My Side of the Only Heroes Situation

So as is apparent to everyone, the whole thing escalated into quite a dramatic situation. I get the impression I offended people, and while I honestly still don't understand the cause for the level of emotional response, I still want to apologize to those people for it. I'm sorry.

Alcar compared it to causing a car accident behind one's self and never seeing it happen, but I don't think that's exactly apt, since I see that there is apparently a problem, I just don't really understand why. From my perspective, it's more like the following metaphorical scenario:

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Four friends and I agree to all eat lunch together on a certain day, but on that day I'm delayed by having to talk to a teacher and so I end up showing up to lunch period ten to fifteen minutes late, and everyone is already sitting at a table together and eating. They all picked out their food together, but because I was late I didn't. One friend had something for me to eat, but when he showed it to me, it turned out it was something I found to have an odd flavor and I may have been mildly allergic to some of the ingredients. So I went and got some food which I like to eat, but unbeknownst to me, some of my friends thought that new food was gross.

As I returned to the table, two of my friends suddenly jump up from their chairs angrily. They grab my lunch, throw it in the trash, and push me out of the cafeteria, intending to lock me out entirely. I manage to pull aside the one who seemed the most upset, who was also the same one who had offered me the food, and attempt to talk to him about it. He won't really explain why he's so angry, but he finally says he'd be okay with me coming back and eating lunch with them, as long as I don't ask him what food I should pick out to eat.

I go through the lunch line again and pick out some food that is almost identical to what my friends were eating, trying my best to choose things that won't somehow offend them, and then I show it to each of them. The two friends who hadn't been angry in the first place nodded their approval right away, and the one I talked to earlier didn't want to give an opinion, but didn't stop me from sitting down. However, the other friend who had been angry refused to look and declared that I shouldn't be allowed to eat any lunch at all, since I showed up to lunch period late.
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So from my end, I truly don't understand why the issue of the deadline is enough to cause this level of turmoil. As far as I can tell, the primary point of having a deadline was to ensure everyone could give feedback and have input on what each other person was making. And after the snafu with the first character I made, I did everything I could to illicit input and feedback on a new one, but didn't receive any. So I tried really hard to just tailor the new one to fit the group and the other characters as well as possible, and I got approval right away on it from two players, so I figure I must have done an okay job of it.

In the end, I only have one person denying me entry, and the stated reason is the the deadline. The thing is, I do have a character that was approved before the deadline, and while I wasn't entirely sold on it at the time, if the choice is to play that character or not play, I'd choose to play it. But to be honest, I really do feel like the latest character I made would fit the group better than that one. I'd probably have a better time playing it, and other characters would probably have a better time interacting with it, compared to the pre-deadline one. But if the deadline is the end-all-be-all, I could just use the one that was approved in time.

Esper.net issues

Esper.net seems to having issues (perhaps owing to just five active servers at the moment). As it would be nice to avoid the dal.net meltdown of yesteryear, this is a general announcement:

If you can't get on esper, or it dies entirely, the dal.net #game1 IS still active (and Sparkie is generally in it). Sessions can be run in it, or game1 move back to it if need be.

And #game1 turns 12 ....

So ... 12 years. For a channel created to run a one-off D&D session with 3 people, I'm astonished it's lasted this long. (Two of the first players, for the record, never returned: D&D murder mystery is not to everyone's tastes.) The channel has seen many, many GMs and games throughout the years and had a lot of players, some of whom have been around, off and on, for over ten years. To say this is a surprise to all concerned underestimates it, to say the least :)

A few milestones that come to mind:

Sparkie, who came into existence as a joke NPC during the 'generic D&D games' that compromised the first months of Game1 and eventually turned into the Wasted World. When the time came for a dicebot, Sparkie got upgraded.

Wasted World. Spanning Three campaigns (for reasons of time travel, the second campaign and half the third technically never happened), it was the first real game1 setting and included everything from wizards with magic shops and pet Otyughs to gods among the PCs. A personal favourite highlight is the attempt of level 1 thugs to mug the PCS, en route back to the city they had acquired during a war. The players were convinced it couldn't be simple ruffians and the encounter lasted over an hour.

It's also the campaign that introduced Jeramias to D&D. He and a friend had browsed the books in a store, he ended up on game1 that night and his pc existed as an idea without stats for a whole campaign as he learned the game on the fly.

Callaran, a year-long D&D campaign that involved kender convincing evil clerics to be good and a vampiric halfling, among other highlights. Ended when the halfling killing other PCs for their attempted murder of him when he became a vampire and the bard being the only survivor.

LOLAD began life as a 'finish that character, a game will fun' incentive that ended up being game1's first foray into modern earth. (D&D 2e being used to run a modern game with vampire and werewolves. Insanity.) It had PC romances, AIs, werepanthers, necromancers, The Faline, dragons, werecows and lasted six months, spawning 2 sequels, another game set in the same world and the lolad 1.1 sequel that ended up being ran by Alcar and then re-envisioned by kentari in the game crossover idea*. It ran in D&D (2e and 3e), besm and a custom system at differing times. Confusing but fun :)

Hubris was the first truly insanely gm-intensive game that began the game1 superheroes games, spawned a sequel set 20 years later and ended due to GM burnout, which is still a regret. Probably the single most in-depth game I've ever done, in terms of the sheet amount of work put into both Hubris and Aftermath.

Shroomform. Just ... shroomform. (This sentiment can probably be applied to the Amber games as well.)

The Lands of Blood games. Aka: death gods without power, a succubi drunken master and a jedi knight, among other things. Stormtroopers and Sith crash-land on a D&D world with Cthulhu waiting in the wings. Probably even crazier than that makes it sound.

Several demented unknown armies campaigns have run, but trying to summarize them up would probably lead to this blog getting a mature warning label. Caltak's PC Hugh was in at least 2, maybe even 3, campaigns, making him one of the only pcs to do that trick.

Ios, a cliche-driven fantasy game in D&D that marked Game1's last 'serious' foray into D&D. To this day I am never quite certain how the hell the Lee/Lirk/Orgg love triangle really came about, but I think Theliar can be blamed.

kbesm, a modern besm game that got a sequel run by kentari and then by alcar*. Crazy-awesome fun all around. Generally any game that spawns sequels enters the pantheon of game1 awesomeness.

Unstrung Heroes deserves a special mention for having run since 2003. The first two sessions were six months apart, long enough that one player had forgotten he'd played in the game. It's ran off and on since them, often with a few sessions close together and a year (or more) gap between sessions.

* Alcar and Kentari ended up not wanting to run/continue sequels to lolad and kbesm, despite requests, so swapped settings. Dunno if it will ever be done again, but it was a lot of fun to run and the cross-over between both settings would have been epic had it ever come to fruition.

Fun searches that found game1 (fennec's archive, that is)

Sparkie would like everyone to know that he made #9 for 'Sparkie' on google, and this should terrify you all.

Odd searches:

• this can be the most difficult emotion to modify, because when you get mad you will be like a furious bulldog, and persuading you to stop sinking your teeth into the other person's leg can be extremely tough.
  
• airheads bubble dog's crazy mission teletoon game
  
• good stalker names
  
• Slut lolad
  
• zacharel funeral
  
• i think there's a dragon on my roof. a fucking dragon. i thought only montana had dragons, what gives? brb potty break rofl
  
• "you were given a sex change"
  
• caltak university
  
• "there are good reasons to be afraid of the dark"
  
• torture game1
  
• lords of death sunglasses
  
• antichrist can't "enter a church" omen
  
• he's gotta be strong, and he’s gotta be fast, and he’s gotta be larger than life: investigating the engendered superhero body
  
• sparkly rainbow thong detachable penis
  
• snailslug's touch response
  
• rule34 faline [!]
  
• vampires 6501
  
• goddess of despair
  

And as far as images went, 'cycle of rebirth' wins out.