So by now, if you are reading my blog and wondering what the hell I am going on about and acting like such a sanctimonious bastard, you are either one of the people for whom role playing is a hobby, or you are asking yourself if I have lost my fucking mind.
Let me explain what the gist of role playing is in the first place, because frankly a lot of people out there playing these games in the first place don’t have the foggiest idea and wouldn’t know truth from imaginary if Harry Potter himself was eating fruit loops on their front porch. I am like a lot of folks who role play in that I started a long time ago, playing D&D when I was a kid almost 30 years ago in fact. Stop with the old-fart comments, don’t make me whack you with my cane bitches. All jests about age and geriatrics aside, gaming has been around for a looong time.
The story goes that back in the late 60’s / early 70’s a game of Risk was run in which the host told his players (I do believe it was St. Gygax who did this, but don’t quote me…) that they could attempt “back room” deals and politics. So the game, the host felt, was a horrible failure because they didn’t finish, but his guests, oh honey, they had a blast! They conned and connived, made back room deals, held coups and double crossed each other and alllll those things. They “took on” the role of world leaders and did unscripted, unscrupulous, unplanned things that added a deep human dimension to a simple game of risk. This led to some ideas and inspirations and eventually D&D grew out of that whole idea. That there was more to games than just games, that you could add in human depth and make it far more intriguing.
Today we have those whole cottage industry making billions of dollars a year off people who want to escape their dreary, boring, craptastic lives. Why? Because there’s a whole shitload of people out there who are sad and never do a fucking thing worthy of being called adventure, but they want to. And on the flipside of the coin there’s a shit load of people out there who bust their ass in this shitty economy and just want some place that they can go and have a little high fantasy that doesn’t involve a cash register or a stupid uniform or some ass hole’s attitude while you’re trying to do your job for low wages. I fall into the “I’m just bored and gaming out of habit” category myself, I doubt I’ll walk away any time soon because frankly, I am amused by idiots and idiocy and their attempts to impose upon me their ideals of cool or acceptable. It’s like watching ants run up an elephants leg with rape on their little ant minds. To those players I say: sorry kids, you’re not going to change ME based on an online game and if you’re actually trying to actively do so, you’re a douche.
So role playing is a game, yes, much like risk or monopoly, only there’s no board, no pieces, and no set “goal” in most cases… with a few notable exceptions (Like Paranoia). You assume the role of a created person, and basically pretend to be someone who’s more bad ass than you are yourself for a short time. All is well with the world, right? Seems like it would be something hard to mess up, right? Wrong. The problem is that any time you get two people together, no matter how mellow, there’s going to be SOMETHING that they can’t agree on. Now, I know you’re saying, “Gee, you haven’t told us much about what role playing IS?” No, I have… Role Playing is PLAYING a ROLE. Actually making it your own. Its equal parts acting and storytelling.
Well, the problem here is that whether you are playing in a game that takes place in a gothic horror now, a distant mystical past, or a futuristic fantasy in space, there’s always some jack ass who just can’t play and be cool with everyone else playing. There is always some water head who has to gripe because his PC isn’t the most specialist or who demands the storytellers time and attention or who wants to be all emo and the center of a galaxy (and game) wide attempt to cheer him up or even just wants to fuck everything in sight that’s got a pulse (pulse is even optional in some cases…). Yep, it gets political. Frankly, I don’t really CARE about someone who’s PC is just a bad idea or who wants to cyber their way into hairy palmed blindness… it’s the social rejects who can’t just be mellow and let others have their fun that I can’t stand. Who cares if Bob the guy from Mud Lick, Kentucky has a piss-poor character? No one is demanding you play with him, leave him be and worry about your own shit. Can’t do that? Then you’re the kind of guy who could fuck up a blow job and I don’t mind it if I offend you by saying so.
The bottom line is that there is almost nothing at stake, people role play and they are so damn judgemental and nasty and political precisely because the stakes are so SMALL. It’s no different than kids playing video games – the price tag is just different and we prefer to interact more dynamically.
Now, here’s the secret: if you want to be a good role player, you have to be good at telling a story. Not necessarily for others, but you have to be good at telling YOUR story… and by YOUR story I don’t mean you personally, I mean, whatever the story is you are trying to tell. Not necessarily every story starts off with a definite ending, there’s nothing wrong with it evolving as it goes along, and there’s no problem if you wander hither and yon while you tell it, but you gotta tell it well. A poorly defined and poorly told story, one where you don’t know who the hell the hero is or what he’s about, goes down about like drinking a nice tall glass of puree’d fish guts in a warm urine sauce. At least take the time to figure out what kind of person you’re going to portray.
And while we’re at it, one last tip: No one likes and ass hole. This goes for characters as well as people, so if your character is an ass hole, expect that no one at all is going to want to hang out with him. You know, when you walk into work and the boss gives you a shit job just because he can and he has power over you? The nazi bitch who runs the office like it’s her own personal little corner of hell over which to hoard? The prick body builder who gave you the atomic wedgie in 10th grade? No body liked them because they. Are. Ass holes. So if you want to have fun and not get avoided like mormon missionaries in a Southern Baptist neighborhood, or worse yet, get curb stomped like mormon missionaries in Kabul, then do us alllll a favor and don’t be an ass hole and don’t PLAY an ass hole.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
The Fireman’s Guide to Different Online Games
The Fireman’s Guide to Different Online Games
OR
Just How Many Different Kinds of Idiots ARE Out There on the Internet?
Ahhh, online gaming. Most of us started out in a pencil-and-paper game setting. We were he geeks and not-so-much geeks sitting around the dining room table with a copy of the Players Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide back when AD&D was the biggest game in town and White Wolf was not yet a wet stain in someone’s shorts and companies like TSR and West End Games and FASA owned the industry. We played games like Mechwarrior and its horrendous system and Twilight 2000 and RIFTS with their ungodly long and involved character creation process and maybe even a few “cool” games like Cyberpunk (or it’s slightly more Tolkien-meets-TRON cousin Shadowrun).
If you are reading this and you don’t know what half of what I just said means, then all I can say is you need to make a trip to the nearest gaming store that sells used books and skip right on past the shiny new Saga Edition Star Wars rules and go find a copy of the original West End version of the game. Then, prepare to ask yourself “What were THOSE crack-babies THINKING?!?”
So, here’s a run down:
Dungeons and Dragons. The game that started it all. The original system was written by St. Gygax… er… I mean Gary Gygax as far back as the 1970’s and was around in one iteration or another up until Wizards of the coast bought the rights from TSR and updated it to the D20 system, or D&D 3rd edition… and the open source license. This brought about a billion minor companies into the mix as they could all produce and sell products that were compatible with D&D. Some companies like Green Ronin or Privateer Press put out some damn fine game material, some others flat sucked the root. The problem in the end is that most people playing D&D online are either 1. Playing in an MMO and not really role playing, or 2. They are sequestered quietly away and playing a more or less private game. There are some large D20 games out there but when someone wants in you have to ask if they want to play the same kind of game you do or incorporate all of the WEIRD shit that’s been put out over the years.
Rifts. I have yet to see a Rifts game online. I have stumbled across hints of them, but they have never been active, I encourage anyone reading this who is aware of one to drop a comment bomb on this blog and let us know, or even better, let us know what it was like. Rifts has great art and an interesting back story, but the system is only just slightly less complicated than the mathematics involved in Quantum physics or Chinese arithmetic. Rifts is set about a thousand years in the future and it’s interesting if you can find a game that focuses on the story and the setting and themes instead of the stats and numbers.
Star Wars. Sometimes you find this in D20 as it was published for quite a few years using a system very close to that for 3rd edition and 3.5 edition D&D. Sometimes you find the old West End Games system, which worked but was… cumbersome. Sometimes you find a system-less site that claims to be role playing but is really more like a group of Star Wars geeks sitting around writing fan fiction and masturbating vicariously. It’s odd but I have seen very few places that produce as much drivel as a bad Star Wars fan site and also very few places that produce such clever and well made fan material. Star Wars is cool, but man, it collects a VERY wide range of fans. If you don’t know what Star Wars is about I want you to go rent Episode iV, A New Hope, and don’t come up for air until you’ve seen it.
White-Wolf. Not a single game but a whole SLEW of games in two different catagories and where I spend a lot of my time, it includes:
OLD World of Darkness. The game that made role playing cool again was Vampire: The Masquerade. How violent, how goth, how horrific and dark… it was like distilled cool. The thing about these games was that they had tie in, one game sometimes kissed the next, but they all tied into each other and the real world around us in metaphysical and social and historical sense. The system wasn’t as refined as it would become with the new World of Darkness, but god the setting and metaplot and history included god and the devil, angels and demons, vampires and werewolves and mages and fae and alllll manner of things.
NEW World of Darkness. Okay, this is where the happy boat stops and I get off because frankly my biggest gripe about the old World of Darkness was the system, in the new game they tossed out everything that was cool and worked and fixed the system but broke every other fucking thing. I won’t go into details (in THIS blog post anyway…) but I will say this: the new changeling game is the best of the new stuff and the only one I REALLY like.
The World of Darkness games both boil down to this: they are both about playing anti-heroes. The eldritch magi, the brutal werewolf, the monstrous vampire, the nightmare fairy. Fun, but atypical, and set in the world just outside your window (only with mages and werewolves and vampires, oh my!).
There are, of course, other games out there on the internet. Now, for those of you who are about to utter the words “Final Fantasy” or “Second Life” don’t even think about it. ROLE PLAYING means you assume the role, not you watch a scripted cinematic. Making a yes or no or an either / or decision by hitting A or B on a pad or clicking with a mouse on options is NOT role playing. Role playing was once argued to me to be Magic the Gathering… yes, that stupid fucking card game that I swear is packaged with heroine, was presented to me as role playing. I laughed so hard I like to piss myself.
ROLE PLAYING means you PLAY the role, you make ALL the choices, create the dialog, the characters temperament, choose the paths to take, and so on. No video game is role playing, what you have is video games where you ASSUME a role as presented and then follow a linear path. Don’t believe me? Show me in a final fantasy game where you can deviate from the script? And I don’t mean make a choice, I mean, take up knitting in the game or perhaps rape the annoying female lead. For the record, I don’t recommend rape EVER, but it illustrates the point that in the game you can’t deviate from what’s programmed. That’s not role playing. Also for the record, if someone tried to rape in a game I was running they would probably leave my house via the front door at roughly the speed of my boot in their ass.
So, that brings us to methodology. There’s basically three ways most people who play online play: in chat, by email, and by forum. Playing by email means you sign onto a mailing list. You receive email at whatever address you signed up with containing information, you reply. I personally don’t think this is worth a damn as a viable role playing experience, but you can write your fan-fiction and so on using this avenue with a framework. It also can be easier to see what’s going on before you leap in. If the game looks like it’s being run by a retarded monkey, then you can bow out before you even get started.
Playing by forum means that there is a message board somewhere. You log in and everything happens on message threads that you follow and post to. Not the most interactive, but once more, you can usually get a feel for how things are run before you leap in. Only real difference between this and email groups is that with an email based game you don’t have to visit the site.
The final means is by chat. This is by far the most interactive and has the longest learning curve. The upside is that in a chat you can interact real-time, the downside is that until you actually catch a story teller and get involved, you won’t know if the game is run well or if it’s the mind child of a brainless nitwit, or worst of all, a nightmare given semi-literate form by someone who’s got the coping and interpersonal skills of a rapid Chihuahua. These can run from amateur in layout to complex and professional, but ultimately they are run by volunteers and as such the value and entertainment factor of an online game can vary widely and how well laid out the sites themselves are have NOTHING to do with how well the games run. Some of the lousiest role playing I’ve had has been on some of the best administered and layed out sites, and some of the most fun has been on barely-there bare bones sites with only the most minimal of functionality.
Now, a word on “system-less” role play. Let me warn you about these place, you will sooner or later run across them, that allow people to make shit up as they go. Places where there are forum, email, chat, or combination’s and some outpatient from a Thorazine clinic had the bright idea that role play without any rules or guidelines based on the literary works of some whacked out British author is a GOOD idea. You’ll run across “furry” sites where people are playing otherwise normal characters except they are DOGS or CATS of RABBITS or wookies or oompa-fucking-loompahs or platypus’ or whatever. It’s one thing to meander into a Star Wars game that’s marginally skirting Lucas’s ideas on the futuristic worlds of space… it’s another thing to run across a site where people are writing bad gay porn involving Howard the Duck and Jar Jar Binks and think it’s a GOOD outlet for their creative “juices”. (Ewww.)
So be warned… there are good sites, and there are bad sites, and then there are the sites where there are no rules to the game they are playing. Stay off the later.
One last note… the pursists and those who have gamed for a LONG time will note that I have missed a HELL of a lot of game systems. Well, that’s because when I get on I find only a few of them still out there. Scion and Aberrant and a few other games show up here and there, but those represent the most widely played that I have run across. There’s so many out there that if I was to try and review or give you a brief on every game system that is out there and could possibly be played online… well, if I was going to write THAT much I’d be punching out novels and trying to at least get PAID for it.
Anyway, that’s it for now… more on the topic of online venues and games and specific sites and so on and so forth later.
-The Fireman.
OR
Just How Many Different Kinds of Idiots ARE Out There on the Internet?
Ahhh, online gaming. Most of us started out in a pencil-and-paper game setting. We were he geeks and not-so-much geeks sitting around the dining room table with a copy of the Players Handbook and the Dungeon Master’s Guide back when AD&D was the biggest game in town and White Wolf was not yet a wet stain in someone’s shorts and companies like TSR and West End Games and FASA owned the industry. We played games like Mechwarrior and its horrendous system and Twilight 2000 and RIFTS with their ungodly long and involved character creation process and maybe even a few “cool” games like Cyberpunk (or it’s slightly more Tolkien-meets-TRON cousin Shadowrun).
If you are reading this and you don’t know what half of what I just said means, then all I can say is you need to make a trip to the nearest gaming store that sells used books and skip right on past the shiny new Saga Edition Star Wars rules and go find a copy of the original West End version of the game. Then, prepare to ask yourself “What were THOSE crack-babies THINKING?!?”
So, here’s a run down:
Dungeons and Dragons. The game that started it all. The original system was written by St. Gygax… er… I mean Gary Gygax as far back as the 1970’s and was around in one iteration or another up until Wizards of the coast bought the rights from TSR and updated it to the D20 system, or D&D 3rd edition… and the open source license. This brought about a billion minor companies into the mix as they could all produce and sell products that were compatible with D&D. Some companies like Green Ronin or Privateer Press put out some damn fine game material, some others flat sucked the root. The problem in the end is that most people playing D&D online are either 1. Playing in an MMO and not really role playing, or 2. They are sequestered quietly away and playing a more or less private game. There are some large D20 games out there but when someone wants in you have to ask if they want to play the same kind of game you do or incorporate all of the WEIRD shit that’s been put out over the years.
Rifts. I have yet to see a Rifts game online. I have stumbled across hints of them, but they have never been active, I encourage anyone reading this who is aware of one to drop a comment bomb on this blog and let us know, or even better, let us know what it was like. Rifts has great art and an interesting back story, but the system is only just slightly less complicated than the mathematics involved in Quantum physics or Chinese arithmetic. Rifts is set about a thousand years in the future and it’s interesting if you can find a game that focuses on the story and the setting and themes instead of the stats and numbers.
Star Wars. Sometimes you find this in D20 as it was published for quite a few years using a system very close to that for 3rd edition and 3.5 edition D&D. Sometimes you find the old West End Games system, which worked but was… cumbersome. Sometimes you find a system-less site that claims to be role playing but is really more like a group of Star Wars geeks sitting around writing fan fiction and masturbating vicariously. It’s odd but I have seen very few places that produce as much drivel as a bad Star Wars fan site and also very few places that produce such clever and well made fan material. Star Wars is cool, but man, it collects a VERY wide range of fans. If you don’t know what Star Wars is about I want you to go rent Episode iV, A New Hope, and don’t come up for air until you’ve seen it.
White-Wolf. Not a single game but a whole SLEW of games in two different catagories and where I spend a lot of my time, it includes:
OLD World of Darkness. The game that made role playing cool again was Vampire: The Masquerade. How violent, how goth, how horrific and dark… it was like distilled cool. The thing about these games was that they had tie in, one game sometimes kissed the next, but they all tied into each other and the real world around us in metaphysical and social and historical sense. The system wasn’t as refined as it would become with the new World of Darkness, but god the setting and metaplot and history included god and the devil, angels and demons, vampires and werewolves and mages and fae and alllll manner of things.
NEW World of Darkness. Okay, this is where the happy boat stops and I get off because frankly my biggest gripe about the old World of Darkness was the system, in the new game they tossed out everything that was cool and worked and fixed the system but broke every other fucking thing. I won’t go into details (in THIS blog post anyway…) but I will say this: the new changeling game is the best of the new stuff and the only one I REALLY like.
The World of Darkness games both boil down to this: they are both about playing anti-heroes. The eldritch magi, the brutal werewolf, the monstrous vampire, the nightmare fairy. Fun, but atypical, and set in the world just outside your window (only with mages and werewolves and vampires, oh my!).
There are, of course, other games out there on the internet. Now, for those of you who are about to utter the words “Final Fantasy” or “Second Life” don’t even think about it. ROLE PLAYING means you assume the role, not you watch a scripted cinematic. Making a yes or no or an either / or decision by hitting A or B on a pad or clicking with a mouse on options is NOT role playing. Role playing was once argued to me to be Magic the Gathering… yes, that stupid fucking card game that I swear is packaged with heroine, was presented to me as role playing. I laughed so hard I like to piss myself.
ROLE PLAYING means you PLAY the role, you make ALL the choices, create the dialog, the characters temperament, choose the paths to take, and so on. No video game is role playing, what you have is video games where you ASSUME a role as presented and then follow a linear path. Don’t believe me? Show me in a final fantasy game where you can deviate from the script? And I don’t mean make a choice, I mean, take up knitting in the game or perhaps rape the annoying female lead. For the record, I don’t recommend rape EVER, but it illustrates the point that in the game you can’t deviate from what’s programmed. That’s not role playing. Also for the record, if someone tried to rape in a game I was running they would probably leave my house via the front door at roughly the speed of my boot in their ass.
So, that brings us to methodology. There’s basically three ways most people who play online play: in chat, by email, and by forum. Playing by email means you sign onto a mailing list. You receive email at whatever address you signed up with containing information, you reply. I personally don’t think this is worth a damn as a viable role playing experience, but you can write your fan-fiction and so on using this avenue with a framework. It also can be easier to see what’s going on before you leap in. If the game looks like it’s being run by a retarded monkey, then you can bow out before you even get started.
Playing by forum means that there is a message board somewhere. You log in and everything happens on message threads that you follow and post to. Not the most interactive, but once more, you can usually get a feel for how things are run before you leap in. Only real difference between this and email groups is that with an email based game you don’t have to visit the site.
The final means is by chat. This is by far the most interactive and has the longest learning curve. The upside is that in a chat you can interact real-time, the downside is that until you actually catch a story teller and get involved, you won’t know if the game is run well or if it’s the mind child of a brainless nitwit, or worst of all, a nightmare given semi-literate form by someone who’s got the coping and interpersonal skills of a rapid Chihuahua. These can run from amateur in layout to complex and professional, but ultimately they are run by volunteers and as such the value and entertainment factor of an online game can vary widely and how well laid out the sites themselves are have NOTHING to do with how well the games run. Some of the lousiest role playing I’ve had has been on some of the best administered and layed out sites, and some of the most fun has been on barely-there bare bones sites with only the most minimal of functionality.
Now, a word on “system-less” role play. Let me warn you about these place, you will sooner or later run across them, that allow people to make shit up as they go. Places where there are forum, email, chat, or combination’s and some outpatient from a Thorazine clinic had the bright idea that role play without any rules or guidelines based on the literary works of some whacked out British author is a GOOD idea. You’ll run across “furry” sites where people are playing otherwise normal characters except they are DOGS or CATS of RABBITS or wookies or oompa-fucking-loompahs or platypus’ or whatever. It’s one thing to meander into a Star Wars game that’s marginally skirting Lucas’s ideas on the futuristic worlds of space… it’s another thing to run across a site where people are writing bad gay porn involving Howard the Duck and Jar Jar Binks and think it’s a GOOD outlet for their creative “juices”. (Ewww.)
So be warned… there are good sites, and there are bad sites, and then there are the sites where there are no rules to the game they are playing. Stay off the later.
One last note… the pursists and those who have gamed for a LONG time will note that I have missed a HELL of a lot of game systems. Well, that’s because when I get on I find only a few of them still out there. Scion and Aberrant and a few other games show up here and there, but those represent the most widely played that I have run across. There’s so many out there that if I was to try and review or give you a brief on every game system that is out there and could possibly be played online… well, if I was going to write THAT much I’d be punching out novels and trying to at least get PAID for it.
Anyway, that’s it for now… more on the topic of online venues and games and specific sites and so on and so forth later.
-The Fireman.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
The Fireman’s Guide to How Making Friends and Enemies!
Ahh, I am in a rather foul mood today. Not that you, dear reader, care one bit what my lethargic ass is feeling in my world while you suck down a nice Frappucino and nibble biscotti at Starbucks. (I’m dreaming… with most gaming geeks I’m lucky if I got you sucking down a big mac, a large fries and an apple pie at McDonalds and not sitting in your underwear in grandma’s basement, but I digress…)
So. Friends and Enemies. Let me first offer up this advice: NEVER believe what people tell you on the internet, and as much so in online games if not more so. For instance: in one recent escapade that made me laugh until my considerable girth quaked and my sides ached, a player in an online venue was panhandling – he was trying to get money, as in, REAL MONEY, out of players by feeding them some sad-sack story about being homeless and living in his car.
Folks, use some common fucking sense! If I was homeless and had nothing but a car and a laptop, I would NOT spend my time panhandling in an online role playing game, I would be looking for fucking work! Where the fuck would he GET internet access anyway? What, he parked in a McDonald’s parking lot while some schlub reads THIS post and hacked old Ronald’s wireless? He used his last five bucks for a Latte so he could use the Starbuck’s wifi? If you believe this story, then I have this check for 54 million bucks that’s stuck in Nigeria and I just need your bank account numbers and pin to deposit it and we’ll split the money, okay?
Friends come easy. Everyone online wants to gather the new blood and enamor the rookies unto themselves and form up packs and cliques and coteries. I do too; I just want to get people to realize that 1. It’s JUST a fucking game and 2. If they will just be cool to each other, then everything else will fall into place. There’s some genuinely good folks online, and then there’s the Rick Walker’s of the world. I don’t know if Rick Walker is a real person, but he was one of the most impressive cock-bites on the old White Wolf Hunter-net mailing list. I don’t think I have ever seen a more destructive personality in online venues. We dubbed him the nameless one, because we didn’t even want to use his name. Even BEING on a list with him was like masturbating with a fist full of steel wool and lye soap, the amusement factor went away almost immediately and it got painful in a right hurry.
When you get to that inevitable point I hope that you treat the new folks with care and compassion. If a kid wanders in without a book or a clue what the game is about, don’t flame him into cinders and send him crying home to momma, he won’t come back. Get him in a private chat, tell him what he needs, offer suggestions, support, and advice, but be fucking NICE, because if not then pretty soon the only people you are playing with is a close knit group of back-stabbing, shit-talking, stone-cold ass holes and you find yourself without a storyteller or a venue or a site to play on and surrounded by a bunch of highly critical people who have no targets left and they are just waiting to find out that you only have one testicle or you drive a Miata.
Or conversely, the staff of a good site just gets tired of you abusing the new blood and stable players and sends you packing. Frankly, if you are the kind of person to starts flame wars and trolls the foyers of the online gaming world, I am GLAD if they run your ass off. If I am in charge, I’m the kind of guy to do so myself. But then, I’m usually not in charge because I don’t want to be the ring leader.
Now, I know, by now most of you want *NOTHING* to do with me based on what I write and how corrosive I can be in this blog: but let me say this in my defense. I am one of the mellowest people you will meet online. I don’t get irritated and irate and scream and rant, but I also don’t do passive aggressive. I walk away or I tell someone to get bent if they are way out of line and mostly I just relax and keep myself to myself unless someone INSISTS on being an ass hat. Has that made me enemies? SURE! People hate it when someone doesn’t have to beg mercy or put up with them or assuage their guilt or sooth their wounded ego. For some reason online role play tends to gather up more than its fair share of people who have emotional issues and can’t relate well with others. Well, to them I say that this is NOT the place to seek therapy or learn how to deal with the public, if you can’t role play in the real world out there face to face with living breathing people, then you shouldn’t be trying it here. They might need some therapy or perhaps a support group, but that’s not what a game is for.
I encourage everyone who stumbles across and reads this blog to go join an online game once or twice a week, I really do. But if you are 43, never had a date or a girlfriend, and your idea of a hot Friday night is turning off the AC and getting naked to type one handed in a yahoo chat room then do us all a favor and get a grip, life is going to leave you behind. If you are 35 and every man you have ever dated left by sneaking out in the middle of the night without saying good bye because you smothered them to death - don’t look at on line games as a new source of cyber. If you are 18 and have never had a job that didn’t involve fries and milkshakes and you smoke pot nightly, you need to grow some before you give online role playing a shot. And for God’s sake, if you think no one can be as cool or has as firm a grasp of intelligence as you do, build a bridge and get over yourself – or don’t, I don’t care – but stay the hell out of the online gaming community!
Now, on the flip side of that; if you are the kind of person who just wants to escape a mundane existence for a few hours a week, if you don’t get upset and pissed off at words on a computer screen because you understand that they do not impact your existence, if you have a stable relationship and take care of your bills and your own life but just need some place to be more creative… well, then, come on out and play. Jump in, the water is fine.
We NEED that kind of person. Not the whiney, the troubled, the elitist, the harried, the arrogant. Everyone has their faults and flaws, and you’ll find that’s true online, just don’t be and don’t tolerate ass holes - let them play with themselves.
So what about making friends online?
First, let me point out that while I make fun of the notion of a half bald, overweight, pasty skinned middle aged water-head gamer typing one handed in his parents basement, I do so because I have met people like that in the real world. First time I went to meet someone I met online was waaaay back in the days of the dial up BBS, in 1994. Girl claimed to look hot, she looked like someone had set her face on fire and tried to put her out with an ice-pick then let Tammy Faye Baker do her makeup is what she looked like.
Do I care? NO. She was a nice enough person and I didn’t go to meet her for a date, it was a GAME site! In fact, I took my wife because my wife was the one who WANTED to meet her! (Not THAT way you perverts, get your minds out of the gutter!) Anyway, the point is, don’t get your hopes up that the people you are gaming with are sexy beasts that look like their character’s image. Most people for some reason seem to think they are talking with a lonely Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie look alike on the other end of the chat… but it just ain’t so. They got warts and moles and wrinkles just like the rest of us, so don’t get all weird on us and turn stalker. Online meeting people for romance happens, and sometimes it works, just don’t get your hopes up and DAMN sure don’t go online to play with that as your ultimate INTENTION. As far as meeting people goes after talking to them online… one thing is for sure, be careful. There are some really freaky folks out there.
As far as making friends online, I encourage it. The world is best when experienced, and when you get along with folks, it just makes the games all the better.
Game on.
-The Fireman.
So. Friends and Enemies. Let me first offer up this advice: NEVER believe what people tell you on the internet, and as much so in online games if not more so. For instance: in one recent escapade that made me laugh until my considerable girth quaked and my sides ached, a player in an online venue was panhandling – he was trying to get money, as in, REAL MONEY, out of players by feeding them some sad-sack story about being homeless and living in his car.
Folks, use some common fucking sense! If I was homeless and had nothing but a car and a laptop, I would NOT spend my time panhandling in an online role playing game, I would be looking for fucking work! Where the fuck would he GET internet access anyway? What, he parked in a McDonald’s parking lot while some schlub reads THIS post and hacked old Ronald’s wireless? He used his last five bucks for a Latte so he could use the Starbuck’s wifi? If you believe this story, then I have this check for 54 million bucks that’s stuck in Nigeria and I just need your bank account numbers and pin to deposit it and we’ll split the money, okay?
Friends come easy. Everyone online wants to gather the new blood and enamor the rookies unto themselves and form up packs and cliques and coteries. I do too; I just want to get people to realize that 1. It’s JUST a fucking game and 2. If they will just be cool to each other, then everything else will fall into place. There’s some genuinely good folks online, and then there’s the Rick Walker’s of the world. I don’t know if Rick Walker is a real person, but he was one of the most impressive cock-bites on the old White Wolf Hunter-net mailing list. I don’t think I have ever seen a more destructive personality in online venues. We dubbed him the nameless one, because we didn’t even want to use his name. Even BEING on a list with him was like masturbating with a fist full of steel wool and lye soap, the amusement factor went away almost immediately and it got painful in a right hurry.
When you get to that inevitable point I hope that you treat the new folks with care and compassion. If a kid wanders in without a book or a clue what the game is about, don’t flame him into cinders and send him crying home to momma, he won’t come back. Get him in a private chat, tell him what he needs, offer suggestions, support, and advice, but be fucking NICE, because if not then pretty soon the only people you are playing with is a close knit group of back-stabbing, shit-talking, stone-cold ass holes and you find yourself without a storyteller or a venue or a site to play on and surrounded by a bunch of highly critical people who have no targets left and they are just waiting to find out that you only have one testicle or you drive a Miata.
Or conversely, the staff of a good site just gets tired of you abusing the new blood and stable players and sends you packing. Frankly, if you are the kind of person to starts flame wars and trolls the foyers of the online gaming world, I am GLAD if they run your ass off. If I am in charge, I’m the kind of guy to do so myself. But then, I’m usually not in charge because I don’t want to be the ring leader.
Now, I know, by now most of you want *NOTHING* to do with me based on what I write and how corrosive I can be in this blog: but let me say this in my defense. I am one of the mellowest people you will meet online. I don’t get irritated and irate and scream and rant, but I also don’t do passive aggressive. I walk away or I tell someone to get bent if they are way out of line and mostly I just relax and keep myself to myself unless someone INSISTS on being an ass hat. Has that made me enemies? SURE! People hate it when someone doesn’t have to beg mercy or put up with them or assuage their guilt or sooth their wounded ego. For some reason online role play tends to gather up more than its fair share of people who have emotional issues and can’t relate well with others. Well, to them I say that this is NOT the place to seek therapy or learn how to deal with the public, if you can’t role play in the real world out there face to face with living breathing people, then you shouldn’t be trying it here. They might need some therapy or perhaps a support group, but that’s not what a game is for.
I encourage everyone who stumbles across and reads this blog to go join an online game once or twice a week, I really do. But if you are 43, never had a date or a girlfriend, and your idea of a hot Friday night is turning off the AC and getting naked to type one handed in a yahoo chat room then do us all a favor and get a grip, life is going to leave you behind. If you are 35 and every man you have ever dated left by sneaking out in the middle of the night without saying good bye because you smothered them to death - don’t look at on line games as a new source of cyber. If you are 18 and have never had a job that didn’t involve fries and milkshakes and you smoke pot nightly, you need to grow some before you give online role playing a shot. And for God’s sake, if you think no one can be as cool or has as firm a grasp of intelligence as you do, build a bridge and get over yourself – or don’t, I don’t care – but stay the hell out of the online gaming community!
Now, on the flip side of that; if you are the kind of person who just wants to escape a mundane existence for a few hours a week, if you don’t get upset and pissed off at words on a computer screen because you understand that they do not impact your existence, if you have a stable relationship and take care of your bills and your own life but just need some place to be more creative… well, then, come on out and play. Jump in, the water is fine.
We NEED that kind of person. Not the whiney, the troubled, the elitist, the harried, the arrogant. Everyone has their faults and flaws, and you’ll find that’s true online, just don’t be and don’t tolerate ass holes - let them play with themselves.
So what about making friends online?
First, let me point out that while I make fun of the notion of a half bald, overweight, pasty skinned middle aged water-head gamer typing one handed in his parents basement, I do so because I have met people like that in the real world. First time I went to meet someone I met online was waaaay back in the days of the dial up BBS, in 1994. Girl claimed to look hot, she looked like someone had set her face on fire and tried to put her out with an ice-pick then let Tammy Faye Baker do her makeup is what she looked like.
Do I care? NO. She was a nice enough person and I didn’t go to meet her for a date, it was a GAME site! In fact, I took my wife because my wife was the one who WANTED to meet her! (Not THAT way you perverts, get your minds out of the gutter!) Anyway, the point is, don’t get your hopes up that the people you are gaming with are sexy beasts that look like their character’s image. Most people for some reason seem to think they are talking with a lonely Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie look alike on the other end of the chat… but it just ain’t so. They got warts and moles and wrinkles just like the rest of us, so don’t get all weird on us and turn stalker. Online meeting people for romance happens, and sometimes it works, just don’t get your hopes up and DAMN sure don’t go online to play with that as your ultimate INTENTION. As far as meeting people goes after talking to them online… one thing is for sure, be careful. There are some really freaky folks out there.
As far as making friends online, I encourage it. The world is best when experienced, and when you get along with folks, it just makes the games all the better.
Game on.
-The Fireman.
Monday, August 10, 2009
The Fireman’s Guide to Surviving Ass Hattery Playing Online.
Ahh. Ass-hats. They make up roughly 99% of the people who game online I think. This group includes a heck of a lot of people at any rate, the butt nuggets who can’t come up with an original idea, the hate talkers on RPG Soapbox, the entire web site who I will not name that has a name like “Icons in the Antechamber.” What the hell is the deal people?
Let me explain – in glorious detail – two things about online games. First there is the site, then there is the people. The site is something not everyone can do. Some jack-offs couldn’t code a site to save their asses but would be awesome storytellers and would run an awesome site, but it never happens because they can’t afford to pay for the site and the code work and all that it involves. Other people can code but they simply don’t care about the game THAT much and things go to shit because they set things up but don’t really care if it’s successful. Still others weasel their way into the games as master or admin and they have no business running a roach motel much less an online game. Everyone online falls in some measure into these catagories when they are running the games: with a mix of benevolence, skill, ego, and arrogance. If you are lucky you have a character in a venue where the guy running the show has some coding skill and a modicum of concern for how things turn out. If not, well, you probably know it but your clinging tenaciously to the hope that things will change. Hah! Might as well go masturbate with a cheese grater, if a site’s admin is an ass hole then the site will forever be what comes out of an ass hole.
The second thing about online games that you must realize is the PEOPLE are just as fucked up as the you get out there in the real world. There’s a smattering of people who are no bullshit honest to god decent people who you would consider gaming with if they lived in town. (I might or might not be in that group, but frankly I don’t care if you like me or not.) The rest of the people online, unfortunately, are the kind of window licking, emotionally disturbed, hairy palmed, basement dwelling cretins that you would normally punch in the face or run away from as rapidly as possible. Occasionally you even get the kind of arrogant pricks you simply never invite to a game again because they have the kind of manners that would prompt the Pope to say: “you know what, YOU are a DICK!” This second group contains the kind of human refuse that can no longer find a game near home because everyone from junior high school to college and beyond who lives near them and especially every group and person who frequents the gaming stores for a hundred mile radius has already either thrown them forcibly out the front door or changed their phone numbers and door locks and gotten a restraining order.
What? You ask, surely there’s no one like that online! Yes, there is, and don’t call me Shirley. Let me assure you, that while a game site can have shitty coding, no online sheets, and a LOUSY looking forum, all those hurdles can be overcome by a GOOD storyteller. On the other hand, a site populated by arrogant pricks is bad news: run the fuck away, it means the Storytellers and Admins have at best a really loose grasp on their site and their players and probably reality or at worst it’s a site where a clique runs things and if you aren’t one of the “kewl(!)” kids you will get NOTHING. It never ceases to amaze me how arrogant people can be, or how narrow minded or short sighted, or how plain estupido.
Here’s the root of the problem: no two people think alike. Now, this in itself is not a problem, if we all thought alike it would be a boring world where all we did was eat the same thing, screw in the same position, and slept at the same time. The problem is that there are SO MANY people online who can’t 1. Come up with an original thought or 2. Have to scream and rant when someone else’s original thought is not up to their personal cool standards. What? You say, dear reader, after hacking on twinks so hard you are going to tell me that it’s bad to get on their idea of fun? You flaming Hypocrite!
No silly. The problem is this: when John Q. Gamer comes along and says “You know what, I want to play a lesbian even though I am a 400 pound fat guy from Paducah Kentucky…” he has every right. He might be a horrible gamer. Who cares? It’s not up to me to flame him off a gaming site – although if he asks me I’m going to tell him it’s a horrible idea and he’s not impressing anyone but I won’t TRY to make the dork feel bad! Besides, people will be quite annoyed with his asinine behavior and alienate him quite without help. If, on the other hand, some twink berry wishes to play something that’s BLATANTLY against the rules, well, that’s where Storyteller’s come in, and should shoot him down. Where the REAL problem starts is when some ass hat who can’t get into a table top gaming group to save his life because he has the personal manners and appeal of a donkey with syphilis has to chime up out of character in the site’s forums or foyer or on some other site and begin to denigrate the guy’s person and character.
It is our god given right to play how we want! So to all you ass holes out there (and I REALLY hope they do read this at some point) who have to attack people out of character for playing concepts just because you don’t like the idea: I hope you get caught under a bus. Frankly, I don’t CARE if someone plays a character I don’t LIKE, so long as doesn’t flat out breaks rules, who cares? We DON’T all think alike. Check your window, if you have one and you’re not reading this in the basement in your underwear, look outside. All those people out there? All 6 BILLION of them? That’s what make the REAL WORLD, that mythical place where shit happens, is the fact that all of them are DIFFERENT!
So when some ass hat slams someone else for having a character that isn’t cool it hurts the whole online gaming community, pretty much like Germany hurt the Jews. It kills us all. If the only people online were some kind of select elite who everyone else thought was KEWL there would be ten people gaming because the average Joe would have LONG since gotten fed up with the arrogant crap and gone back to a table top game with their buddies. THIS, my dear friends, means that online gaming gets LESS amusing over time and more frustrating as good people get fed up with the morons and leave. And it gets worse because sooner or later the elite gamer Nazis run across a group who won’t back down and then things escalate to super nova levels of ass hattery. Look, sometimes the average Joe who’s casual and laid back - he gets behind a keyboard and even though in the real would he wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouth full of it as soon as he has the perceived anonymity of the internet and assumes no one will know who he is he begins to spew forth the most evil, vile, sadistic, ignorant crap you have ever read!
So how does this turn into a “Survival guide” in that environment? Well, here’s the positive light! I hear you gasp in shock, me, painting a positive picture?! Say it isn’t so! Ahhh, but yes, there IS an upside. That is, the really casual morons tend to not care or go away in a hurry, so that guy who would never have logged in to play tends to get sifted out fairly quickly. What I am hoping is that the NEW player who reads this will understand the kinds of nitwits they WILL be encountering and hopefully by being forewarned when they encounter this kind of ass hattery they will not be disenchanted to the point of leaving the online gaming community.
The upside is that there’s also an online gaming community who is non-judgmental, who doesn’t scream foul when they don’t get their way, who doesn’t insist on judging everyone else. It might take a while to find them, they tend to keep their own council and watch each other’s backs very carefully and present a pretty solid front - that’s because they have learned not to trust. Watch for them, my friend reader, watch for the guy who isn’t judgmental and who might leave a scene where some brazen idiot is demanding attention but who doesn’t go off out of character. Watch for the classy lady who avoids cyber and bad drama and worse stereotypes. Watch for the PC’s who when you interact with them you step back and say “That’s an original idea…” Those people, they are probably the ones you want to associate with.
Stay the hell away from anyone who talks crap in the foyers of the various gaming sites or PM’s you with insults about another player. And most of all stay away from anyone who is already embroiled in some kind of flame war at LEAST until you know what the reason for it all is. And be warned, dear reader, that if you DO wade into a flame fest, it can get you booted off a decent site. Choose your battles wisely.
-The Fireman
Let me explain – in glorious detail – two things about online games. First there is the site, then there is the people. The site is something not everyone can do. Some jack-offs couldn’t code a site to save their asses but would be awesome storytellers and would run an awesome site, but it never happens because they can’t afford to pay for the site and the code work and all that it involves. Other people can code but they simply don’t care about the game THAT much and things go to shit because they set things up but don’t really care if it’s successful. Still others weasel their way into the games as master or admin and they have no business running a roach motel much less an online game. Everyone online falls in some measure into these catagories when they are running the games: with a mix of benevolence, skill, ego, and arrogance. If you are lucky you have a character in a venue where the guy running the show has some coding skill and a modicum of concern for how things turn out. If not, well, you probably know it but your clinging tenaciously to the hope that things will change. Hah! Might as well go masturbate with a cheese grater, if a site’s admin is an ass hole then the site will forever be what comes out of an ass hole.
The second thing about online games that you must realize is the PEOPLE are just as fucked up as the you get out there in the real world. There’s a smattering of people who are no bullshit honest to god decent people who you would consider gaming with if they lived in town. (I might or might not be in that group, but frankly I don’t care if you like me or not.) The rest of the people online, unfortunately, are the kind of window licking, emotionally disturbed, hairy palmed, basement dwelling cretins that you would normally punch in the face or run away from as rapidly as possible. Occasionally you even get the kind of arrogant pricks you simply never invite to a game again because they have the kind of manners that would prompt the Pope to say: “you know what, YOU are a DICK!” This second group contains the kind of human refuse that can no longer find a game near home because everyone from junior high school to college and beyond who lives near them and especially every group and person who frequents the gaming stores for a hundred mile radius has already either thrown them forcibly out the front door or changed their phone numbers and door locks and gotten a restraining order.
What? You ask, surely there’s no one like that online! Yes, there is, and don’t call me Shirley. Let me assure you, that while a game site can have shitty coding, no online sheets, and a LOUSY looking forum, all those hurdles can be overcome by a GOOD storyteller. On the other hand, a site populated by arrogant pricks is bad news: run the fuck away, it means the Storytellers and Admins have at best a really loose grasp on their site and their players and probably reality or at worst it’s a site where a clique runs things and if you aren’t one of the “kewl(!)” kids you will get NOTHING. It never ceases to amaze me how arrogant people can be, or how narrow minded or short sighted, or how plain estupido.
Here’s the root of the problem: no two people think alike. Now, this in itself is not a problem, if we all thought alike it would be a boring world where all we did was eat the same thing, screw in the same position, and slept at the same time. The problem is that there are SO MANY people online who can’t 1. Come up with an original thought or 2. Have to scream and rant when someone else’s original thought is not up to their personal cool standards. What? You say, dear reader, after hacking on twinks so hard you are going to tell me that it’s bad to get on their idea of fun? You flaming Hypocrite!
No silly. The problem is this: when John Q. Gamer comes along and says “You know what, I want to play a lesbian even though I am a 400 pound fat guy from Paducah Kentucky…” he has every right. He might be a horrible gamer. Who cares? It’s not up to me to flame him off a gaming site – although if he asks me I’m going to tell him it’s a horrible idea and he’s not impressing anyone but I won’t TRY to make the dork feel bad! Besides, people will be quite annoyed with his asinine behavior and alienate him quite without help. If, on the other hand, some twink berry wishes to play something that’s BLATANTLY against the rules, well, that’s where Storyteller’s come in, and should shoot him down. Where the REAL problem starts is when some ass hat who can’t get into a table top gaming group to save his life because he has the personal manners and appeal of a donkey with syphilis has to chime up out of character in the site’s forums or foyer or on some other site and begin to denigrate the guy’s person and character.
It is our god given right to play how we want! So to all you ass holes out there (and I REALLY hope they do read this at some point) who have to attack people out of character for playing concepts just because you don’t like the idea: I hope you get caught under a bus. Frankly, I don’t CARE if someone plays a character I don’t LIKE, so long as doesn’t flat out breaks rules, who cares? We DON’T all think alike. Check your window, if you have one and you’re not reading this in the basement in your underwear, look outside. All those people out there? All 6 BILLION of them? That’s what make the REAL WORLD, that mythical place where shit happens, is the fact that all of them are DIFFERENT!
So when some ass hat slams someone else for having a character that isn’t cool it hurts the whole online gaming community, pretty much like Germany hurt the Jews. It kills us all. If the only people online were some kind of select elite who everyone else thought was KEWL there would be ten people gaming because the average Joe would have LONG since gotten fed up with the arrogant crap and gone back to a table top game with their buddies. THIS, my dear friends, means that online gaming gets LESS amusing over time and more frustrating as good people get fed up with the morons and leave. And it gets worse because sooner or later the elite gamer Nazis run across a group who won’t back down and then things escalate to super nova levels of ass hattery. Look, sometimes the average Joe who’s casual and laid back - he gets behind a keyboard and even though in the real would he wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouth full of it as soon as he has the perceived anonymity of the internet and assumes no one will know who he is he begins to spew forth the most evil, vile, sadistic, ignorant crap you have ever read!
So how does this turn into a “Survival guide” in that environment? Well, here’s the positive light! I hear you gasp in shock, me, painting a positive picture?! Say it isn’t so! Ahhh, but yes, there IS an upside. That is, the really casual morons tend to not care or go away in a hurry, so that guy who would never have logged in to play tends to get sifted out fairly quickly. What I am hoping is that the NEW player who reads this will understand the kinds of nitwits they WILL be encountering and hopefully by being forewarned when they encounter this kind of ass hattery they will not be disenchanted to the point of leaving the online gaming community.
The upside is that there’s also an online gaming community who is non-judgmental, who doesn’t scream foul when they don’t get their way, who doesn’t insist on judging everyone else. It might take a while to find them, they tend to keep their own council and watch each other’s backs very carefully and present a pretty solid front - that’s because they have learned not to trust. Watch for them, my friend reader, watch for the guy who isn’t judgmental and who might leave a scene where some brazen idiot is demanding attention but who doesn’t go off out of character. Watch for the classy lady who avoids cyber and bad drama and worse stereotypes. Watch for the PC’s who when you interact with them you step back and say “That’s an original idea…” Those people, they are probably the ones you want to associate with.
Stay the hell away from anyone who talks crap in the foyers of the various gaming sites or PM’s you with insults about another player. And most of all stay away from anyone who is already embroiled in some kind of flame war at LEAST until you know what the reason for it all is. And be warned, dear reader, that if you DO wade into a flame fest, it can get you booted off a decent site. Choose your battles wisely.
-The Fireman
Monday, August 3, 2009
The Fireman’s Guide to the Katana
Now here’s a topic that’s probably about as contentious as late term abortion. The legendary Japanese Katana, made kewl in the eyes of twinks by Highlander, loathed by Storytellers who can’t get over their elitists cramps, and a constant source of frustration to the few people out there who actually understand what a Katana really is. Ahhh, the whining of morons who wouldn’t know a Japanese blade from a lawn mower blade when I tell them “NO!” warms my little Storyteller heart. The problem is that about 9 out of 10 people who want one in the game are completely ignorant of what they are really asking for and go bumbling any good reason or use… kind of like our presidents do.
There’s several sides to this little debate, so let me start with a brief and highly simplified explanation of a couple of things.
1. A Katana is made only in Japan from steel that only comes from the black sandy iron from a single region of the country, and it’s only made using VERY precise processes and blessings used by Japanese black smiths and Shinto priests.
2. A Katana is NOT the stainless steel 25-dollar piece of shit hanging on the wall that you got off Ebay – that is merely a katana-shaped chunk of Chinese crap.
3. a PROPER high carbon steel practice weapon with a real edge and differential temper that can be disassembled and cleaned and properly cared for and maintained, while *technically* not a katana, is a LOT different than the 25-dollar Chinese crap that looks pretty but is worthless, however, it’s also not cheap, usually a couple hundred bucks.
4. A wakizashi follows these same principles in construction – they are made the same way, and if you got one for twenty five bucks you have Chinese crap. The same rule applies for the Tanto and the Tachi. (If you don’t know what the difference between a Katana, a Wakizashi, and a Tachi is and you have ever asked an ST for a Katana I want you to slap yourself in the face right now, hard, for being a twink.)
The reason I make these points is simple: twinks. Twinks always act the damn fool as soon as they ask for a katana, they whine and cry and their pussies get to hurting and bleeding when a storyteller goes “no, your antique dealer who grew up in France can’t have an original Muramasa Katana.” To make matters worse, the player is usually some white-bread idiot who’s never been out of his home town and gets his education on Japanese culture from reading Super Taboo and watching bad Anime. They have a character named “Connor Yamaguchi” or “Maia McCleod” who’s half Scottish, half Japanese asking if they can have a Daisho at creation and they know JUST enough to understand that a Daisho is a Katana and Wakizashi. (I swear to God, I have seen precisely that character concept.) Side note: if you have ever wanted to create a PC based on a video game wherein some insane weapon is wielded, you were twinking, knock it the hell off.
Guys, if you do ask for this katana, the ST is going to immediately tag you in their mind as a flaming fucking moron and the other players are going to groan inwardly (or maybe even outwardly at their computer screens...). Hell, a few may go so far as to tell you that it’s a shallow, stupid, facile idea. They would be right. I once had a table top player who actually presented me with a six-foot-four, red haired, green eyed Japanese princess for a PC. I almost laughed until I realized he was serious, then I really DID laugh at him… laughed him right out of my game is what I did. (Of course, this was only one tiny part of this particular players ass hattery and flamboyant twinkery, I promise, you will hear more about him in time.)
Usually these same PC’s want to hide their kewl(!) sword in a trench coat, or worse, carry them in the open. Highlander was not fucking realistic! Get a go damned trench coat, try to hide a 3 foot walking stick under there… everyone KNOWS you have something. Don’t be fooled and don’t be stupid, you don’t hide fucking swords readily, and if you do conceal it, you wind up looking to everyone like you’re hiding *something*. My personal favorite is the twink who wants to wear a motorcycle jacket and still hide the katana. Yeah, where? Between your lungs and your prostate? How do you talk with the handle of that thing in the back of your throat? True, just about everyone who has ever had a sword in their role-playing inventory has tried to hide it somewhere at some point, sometimes they even have a reasonable understanding of the difficulties of doing so and the better among our numbers doesn’t just kind of ignore this facet of the game, but if your character concept revolves around a katana under a trench coat, then you’re doing it wrong, and you totally missed the point of creating your OWN character! I’ll talk about the character whose got more weapons hidden on his person than the average gun store even holds in a later post…
A real Katana’s strength comes from the way it’s made. The back of the blade is soft, flexible steel. Incredibly resilient and with spring like qualities, it absorbs impacts very well. The edge of the blade is hard as hell on the other hand, more brittle but VERY sharp and carrying exceptional edge-holding properties. For these reasons the real weapons, when you watch a REAL martial artist practice, are used in some VERY specific ways (which – by the way – are NOT how the props were wielded on the Highlander movies and television program episodes). The sharp leading edge of a katana blade is almost *NEVER* used to parry a blow, to do so risks deeply notching the harder steel, and that rapidly becomes irreparable damage. Blows are parried by knocking them aside and deflecting them with the softer spine of the blade.
The reason I spell this out is because your Chinese made Stainless Steel wall art does NOT carry this differential temper – it is a single chunk of solid stainless that will notch and bend and break regardless of HOW it’s used to parry, and I’m not even getting into Stainless Steel’s work hardening properties! It is inferior in every way, it has a rat tail tang, a piece of long threaded rod with a simple nut on the end used to hold the handle in place, where as a real katana has a full tang that’s secured with wooden pins. The rat tail is a point of weakness on that Chinese crap, so you might go to hit something and *WHOOSH!* the blade goes flying off into the wild blue yonder! Now, if you’re actually swinging that crap around in your backyard in the REAL world and not the game… STOP! You fucking idiot, you’re going to break that fucking thing or kill grandma or impale the neighbors Bichon Frise! Actually, I encourage you to shut the neighbor’s yip-yap Bichon Frise up, I just don’t recommend using the severed business end of a piss poor Chinese made piece of crap as a makeshift javelin in order to do so.
So why the fuck all these history lessons? For you, my dear reader, if you have a Katana on a sheet, or if you have ever ASKED for one for a PC, and you don’t know what the difference between a Hamon and a Tsuba is, I want you to first apologize to your storyteller and thank them for putting up with your lame ass. Then I want you to have the Katana removed; erase it from the sheet, put in the characters thread that you lost it, whatever. Then, go stick your dominant hand in a running blender so you never do that again you poser.
NOW: let me address the other side of the coin. ST ass hattery. THIS gentle loving is directed at the elitist, ST snobs from around the web who have a stick up their ass about Katanas. There’s some jack asses out there who will flat refuse ANYONE a request for a katana. It’s one thing to heavily restrict an item, but the Katana DOES exist in the real world, and so does Kendo and Kenjutsu and Tamishigiri and martial arts for which the Katana IS a central focus… so denying EVERY PC who comes along because many of them are idiots is frankly both insulting, frustrating, and it’s ASSHOLE behavior as bad as the twinks with the trench coat because it tells the few decent folks out there who understand shit that you equate them to twinks.
My personal litmus test (and solution) is this: if a player asks for a Katana, ask them where they got it. If they say “You can get one on Ebay for like, twenty five bucks!” Sure. Let them have that piece of crap. The first time they try to use it in combat have it fail, dramatically, and let them find out the hard way the stats are NOTHING like in the book for the legendary weapon. Fail to do your research and let it bite ya in the ass. That being said, a Storyteller who flat refuses a katana to a player who DOES know what they are talking about, who has done their research and knows the difference and is not trying to twink the game, who’s character has practiced martial arts and who does NOT revolve around the stupid weapon and a bad Scottish accent… well, sorry buddy, but you’re being a piece of shit storyteller because your letting your personal hang-up’s fuck up a players game just because there’s some idiots out there. Build a bridge and get over yourself.
Twinks: that still doesn’t mean you should get a fucking Katana because if not it’ll fuck up your game. Twinks don’t have a game, that’s why they are twinks, all they have is stolen ideas from someone else that they think are kewl(!) and until they get an original idea they’re not going to have a GOOD game.
NOW, let me clarify something. In my real life, in my home, I DO own a $25 piece of Chinese crap. It’s craptastic. It sucks. It’s nothing worth carrying into a fight. But it does look real pretty on the wall! I also, however, own a $750 Paul Cheng that’s really folded steel, it really does have a razor edge, it really will cut through a person like hot butter, but it is not on the wall, it requires regular cleaning and oiling and would rust on the wall, and there’s NO WAY in hell I would hide that sucker in a trench coat. Neither one of them is a *real* katana, because neither one of them actually was made in the traditional method. For the record, I have never taken out a Bichon Frise with one. Or any other Yip-yap dog. Or a cat. Okay, I did once use the cheapie in its sheath to kill a spider on the roof. The Paul Cheng, if I was to put it on a sheet, I would list as a Katana, because it is just as hard, strong, sharp, and durable as the original antique would be… it’s just not as old or made by hand using 1000 year old processes.
A REAL katana costs tens of thousands of dollars – they are always, always works of art, unique, timeless, requiring either a hell of a lot of money or a hell of a lot of hard work to acquire, so forget having it without a damn good reason and a damn good story. You might be able to con some table top storyteller into it, especially if he’s your buddy and you’re both living in some backwater in Alabama and the closest to Asia you’ll ever get is the local Panda Express, but in an online game where people might very well be playing who live in Japan? Guess again, white boy. I say white boy, but girls are included, I’m not a sexist smack talker.
On a related note – NO character concept for whom you have a mental image of a Scottish Highlander wielding an Asian weapon is EVER a good character concept unless you wrote the ORIGINAL story! Everyone else is like the sequel, and as we know those sequels sucked. So grow up and come up with an original concept.
-The Fireman.
Now here’s a topic that’s probably about as contentious as late term abortion. The legendary Japanese Katana, made kewl in the eyes of twinks by Highlander, loathed by Storytellers who can’t get over their elitists cramps, and a constant source of frustration to the few people out there who actually understand what a Katana really is. Ahhh, the whining of morons who wouldn’t know a Japanese blade from a lawn mower blade when I tell them “NO!” warms my little Storyteller heart. The problem is that about 9 out of 10 people who want one in the game are completely ignorant of what they are really asking for and go bumbling any good reason or use… kind of like our presidents do.
There’s several sides to this little debate, so let me start with a brief and highly simplified explanation of a couple of things.
1. A Katana is made only in Japan from steel that only comes from the black sandy iron from a single region of the country, and it’s only made using VERY precise processes and blessings used by Japanese black smiths and Shinto priests.
2. A Katana is NOT the stainless steel 25-dollar piece of shit hanging on the wall that you got off Ebay – that is merely a katana-shaped chunk of Chinese crap.
3. a PROPER high carbon steel practice weapon with a real edge and differential temper that can be disassembled and cleaned and properly cared for and maintained, while *technically* not a katana, is a LOT different than the 25-dollar Chinese crap that looks pretty but is worthless, however, it’s also not cheap, usually a couple hundred bucks.
4. A wakizashi follows these same principles in construction – they are made the same way, and if you got one for twenty five bucks you have Chinese crap. The same rule applies for the Tanto and the Tachi. (If you don’t know what the difference between a Katana, a Wakizashi, and a Tachi is and you have ever asked an ST for a Katana I want you to slap yourself in the face right now, hard, for being a twink.)
The reason I make these points is simple: twinks. Twinks always act the damn fool as soon as they ask for a katana, they whine and cry and their pussies get to hurting and bleeding when a storyteller goes “no, your antique dealer who grew up in France can’t have an original Muramasa Katana.” To make matters worse, the player is usually some white-bread idiot who’s never been out of his home town and gets his education on Japanese culture from reading Super Taboo and watching bad Anime. They have a character named “Connor Yamaguchi” or “Maia McCleod” who’s half Scottish, half Japanese asking if they can have a Daisho at creation and they know JUST enough to understand that a Daisho is a Katana and Wakizashi. (I swear to God, I have seen precisely that character concept.) Side note: if you have ever wanted to create a PC based on a video game wherein some insane weapon is wielded, you were twinking, knock it the hell off.
Guys, if you do ask for this katana, the ST is going to immediately tag you in their mind as a flaming fucking moron and the other players are going to groan inwardly (or maybe even outwardly at their computer screens...). Hell, a few may go so far as to tell you that it’s a shallow, stupid, facile idea. They would be right. I once had a table top player who actually presented me with a six-foot-four, red haired, green eyed Japanese princess for a PC. I almost laughed until I realized he was serious, then I really DID laugh at him… laughed him right out of my game is what I did. (Of course, this was only one tiny part of this particular players ass hattery and flamboyant twinkery, I promise, you will hear more about him in time.)
Usually these same PC’s want to hide their kewl(!) sword in a trench coat, or worse, carry them in the open. Highlander was not fucking realistic! Get a go damned trench coat, try to hide a 3 foot walking stick under there… everyone KNOWS you have something. Don’t be fooled and don’t be stupid, you don’t hide fucking swords readily, and if you do conceal it, you wind up looking to everyone like you’re hiding *something*. My personal favorite is the twink who wants to wear a motorcycle jacket and still hide the katana. Yeah, where? Between your lungs and your prostate? How do you talk with the handle of that thing in the back of your throat? True, just about everyone who has ever had a sword in their role-playing inventory has tried to hide it somewhere at some point, sometimes they even have a reasonable understanding of the difficulties of doing so and the better among our numbers doesn’t just kind of ignore this facet of the game, but if your character concept revolves around a katana under a trench coat, then you’re doing it wrong, and you totally missed the point of creating your OWN character! I’ll talk about the character whose got more weapons hidden on his person than the average gun store even holds in a later post…
A real Katana’s strength comes from the way it’s made. The back of the blade is soft, flexible steel. Incredibly resilient and with spring like qualities, it absorbs impacts very well. The edge of the blade is hard as hell on the other hand, more brittle but VERY sharp and carrying exceptional edge-holding properties. For these reasons the real weapons, when you watch a REAL martial artist practice, are used in some VERY specific ways (which – by the way – are NOT how the props were wielded on the Highlander movies and television program episodes). The sharp leading edge of a katana blade is almost *NEVER* used to parry a blow, to do so risks deeply notching the harder steel, and that rapidly becomes irreparable damage. Blows are parried by knocking them aside and deflecting them with the softer spine of the blade.
The reason I spell this out is because your Chinese made Stainless Steel wall art does NOT carry this differential temper – it is a single chunk of solid stainless that will notch and bend and break regardless of HOW it’s used to parry, and I’m not even getting into Stainless Steel’s work hardening properties! It is inferior in every way, it has a rat tail tang, a piece of long threaded rod with a simple nut on the end used to hold the handle in place, where as a real katana has a full tang that’s secured with wooden pins. The rat tail is a point of weakness on that Chinese crap, so you might go to hit something and *WHOOSH!* the blade goes flying off into the wild blue yonder! Now, if you’re actually swinging that crap around in your backyard in the REAL world and not the game… STOP! You fucking idiot, you’re going to break that fucking thing or kill grandma or impale the neighbors Bichon Frise! Actually, I encourage you to shut the neighbor’s yip-yap Bichon Frise up, I just don’t recommend using the severed business end of a piss poor Chinese made piece of crap as a makeshift javelin in order to do so.
So why the fuck all these history lessons? For you, my dear reader, if you have a Katana on a sheet, or if you have ever ASKED for one for a PC, and you don’t know what the difference between a Hamon and a Tsuba is, I want you to first apologize to your storyteller and thank them for putting up with your lame ass. Then I want you to have the Katana removed; erase it from the sheet, put in the characters thread that you lost it, whatever. Then, go stick your dominant hand in a running blender so you never do that again you poser.
NOW: let me address the other side of the coin. ST ass hattery. THIS gentle loving is directed at the elitist, ST snobs from around the web who have a stick up their ass about Katanas. There’s some jack asses out there who will flat refuse ANYONE a request for a katana. It’s one thing to heavily restrict an item, but the Katana DOES exist in the real world, and so does Kendo and Kenjutsu and Tamishigiri and martial arts for which the Katana IS a central focus… so denying EVERY PC who comes along because many of them are idiots is frankly both insulting, frustrating, and it’s ASSHOLE behavior as bad as the twinks with the trench coat because it tells the few decent folks out there who understand shit that you equate them to twinks.
My personal litmus test (and solution) is this: if a player asks for a Katana, ask them where they got it. If they say “You can get one on Ebay for like, twenty five bucks!” Sure. Let them have that piece of crap. The first time they try to use it in combat have it fail, dramatically, and let them find out the hard way the stats are NOTHING like in the book for the legendary weapon. Fail to do your research and let it bite ya in the ass. That being said, a Storyteller who flat refuses a katana to a player who DOES know what they are talking about, who has done their research and knows the difference and is not trying to twink the game, who’s character has practiced martial arts and who does NOT revolve around the stupid weapon and a bad Scottish accent… well, sorry buddy, but you’re being a piece of shit storyteller because your letting your personal hang-up’s fuck up a players game just because there’s some idiots out there. Build a bridge and get over yourself.
Twinks: that still doesn’t mean you should get a fucking Katana because if not it’ll fuck up your game. Twinks don’t have a game, that’s why they are twinks, all they have is stolen ideas from someone else that they think are kewl(!) and until they get an original idea they’re not going to have a GOOD game.
NOW, let me clarify something. In my real life, in my home, I DO own a $25 piece of Chinese crap. It’s craptastic. It sucks. It’s nothing worth carrying into a fight. But it does look real pretty on the wall! I also, however, own a $750 Paul Cheng that’s really folded steel, it really does have a razor edge, it really will cut through a person like hot butter, but it is not on the wall, it requires regular cleaning and oiling and would rust on the wall, and there’s NO WAY in hell I would hide that sucker in a trench coat. Neither one of them is a *real* katana, because neither one of them actually was made in the traditional method. For the record, I have never taken out a Bichon Frise with one. Or any other Yip-yap dog. Or a cat. Okay, I did once use the cheapie in its sheath to kill a spider on the roof. The Paul Cheng, if I was to put it on a sheet, I would list as a Katana, because it is just as hard, strong, sharp, and durable as the original antique would be… it’s just not as old or made by hand using 1000 year old processes.
A REAL katana costs tens of thousands of dollars – they are always, always works of art, unique, timeless, requiring either a hell of a lot of money or a hell of a lot of hard work to acquire, so forget having it without a damn good reason and a damn good story. You might be able to con some table top storyteller into it, especially if he’s your buddy and you’re both living in some backwater in Alabama and the closest to Asia you’ll ever get is the local Panda Express, but in an online game where people might very well be playing who live in Japan? Guess again, white boy. I say white boy, but girls are included, I’m not a sexist smack talker.
On a related note – NO character concept for whom you have a mental image of a Scottish Highlander wielding an Asian weapon is EVER a good character concept unless you wrote the ORIGINAL story! Everyone else is like the sequel, and as we know those sequels sucked. So grow up and come up with an original concept.
-The Fireman.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
The Fireman's Guide to Cybersex in the OLD World or Darkness...
Okay, first thing first: NO, this is not a guide HOW to have cyber sex. If you can't figure out how to type one handed I am not going to teach you, I don't want to talk about the ins and outs of bad erotic prose much less try and TEACH someone how to write it, and I do NOT care if you do it. But you know what? There’s some things that need to be said, because they don’t get said enough, and fuck it, I’m a say ‘em! These are, of course, the rantings of a storyteller (and a slightly fucked-in-the-head storyteller at that!) so if you don’t agree start your own blog and we’ll have blog wars about who’s got the largest… following.
Yeah, I intend to return to this topic eventually, because EVERY game has its cyber-sex related headaches and stupidity. But I'm a start here with the game that's nearest and dearest to my heart. The book is on the desk right now next to the jar I keep the old myocardium in.
So, on with my thoughts:
VAMPIRES DO NOT FUCK. They don't bang, they don't screw, they don't bump uglies, they don't make love. A vampire is an undead creature for whom sex holds about as much interest as the chewing gum you stepped on at the gaming store parking lot or the mess your dog left on the neighbor's carefully manicured lawn. This doesn't mean some drop-dead gorgeous Toreador is above faking it with the mayor so her hidden ghoul can get some photographs with which to exert leverage over his philandering ass, but let's get real: if two 13th gen vampires are doing the horizontal mambo, then YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. Vampires. Don't. Get. Off. It's called a horror game, welcome to the horrible part, if you want to screw like bunny rabbits make a mage or a mortal or a kinfolk. And if you are trying to seduce your way into polite society and you’re vampire possesses Presence and you’re using slut wear, clear heels, and generally being a sexual predator to get there then somewhere you reallllly missed the whole damn point, delete your PC and go get a Hustler.
WEREWOLVES DO NOT FUCK ANYTHING THAT MOVES. Would you screw your Husky/Shepherd mix? No? Well guess what, MOST people born to humans aren't going to screw someone born a WOLF, and the exception to that rule is typically someone you don't want to sit down and have a latte with at Starbucks and probably the kind of person you feel dirty when you shake their hand. Are there exceptions to the rule? Sure there are, but how much time has your homid garou spent in his lupus form running with a pack of wolves? How much time does your Lupus garou spend in homid? If your lupus is spending 99% of his time in homid because he has the hots for Rosy Rottencrotch YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. Werewolves try to keep it within their species – not because werewolves would but because *everyone* would!
Metis - for the record - are sterile, and that DOES NOT mean they can screw all they want, no birth control necessary. Metis are wrong, they are deformed, they CAN'T have kids and most people with IQ in the positive range stay the fuck away from them. If you're metis has a lover, if your PC has a metis lover, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. Anyone with two warm brain cells doesn't want to sleep with the guy who's got antlers for Christ’s sake, get over it or don't play a metis. And frankly, most metis should have some *serious* personality issues when it comes to sex from growing up knowing they are the sterile result of an act that left mom and dag with a whole lot of egg on their face. (Well, SOMETHING on their face anyway.)
And cross tribe relationships? Sure, they can happen, but it pisses a LOT of people in both tribes off. Remember that pure blood background? If your Silver Fang is sleeping with a Bone Gnawer you are essentially slapping the whole tribe in the face with the penis involved. If you're Black Fury Kinfolk is having kids with a Shadow Lord YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. If you do this, someone, if not both parties are VERY likely to get run right out of town, shamed horribly, and depending on the tribe possibly maimed, permanently disfigured, or downright killed. Unless you're the Bone Gnawer, that is the only pack that might hive five the lucky person involved, but it might also start an inter-tribal war... so engage in coitus at your own risk. Now, allow me to make a note about table top gaming; just because your PC was involved in some poorly run game when you were 13, and had a lover from another tribe’s kin, that doesn’t mean it’s kosher and I’m talking out my ass. Remember that our games are fine and dandy and if Richard Edwards, your seventh grade storyteller wants to let that shit fly in his game? All him, it’s his game, but ONLINE any storyteller with a set (ladies included) is going to pimp smack your PC’s through a wall.
Demons are a lot like these werewolves in that they DO NOT fuck in their apocalyptic form. If you’re locking up in a room and then locking up with a damn angel in the glory and horror form, you’re an idiot. The demons of the world are just that, demons, and anyone who’s into THAT is a plain bent little monkey. Sure, a few of those demons do look the part of angels… and some of them look like the devil too. But that doesn’t change the fact that, frankly, if your Demon PC is exchanging bodily fluids in anything BUT their mortal guise then you’re missing the whole point to their torment. If you’re the girl or boy who’s under that thing, just remember: succubi KILL their victims, so stop being so damn perverted!
Changelings… Okay, yeah, your right, in the old World of Darkness the Satyr just screams fornication. I really can’t say anything there… but I will say that if you’ve made a boggan for sex you’re a moron, go change the kith to something that’s not so damn laughable. Make a Satyr or even an Eshu or a Sidhe, at least someone would WANT to sleep with them, and not a roly-poly little hobbit looking mother fucker, because frankly no one wants to see Sam Gamgee in a g-string and pasties! Most Storytellers wince when they see a Satyr because they know – oh yes boys and girls, we know what’s coming, and we PRAY you’re not going to be another doofus who logs in only to see what the flavor of the week’s prospects are like. Satyr’s are painful to the online ST, we want to like the kith, but at the same time, soooo many people who play them are so bad at playing them it’s pathetic. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not because the players don’t get Satyr… I mean, drink, eat, fuck, sleep, what’s not to understand? It’s that the Satyr draws so many BAD players to them! It’s a shit magnet kith, drawing the worst cyberwhores and grammatically challenged perverts the interwebs have to offer!
For the Mages, the Hunters, the Mummies, the others who are mostly normal... BE WARNED, there are logs out there for Digichat rooms, and just because you go into a locked room does NOT mean us storytellers can't pull the logs some day. We don't NEED your password, just the room name, locked or unlocked, and then our prying little beady ST eyes can dig in and see just how fucking sick your games are. Expect there to be repercussions if your PC sleeps with everything that has a pulse, gets involved in freaky crinos-on-midget flings, and does ass-to-mouth with that sexy Demon who has the big... sword. Herpasyphlaids is right around the corner, and you just might find yourself wishing you'd done the whole damn scene through AIM instead of in a locked room. Gypsies, mages and their little helpers, technocrats, you name it, we’ve seen it. Oh, and here’s something to keep in mind: if you are using correspondence, mind, and life magick all at the same time to have a threesome (or foursome, or whatever) with your sleeper partner? The paradox STILL winds up fucking YOU in the end! Maybe literally if you have too much paradox and a REALLY perverse storyteller. Point is, if you get your PC in bed and suddenly forget that there is a system to the game… well, who knows, you might wind up with an ingrown penis!
Wraith. If you have a wraith, or ever had a wraith PC involved in cyber, you need to stop reading this, turn off your computer, get in your car, drive to the nearest therapist, kick the current patient off the couch, and get some serious help you sick twisted fuck.
Fomori. You know… when it first came out, Freak Legion was the shit. There was one thing in there that I saw that made me cringe and laugh at the same time: savage genitalia. If you ever created a fomori with that, see Wraith above… if you ever actually used it, and ESPECIALLY if you combined it with body barbs, inner volcano, or succubi’s veil, then you don’t need a god damned couch, you need a room with very soft walls and chemicals to keep you away from the elementary schools you inhuman demented fucked-up monster!
NOW, a word on Cyber. I do not personally CARE if you and a willing parter (or two or three...) lock a room and go hobbling in and roll your dexterity + sexual prowess vs. dif 4 alllll night long (although we all know the dice pool is much *AHEM* smaller), but, if that's all you do IC, you're never going to get an experience request granted, and no one is going to take you as a PC seriously, forget influence, and forget much improvement. FURTHER, while I and most of the ST's could care less, if you let it turn into a drama barrier to our SL's, expect that we'll whack you upside the head with some pretty serious repercussions. Why? Because we put time and effort into our threads, and it REALLY pisses us off when someone with bad grammar and a vagina that looks like an old catcher’s mitt derails things for a week because gilted lover PC's can't stop following their penises long enough to PLAY the game we are actually TRYING to run for people.
In other words: cyber yourself silly if you like, we don't want to suppress your creativity... but don't let it fuck with our games, or we'll put a stop to it through dirty tricks, vile consequences, or if we have to downright mean ST'ness. I guarantee you that with few exceptions there are very few storytellers out there on the interwebs who smile and get warm tingly feelings when they see slews of locked rooms and IC drama and OOC drama over whose electrons are interfacing on their chat and in their venues.
Now, let me spell something out. Every storyteller / game master / dungeon master / referee out there at one point or another (and some will deny It – don’t be fooled though) has engaged in cyber. Some might still log in under names no one knows and others might go to another site or do it in chat, but most Storytellers gave it up or at the very least developed highly discriminating taste in cyber-partners. Why? Because you can only type “uh, oh, ahhh, grunt, splurt” so many ways. Cyber sex has about the appeal of most porno mags, that is to say, fleeting, and highly variable with quality. It’s bad enough typing prose one handed, but it gets worse when your partner has no imagination and even less ability to compose a legible fucking sentence much less one that’s sultry and elicits a response! We’ve been there, we’ve done that, so don’t get all defensive about it and certainly don’t say it’s because we don’t understand. We understand the urge to screw quite well, I promise you, every human being who isn’t unbearably pent up knows the need to get some action. We might not all indulge that every five minutes, but then, not everyone can be a functional member of society; now here’s some tissue, there’s the bathroom, let the adults have their game for a while okay?
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