse University. I heard music coming from the quad, and drifted over. A band with a female lead singer was playing AMAZING rock and roll, so I sat down at the periphery and listened. I caught the name of the singer after a few more songs, and a week later, bought her self named debut album at a local campus record store.
Along with the first two albums by The Cars, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' DAMN THE TORPEDOES, Blue Oyster Cult's SECRET TREATIES and AGENTS OF FORTUNE, and Carole King's TAPESTRY, that self titled debut album, CAROLYNE MAS, became a vital and permanent part of the musical backdrop of my adulthood. I've always thought it was a great pity that Carolyne Mas never caught on; she had a fantastic voice, was a wonderful guitar player, and a terrific songwriter. A few years later I managed to find her third album and snatched that up, too. It wasn't as good as the first, but it still had a lot of really solid tunes on it.
Fast forward to last summer -- I came across an article online about Carolyne Mas, about how she'd never quite made it in rock and roll and was currently, in her early 50s, running a shelter for abandoned animals in Florida. I put up a blog entry lamenting the unfairness of a world in which hack non creative types become incredibly successful while genuinely talented artists languish as unknowns.
Fast forward again to a few weeks ago, when that blog entry got its first comment... from Carolyne Mas. She thanked me for the entry, said she loved my writing style, and suggested I help her write her biography.
That began an email correspondence, the latest installment of which is below (in response to a note I sent on Monday, asking if she was doing okay, as I knew from a phone call on Friday she was heading into a rough weekend):
"We're not okay...I have been desperately trying to raise money. I have no money for cat food, dog food, and now people food. No matter how many times I post my plea on FB or MySpace...we are all on the verge of starvation. I am trying to make sure my mother and my son have something to eat. There is a place that gives free meals on Sundays, so we will be able to eat then, all of us, if we can get the gas to get there. I am worried about the cats and dogs, too.
I have sent this letter to all the production and publishing big shots I have known, who are all wealthy, with no response. When you are poor, no one wants anything to do with you. It's a sick world, especially the entertainment business...if you cannot serve them in some way, you are invisible.
Here is a link to my letter...
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/note.php?note_id=90734634069&id=637561082&ref=mf]http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/note.php?note_id=90734634069&id=637561082&ref=mf
Hope I can hang on long enough for you to finish this...
Love, Carolyne"
This is not a joke or a hoax. This is a real person who is really at the end of her rope and has no idea where else she is going to turn, or how she's going to eat, or feed her husband, or the hundreds of abandoned animals in her care, past this Sunday, assuming they manage to get to a food bank and the food bank actually has any food.
I don't know this woman at all well, but I believe her to be one of the genuinely good people in this world, as well as an enormously talented performing artist, and while there is little to nothing I can do for her, or my family can do for her, at this distance and given our own financial situation, still, I can reach out on the Internet, and I am doing so.
If you check out this link and scroll down a little, you will find a lot of information about Carolyne's life and career and current undertakings and desperate situation, and you will also find a PayPal link. I'm sure Carolyne will be deeply grateful for any contributions whatsoever that may come in. As will I, for whatever that may be worth.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
These are a few of my least favorite things...
...a bunch of blog posts in a row with no comments.
It's tough to stay motivated.
It's tough to stay motivated.
Friday, July 03, 2009
It's just a jump to the left
Okay. So, I started a new job on Monday, and I could do a whole blog about what I've learned regarding this job in the last four days, but the economics of our day to day family life demand that I not get fired, so I will abstain. Suffice to say, it's a call center, and when I complete my classroom training in another three weeks, I'll be taking calls from disgruntled and stupid customers at horrifying hours of the day and night. You can review my old blog entries made while working in other call centers for anything further you might need; nothing is different about this job, except in the ways that this job is worse than those I've held previously.
I'm pretty much over LouisvilleRPG.net, and I'll tell you why.
The latest thing was, I had set up this scenario to run for my Monday night gaming group using the SAVAGE WORLDS RPG system. SAVAGE WORLDS is extremely simple minded and unrealistic and I'm not crazy about how several of its essential mechanisms work, but the system's slogan is "Fast, Furious, Fun!" and that, at least, is accurate. I would never use the system for any kind of serious campaign, but for different, more shallow adventures, it's pretty workable. So I came up with this scenario and I was really psyched to run it, as it's set in 1938 and features larger than life pulp hero/villain archetypes, which is a subgenre I've loved since I was a kid reading DOC SAVAGE paperbacks at my babysitter's house. I was really looking forward to it, it was going to be a lot of fun.
But those hopes began to die when I started my new job.
See, I'd known that after six weeks of training, I'd have to bid on a shift and chances are that, having no seniority, I'd end up with one nobody else wanted, meaning, I'd be working nights. My Monday night gaming group ran on, well, Monday nights, so it seemed pretty certain that once six weeks went by, I'd no longer be able to game with those guys, but that was okay, as the scenario I'd come up with was designed to run maybe four sessions at most. So all was cool. Yes, it seemed likely that after training was over, I'd have to drop out of the Monday night group indefinitely, but at least I'd go out with a bang.
Now, the path to getting my new job was long and arduous and required several phone conversations/interviews with various HR people and supervisors, as well as a drug screen and a background check, over the course of several months. During these contacts, I was told repeatedly by several different people that for training, we'd be working Monday through Friday, 8 to 5. After training, we'd have to bid on shifts and most likely would start out working at night, as very few people want to work at night and that's what we'd get stuck with... a very familiar dynamic to me from past call centers. But for the first six weeks, Monday through Friday, 8 to 5.
Which worked well with our Monday game group, as it met from 6 to 10. Four hours isn't much to run an RPG in, and I wouldn't have wanted to try running any kind of RPG for much less than four hours a session, but getting out of work at 5 would leave me ample time to make a 6 o'clock start time.
So I thought, anyway.
But Nate's going on vacation next week, so that was one Monday we weren't going to have. Which was no problem, as my scenario was only supposed to run 4 sessions, and I still had 5 weeks available for sessions before training concluded and I had to quit the group. So it was still going to be cool and I was still totally psyched.
But then, one of the other guys (he doesn't like his real name used on the internet, on the sight he goes by Cruel Despot, so I'll call him CD) announced he'd be out for a week in there, too... not the same week Nate was going to be out, but a different one.
So that dropped my six weeks of availability down to 4. But I could still do it, no problem. Gonna be fun, totally psyched...
So then Nate found out on a Thursday that the following Monday (last Monday, the 29th of June) he was going to have to go out of town for work and wouldn't be around. Fuck. Okay. At first I figured we just weren't going to get to play that week, which sucked, and I was sad and disappointed. But then, everyone in the group -- CD, another guy named Chris, and Nate -- agreed to do it on Wednesday night instead. Okay. Going to be cool, totally psyched...
Then at work, first day, right out of the box, we were informed that our fifth and sixth weeks of training we'd be working 2 pm to 11 pm, instead of 8 to 5. Which meant suddenly I'd have to quit the Monday group two weeks earlier than I'd thought. So I started sending emails on my break again, and that dialogue went something like this:
ME: I only have four weeks until I start working evenings. Two weeks of those we can't play. Suggestions?
CD: Run it anyway as a one shot, or for two sessions. I want to play.
NATE: Hell to the yeah.
CHRIS: Whatever, dudes.
So... okay. I could cut back, I could streamline, I could cram. I could run the scenario for one or two sessions. I could make that work. And I was incredibly psyched to run. Even comopressed, it was going to be SO much fun. I just love Golden Age pulp.
So there were two other guys who were kinda sorta thinking of joining the Monday night group, which as I have noted, met from 6 to 10 on Mondays. I'd been hoping they'd both play in the scenario, as 5 player characters would be better than 3. One of them, whom I knew only by his board sig, ElSanto, had sent me a few emails full of excellent ideas for Golden Age type pulp heroic player characters. So I was really hoping he'd be able to play on Wednesday.
Another, a guy named Conner, I hadn't heard a word from. But after the run had to be pushed from Monday to Wednesday, I heard from ElSanto... he was sorry, but the only night he could make it was Monday. Goddamit. Okay, that was disappointing.
Then I heard from the other guy. He wasn't really interested in the 1930s or 'the whole pulp thing', as he put it. So he wasn't going to play, either. Bummer. Oh, well. Anybody who doesn't like Golden Age Pulp is a waste of space and organized protoplasm, anyway, so... whatever.
But I still had three players for Wednesday, and was totally psyched. It was going to be SO cool. I was really looking forward to it.
So then at the end of our first day, after I'd made all these adjustments and absorbed all of these changes, our trainer mentioned that she was changing training hours from 8 to 5 to 9 to 6.
That dialogue went like this:
TRAINER: Did they tell all of you you'd be working from 8 to 5 for the first four weeks of training?
CLASS: Yes. Over and over again.
TRAINER: I'm going to change that just a little, to 9 to 6. I really think it will help you to get a little later start in the morning. You'll be more awake.
ME: You fucking bitch. I will kill you, I will skin you, I will suck the marrow from your bones, tan your filthy hide and make it into taut, supple drumheads that I may beat out the rhythms of my rage with the long and weighty lengths of your femurs, which will feel so very right and comfortable in my vengeful hands.
Or at least, that's how it went in my mind.
(Should the human race become telepathic, I will find it impossible to remain employed.)
So, I sent emails out again. Did people still want to try to run this thing, if I couldn't be there until 6:30, quarter of 7? I hated losing any time at all from such a narrow, finite window. But I only had two potential sessions left to run this thing where a reasonably sized group could get there, and I really wanted to run it, despite what seemed to be an absolute determination on the part of God to do everything short of hitting the Earth with a planet killing meteor to stop me doing so.
That went like this:
ME: Uh, so, my hours just got changed and I'm working until 6 and I probably can't get there until like 6:30, quarter of 7. I hate that. Do people still want to play?
CD: I'm cool.
NATE: Totally.
CHRIS: Uh... I forgot to tell you guys but like two months ago I promised my girlfriend I'd do something with her and her family on Wednesday and she just reminded me so, uh, too bad, so sad.
ME: You fucking bitch. I will kill you, I will skin you, I will suck the marrow from your bones, tan your filthy hide and make it into taut, supple drumheads that I may beat out the rhythms of my rage with the long and weighty lengths of your femurs, which will feel so very right and comfortable in my vengeful hands.
Okay, I didn't really say it, or even type it, that time, either, but I badly, badly wanted to.
It was especially exasperating, as I'd gone to great efforts to attend a couple of RPG sessions that Chris had GMed, the previous week. But... whatever, dude. Skin you later.
At this point, I just gave up, because it seems obvious that if I persist in this folly, God is going to send a plague of boils or a voracious and unstoppable onslaught of hideous mutated giant boll weevils or some such shit to keep me from ever running this scenario.
Which makes me sad. And frustrated.
Just to add further general aggravation to the situation, it appears that apparently by some bizarre alchemy, this complete collapse of my planned scenario has transmuted itself into the complete collapse of the Monday night gaming group. Those two guys who were going to join the group? They decided to start their own Monday night group instead. Chris and CD? They've joined the new Monday night group, abandoning our previous one.
It's like, I get a job where I'll have to work evenings, and everything falls apart all around me.
I had no idea I was such an essential person.
Anyway. By itself that wouldn't have been enough to sour me on the RPG site, but, well, it's been coming for awhile, and this is just that fabled final straw. Beyond all the crap I've already reported above and in previous entries, well, I'm just tired of the idiocy and, more importantly, the hypocrisy, that is redolent on the site. What do I mean? Well... listen, O Prince, as I weave for you the tales:
A while back, I happened to casually mention in a thread on the site a particular incident that had occurred in my RPG back in the 90s, in Syracuse. I thought it was funny, and that others would find it amusing. As nearly always happens, I vastly overestimated the intelligence, maturity, open mindedness, and wisdom of my fellow gamers, especially those at LouisvilleRPG.net. But let me tell you this anecdote as I told it to them:
The group of player characters in my game at the time had broken into a wizard's lair and stolen several valuable items. One of the most valuable they couldn't sell in Ona Tengu (the area where they were) because it was powered by a kind of magic that was very illegal there (necromancy) and they would have been executed if anyone had suspected they had such a thing.
So they had booked passage on a ship to a less lawful realm, but it didn't leave until the next morning. They were pretty sure the local underworld was aware they had the item, and would try to kill them and get it. So they rented an inn room, and took turns sitting up on watch in the hallway outside the inn room door. (In a previous scenario, a different group of characters played by the same guys had been in a similar situation, and they'd stood watch inside the inn room, and an assassin had snuck up to the door and pumped the room full of toxic gas through the keyhole. So this time, they posted their guard outside the door, to preclude that.)
So I was going to have the local crimelord send an attractive bimbo to try and lure the PC guarding the door away.
Naturally, the players were going to be suspicious of any kind of approach... players generally know when an encounter or occurrence is random or planned, based on what kind of dice the GM has them roll. So they were suspicious of anything that happened, especially if they hadn't rolled a random encounter. (Some GMs roll such things behind their DM screen, specifically so that players won't have this kind of information, but I make rolls like this where people can see them, so they know I'm not cheating. It's just how I DM.)
Now, what the players were doing in this instance is called metagaming... playing your character with knowledge that only the player has, usually based on a game mechanic the character has no idea exists... and I have rules to deal with it. There are skills in my RPG that allow characters to Persuade each other to do things, even if the player of those characters knows better and does not want their character to do those things.
So I was going to have a cute dancer or tavern servant or something go down the hall and make a Sex Appeal roll on whoever was standing guard. The player would be pretty sure it was a trick, given the lack of a random encounter roll... they'd be fairly certain this was an event planned by the GM, and therefore, part of some scheme... but if the non player character succeeded at the skill roll vs the player character's Willpower, then it wouldn't matter what the player suspected... the PC would be successfully seduced and removed from position.
At the last second, it occurred to me that in my RPG setting, there is no homosexuality taboo and nearly everyone is bisexual... so it could just as easily be a male cute young thang as a female assigned to the seduction/distraction task. Certainly, it would never occur to the local crimelord that he needed to specifically send a woman to do the job. So I told the player whose character was on guard (his name was Chris) to roll a d6. He said "What do I want?" and I said, "Well, knowing you, probably an odd number". He rolled a 4. So the cute young thang set to seduce the big burly male mercenary was, indeed, male.
In my RPG setting, this wouldn't make any difference, which was why I did it... to underscore that the world my players were gaming in was not our world, but an entirely different reality, and their player characters, having been raised in that world, would have somewhat different values, morals, and taboos than the players themselves did.
So this is how that went:
ME: So you see this incredibly sexy inn servant coming up the stairs... you saw this same NPC serving drinks in the bar downstairs when you came in. Long reddish blonde hair, silky soft, beautifully applied make up, young,soft skin the color of coffee with cream, big brown eyes... you smell just a hint of a very pleasant, musky perfume mingled with a very sexy natural body scent as this sexy thing sways past you in the hall, carrying a tray of drinks to one of the rooms further down. You get a wink and a smile as you watch the NPC go by with the tray. A few minutes later, this same server comes back out and walks back down the hall, and pauses a few yards away from you and says "Gods, I hate this shift. What are you still doing up?"
CHRIS: Uh... I ignore her.
ME: Ignore beauty such as this? Roll 2d6 and add 2.
CHRIS: Goddamit... okay. Erg. 9.
KENNY: Dude, you are totally into her.
ME: In character, I don't think your character would just ignore her.
CHRIS: I want a Willpower roll.
ME: Okay... roll. (rolls dice) I have a 19 total.
CHRIS: I can beat that... (rolls dice) Fuck. A 12. Okay, I'll say "Well, I'm keeping watch and I need to concentrate so I'll talk to you later."
ME: Okay. You see a disappointed pout come to the NPC's lovely features. "Look," that lovely voice says, dropping to a whisper, "it's dead downstairs; the barkeep won't notice if I don't come back for a little while. This room across the way is empty... wanna slip into it with me for a quickie?"
KENNY: Dude, don't do it!
NATE: She's going to make a Sex Appeal roll and I'll bet she's got this huge rating.
SCOTT: It's a good thing it's not my watch or I'd already be there. She wouldn't even have to roll on me.
KENNY: Dude, you're a horn dog.
NATE: You'd get us all killed.
CHRIS: I tell her I can't, really, but I'm flattered.
ME: Well, your character knows he SHOULD say that, but I'm not sure he actually can. Roll and add to your Willpower.
CHRIS: Goddamit. (rolls dice) A 23.
ME: (rolls dice) Yeah, but I have a real good rating... 29. Your character totally wants to go.
CHRIS: Goddamit, goddamit! I know this is a total set up from the Kinship!
ME: Your character goes off with the good looking young waiter, and I'm sure has a great time...
NATE: Wait. 'Waiter'?
SCOTT: It's a guy?
ME: Well, I've told you guys before, there is no homosexuality taboo on the River, so your characters wouldn't care. It's not our world.
CHRIS: What the fuck...? It's a GUY?
ME: It wouldn't make any difference to your character, Chris...
KENNY: Dude! It's a DUDE! You're totally going to bone a DUDE! Your character is a fag!
SCOTT: {coughs into hand} Homo!
NATE AND KENNY: (playing air guitar) Lolaaaaa... Lo Lo Lo Lo Lolaaaaaa... Lo lo lo lo lo Lolaaaaaa...
CHRIS: (yelling) That is so totally stupid my character is not gay I would totally never play a gay character I would never even let a guy get close to me that is so fucking bogus I AM TOTALLY NOT QUEER THAT IS SO UNFAIR YOU CAN'T DO THAT...
So I told this story on the site. I mean, it's fifteen years later, right? People are more enlightened now. Everyone would see how funny the whole thing was.
Or so I, entirely erroneously, presumed.
You would have thought I'd confessed to killing someone's kid.
IDIOT 1: You can't make people be gay. That's crazy. Players should have total control of their characters, especially something as important as whether they're gay or not.
ME: It.. okay, in my rpg setting, the kind of homosexuality taboo we take for granted in our world does not exist. People can be attracted to other people regardless of gender. I'm not 'making' anyone be gay, it's simply that my culture does not place enormous social pressure on all its members from birth to only behave in a heterosexual manner.
IDIOT 2: You are totally overestimating the impact of culture on sexuality. People are born straight or gay. And all my characters were born totally straight. Totally.
ME: Look, in most RPGs, characters are pagan, right? You don't get a choice in that. The background culture worships many gods, so, so do your characters. You don't feel offended or outraged that your character is going to worship some weird made up deity from a Monster Manual because that's what people do in the world where he grew up.
IDIOT 3: That's not the same, being gay or straight is totally different from that, and all my characters are straight. The world they are born in has nothing to do with it.
IDIOT 4: Also, you can't just make somebody's character do something they don't want to. Even if it was a girl trying to lure me away, I should get to decide if I go or not.
ME: So, if some good looking NPC makes a Sex Appeal roll on you, and you fail a Willpower check, there should be no consequences?
IDIOT 5: The player decides what his character does. Unless you're using a mind control spell or something. Sure she might be hot but my character might think about the good of the mission and how the party needs him and decide not to go with her. Or maybe my character is married or just isn't in the mood to have sex right then. It's up to me, not you.
IDIOT 2: Also, my character isn't gay. I would never sleep with a man under any circumstances and neither would any of my characters.
ME: So, the player always controls the character, even if the behavior is out of character?
IDIOT 1: It isn't out of character. My character might decide to go with the chick, but he might not. It depends. I'd play my character in character. But only I get to decide what that is.
IDIOT 3: And he would never under any circumstances be gay. That's final.
This "how dare I make anyone be GAY" thing is, in my opinion, beneath contempt... it's nothing but homophobia, which was made pretty clear in the succeeding posts in the thread. The more the members of this particular posse protested that they had nothing against gay guys, it's just that THEY weren't gay, and weren't interested in roleplaying gay characters, and none of their characters should ever be gay, or would ever be gay, under any circumstances, the clearer it became that these were some deeply homophobic motherfuckers, at least some of which were probably repressing their own particular impulses and fantasies to an entirely unhealthy extent. And I have no time for that idiocy, any more than I had time for the one player who rolled up a member of a dark skinned race in my game and didn't want to play him, because he just wasn't comfortable if his PC wasn't a white guy, like him.
So all that soured me on the site, too. But the last straw was an incident that occurred just last week.
As background, let me take you back to the height of the Doc Nebula Flame Wars. This was a period when most of the site was up in arms at me, because I do not like Dungeons and Dragons, I think it's an incredibly stupid fucking game system, and I also think that adults who play Dungeons and Dragons instead of using any of a hundred or more better game systems, or making up their own, are kind of retarded, or, at the very least, have no idea what roleplaying actually is, and are apparently unwilling to learn. And I'd said so, repeatedly, on the site.
Now, this is a site devoted to roleplaying games, and one where supposedly, freedom of expression is cherished and championed. However, apparently one of the big unwritten taboos of the site was and remains, Thou Shalt Not Talk Shit About D&D Because We Worship It Beyond All Sense or Reason. D&D is a childish system, a simple minded system, an unrealistic system, a brainless, dumbass, fucked up and retarded system, and this is inarguable to anyone who has ever roleplayed using it and who has more than four functional brain cells. Everybody I knew who was serious about roleplaying started out with one of the various D&D versions, eventually (usually quickly) became disgusted with its limitations, and moved on to more sophisticated systems allowing greater depth and breadth of roleplaying.
And, in point of fact, many of the people on the site made similarly disparaging remarks about D&D, although they still played it. And many site members also insulted each other with great regularity. However, apparently, my derisive comments regarding D&D, and those who played it irregardless of its obvious limitations and built in stupidities, were intolerable. And so, the flame wars raged.
So at one point, I posted an essay on what freedom of speech meant, and how it was necessary for people of maturity and good will to take responsibility for their own responses, when something that was not intended to insult them wound up offending them gravely. I truly believe that we generally choose to be offended by something, although often we are not consciously aware of it, and if we spend all of our time reacting with umbrage and outrage to everything that offends us, we are not being particularly adult. Freedom of speech doesn't work well in an environment where people scream like four years olds every time somebody says something that conflicts with one of their precious provincial biases or dearly held preconceptions.
I posted that essay in a sub forum where I had moderator privileges, and warned people in advance that while I was looking forward to a spirited debate as regards the ideas in the essay, I would, as moderator of the forum, delete any posts that were simply abusive and/or pejorative.
The first response I got was "DOC STOP BEING SUCH A FUCKING DOUCHE!!!!" And, as I had said I would, I deleted it.
And oh my God. You would have thought I'd bombed downtown Louisville with flaming grandmothers, or something. I could barely keep up with deleting all the abusive, insulting, infuriated tirades of personal invective. I deleted and deleted and deleted. Every once in a while someone would post something pertinent to the actual discussion, and I'd leave that up and respond to it, but those posts were about 1/10th of the flood of hysterical abuse that came pouring in. And most of the abuse was no longer about my hateful intolerant insults in regard to D&D and those who played it, or even what a jackass I was to post essays on freedom of speech and how mature adults should behave in response to it. No, now I was horrible, appalling, and a megalomaniac because I DARED to delete people's posts. I should be stripped of my privileges as moderator in my own sub forum. I should be thrown off the site. I should have a rebar shoved up my ass. It was an outrage.
Well, all that was months ago, but it served to convey to me that apparently, on the site, it is considered to be an absolutely unforgivable offense for a moderator in a forum to delete anyone else's posts, for any reason whatsoever, period, the end.
So, last week, a site member who was posting in another site member's sub forum hit 1000 posts, which is quite a milestone on the site. And he mentioned it in his post. And was clearly pleased at the accomplishment.
So the next day, the member with moderator powers in the sub forum, who has a long standing personality war going on with the first guy, went in and deleted half a dozen of the first guy's posts, to drop him back below 1000. And then he changed the visible signature paragraph on all HIS posts, to make it clear he'd done it just to be a dick.
So the first guy started a thread in which he described what had happened and replaced all the posts that had been taken down. And I read this, and I could not believe what a complete asswipe the other guy had been, and I also could not believe that the rest of the site, which had come after me so hard and furious when I'd deleted posts by other members for what was a very good reason, was going to just sit there and let the dumbass get away with deleting another member's posts for a completely childish and spiteful reason.
So I went in and posted something about what an amazing jackass he was.
And the sky fell in on me.
I'm not kidding. Here's how that went:
IDIOT 1: You fucking hypocrite. You did the exact same thing deleting other people's posts and now you're getting in someone else's face for it? You are scum.
ME: Uh... I deleted posts that were personally abusive and insulting, after advising people that I would. He deleted posts just to be a dick. That's not the same thing.
IDIOT 2: Shut the fuck up, you're stupid.
ME: I... hold on. Even if it is the same thing, when I did it you people crucified me for it, and now, none of you are saying a word to him about it...
IDIOT 3: It was just a joke. Those two have a history. You should just stay out of it. You're such an asshole.
ME: Okay, wait. So when I delete other people's posts for a good reason, I'm scum, and everyone screams at me, but when some other guy does it for a joke, just to be an ass, that's okay?
IDIOT 4: Shut the fuck up.
IDIOT 5: Somebody wake me up when he stops crying like a little bitch.
IDIOT 6: I can't believe you're trying to start a flame war over this. Delete your thread or I'll delete it for you.
ME: ...what...?
IDIOTS: Shut the fuck up.
I want to say I don't understand, but of course I understand. The guy who deleted the other guy's posts, just to be an ass? He plays D&D, albeit with about a thousand house rules loaded on top, and frequently brags about how much he loves D&D and would never play with another rules system. So apparently, as long as he loves D&D and says so frequently in public, he can do no wrong.
Me, on the other hand... my input to the site is only just barely suffered by most other members as long as I never express any kind of negative opinion regarding Dungeons and Dragons. My constant suppression of my opinions regarding that particular gaming system, and the retarded morons who game with it, is the price of my continued sufferance on the site.
So, I'm pretty much over LouisvilleRPG.net.
But if you love Dungeons and Dragons, it is definitely the place for you.
Go to it. Bear its children.
I'll be over here, scheming to make all your characters gay.
I'm pretty much over LouisvilleRPG.net, and I'll tell you why.
The latest thing was, I had set up this scenario to run for my Monday night gaming group using the SAVAGE WORLDS RPG system. SAVAGE WORLDS is extremely simple minded and unrealistic and I'm not crazy about how several of its essential mechanisms work, but the system's slogan is "Fast, Furious, Fun!" and that, at least, is accurate. I would never use the system for any kind of serious campaign, but for different, more shallow adventures, it's pretty workable. So I came up with this scenario and I was really psyched to run it, as it's set in 1938 and features larger than life pulp hero/villain archetypes, which is a subgenre I've loved since I was a kid reading DOC SAVAGE paperbacks at my babysitter's house. I was really looking forward to it, it was going to be a lot of fun.
But those hopes began to die when I started my new job.
See, I'd known that after six weeks of training, I'd have to bid on a shift and chances are that, having no seniority, I'd end up with one nobody else wanted, meaning, I'd be working nights. My Monday night gaming group ran on, well, Monday nights, so it seemed pretty certain that once six weeks went by, I'd no longer be able to game with those guys, but that was okay, as the scenario I'd come up with was designed to run maybe four sessions at most. So all was cool. Yes, it seemed likely that after training was over, I'd have to drop out of the Monday night group indefinitely, but at least I'd go out with a bang.
Now, the path to getting my new job was long and arduous and required several phone conversations/interviews with various HR people and supervisors, as well as a drug screen and a background check, over the course of several months. During these contacts, I was told repeatedly by several different people that for training, we'd be working Monday through Friday, 8 to 5. After training, we'd have to bid on shifts and most likely would start out working at night, as very few people want to work at night and that's what we'd get stuck with... a very familiar dynamic to me from past call centers. But for the first six weeks, Monday through Friday, 8 to 5.
Which worked well with our Monday game group, as it met from 6 to 10. Four hours isn't much to run an RPG in, and I wouldn't have wanted to try running any kind of RPG for much less than four hours a session, but getting out of work at 5 would leave me ample time to make a 6 o'clock start time.
So I thought, anyway.
But Nate's going on vacation next week, so that was one Monday we weren't going to have. Which was no problem, as my scenario was only supposed to run 4 sessions, and I still had 5 weeks available for sessions before training concluded and I had to quit the group. So it was still going to be cool and I was still totally psyched.
But then, one of the other guys (he doesn't like his real name used on the internet, on the sight he goes by Cruel Despot, so I'll call him CD) announced he'd be out for a week in there, too... not the same week Nate was going to be out, but a different one.
So that dropped my six weeks of availability down to 4. But I could still do it, no problem. Gonna be fun, totally psyched...
So then Nate found out on a Thursday that the following Monday (last Monday, the 29th of June) he was going to have to go out of town for work and wouldn't be around. Fuck. Okay. At first I figured we just weren't going to get to play that week, which sucked, and I was sad and disappointed. But then, everyone in the group -- CD, another guy named Chris, and Nate -- agreed to do it on Wednesday night instead. Okay. Going to be cool, totally psyched...
Then at work, first day, right out of the box, we were informed that our fifth and sixth weeks of training we'd be working 2 pm to 11 pm, instead of 8 to 5. Which meant suddenly I'd have to quit the Monday group two weeks earlier than I'd thought. So I started sending emails on my break again, and that dialogue went something like this:
ME: I only have four weeks until I start working evenings. Two weeks of those we can't play. Suggestions?
CD: Run it anyway as a one shot, or for two sessions. I want to play.
NATE: Hell to the yeah.
CHRIS: Whatever, dudes.
So... okay. I could cut back, I could streamline, I could cram. I could run the scenario for one or two sessions. I could make that work. And I was incredibly psyched to run. Even comopressed, it was going to be SO much fun. I just love Golden Age pulp.
So there were two other guys who were kinda sorta thinking of joining the Monday night group, which as I have noted, met from 6 to 10 on Mondays. I'd been hoping they'd both play in the scenario, as 5 player characters would be better than 3. One of them, whom I knew only by his board sig, ElSanto, had sent me a few emails full of excellent ideas for Golden Age type pulp heroic player characters. So I was really hoping he'd be able to play on Wednesday.
Another, a guy named Conner, I hadn't heard a word from. But after the run had to be pushed from Monday to Wednesday, I heard from ElSanto... he was sorry, but the only night he could make it was Monday. Goddamit. Okay, that was disappointing.
Then I heard from the other guy. He wasn't really interested in the 1930s or 'the whole pulp thing', as he put it. So he wasn't going to play, either. Bummer. Oh, well. Anybody who doesn't like Golden Age Pulp is a waste of space and organized protoplasm, anyway, so... whatever.
But I still had three players for Wednesday, and was totally psyched. It was going to be SO cool. I was really looking forward to it.
So then at the end of our first day, after I'd made all these adjustments and absorbed all of these changes, our trainer mentioned that she was changing training hours from 8 to 5 to 9 to 6.
That dialogue went like this:
TRAINER: Did they tell all of you you'd be working from 8 to 5 for the first four weeks of training?
CLASS: Yes. Over and over again.
TRAINER: I'm going to change that just a little, to 9 to 6. I really think it will help you to get a little later start in the morning. You'll be more awake.
ME: You fucking bitch. I will kill you, I will skin you, I will suck the marrow from your bones, tan your filthy hide and make it into taut, supple drumheads that I may beat out the rhythms of my rage with the long and weighty lengths of your femurs, which will feel so very right and comfortable in my vengeful hands.
Or at least, that's how it went in my mind.
(Should the human race become telepathic, I will find it impossible to remain employed.)
So, I sent emails out again. Did people still want to try to run this thing, if I couldn't be there until 6:30, quarter of 7? I hated losing any time at all from such a narrow, finite window. But I only had two potential sessions left to run this thing where a reasonably sized group could get there, and I really wanted to run it, despite what seemed to be an absolute determination on the part of God to do everything short of hitting the Earth with a planet killing meteor to stop me doing so.
That went like this:
ME: Uh, so, my hours just got changed and I'm working until 6 and I probably can't get there until like 6:30, quarter of 7. I hate that. Do people still want to play?
CD: I'm cool.
NATE: Totally.
CHRIS: Uh... I forgot to tell you guys but like two months ago I promised my girlfriend I'd do something with her and her family on Wednesday and she just reminded me so, uh, too bad, so sad.
ME: You fucking bitch. I will kill you, I will skin you, I will suck the marrow from your bones, tan your filthy hide and make it into taut, supple drumheads that I may beat out the rhythms of my rage with the long and weighty lengths of your femurs, which will feel so very right and comfortable in my vengeful hands.
Okay, I didn't really say it, or even type it, that time, either, but I badly, badly wanted to.
It was especially exasperating, as I'd gone to great efforts to attend a couple of RPG sessions that Chris had GMed, the previous week. But... whatever, dude. Skin you later.
At this point, I just gave up, because it seems obvious that if I persist in this folly, God is going to send a plague of boils or a voracious and unstoppable onslaught of hideous mutated giant boll weevils or some such shit to keep me from ever running this scenario.
Which makes me sad. And frustrated.
Just to add further general aggravation to the situation, it appears that apparently by some bizarre alchemy, this complete collapse of my planned scenario has transmuted itself into the complete collapse of the Monday night gaming group. Those two guys who were going to join the group? They decided to start their own Monday night group instead. Chris and CD? They've joined the new Monday night group, abandoning our previous one.
It's like, I get a job where I'll have to work evenings, and everything falls apart all around me.
I had no idea I was such an essential person.
Anyway. By itself that wouldn't have been enough to sour me on the RPG site, but, well, it's been coming for awhile, and this is just that fabled final straw. Beyond all the crap I've already reported above and in previous entries, well, I'm just tired of the idiocy and, more importantly, the hypocrisy, that is redolent on the site. What do I mean? Well... listen, O Prince, as I weave for you the tales:
A while back, I happened to casually mention in a thread on the site a particular incident that had occurred in my RPG back in the 90s, in Syracuse. I thought it was funny, and that others would find it amusing. As nearly always happens, I vastly overestimated the intelligence, maturity, open mindedness, and wisdom of my fellow gamers, especially those at LouisvilleRPG.net. But let me tell you this anecdote as I told it to them:
The group of player characters in my game at the time had broken into a wizard's lair and stolen several valuable items. One of the most valuable they couldn't sell in Ona Tengu (the area where they were) because it was powered by a kind of magic that was very illegal there (necromancy) and they would have been executed if anyone had suspected they had such a thing.
So they had booked passage on a ship to a less lawful realm, but it didn't leave until the next morning. They were pretty sure the local underworld was aware they had the item, and would try to kill them and get it. So they rented an inn room, and took turns sitting up on watch in the hallway outside the inn room door. (In a previous scenario, a different group of characters played by the same guys had been in a similar situation, and they'd stood watch inside the inn room, and an assassin had snuck up to the door and pumped the room full of toxic gas through the keyhole. So this time, they posted their guard outside the door, to preclude that.)
So I was going to have the local crimelord send an attractive bimbo to try and lure the PC guarding the door away.
Naturally, the players were going to be suspicious of any kind of approach... players generally know when an encounter or occurrence is random or planned, based on what kind of dice the GM has them roll. So they were suspicious of anything that happened, especially if they hadn't rolled a random encounter. (Some GMs roll such things behind their DM screen, specifically so that players won't have this kind of information, but I make rolls like this where people can see them, so they know I'm not cheating. It's just how I DM.)
Now, what the players were doing in this instance is called metagaming... playing your character with knowledge that only the player has, usually based on a game mechanic the character has no idea exists... and I have rules to deal with it. There are skills in my RPG that allow characters to Persuade each other to do things, even if the player of those characters knows better and does not want their character to do those things.
So I was going to have a cute dancer or tavern servant or something go down the hall and make a Sex Appeal roll on whoever was standing guard. The player would be pretty sure it was a trick, given the lack of a random encounter roll... they'd be fairly certain this was an event planned by the GM, and therefore, part of some scheme... but if the non player character succeeded at the skill roll vs the player character's Willpower, then it wouldn't matter what the player suspected... the PC would be successfully seduced and removed from position.
At the last second, it occurred to me that in my RPG setting, there is no homosexuality taboo and nearly everyone is bisexual... so it could just as easily be a male cute young thang as a female assigned to the seduction/distraction task. Certainly, it would never occur to the local crimelord that he needed to specifically send a woman to do the job. So I told the player whose character was on guard (his name was Chris) to roll a d6. He said "What do I want?" and I said, "Well, knowing you, probably an odd number". He rolled a 4. So the cute young thang set to seduce the big burly male mercenary was, indeed, male.
In my RPG setting, this wouldn't make any difference, which was why I did it... to underscore that the world my players were gaming in was not our world, but an entirely different reality, and their player characters, having been raised in that world, would have somewhat different values, morals, and taboos than the players themselves did.
So this is how that went:
ME: So you see this incredibly sexy inn servant coming up the stairs... you saw this same NPC serving drinks in the bar downstairs when you came in. Long reddish blonde hair, silky soft, beautifully applied make up, young,soft skin the color of coffee with cream, big brown eyes... you smell just a hint of a very pleasant, musky perfume mingled with a very sexy natural body scent as this sexy thing sways past you in the hall, carrying a tray of drinks to one of the rooms further down. You get a wink and a smile as you watch the NPC go by with the tray. A few minutes later, this same server comes back out and walks back down the hall, and pauses a few yards away from you and says "Gods, I hate this shift. What are you still doing up?"
CHRIS: Uh... I ignore her.
ME: Ignore beauty such as this? Roll 2d6 and add 2.
CHRIS: Goddamit... okay. Erg. 9.
KENNY: Dude, you are totally into her.
ME: In character, I don't think your character would just ignore her.
CHRIS: I want a Willpower roll.
ME: Okay... roll. (rolls dice) I have a 19 total.
CHRIS: I can beat that... (rolls dice) Fuck. A 12. Okay, I'll say "Well, I'm keeping watch and I need to concentrate so I'll talk to you later."
ME: Okay. You see a disappointed pout come to the NPC's lovely features. "Look," that lovely voice says, dropping to a whisper, "it's dead downstairs; the barkeep won't notice if I don't come back for a little while. This room across the way is empty... wanna slip into it with me for a quickie?"
KENNY: Dude, don't do it!
NATE: She's going to make a Sex Appeal roll and I'll bet she's got this huge rating.
SCOTT: It's a good thing it's not my watch or I'd already be there. She wouldn't even have to roll on me.
KENNY: Dude, you're a horn dog.
NATE: You'd get us all killed.
CHRIS: I tell her I can't, really, but I'm flattered.
ME: Well, your character knows he SHOULD say that, but I'm not sure he actually can. Roll and add to your Willpower.
CHRIS: Goddamit. (rolls dice) A 23.
ME: (rolls dice) Yeah, but I have a real good rating... 29. Your character totally wants to go.
CHRIS: Goddamit, goddamit! I know this is a total set up from the Kinship!
ME: Your character goes off with the good looking young waiter, and I'm sure has a great time...
NATE: Wait. 'Waiter'?
SCOTT: It's a guy?
ME: Well, I've told you guys before, there is no homosexuality taboo on the River, so your characters wouldn't care. It's not our world.
CHRIS: What the fuck...? It's a GUY?
ME: It wouldn't make any difference to your character, Chris...
KENNY: Dude! It's a DUDE! You're totally going to bone a DUDE! Your character is a fag!
SCOTT: {coughs into hand} Homo!
NATE AND KENNY: (playing air guitar) Lolaaaaa... Lo Lo Lo Lo Lolaaaaaa... Lo lo lo lo lo Lolaaaaaa...
CHRIS: (yelling) That is so totally stupid my character is not gay I would totally never play a gay character I would never even let a guy get close to me that is so fucking bogus I AM TOTALLY NOT QUEER THAT IS SO UNFAIR YOU CAN'T DO THAT...
So I told this story on the site. I mean, it's fifteen years later, right? People are more enlightened now. Everyone would see how funny the whole thing was.
Or so I, entirely erroneously, presumed.
You would have thought I'd confessed to killing someone's kid.
IDIOT 1: You can't make people be gay. That's crazy. Players should have total control of their characters, especially something as important as whether they're gay or not.
ME: It.. okay, in my rpg setting, the kind of homosexuality taboo we take for granted in our world does not exist. People can be attracted to other people regardless of gender. I'm not 'making' anyone be gay, it's simply that my culture does not place enormous social pressure on all its members from birth to only behave in a heterosexual manner.
IDIOT 2: You are totally overestimating the impact of culture on sexuality. People are born straight or gay. And all my characters were born totally straight. Totally.
ME: Look, in most RPGs, characters are pagan, right? You don't get a choice in that. The background culture worships many gods, so, so do your characters. You don't feel offended or outraged that your character is going to worship some weird made up deity from a Monster Manual because that's what people do in the world where he grew up.
IDIOT 3: That's not the same, being gay or straight is totally different from that, and all my characters are straight. The world they are born in has nothing to do with it.
IDIOT 4: Also, you can't just make somebody's character do something they don't want to. Even if it was a girl trying to lure me away, I should get to decide if I go or not.
ME: So, if some good looking NPC makes a Sex Appeal roll on you, and you fail a Willpower check, there should be no consequences?
IDIOT 5: The player decides what his character does. Unless you're using a mind control spell or something. Sure she might be hot but my character might think about the good of the mission and how the party needs him and decide not to go with her. Or maybe my character is married or just isn't in the mood to have sex right then. It's up to me, not you.
IDIOT 2: Also, my character isn't gay. I would never sleep with a man under any circumstances and neither would any of my characters.
ME: So, the player always controls the character, even if the behavior is out of character?
IDIOT 1: It isn't out of character. My character might decide to go with the chick, but he might not. It depends. I'd play my character in character. But only I get to decide what that is.
IDIOT 3: And he would never under any circumstances be gay. That's final.
This "how dare I make anyone be GAY" thing is, in my opinion, beneath contempt... it's nothing but homophobia, which was made pretty clear in the succeeding posts in the thread. The more the members of this particular posse protested that they had nothing against gay guys, it's just that THEY weren't gay, and weren't interested in roleplaying gay characters, and none of their characters should ever be gay, or would ever be gay, under any circumstances, the clearer it became that these were some deeply homophobic motherfuckers, at least some of which were probably repressing their own particular impulses and fantasies to an entirely unhealthy extent. And I have no time for that idiocy, any more than I had time for the one player who rolled up a member of a dark skinned race in my game and didn't want to play him, because he just wasn't comfortable if his PC wasn't a white guy, like him.
So all that soured me on the site, too. But the last straw was an incident that occurred just last week.
As background, let me take you back to the height of the Doc Nebula Flame Wars. This was a period when most of the site was up in arms at me, because I do not like Dungeons and Dragons, I think it's an incredibly stupid fucking game system, and I also think that adults who play Dungeons and Dragons instead of using any of a hundred or more better game systems, or making up their own, are kind of retarded, or, at the very least, have no idea what roleplaying actually is, and are apparently unwilling to learn. And I'd said so, repeatedly, on the site.
Now, this is a site devoted to roleplaying games, and one where supposedly, freedom of expression is cherished and championed. However, apparently one of the big unwritten taboos of the site was and remains, Thou Shalt Not Talk Shit About D&D Because We Worship It Beyond All Sense or Reason. D&D is a childish system, a simple minded system, an unrealistic system, a brainless, dumbass, fucked up and retarded system, and this is inarguable to anyone who has ever roleplayed using it and who has more than four functional brain cells. Everybody I knew who was serious about roleplaying started out with one of the various D&D versions, eventually (usually quickly) became disgusted with its limitations, and moved on to more sophisticated systems allowing greater depth and breadth of roleplaying.
And, in point of fact, many of the people on the site made similarly disparaging remarks about D&D, although they still played it. And many site members also insulted each other with great regularity. However, apparently, my derisive comments regarding D&D, and those who played it irregardless of its obvious limitations and built in stupidities, were intolerable. And so, the flame wars raged.
So at one point, I posted an essay on what freedom of speech meant, and how it was necessary for people of maturity and good will to take responsibility for their own responses, when something that was not intended to insult them wound up offending them gravely. I truly believe that we generally choose to be offended by something, although often we are not consciously aware of it, and if we spend all of our time reacting with umbrage and outrage to everything that offends us, we are not being particularly adult. Freedom of speech doesn't work well in an environment where people scream like four years olds every time somebody says something that conflicts with one of their precious provincial biases or dearly held preconceptions.
I posted that essay in a sub forum where I had moderator privileges, and warned people in advance that while I was looking forward to a spirited debate as regards the ideas in the essay, I would, as moderator of the forum, delete any posts that were simply abusive and/or pejorative.
The first response I got was "DOC STOP BEING SUCH A FUCKING DOUCHE!!!!" And, as I had said I would, I deleted it.
And oh my God. You would have thought I'd bombed downtown Louisville with flaming grandmothers, or something. I could barely keep up with deleting all the abusive, insulting, infuriated tirades of personal invective. I deleted and deleted and deleted. Every once in a while someone would post something pertinent to the actual discussion, and I'd leave that up and respond to it, but those posts were about 1/10th of the flood of hysterical abuse that came pouring in. And most of the abuse was no longer about my hateful intolerant insults in regard to D&D and those who played it, or even what a jackass I was to post essays on freedom of speech and how mature adults should behave in response to it. No, now I was horrible, appalling, and a megalomaniac because I DARED to delete people's posts. I should be stripped of my privileges as moderator in my own sub forum. I should be thrown off the site. I should have a rebar shoved up my ass. It was an outrage.
Well, all that was months ago, but it served to convey to me that apparently, on the site, it is considered to be an absolutely unforgivable offense for a moderator in a forum to delete anyone else's posts, for any reason whatsoever, period, the end.
So, last week, a site member who was posting in another site member's sub forum hit 1000 posts, which is quite a milestone on the site. And he mentioned it in his post. And was clearly pleased at the accomplishment.
So the next day, the member with moderator powers in the sub forum, who has a long standing personality war going on with the first guy, went in and deleted half a dozen of the first guy's posts, to drop him back below 1000. And then he changed the visible signature paragraph on all HIS posts, to make it clear he'd done it just to be a dick.
So the first guy started a thread in which he described what had happened and replaced all the posts that had been taken down. And I read this, and I could not believe what a complete asswipe the other guy had been, and I also could not believe that the rest of the site, which had come after me so hard and furious when I'd deleted posts by other members for what was a very good reason, was going to just sit there and let the dumbass get away with deleting another member's posts for a completely childish and spiteful reason.
So I went in and posted something about what an amazing jackass he was.
And the sky fell in on me.
I'm not kidding. Here's how that went:
IDIOT 1: You fucking hypocrite. You did the exact same thing deleting other people's posts and now you're getting in someone else's face for it? You are scum.
ME: Uh... I deleted posts that were personally abusive and insulting, after advising people that I would. He deleted posts just to be a dick. That's not the same thing.
IDIOT 2: Shut the fuck up, you're stupid.
ME: I... hold on. Even if it is the same thing, when I did it you people crucified me for it, and now, none of you are saying a word to him about it...
IDIOT 3: It was just a joke. Those two have a history. You should just stay out of it. You're such an asshole.
ME: Okay, wait. So when I delete other people's posts for a good reason, I'm scum, and everyone screams at me, but when some other guy does it for a joke, just to be an ass, that's okay?
IDIOT 4: Shut the fuck up.
IDIOT 5: Somebody wake me up when he stops crying like a little bitch.
IDIOT 6: I can't believe you're trying to start a flame war over this. Delete your thread or I'll delete it for you.
ME: ...what...?
IDIOTS: Shut the fuck up.
I want to say I don't understand, but of course I understand. The guy who deleted the other guy's posts, just to be an ass? He plays D&D, albeit with about a thousand house rules loaded on top, and frequently brags about how much he loves D&D and would never play with another rules system. So apparently, as long as he loves D&D and says so frequently in public, he can do no wrong.
Me, on the other hand... my input to the site is only just barely suffered by most other members as long as I never express any kind of negative opinion regarding Dungeons and Dragons. My constant suppression of my opinions regarding that particular gaming system, and the retarded morons who game with it, is the price of my continued sufferance on the site.
So, I'm pretty much over LouisvilleRPG.net.
But if you love Dungeons and Dragons, it is definitely the place for you.
Go to it. Bear its children.
I'll be over here, scheming to make all your characters gay.
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So this Boy Scout, couldn't have been older than eleven, is holding up this kinda chubby looking Scotch Pine. It was.... ehhhh... okay...
