Why do you play Armageddon?

[Kismetic]

I did some search-fu and I couldn't find a similar thread, so apologies if one like this already exists (and maybe they could be merged).  I also apologize for the following long-winded post.

I grew up in a small town, a very shy boy.  I have social anxiety--  I feel like I draw on people's energy, negative or positive, and it can be exhausting.  In high school, I took a lot of drama, using the improvisation exercises to harness that anxiety into something useful.  As an adult, I then pursued a career that puts me in the background of huge events.  Roaring crowds of tens of thousands is something I deal with every week, as a profession.  My natural resting state is one of a reserved, thoughtful, serene human being who likes to chill out and laugh, but at times I can be very animated and outgoing.  This is the result of much training, as I am, after all, just a shy boy.

Roleplaying was an amazing outlet that I found very early on in life.  It appeals to all the things that I treasure:  adventure, wit, imagination, all while delving deep into a foreign psyche.  Roleplaying will always be one of my greatest loves in this life.  This got me thinking the other day about Armageddon, and what, other than my love of roleplaying, does it do for me?

I haven't decided, yet, to be honest.  I think if I'm being truthful, I love to explore (IRL and in the imaginary), and what's in your soul is an inescapable part of your daily life.  If I reach back to my tabletop days of youth, killing epic monsters is always gonna be up there on the list.  When I want to experience a PVP setting with maximum skill and fun, I will play DotA, but there's something to be said about risking a character that won't respawn in ~30 seconds. These are just a few things I could think up.

What about you?  This isn't a poll, because I'm hoping there will be some thoughtful responses that might give me (or you) more perspective about why we play this game so damn much.

[The Silence of the Erdlus]

I love the fuck out of acting, also this is a quality game which deserves my time. You can also multitask while having this game open.

[Kismetic]

I love the fuck out of acting ...

I do, too.  I wanted to pursue it as a career as a young man, but I had this enormous shnoz, braces and acne.  I was hugely fond of Cyrano de Bergerac, I wonder why?  I was pretty good, though!  I made a kid cry at a high school performance when I was portraying Jacob Marley.  I think I agree with you, here.  It dusts off the acting chops, doesn't it?

[Refugee]

I was introduced to roleplaying games in the 1970s when a group of sailors I was going to "C" School with introduced me to AD&D.  Wow, was I hooked.  I've tried to have something going ever since, but work and parenting made regular D&D games difficult as the years passed.  I was given a copy of Everquest for my 40th birthday, and I played that for 5 years, but even though I joined "roleplaying" clans, it really didn't do it for me.  I don't like grinding, and there really wasn't much roleplaying...

One day I stumbled on The Mud Connector, and read hungrily through many game write-ups.  It sounded like the old text adventure games I'd loved as a young adult, and which were so much better than anything have been since they started doing them graphically.  I found Shadows of Isildur.  I've been a Tolkien freak since 1971 when I found  "The Fellowship of the Ring" and read the covers off.  I didn't get to read the other two books of the Trilogy until I was in boot camp years later, stuck over Christmas 1977 so we could have actual non-Bluejacket books to read, and a member of my training unit had them sent to me.  So SoI seemed a good fit and it was wonderful.  I played there many years, I loved it, and staffed for awhile too.   Until SoI crashed and burned, I was happy there.  I played Atonement for awhile, I liked it a lot until they left the moon.  A player there talked me into trying Arm, and here I am.

If it's not permadeath, it's not roleplaying, to me.  I tend to play long-lived combat PCs.  I love taking them into danger; I hate losing them, but I need to know I can.  It's the emotion you have invested that makes it immersive.  I don't know that it's fun, exactly.  Sometimes it is, of course.  But the relationships, the joys, the fear, the loss...that's what makes these games GOOD, and satisfying, and worth my time.  

The thing I love is bringing a character to life, making him as real and three-dimensional as I can, living this other life through the game.  It satisfies something in me, the same thing that I used to satisfy as a kid when I'd climb up a tree or hide in the barn and write stories for hours on end.  I'm old now and my creative ability has dried up a lot, but I still have the compulsion, and Arm satisfies it.

[bardlyone]

Acting, roleplay, the chance to explore a foreign mindset with some similarities to my own, the ability to make a character look exactly as I picture them, the exploration of shared spaces of imagination.

[Kismetic]

I was introduced to roleplaying games in the 1970s when a group of sailors I was going to "C" School with introduced me to AD&D.

Dude, that makes you one of the originals.  I appreciate your thoughtful response.  I started RPing with my cousins Daniel and Mark, two very intelligent "geeks" who later went on to have careers in Army Intel.  I looked up to them so much, and they got me started off on Star Wars:  Second Edition when I was twelve.  I still own that book!

For myself, MUDing came as an extension of my joining interest in the internet and roleplaying.  I frequented the Star Wars RPG chat rooms on AOL as the moniker "C45Lando", because my real life nickname among friends was Lando (short for Lando Calrissian).  Sometimes, I still meet girls who only know me as Lando, lol.  The roleplay there was pretty atrocious, but I met an important friend and fellow writer who would later join me for a brief stint in MUDing before he left for Hollywood (he's now a successful production assistant, Tek bless him).

Anyway, my dad was a hardcore Macintosh guy from the start, and in the mid-90's there were NO games for Mac.  I was such a gaming outcast.  But I found these rogue-likes and played them obsessively.  I can't remember the first one I played, but the one I was hooked on was called Angband.  Talking with my pot dealer at the time, he suggested I try out something called MUDing.  We played on a game called Faerun, which had a very intricate storyline and a high standard of roleplay, even though the playerbase was fairly small.  I've been MUDing off and on ever since, and that was maybe 1998?

... shared spaces of imagination.

I enjoy that description, it's a unique collaborative experience.

[Refugee]

I was introduced to roleplaying games in the 1970s when a group of sailors I was going to "C" School with introduced me to AD&D.

Dude, that makes you one of the originals.  

There was only one AD&D book from TSR at the time, if you can imagine that, the Player's Guide.  We were all waiting anxiously for the DM's Guide, and when it came out we drove all over San Francisco Bay area trying to find it, took weeks!  Mainstream book stores didn't carry that stuff back then.

[Bushranger]

The better question to ask is: Why don't you play Armageddon?

[Kismetic]

The better question to ask is: Why don't you play Armageddon?

Zzzzz.

[Kismetic]

I was introduced to roleplaying games in the 1970s when a group of sailors I was going to "C" School with introduced me to AD&D.

Dude, that makes you one of the originals.  

There was only one AD&D book from TSR at the time, if you can imagine that, the Player's Guide.  We were all waiting anxiously for the DM's Guide, and when it came out we drove all over San Francisco Bay area trying to find it, took weeks!  Mainstream book stores didn't carry that stuff back then.

That's pretty cool, man.  I can actually picture that well since I've been to San Fran many times.

[Refugee]

I was stationed at Mare Island at the time, going to a crypto maintenance school.

We finally found the DM's Guide at a cool little hole-in-the-wall bookshop in Berkeley on a cobblestoned street.

[Kismetic]

Man, you trip me out a bit.  The Navy heavily tried to recruit me for either crypto or nuke school.  I was very enticed.  I love Berkeley, too!  That's such a cool story. 

[CodeMaster]

My computer game staples are arena shooters, turn-based dungeon crawlers, and MUDs.  I like the low system requirements on MUDs, the low bandwidth requirements, and how far you can go in customizing your interface (I've been writing my own client alongside playing the game for about a year now.)

Armageddon is the best.  It takes the IC/OOC boundary more seriously than any game I've ever seen, MUSHes included.  We take these for granted, but it's not at all common for OOC to be local only and its use discouraged; or for the OOC discussion of ongoing events and deaths to be discouraged; or for OOC coordination to be discouraged; or [the] carrying over of knowledge from one dead character to the next.  These things are key to preserving intrigue in the game.

Correspondingly I like that you often don't have to "pretend" to be surprised or ill-informed in the game.  For instance, if your character is ignorant of an ongoing plot, you probably are too, so you don't have to invent misleading assumptions for your character's sake (if you even think to) -- you'll make them on your own.  If your character isn't perceptive enough to see that master burglar, you don't have to pretend: she simply won't be there.  If your character isn't prepared to make the journey from point A to point B, don't worry, he'll probably suffer for it.

I like the stories the game generates (reinforced by a coded backbone -- even if this means there are sudden and unsatisfying deaths) and the care that goes into describing things.

I also prefer Arm's pace (largely due to the limited size of the input buffer) to the pace of other games where story is central.

Finally, I love the game's lore, secrets, and the hints scattered throughout the help files.  I love the lore about the Dragon and his corrupted dread servants -- and the possibility that maybe they aren't all dead.

[edits]

[LauraMars]

When you're a homeschooled girl who lives in the country, has no friends because you recently decided Jesus wasn't your pal after all, and you happen to be crazy for online video games (but your only internet connection is dial up) Armageddon is the best thing that could ever possibly happen to you from an entertainment perspective.*

Bonus, no violent images to scare mom and dad with, they just think their smart daughter is working on hacker-writing a webdoodle on the internets with the computer box.

*edit: or literally the worst thing.

[whitt]

Because SoI shit the bed and by the time in came back online I was hooked on a rocking period of Byn activity.  Since then, I've just had a great time experiencing the depth of the characters in the world and the occasionally jaw-dropping scenes that come from that.

[CodeMaster]

they just think their smart daughter is working on hacker-writing a webdoodle on the internets with the computer box.

that's pretty much what it looks like to the uninitiated

[RogueGunslinger]

I play this game to pretend to chop muthafuckaz up with bone swords.

Thanks Metek, I found it!

[MeTekillot]

It was WarriorPoet. He said he plays Arm to pretend to chop muthafuckas up with bone swords.

[Majikal]

I've played this game for like, fourteen years now? Fifteen? I get the most joy out of passing the torch. All the lore I've picked up on that isn't easily available, all the neat facts about the game world that aren't necessarily known and don't even come up, I get to bring it up. I love when I have a pc that's got the background that lets me dive into those little tidbits with noobs present. To let them know that the rockslide you saw in that room had a story behind it, that those statues came from somewhere,

I love bringing pcs to places the player and the character have never seen.

When I was a noob I was lucky enough to have a veteran for a roommate and he showed me awesome shit, I remember being amazed by everything the 'vet' players showed me and now I'm one of the vets. Tis my duty to show the noobs kewl shit!

[Kismetic]

I've played this game for like, fourteen years now? Fifteen? I get the most joy out of passing the torch. All the lore I've picked up on that isn't easily available, all the neat facts about the game world that aren't necessarily known and don't even come up, I get to bring it up. I love when I have a pc that's got the background that lets me dive into those little tidbits with noobs present. To let them know that the rockslide you saw in that room had a story behind it, that those statues came from somewhere,

I love bringing pcs to places the player and the character have never seen.

When I was a noob I was lucky enough to have a veteran for a roommate and he showed me awesome shit, I remember being amazed by everything the 'vet' players showed me and now I'm one of the vets. Tis my duty to show the noobs kewl shit!

You, sir, are why this game is great.  I try, myself, to do much the same.

It was WarriorPoet. He said he plays Arm to pretend to chop muthafuckas up with bone swords.

Well, are you calling me a pacifist?  Because I will chop some dudes.

[Kismetic]

Armageddon is the best.  It takes the IC/OOC boundary more seriously than any game I've ever seen, MUSHes included.  We take these for granted, but it's not at all common for OOC to be local only and its use discouraged; or for the OOC discussion of ongoing events and deaths to be discouraged; or for OOC coordination to be discouraged; or [the] carrying over of knowledge from one dead character to the next.  These things are key to preserving intrigue in the game.

I remember laughing with you briefly at the Imm drunken beach session on the TeamSpeak.  You came off as an intelligent human being, I really liked your thoughts on literature, especially.  What you're describing is called method acting, and it's the pinnacle of Armageddon, and every Daniel Day-Lewis/Kevin Spacey/Gary Oldman/Phillip Seymour-Hoffman/Marlon Brando/Whoever has an Arm character brewing somewhere.

[Kismetic]

When you're a homeschooled girl who lives in the country, has no friends because you recently decided Jesus wasn't your pal after all

I have a sad story about why Jesus is not my pal, anymore, but I'm gonna let it be, and just say, I really understand where you're coming from.  Arm can be cathartic.

[ABoredLion]

Armageddon was my first MUD. This had a very positive (or possibly poor) effect on my characters when it comes to MUDs, and now anywhere I go, -I'm- strange. That aside, the gritty, post apocalyptic wasteland where people struggle to survive is a great genre that many groups touch on. Just so happens Arm also touches on the magick and other races, etc. It's a lot of fun, with a very steep learning curve.

[manonfire]

Man, I don't even know anymore. It's like my perennial fallback game - if there's a bit of lag time between games I play with my little clan of miscreants, I'll start playing Armageddon again. Since Rocket League came out, I've barely touched Arm, but the second Rocket League gets boring, I'll be back at Armageddon.

[Case]

I started playing because Enigma from SoI (don't remember his GDB name here) wanted me to. His amazingness got me past all the obstacles I'd struck trying to get into Arm by myself (my account dates to 2005 but I started playing in 2009ish).

Now I stay because I'm good at the Arm plus I have awesome friends here.