{"id":601,"date":"2005-03-23T14:41:49","date_gmt":"2005-03-23T14:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/random-average.com\/?p=601"},"modified":"2005-03-23T14:41:49","modified_gmt":"2005-03-23T14:41:49","slug":"coh-personal-update-recreation-and-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/2005\/03\/coh-personal-update-recreation-and-responsibility\/","title":{"rendered":"CoH Personal Update — Recreation and Responsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

As noted here<\/a>, it was a pretty active weekend on CoH. Hang Time dinged 33, as did Shock about a day later. Hyperthermian dinged 11, Rose hit 19, and Strat dinged both 20 and 21.
\nAll of which occured on Friday and Saturday, actually. Not a lot going on on Sunday.
\nThe murder plot thing in the Freedom Phalanx has gone well enough, I think — certainly it’s a type of play that most of the other players haven’t seen on there, and they’ve really digged the immersion. It’s cool that I was put in charge of it, since I’ve been wanting to do somehting like that for awhile, but in retrospect, I had a LOT of people involved in that thing, and it made it a lot harder.
\nI have some thoughts on a smaller, simpler, and I think more light-hearted storyline to run in a bit. Just call me Mr. Responsiblity. Lee does.
\nAnd on the one hand yeah, I can see why people look at me oddly for wanting to use my free time and a little money each month in order to be in charge of stuff instead of just playing. I’ve given it some thought, and there’s really two parts to that:
\na) Why do I like multi-player online games like MUDs, MUSHes, and CoH, at all? Why so much? What’s my payoff?
\nThat’s a bigger questions that I’m still thinking about — there may be an essay there at some point.
\nb) Why, when I’m involved in such games, do I take on roles of responsibility and game-mastering-type stuff?
\nTwo answers:
\nOne — engaging surroundings make me think of stories that I’d like to see played out so, lacking anyone else likely to do it, I run them myself. That’s the GM part. Honestly, it’s one of the reasons I run as many face-to-face games as I do.
\nTwo — well, taking on responsibility and admin type stuff seems like a self-sacrificing thing, but really it’s just selfishness. When I get into a position of some influence within a group on a game like CoH, I have more ability to make the experience into one that I’ll enjoy: if someone in a supergroup I’m in is continually annoying I have the influence and ability to get them to change their behavior or boot them, if a candidate is really rubbing me the wrong way I can veto their admittance, if a supergroup in a larger alliance is ruining everyone’s fun I can do more about it than just bitch.
\nSo yeah, it’s a control thing — I’m spending the money on the game and the way I see it I have the right to make the game enjoyable for myself and those around me as much as I’m able, provided I’m not ruining someone else’s fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As noted here, it was a pretty active weekend on CoH. Hang Time dinged 33, as did Shock about a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mmos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/randomaverage.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}