CoH Personal Update — Recreation and Responsibility

As noted here, 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.
All of which occured on Friday and Saturday, actually. Not a lot going on on Sunday.
The 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.
I 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.
And 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:
a) Why do I like multi-player online games like MUDs, MUSHes, and CoH, at all? Why so much? What’s my payoff?
That’s a bigger questions that I’m still thinking about — there may be an essay there at some point.
b) Why, when I’m involved in such games, do I take on roles of responsibility and game-mastering-type stuff?
Two answers:
One — 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.
Two — 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.
So 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.