So...bored...
Jan. 10th, 2006 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unforthSoooooo bored. I mean, the teacher is actually okay, but it's just dull, so I thought maybe I'd write about more of my favorite games of all time. At least it'll give me something to do. As before, these are more written for me than anyone else.
Black Ops - this abortive attempt to run a Black Ops game ended due to various fallings out that occured over the course of the spring semester and the following summer. I won't go into much detail, for it was shortly sad lived, but I loved it, and it left me wishing to play another Black Ops game, which didn't happen for several years.
Marvel Superheroes - I may have the starting year wrong. Started one lazy summer day as 5 bored people decided to play some Marvel SAGA System. Jason decided to GM, and we ended up playing for more than 12 hours straight, and we played lots more over the proceeding weeks. My character, Danielle, was an idealist, pure and simple, and I had so much fun pushing ideas I knew were bad because they were "the right thing to do" or other such nonsense.
My favorite moment in Marvel is one that still makes me laugh. One of the other PC's was played bu our friend Kevin, who I often clashed with in games cause, well, he often acts like a jack ass. Many characters came and went from Marvel Superheroes, but his - named Orson - and mine were two of the originals and the longest and most consistently played. At one point, his character lost his virginity (we were all high school students) to a chick who later turned out to be a Nazi. Needless to say, he was pissed and left her. Later, we found out she was dying, and he was all angsty, but he convinced himself that he didn't want to visit her. While the GM ran the main game, he and I got into a screaming match during which my idealistic self tried to convince him that he should visit her, and he wallowed in self pity. To this day, I have not been able to convince people that I was in no way angry with him out of game (since I often wanted to kill him out of game. :) ) ...I don't know why, but I've always found that awesome.
Vampire - GMed by Andy F. I hadn't played a great deal of White Wolf before this (a little bit of Mage, one or two other random sessions...). We came back from Winter break with a week till classes started and began playing this game. In that week, we played it almost every single day. In game time was almost real time for the first month we played. I was playing Kaitlin (Kate) Anderson, a rather bitter Gangrel who had spent most of her adult life as a feminazi ecoterrorist, but who was in truth just a goon and had always been a goon. Up until this time, I'd say this game was the most roleplaying heavy game I'd ever played - other games had had a lot of rping, but this game was 95%, rping, especially in the beginning, and it was great fun at first. The game died because of a personality conflict which caused the deaths of other games as well. In early Spring 2004 (I think I have my dates right, though I might be off by a year), I realized that, well, I wanted to fricken kill one of the girls who was someone I played with every day. She was dumb. She was slow. She blatantly roleplayed to live out her fantasy life. A bad part of me hopes she'll see this, though I'm sure she won't. Anyway, I couldn't take it any more, and I told her that I couldn't take playing with her anymore in small groups. This upset her greatly, which actually was a little odd because on of the things that came out of this conflict was discovering that she was in fact incredibly unhappy playing with me as well. (and I didn't tell her that I thought she was dumb or slow, either). So yeah, a few other games died around this time as well. I feel bad about it, in some ways, cause it was completely my fault.
My favorite moment of this game was early on. I had the nightmares flaw, and the GM made me regret that a lot. I kept having dreams about my abusive father. One time, though, when I woke up I not only failed the roll for nightmares, I botched it. What happened? I thought I was still in the dream. I was convinced my "father" - actually my characters lover, Jules, an NPC - was lying next to me in bed, and so I did the only logical thing - pulled out my claws and attempted to eviscerate him. Jules could have kicked my butt, but he was the lonely sort and was rapidly falling for me (and I for him, if I hadn't been frenzied) and so was too shocked to defend himself. I put my claws through his head, and killed him pretty thoroughly. I just loved having to deal with the repurcussions (which included my almost being killed, almost killing myself, and going into a quest in the umbra to get the bastard back).
Exalted - GMed by Jason. Not long after Exalted first came out, we decided it was way cool, and started playing to almost immediately. 5 players, one for each caste, met at noon on Sunday - my first participation in a day time game - and gamed until it was time to go to Golden Age. I was the Eclipse caste, a former diplomat for the evil empire turned Exalt. My role proved to be as the parties "detail" person. We had vast plans to reform the planet, and while every thought large scale, I took care of things like building roads so that our future armies could move, setting up a postal system, that sort of thing. This also meant that I tended to be the group "nitpicker," though - I would, I'll admit, go out of my way to find problems with any idea another player put forward, because my character felt that it was her duty to do so. Unfortunately, this caused problems (and was one, though not the only, reason for the games demise). The main problem was that one of the other players wasn't very bright, and so frequently proposed bad ideas that had kernels of good ideas in them. I'd rip apart the bad parts, try to point out the good parts, but she'd get so frustrated at the ripping apart that she'd declare the entire idea garbage and then whine a whole lot, even when myself and others would try to explain that parts of the idea were good - I make it sound like I was awful to her, but in truth she couldn't seem to accept that ideas don't spring out fully formed, the bad parts get discarded and the good parts get expanded on. The other thing that went wrong was Black Ops, mark 2. Black Ops ran Saturday nights, and usually went until 4 or 5 AM, or later. All of the players but one in the Exalted game played Black Ops. Thus, all of us were zombies on Sunday mornings, and given the player strife, it just couldn't hold itself together.
I have no particular favorite moment, though there was this one time that my character decided - I don't remember exactly why - to train in the middle of the night with the Bull of the North without telling anyone what she was doing. I had a reason for this, I know I did, but damned if I recall what. Anyway, given that he's a dawn caste, and much more experienced than I, it didn't go to well - though I remember feeling it was a victory - I must have been trying to prove some kind of point. I just loved coming back to camp, a health box from death, and refusing to explain what had happened.
Black Ops - Co GMed by Jason and Andy F., this second attempt at Black Ops is one of the best games I have ever played. No other game I've ever been in gave me the feeling of blind terror and dread of each game as this one did. Black Ops had a high fatality rate, and I was playing a vastly under powered character. Black Ops, MIB on crack, starts with 150 point GURPs character, and puts them through truly brutal training. I decided that I wanted to play someone with Magery - which is almost unheard of in the Black Ops world, it took a lot of fast talking to get to be allowed to. Doing so cost me almost 100 of my starting points, so I was horribly under powered compared to everyone else. The number of times I almost got turned to paste...ah, memories. However, the thing I liked best about Black Ops was the character interactions. Despite being a lot of dice rolling, it had a rich RP environment, and one of my favorite romances in any game I'd played at the time. Dave, an NPC, was just totally awesome - the sweetest, cutest...I could go on and on, I have lots and lots of fond memories of Black Ops. I will pick just one favorite though...
My favorite Black Ops moment was one of the best mind fucks in any game I've played so far. Training was made up of individual modules. One of these was a second chance - our characters were sent "back in time" to the events that caused us to be recruited by Black Ops, with some of the knowledge of our training to that point, and were given a chance to change events at that time - at the time, we didn't realize that we were actually changing time. Anyway, my character had had a miserable life. She had a horribly abusive husband who she couldn't leave, and worked at Walmart. She was recruited one day at work. During Second Chance, though, she decided that instead of going to work that day, she would leave her husband and go to school to become a doctor (she was training as a doctor in Black Ops). She made this choice with the knowledge that she would not meet Dave, who she was in a relationship with. I didn't want to corrupt my characters opinions with the fact that I thought Dave was awesome, so I'd been rolling to see if she was in love, and it just wasn't happening - she liked him, but didn't love him. Anyway, after a period of time we ended up back in training (for my character, almost three years passed). Julie was very upset. However, worse yet, Dave found out that she had chosen her normal life over meeting him. He was hopelessly in love, and was understandably very upset and started avoiding Julie. That, of course, was when I finally "succeeded" one of my in-love rolls. So I got to try to fix it (which was much fun). Now, a few weeks later time got all screwed up, because Julie and another PC, Melinda, were investigating some things they'd noticed (time, they discovered, had split into multiple time lines - in the other one, Dave had died, Julie wasn't happy about that). They got charged with unifying time and picking one way for things to have happened. Everyone had lived two admissions to Black Ops, and it was our job to select one that would become the "true" one. My character was very selfless, and found this to be truly awful. Worse, she had to pick her own too - choose her original entry, and arrive at Black Ops a pathetic wretch, or her alternate one, and never meet Dave. Of course, she choose Dave...when all was done, we all forgot about the time split, but the stress remained, so I had the delightful experience of having a full nervous breakdown over something I couldn't remember doing.
I feel like this description doesn't do these events justice - I wasn't the only one who thought they were cool at the time. :) I have many other fond memories of Black Ops, but I won't babble about it more now - maybe it'll get it's own post in the future.
Anyway, the professor is talking about something I don't actually know, so I'm off! :)
Black Ops - this abortive attempt to run a Black Ops game ended due to various fallings out that occured over the course of the spring semester and the following summer. I won't go into much detail, for it was shortly sad lived, but I loved it, and it left me wishing to play another Black Ops game, which didn't happen for several years.
Marvel Superheroes - I may have the starting year wrong. Started one lazy summer day as 5 bored people decided to play some Marvel SAGA System. Jason decided to GM, and we ended up playing for more than 12 hours straight, and we played lots more over the proceeding weeks. My character, Danielle, was an idealist, pure and simple, and I had so much fun pushing ideas I knew were bad because they were "the right thing to do" or other such nonsense.
My favorite moment in Marvel is one that still makes me laugh. One of the other PC's was played bu our friend Kevin, who I often clashed with in games cause, well, he often acts like a jack ass. Many characters came and went from Marvel Superheroes, but his - named Orson - and mine were two of the originals and the longest and most consistently played. At one point, his character lost his virginity (we were all high school students) to a chick who later turned out to be a Nazi. Needless to say, he was pissed and left her. Later, we found out she was dying, and he was all angsty, but he convinced himself that he didn't want to visit her. While the GM ran the main game, he and I got into a screaming match during which my idealistic self tried to convince him that he should visit her, and he wallowed in self pity. To this day, I have not been able to convince people that I was in no way angry with him out of game (since I often wanted to kill him out of game. :) ) ...I don't know why, but I've always found that awesome.
Vampire - GMed by Andy F. I hadn't played a great deal of White Wolf before this (a little bit of Mage, one or two other random sessions...). We came back from Winter break with a week till classes started and began playing this game. In that week, we played it almost every single day. In game time was almost real time for the first month we played. I was playing Kaitlin (Kate) Anderson, a rather bitter Gangrel who had spent most of her adult life as a feminazi ecoterrorist, but who was in truth just a goon and had always been a goon. Up until this time, I'd say this game was the most roleplaying heavy game I'd ever played - other games had had a lot of rping, but this game was 95%, rping, especially in the beginning, and it was great fun at first. The game died because of a personality conflict which caused the deaths of other games as well. In early Spring 2004 (I think I have my dates right, though I might be off by a year), I realized that, well, I wanted to fricken kill one of the girls who was someone I played with every day. She was dumb. She was slow. She blatantly roleplayed to live out her fantasy life. A bad part of me hopes she'll see this, though I'm sure she won't. Anyway, I couldn't take it any more, and I told her that I couldn't take playing with her anymore in small groups. This upset her greatly, which actually was a little odd because on of the things that came out of this conflict was discovering that she was in fact incredibly unhappy playing with me as well. (and I didn't tell her that I thought she was dumb or slow, either). So yeah, a few other games died around this time as well. I feel bad about it, in some ways, cause it was completely my fault.
My favorite moment of this game was early on. I had the nightmares flaw, and the GM made me regret that a lot. I kept having dreams about my abusive father. One time, though, when I woke up I not only failed the roll for nightmares, I botched it. What happened? I thought I was still in the dream. I was convinced my "father" - actually my characters lover, Jules, an NPC - was lying next to me in bed, and so I did the only logical thing - pulled out my claws and attempted to eviscerate him. Jules could have kicked my butt, but he was the lonely sort and was rapidly falling for me (and I for him, if I hadn't been frenzied) and so was too shocked to defend himself. I put my claws through his head, and killed him pretty thoroughly. I just loved having to deal with the repurcussions (which included my almost being killed, almost killing myself, and going into a quest in the umbra to get the bastard back).
Exalted - GMed by Jason. Not long after Exalted first came out, we decided it was way cool, and started playing to almost immediately. 5 players, one for each caste, met at noon on Sunday - my first participation in a day time game - and gamed until it was time to go to Golden Age. I was the Eclipse caste, a former diplomat for the evil empire turned Exalt. My role proved to be as the parties "detail" person. We had vast plans to reform the planet, and while every thought large scale, I took care of things like building roads so that our future armies could move, setting up a postal system, that sort of thing. This also meant that I tended to be the group "nitpicker," though - I would, I'll admit, go out of my way to find problems with any idea another player put forward, because my character felt that it was her duty to do so. Unfortunately, this caused problems (and was one, though not the only, reason for the games demise). The main problem was that one of the other players wasn't very bright, and so frequently proposed bad ideas that had kernels of good ideas in them. I'd rip apart the bad parts, try to point out the good parts, but she'd get so frustrated at the ripping apart that she'd declare the entire idea garbage and then whine a whole lot, even when myself and others would try to explain that parts of the idea were good - I make it sound like I was awful to her, but in truth she couldn't seem to accept that ideas don't spring out fully formed, the bad parts get discarded and the good parts get expanded on. The other thing that went wrong was Black Ops, mark 2. Black Ops ran Saturday nights, and usually went until 4 or 5 AM, or later. All of the players but one in the Exalted game played Black Ops. Thus, all of us were zombies on Sunday mornings, and given the player strife, it just couldn't hold itself together.
I have no particular favorite moment, though there was this one time that my character decided - I don't remember exactly why - to train in the middle of the night with the Bull of the North without telling anyone what she was doing. I had a reason for this, I know I did, but damned if I recall what. Anyway, given that he's a dawn caste, and much more experienced than I, it didn't go to well - though I remember feeling it was a victory - I must have been trying to prove some kind of point. I just loved coming back to camp, a health box from death, and refusing to explain what had happened.
Black Ops - Co GMed by Jason and Andy F., this second attempt at Black Ops is one of the best games I have ever played. No other game I've ever been in gave me the feeling of blind terror and dread of each game as this one did. Black Ops had a high fatality rate, and I was playing a vastly under powered character. Black Ops, MIB on crack, starts with 150 point GURPs character, and puts them through truly brutal training. I decided that I wanted to play someone with Magery - which is almost unheard of in the Black Ops world, it took a lot of fast talking to get to be allowed to. Doing so cost me almost 100 of my starting points, so I was horribly under powered compared to everyone else. The number of times I almost got turned to paste...ah, memories. However, the thing I liked best about Black Ops was the character interactions. Despite being a lot of dice rolling, it had a rich RP environment, and one of my favorite romances in any game I'd played at the time. Dave, an NPC, was just totally awesome - the sweetest, cutest...I could go on and on, I have lots and lots of fond memories of Black Ops. I will pick just one favorite though...
My favorite Black Ops moment was one of the best mind fucks in any game I've played so far. Training was made up of individual modules. One of these was a second chance - our characters were sent "back in time" to the events that caused us to be recruited by Black Ops, with some of the knowledge of our training to that point, and were given a chance to change events at that time - at the time, we didn't realize that we were actually changing time. Anyway, my character had had a miserable life. She had a horribly abusive husband who she couldn't leave, and worked at Walmart. She was recruited one day at work. During Second Chance, though, she decided that instead of going to work that day, she would leave her husband and go to school to become a doctor (she was training as a doctor in Black Ops). She made this choice with the knowledge that she would not meet Dave, who she was in a relationship with. I didn't want to corrupt my characters opinions with the fact that I thought Dave was awesome, so I'd been rolling to see if she was in love, and it just wasn't happening - she liked him, but didn't love him. Anyway, after a period of time we ended up back in training (for my character, almost three years passed). Julie was very upset. However, worse yet, Dave found out that she had chosen her normal life over meeting him. He was hopelessly in love, and was understandably very upset and started avoiding Julie. That, of course, was when I finally "succeeded" one of my in-love rolls. So I got to try to fix it (which was much fun). Now, a few weeks later time got all screwed up, because Julie and another PC, Melinda, were investigating some things they'd noticed (time, they discovered, had split into multiple time lines - in the other one, Dave had died, Julie wasn't happy about that). They got charged with unifying time and picking one way for things to have happened. Everyone had lived two admissions to Black Ops, and it was our job to select one that would become the "true" one. My character was very selfless, and found this to be truly awful. Worse, she had to pick her own too - choose her original entry, and arrive at Black Ops a pathetic wretch, or her alternate one, and never meet Dave. Of course, she choose Dave...when all was done, we all forgot about the time split, but the stress remained, so I had the delightful experience of having a full nervous breakdown over something I couldn't remember doing.
I feel like this description doesn't do these events justice - I wasn't the only one who thought they were cool at the time. :) I have many other fond memories of Black Ops, but I won't babble about it more now - maybe it'll get it's own post in the future.
Anyway, the professor is talking about something I don't actually know, so I'm off! :)
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Date: 2006-01-11 01:20 am (UTC)