News from the front, part 2

I've been here for a few weeks now, and I'm pleased to report that it's as fun as I expected. There are some really good writers out there on these internets, and that they happen to be nice people too is almost too much of a coincidence. (Although some of the nicest people I know I've met through roleplaying, so maybe it's not a coincidence after all.)

I've also had some time to reconsider the question of timing, and there are a couple of advantages after all, things I'm surprised I overlooked before. First of all, it means that the game's pace is a bit more flexible; I hate it when a session's plot gets rushed along because we only have n hours to get through it. It also means that side plots and character building can go on concurrently with the main story, instead of slowing everyone else down. And, of course, you avoid the perennial problem of having to talk over people to be heard, or missing your chance to act, which is a boon for the less experienced and/or less assertive roleplayer. Overall, a forum game is different enough from a tabletop game that I'm inclined to stop comparing them, and start trying to judge it on its own merits. At any rate, it's certainly not the second-rate substitute that I envisioned before I got started.

As far as dealing with more than two people, the group I'm in seems to have adopted the convention of posting round robin. This is a bit frustrating, since the timing doesn't always work out -- sometimes I feel like I'm cutting into somebody else's conversation, and at other times I don't really have anything to say, but have to post so I don't hold everyone else up. It does mean that everyone gets a chance to say something at regular intervals, though, which is a nice thing to have in a large group. If I were running one myself, I might go for something a little more free-form, but then again I don't have nearly enough experience with forums (roleplay or otherwise) to be confident in my opinions on these things.

In other news, the newest installation in the Shin Megami Tensei metaseries was recently released. SMT wasn't particularly known for anything until the release of Persona 3, which captured the hearts of gamers with its unique aesthetic (high school kids shooting themselves in the head to summon monsters). Since then, it's apparently become fairly popular; Devil Survivor was sold out in the first few stores I tried, though this might be because Atlus likes doing limited releases.

The game itself is notable for its original combination of (unoriginal) elements -- it's a strategy RPG which becomes a normal turn-based RPG for a bit when you attack -- and for possibly having more endings than anything since Chrono Trigger. It also takes the obvious but uncommon step of making the various small choices you make throughout the story actually have an effect. In fact, it's one of the few JRPGs that actually allows and encourages roleplaying. This and the number of endings combine to add a lot to the feel of the game; it's entirely possible to reach a point where you have three major options, all of them terrible. It's been a while since a JRPG has had me sitting there agonizing about which is the lesser of two evils. Or maybe that's just me. Either way, it's a lot of fun, and only increases my desire to track down some of the rare old SMT games (particularly Nocturne).

Well, that's it for now. No sweeping thesis on reality here. Move along.

News from the front

So, I've recently become interested in the phenomenon of forum roleplaying. I've just joined a game, so I thought I'd take the time to put up some thoughts. (I won't link you to the site; I'm too embarrassed about having people read my writing.) I've done a lot of console and tabletop roleplaying (yes, in case you didn't already know, I play Dungeons and Dragons), but my internet RP experience consists of a few abortive Skype games (it's really hard to keep a game going over Skype). So the things that jump out at me first are the differences in the forum approach. They are, in no particular order:

1) It's generally rules-light. I consider this a good thing. Crunching numbers is fun and all, but the real joy of roleplaying is the cooperative story aspect, and recently I've felt that this means the fewer rules the better. Of course, this only works well as long as everyone gets along, which leads me to my next point.

2) It's on the internet. This is both good and bad. Bad, because as with everything on the internet, most of the forum games out there look pretty awful. The odds of things going poorly (for the players, not the characters) is probably a good deal higher than in your average college gaming club. At the same time, there's so much stuff out there that the odds of finding something that meets your personal tastes (say, psychological horror niche anime) are pretty high. And there are enough people who play that there are most likely quite a few groups full of good writers and nice people.

3) It's not realtime. This is probably the first thing that struck me, and to me the strangest. How are you supposed to have a conversation when the other person might not respond for hours or days? How are you supposed to run a dramatic scene when you don't have everyone at the table? As it turns out, people have come up with ways around it. One of these ways is to have each post partially overlap with the posts before and after it, so that in one post your character might react to a few things someone else did, do something on her own, and ask a few questions for the next poster to respond to. With more than two people, this starts getting messy, but it's better than nothing. And of course, forum posts can be edited after the fact for continuity without embarrassing cries of "retcon!" Even so, the time thing still seems like a disadvantage to me. Maybe I'll change my mind as I play.

So, for the next while, among other things, this shall be a forum roleplay blog. Wow, that's like, Web 3.0 or something. If this much nerdiness hasn't put you off already, stay tuned!

a story

I woke up one morning and there was a little man at the foot of my bed. I've never seen a butler, but he was dressed like a butler, in a tuxedo and a top hat. He said, "Good morning, sir."

I wasn't sure what to do, so I just sat there for a bit. He cleared his throat, and then asked me: "Do you want to destroy the world today, sir?"

"Huh? Destroy the world...?"

"Yes, sir, that's correct. Do you want to destroy the world today?"

"Uh... no... not really...."

"Very good, sir." And he disappeared.

It was a weird dream. I don't usually remember my dreams, but this one was pretty memorable. I kept thinking about it all day. "Do you want to destroy the world?" It isn't really the sort of question you'd expect a butler to ask.

In school that day, I asked Alexa about it. "Hey, have you ever thought about destroying the world?"

"Of course! I've told you this already. My army of giant robots will bring the world's governments to their knees, and they'll be forced to acknowledge me as their leader. Then everyone will have to do what I tell them to."

"No, I mean, like, destroying it. Not just taking it over, actually getting rid of it."

"That's stupid. There wouldn't be anyone left to do my bidding. What would the point of that be?"

"Ah, yeah... I guess so...."

"Hey, come on, eat up. Lunch's almost over."

I went home, did my homework, read for a bit, went to sleep. The next morning, the little man was there again.

"Do you want to destroy the world today, sir?"

"Why would I want to destroy the world?"

"That's not for me to say, sir. Do you?"

"No! Stop asking me! Of course I don't."

"Very good, sir. I'll come again tomorrow." And he disappeared again.

The harder I tried to put it out of my mind, the more I thought about it. So I asked Daniel about it during computer lab.

"Hey, Daniel, have you ever thought about destroying the world?"

His eyes lit up. "A good question! Actually, the world is destroyed all the time. At every timestep, the current state is erased, and a new state is determined. It's the connection between them that gives the illusion of continuity."

"Uh, sorry, I tried really hard, but I have no idea what that meant."

"Okay, okay, I'll give you an example. You know the Game of Life?"

"You mean that dumb board game with the little cars and little people?"

"No, I'm talking about Conway's Game of Life. Look, I'll show you." He pulled up a website with a grid of white squares, and clicked on some of them, turning them black. "Here we have a world. Some cells are on, some are off." He clicked a button, and the patterns started moving. "And here we have life. Some patterns fall apart, some sustain themselves, some even produce more of themselves. But in reality, at each step, each cell's state is determined by a few simple rules. At every step, the grid is wiped blank, and new cells are filled in based on those rules. Nothing moves or changes at all; it's constantly destroyed and recreated."

"Okay... so, you're saying the real world's like that too?"

"Exactly! I knew you'd catch on. Matter never changes; it's only created and destroyed."

"If you say so...."

It was pretty cool to watch, though. When I got home, I played around with the game for a while, trying to see what kinds of patterns would survive and what kinds would disappear. I almost forgot, but before I went to sleep, I set my alarm for a bit earlier than usual. I wanted to wake up and have some time to get things clear in my head before the little man appeared. As soon as I woke up, though, he was there again.

"Do you want to destroy the world today, sir?"

"This is some kind of riddle, right?"

"I couldn't say, sir."

"Well, I figured it out. I already destroyed the world. Every time I go to sleep, it disappears. Every time I wake up, it's there again."

"I see, sir. Do you want to destroy the world today?"

"I just told you! I already did!"

"As you said, sir. Does sir want to destroy the world today?"

"It doesn't matter, does it? It'll happen whether I want it to or not. That's how things work."

"That may be, sir. Nevertheless."

"...no, I don't. Go away."

"Very good, sir." And he was gone. I felt... I don't know... disappointed? Frustrated? Here I thought I'd worked it all out, and now I didn't understand it any better than I did before. Thinking about it, it didn't make sense; why would he ask me whether I wanted to destroy the world? What did what I wanted have to do with it? I was feeling pretty down, so I decided to hang out with Jake after school.

"Hey, Jake."

"...hi."

"I was wondering...."

"...yeah?"

"I know it sounds weird, but... have you ever wanted to destroy the world?"

"...yeah. Sometimes."

I thought he was just going to leave it at that, but just as I was about to change the subject, he started talking again.

"You know, most of the time, the world's a great place. And even when it's not so great, it's gotta be better than nothing, right? But I don't always feel that way. Sometimes I really do think that we'd be better off with nothing at all. So, yeah. Sometimes I feel like I want to destroy the world."

"Oh... huh. Yeah. I guess I see what you mean. That's pretty heavy stuff, though."

He smiled a bit. "Yeah, I know. Don't worry. Things haven't been that bad for a while. And even when I feel that way, I know I'll feel better before long. So I wouldn't really want to destroy the world."

"Yeah, me neither. Thanks, man. For some reason, I feel a lot better now."

This time he actually laughed. "You're so weird. But I'm glad I could help."

I went home, suffered through my homework, and then just sat and thought for a while. I could see how someone might want to just get rid of everything. I can imagine some poor kid whose life has been nothing but miserable, like Oliver Twist or something, wishing it all away. But I didn't have it that bad. I didn't have any reason to want the world destroyed. It sounds depressing, I know, but it cheered me up, and by the time I went to sleep I felt pretty confident.

Of course, the little man was there again when I woke up. "Good morning, sir. Do you want to destroy the world today?"

"No, I don't."

"I see, sir."

"And I'll tell you something else. You don't have to come tomorrow, either. Or ever again. I don't want to destroy the world, and I'm not going to, no matter how many times you ask me."

I felt pretty sure of myself, but he just stood there and nodded. When I finished, he smiled, ever so slightly, and said, "very good, sir. I'll come again tomorrow" and disappeared, just like he always did.

He didn't seem bothered at all, and that bothered me. Didn't he get it? There was something about that smile, like he knew something I didn't. I could hardly concentrate during school, I was so busy worrying about it. Alexa and Daniel asked me if I was okay, but I couldn't really explain it to them. After all, I couldn't even explain it to myself. By the time I got home, I was a nervous wreck. So I finally gave in and talked to my dad about it.

My dad's a psychologist. This means, among other things, that I can't hide anything from him. Whenever I ask him something, he keeps asking questions, trying to understand why I feel the way I feel. Some of the things he says are hard to believe, and some of them make me really uncomfortable, so I usually just make sure not to get him started. This time, though, I really needed his advice. So I started from the beginning and told him everything.

"Hmm, I see. A desire to destroy the world is often the projection of a desire to destroy oneself." He gave me a look. "Have you been having suicidal thoughts lately?"

I don't know, have I? Was that what all this was really about? "I don't think so...."

"A healthy answer. We can't control our subconscious minds. Freud wrote that everyone has, at some level, an inner drive for destruction, whether of the self or of the other. What's important is that you remain in control of yourself. You're empowered to make your own decisions, irregardless of any subconscious desires."

I wasn't really sure what he meant, but there was something reassuring about the way he said it. "So... I should ignore what I feel and do what I think is right?"

"Hrmm... yes, I suppose that's a reasonable way for you to think of it."

"Okay... thanks, Dad. That really helped."

"I'm glad you feel that you can talk to me. Communication is important, you know."

"Yeah, I know. Goodnight."

I headed up to my room and lay there for a while, thinking about it. Eventually I feel asleep. The next morning, the little man was there again.

"Good morning, sir."

"Good morning. Hey... are you a part of me?"

"I couldn't say, sir."

"Yeah, I guess not."

"Do you want to destroy the world today, sir?"

"Not really. You know, you don't have to keep asking me."

He cleared his throat. "That's as may be, sir."

"Why? What's the point? I don't want to destroy the world, I don't want to kill myself. There's no reason for you to be here anymore."

His face never showed a hint of emotion. "Very good, sir. I'll come again tomorrow."

And he was gone. I sighed. I thought I'd finally figured him out, but nothing had changed at all. I didn't even know whether I'd been right or wrong.

-------------------------------------------

I don't really remember what happened next. This was three years ago now. I don't think I talked to anyone else about it; I didn't want my friends to worry. I'm sure the little man appeared at least a few more times, and I said no to him each time. Then eventually I forgot about him. Maybe he stopped appearing, or maybe I stopped remembering him.

I'm not sure why I thought of him now. Maybe now that I've remembered him, he'll come again, and ask me that same question. If he does, I'll say no.




Whew. This is a story I thought of today. I don't write very often, but sometimes an idea gets into my head, and won't leave until I put it into words. I should probably add that the main character of this story isn't me or anyone I know, and that I'm neither depressed nor more than usually delusional. In the words of the late great Kurt Vonnegut, "all persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental and should not be construed."