Comments | lilith_rta: (Jumping the Shark?)

lilith_rta

(Jumping the Shark?)

Jan 22, 2009 11:50

So Peril and I can have some interesting discussions and such. While at lunch yesterday, we got onto the topic of my last post… Motivation. Why we play. Well as many times such discussions go, it was a gateway to my next topic… “Jumping the Shark”.

( Jumping the Shark? )

Comments 10

lilith_rta January 22 2009, 16:51:26 UTC

I will say that I came from a game that had jumped that shark, and we were in our revival. When we felt that all would be well and grand once more… it jumped again. Newbies were being forced off the grid and attrition had set in.

Now if you were to ask why this game broke, it all started with a clique. I know people say that sometimes they’re good, and others go “eww bad”. I’m more neutral. If it drives story, then great. If it drives story for a handful of people who refuse or exclude others… this is bad. Pretty straight forward, yes?

Interestingly enough, when I went shopping about for a MUSH, this is a reason that many others gave me for leaving. Scary, huh?

baksi_rta January 22 2009, 17:12:33 UTC

I've always felt that when the Big Bad that cannot be fought, cannot be investigated, cannot be prevailed against, always manages to whup the collective asses of the PCs even though the rules generally state that NPCs lose, and which somehow is godlike in knowing everything about the PCs and using it against them...every time that happens....that game has lost its oomph. Last-ditch desperation plots to rescue it by presenting an Unstoppable Evil just leave me cold.

I'm a little weary by this point of our absolute inability to get anywhere with the black road, actually, and I think the general trend by players toward pursuing other story lines bears that out. But here we have GMs who will work with you. In the other cases I'm thinking of, the GMs held a stranglehold on information, and if you didn't ask the right questions, you might as well not RP. I've never been a good mind-reader and I've inevitably given up and left those games.

lilith_rta January 22 2009, 18:00:44 UTC

GEFBT (Greater Evil from Beyond Time). It is a term we picked up while Larping. When you have had the fifth one that year.. you start doing strange things. Such as offering to them them into a newt, just to get them to go away.

benedict_rta January 22 2009, 17:22:39 UTC

This one, I think is individual. For me, being at a different time-zone, I do a lot of running for myself. I only just grew into doing that, though, so I used to have a lot of coffee-house RP. For me, shark-jumping is when people over-play their own sheets, and/or become their own parodies. For that reason, even Benedict doesn't drink tea /all/ the time.

lilith_rta January 22 2009, 17:59:23 UTC

For the record, you are what I aspire to be when it comes to being a GM or integral character, ie feature.

I really love how you just grab people and go. It's awesome!

benedict_rta January 22 2009, 18:55:00 UTC

"Watson, my blushes!"

Thanks, it's good to know. The flip side is that sometimes I screw up, or fail to pull people onboard, but it's a flip side doesn't exist until you try.

Doesn't quite sound right, but you know what I mean.

standing_dragon January 22 2009, 23:07:03 UTC

Jes, Bene - joo do rawk. Here's hopin' I gets ta play wif joo again, sooner rather than later. Darnit. :)

(Peril)

standing_dragon January 22 2009, 23:00:31 UTC

My general rule of thumb in all of this is 'when it loses its spirit'. When.. what you sign into isn't what you started in, anymore ( ... )

petruspitello January 23 2009, 04:02:21 UTC

Frankly, I think the most interesting thing you can do in a game like this is to explore the cultures set out by other players, and other characters. When you start thinking of the enemy of the week as the point, the game has jumped the shark.

Trying to find a japanese flash from FF11 I once saw that explains what I mean.

petruspitello January 23 2009, 04:41:20 UTC

Not the original flash, but here it is in youtube format ('Meeting Again' is the title.)
http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=7368648&publicUserId=5550732

I think in MUSH, we're prone to falling into the same sort of malaise that befalls entire MMORPG communities, it's just harder to tell. But the truth is, despite how disfunctional folks can be at times, we're all playing in the same hallucination, and most of us would love to share our pieces of it with others, and most of us would love to see the other pieces, or dive into something that hasn't been explored before.