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
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