Post by LoonyLadle on May 23, 2018 23:57:09 GMT
Hey, I'm Lulu. Some of you might know me as that pompous person who occasionally bounced around the official PTU Discord channel for a while and asked really subjective questions to the unending annoyance of the staff. A while back I decided I disliked everything I said being run past some kind of politically-correct filter and taken out of context to make me look like a bad guy, so I left. Now I'm here.
Arceus have mercy on you.
In all seriousness, I'm not a bad person. If I do something you don't like please do talk to me about it so I can do my best to put it right; that's the only way anyone ever learns. But enough about my shortcomings as a human being, you're reading this because you want to know my roleplaying history!
I've always been a roleplayer. I would use whatever was available to me to facilitate the creation of my own little games between me and those few friends I managed to gather outside of school. I would have video games with save files in areas with cool music or ambiance, and create mock sets and characters out of Lego or whatever else I had on hand. There were some loose rules I'd invented over the years, but it was always pretty basic. I didn't really have a word for what I was doing until much, much later, and regarded Dungeons and Dragons as a "nerd thing." I didn't have a concept of nerds being cool yet -- or that I, myself, was one.
One day, in my middle school years, I found myself playing a game called Starcraft. I was terrible at it, and hated it; it was described to me as "Sim City but you fight people with your city" which is about as great a misrepresentation of real-time strategy as you can get. But about when I was about to uninstall the game and go back to Diablo II, I joined a custom scenario called Galaxies' End RP. Crude RPGs made with Starcraft's scenario editor were popular and sometimes fun, and I thought they'd just forgotten the 'G' part of RPG. But no, this was a bona fide freeform roleplaying experience. It was an instant match made in heaven, and where I became formally acquainted with the terminology and etiquette of roleplaying. I even became a highly skilled scenario creator and would go on to feature in lists alongside other Starcraft mapping celebrities like Shmidley. I even had my own copycat, a guy named Vrael (though like any good copycat, he eventually surpassed his mentor).
My first true experience with roleplaying games was Neverwinter Nights, an Aurora Engine RPG based on third edition Dungeons and Dragons. I operated a local vault persistent world for a time but had entered the scene on the downslope and never enjoyed the popularity I did on Starcraft. I did, however, gain a strong appreciation for Dungeons and Dragons that I had up to this point lacked. NWN was the game that made me realize that playing RPGs with dice and game masters might actually be something I would be able to get into.
So I did.
Sort of...
I'm a recluse, and finding just one person to play games with was a big ordeal for me for a long time. It seemed I would never be able to find a group of five-plus people who met the extremely high standards I had come to expect from my fellows. I bounced between Invisionfree and Proboards forums for a long time, and always thought they were poorly run and unprofessional. Each board always seemed overly focused on one particular topic or game system, and even the more generic forums were always at the mercy of the forum staff to get subforums made for their game. Sensing an opportunity I attempted to create a true generic roleplay community, where anyone could run any sort of game using any system they wanted. But I am a recluse with a small community of also-reclusive friends, none of us really knew how to advertise, and the limitations of the free forum format meant that the staff -- particularly, me -- still had to create the subforums. Add personal relationship friction and drama on top of that... you can see how this was an unabashed failure.
I drifted for a while after that. Dropped out of high school, tried to recapture the glory on Starcraft but everyone's moved on to the sequel, attempted to reboot my NWN server but GameSpy's servers had died and effectively rendered NWN's multiplayer inaccessible to all but the most technically capable. My social network had largely moved on to other games or left to join the military. If you think I'm difficult to get along with now, you would likely scream in frustration on learning what an unpleasant person I was as a youth; few people wanted to keep in touch once they moved on, and I do not blame them.
Then I found Roleplay Online (dot net), and my life immensely improved. Thousands of games, tens of thousands of players, and millions of posts. All automated and self contained. Everything I set out to create with my doomed CPRoleplay community. I met great people and learned new systems: D20 Modern, Tri-Stat, Mutants & Masterminds, Shadowrun, Vampire: The Masquerade. One day I decided I wanted to run a Pokemon game but my favorite system at the time, Tri-Stat (via its anime adaptation Big Eyes, Small Mouth) was clunky for what I wanted to do. I did my research and eventually came upon a system that, I felt, had the perfect balance of loyalty to the video games and concession to the necessities of a tabletop gaming environment.
That system was Pokemon Tabletop United. Version 1.04, to be specific.
There were others, of course, but it was this system that met my criteria. The problem was finding players. Being a very unofficial product meant it didn't have a lot of name recognition, and applications to my game invariably included some line to the effect of "never heard of PTU, but eager to learn." Finding quality players proved problematic however, so I did something I thought I never would: I started looking on sites other than Roleplay Online. Via a roundabout process that involved a lot of being yelled at and threats of being banned, that route eventually led me here... to a Proboards forum focused on one specific game that's at the mercy of the staff to create subforums, AAAAAA I THOUGHT I WAS FREE AAAAAAAA!!!
And that's where we leave the past and enter the present. Whew, that turned out a little bit more long-winded than I expected! If you've made it this far, then you surprise me. I need to step away a bit now, but I will likely follow up this post with another later tonight describing my likes and dislikes as a player plus what sorts of games and characters I hope to play with here and abroad. I wonder if anyone will notice or care?
Arceus have mercy on you.
In all seriousness, I'm not a bad person. If I do something you don't like please do talk to me about it so I can do my best to put it right; that's the only way anyone ever learns. But enough about my shortcomings as a human being, you're reading this because you want to know my roleplaying history!
I've always been a roleplayer. I would use whatever was available to me to facilitate the creation of my own little games between me and those few friends I managed to gather outside of school. I would have video games with save files in areas with cool music or ambiance, and create mock sets and characters out of Lego or whatever else I had on hand. There were some loose rules I'd invented over the years, but it was always pretty basic. I didn't really have a word for what I was doing until much, much later, and regarded Dungeons and Dragons as a "nerd thing." I didn't have a concept of nerds being cool yet -- or that I, myself, was one.
One day, in my middle school years, I found myself playing a game called Starcraft. I was terrible at it, and hated it; it was described to me as "Sim City but you fight people with your city" which is about as great a misrepresentation of real-time strategy as you can get. But about when I was about to uninstall the game and go back to Diablo II, I joined a custom scenario called Galaxies' End RP. Crude RPGs made with Starcraft's scenario editor were popular and sometimes fun, and I thought they'd just forgotten the 'G' part of RPG. But no, this was a bona fide freeform roleplaying experience. It was an instant match made in heaven, and where I became formally acquainted with the terminology and etiquette of roleplaying. I even became a highly skilled scenario creator and would go on to feature in lists alongside other Starcraft mapping celebrities like Shmidley. I even had my own copycat, a guy named Vrael (though like any good copycat, he eventually surpassed his mentor).
My first true experience with roleplaying games was Neverwinter Nights, an Aurora Engine RPG based on third edition Dungeons and Dragons. I operated a local vault persistent world for a time but had entered the scene on the downslope and never enjoyed the popularity I did on Starcraft. I did, however, gain a strong appreciation for Dungeons and Dragons that I had up to this point lacked. NWN was the game that made me realize that playing RPGs with dice and game masters might actually be something I would be able to get into.
So I did.
Sort of...
I'm a recluse, and finding just one person to play games with was a big ordeal for me for a long time. It seemed I would never be able to find a group of five-plus people who met the extremely high standards I had come to expect from my fellows. I bounced between Invisionfree and Proboards forums for a long time, and always thought they were poorly run and unprofessional. Each board always seemed overly focused on one particular topic or game system, and even the more generic forums were always at the mercy of the forum staff to get subforums made for their game. Sensing an opportunity I attempted to create a true generic roleplay community, where anyone could run any sort of game using any system they wanted. But I am a recluse with a small community of also-reclusive friends, none of us really knew how to advertise, and the limitations of the free forum format meant that the staff -- particularly, me -- still had to create the subforums. Add personal relationship friction and drama on top of that... you can see how this was an unabashed failure.
I drifted for a while after that. Dropped out of high school, tried to recapture the glory on Starcraft but everyone's moved on to the sequel, attempted to reboot my NWN server but GameSpy's servers had died and effectively rendered NWN's multiplayer inaccessible to all but the most technically capable. My social network had largely moved on to other games or left to join the military. If you think I'm difficult to get along with now, you would likely scream in frustration on learning what an unpleasant person I was as a youth; few people wanted to keep in touch once they moved on, and I do not blame them.
Then I found Roleplay Online (dot net), and my life immensely improved. Thousands of games, tens of thousands of players, and millions of posts. All automated and self contained. Everything I set out to create with my doomed CPRoleplay community. I met great people and learned new systems: D20 Modern, Tri-Stat, Mutants & Masterminds, Shadowrun, Vampire: The Masquerade. One day I decided I wanted to run a Pokemon game but my favorite system at the time, Tri-Stat (via its anime adaptation Big Eyes, Small Mouth) was clunky for what I wanted to do. I did my research and eventually came upon a system that, I felt, had the perfect balance of loyalty to the video games and concession to the necessities of a tabletop gaming environment.
That system was Pokemon Tabletop United. Version 1.04, to be specific.
There were others, of course, but it was this system that met my criteria. The problem was finding players. Being a very unofficial product meant it didn't have a lot of name recognition, and applications to my game invariably included some line to the effect of "never heard of PTU, but eager to learn." Finding quality players proved problematic however, so I did something I thought I never would: I started looking on sites other than Roleplay Online. Via a roundabout process that involved a lot of being yelled at and threats of being banned, that route eventually led me here... to a Proboards forum focused on one specific game that's at the mercy of the staff to create subforums, AAAAAA I THOUGHT I WAS FREE AAAAAAAA!!!
And that's where we leave the past and enter the present. Whew, that turned out a little bit more long-winded than I expected! If you've made it this far, then you surprise me. I need to step away a bit now, but I will likely follow up this post with another later tonight describing my likes and dislikes as a player plus what sorts of games and characters I hope to play with here and abroad. I wonder if anyone will notice or care?