Madness Monday - Freelancer Roleplay (The Definition Of Madness)

Hello and welcome to Madness Monday; the day of the week where I tel you about a really great game I played for years... and then mention how the Madness of it's players turned from a factor of enjoyment to boredom.

Freelancer boxart is the property of Microsoft. (Also, the mirroring of the planet is not part of the original image. Box art is too narrow for my header image, so I made do.)

Have you ever pretended to be someone else and done strange out-of-character things in the name of Roleplay? If yes, you're either an actor, a fan of Dungeons and Dragons, crazy as all hell, or really kinky. (You dirty dog you. Haha) Some people like to pretend to be other people online sometimes. It can fun... sometimes.

Freelancer is the space gamers special memory of way-back-when game that was made by Digital Anvil, with Chris Roberts at the lead, and published by Microsoft Game Studios in 2003. (If Chris Roberts sounds like a familiar name, that's probably because he's the guy running the development of Star Citizen. You know, that game that made headlines with now $49 million in crowdsourced funding.) Anyways, odds are, if you meet a space game enthusiast, they've probably played one of Chris Roberts's games, and Freelancer is one of the more popular ones. (The other being Wing Commander. And that game was hard as hell to play when you're 7)

In any case, "so why is this on a Madness Monday?", you may be wondering. A couple reasons. Space game enthusiasts are pretty crazy. One good reason is that considering this game was made in 2003, there are still mods being made and updated for this game regularly, one of which is the main subject of this article. The Discovery Mod for Freelancer, which is in version 4.86, is perhaps one of the few things I continued to play for years. (My average playtime for most games is weeks at most.) This mod has added countless things to the game, to the point that it's a wonder that the game still manages to run unofficial online servers for any period of time.

So what did I do for years in a mod for an ancient game? Roleplay. (Apparently roleplay is the topic of interest right now, considering Saturdays article.) I think there must be a lot of bored and somewhat mad individuals out there, (like myself), to go to an ancient spaceship piloting game, fly out into space and pretend to a Space Pirate who goes and steals from the other poor carebears who thought that trading goods in an online game was fun. And the madness didn't end there. Not satisfied with simple in game roleplay, there is a forum more or less dedicated to the mod's official server and all the roleplay that took place on it. And things get weird on there and in game, (and on Skype for some). A term I used in my review of Aura Kingdom; Lolicom, is a fairly accurate description of some of the weird things these people did. Picture two grown men sitting at computers, pretending to be a guy and girl and roleplaying their "story". (*Shivers* it is the internet i guess, rule 34 of the internet being what it is.)

Still, it's not all bad. At times it was an utter blast. If you enjoy writing stories and seeing how people react to and interact with them, there was a definite allure to the strange things we did on this single online server. And the people who liked to make these stories were always a pleasure to meet. To be fair, if I had never played this weird game online, I'd never have started learning to do Photoshop, and maybe wouldn't be quite the actor I turned out to be later in life. (Ah, yes, another crazy thing about this game, everyone and their mother had a fancy header image or graphic that they designed themself or had designed for them. It makes no sense, but I guess people will do lots in an attempt to suspend disbelief.)

In the end though, it wasn't the utterly strange people that played the game, nor the visible aging of the game, that eventually made me stop playing yeas later. It was boredom. In the wise words of Far Cry 3's antagonist Vass Montenegro, "The definition of madness is doing the same thing, over and over, expecting things to change." (Although some other person might have said it first.) Basically, the scope of the game began to limit the stories that could be told. There's only so many times you can fly in and start shooting before the reason for doing so starts to sound overused. Eventually it felt like a chore saying the same things again and again. "Maddeningly monotonous" is putting it lightly.

In any case, it could still be fun for other people I guess, if you can put up with the element of sheer strangeness that even I don't compare to. (And that's saying something.) Do you think that's hard to manage?Or maybe just want to tell me about some other weird roleplaying you've done, make sure to let me know in the comments below. (Not the kinky kind though; keep that to yourself. This is a relatively child friendly blog.) Also, don't forget to share this any friends who think that they do weird things. They might feel a little more normal afterwards. And of course, if you would like to read more articles like this, make sure to like my Facebook page and/or follow me on Twitter using the associated buttons on the sidebar to the right. Regardless of what you do though, I thank you for taking the time to read this strange article; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again tomorrow.

Peace be with you friends.

Storytime Sunday - The Tale Of Plugless (Another Of My Nicknames)

Hello and welcome to Storytime Sunday; that day of the week where I detail the story of how I earned yet another of the countless strange nicknames I have.

This could be the weirdest thing I've used in a header image so far... Well. First time for everything. :D

Have you ever done something so incomprehensibly silly, that the only reaction for both yourself and those around you, was to laugh? Probably. People do stupid things all the time. In my case though, it was bad enough that some of the fairer humored individuals took to calling me Plugless afterwards. Quite the story actually.

If you've read some of the articles that I post on this blog, such as the fantastic idea I had of jumping off of a almost 2 story high platform of sorts, you'll understand that I have a certain propensity towards ill thought out decisions, often in the name of spontaneous fun. While perhaps not always a bad thing, this does sometimes lead to strange situations such as today's topic, how I came to be known as Plugless.

Just less than 3 years ago from today, I had just become a leader (prefect) at my High School, and was, alongside the rest of the leader body, tasked with helping to get the school into a condition that would allow for the marking of that years Matric Examination papers to proceed without an issue. This also involved the assistance of running a small shop which was to provision the South African teachers marking said papers with food and drinks so that their job could pass by with less hassle.

So here's the fun. For some reason, South African teachers are coke addicts. (Not that coke... The stuff you drink. On a side note, I've tried sniffing coke before. The bubbles kept tickling my nose.) In any case, running this shop passed by with relative ease apart from the near constant demand for cans of Coca-Cola. The shop had set up a massive metal bin which was filled with water and ice in order to keep the cans cool as they were sold nearly as quickly as they were put in.

The problem with such a setup of course, is that the freshest cokes were always placed into the tub on top, and the oldest ones were to be found at the bottom of said metal container... by the rubber plug which held the frigid contents in their watery suspension. So of course Murphy's law dictates that at the end of the day when there is no longer a supply of ice to further cool more drinks, I knocked the infernal plug out of the drain.

Allow me to place this into perspective. This bin was tall enough to reach over your average persons hips, and deep enough that placing your arm in, your shoulder would be submerged if you placed your hand flat against the base. So there I was, innocently searching for a cold coke, when the sudden splatter of water on the ground gives away what I've done, and seeking to preserve the now more precious supply of cold water for the remaining drinks, I quickly weighed my options. 

There was no way to refill the bin, and no alternative plug, and after frantically brushing my hands about the bottom for 30 seconds, I decided that the only remaining option was to sacrifice my own limbs to frostbite in the name of preserving the precious commodity that was cold water. (I should point out that almost 3 years later, I'm still laughing at how ridiculous this sounds.) Placing one hand over the drain to prevent leakage, I stood with my arms up to my shoulders in icy water with my behind dangling over the edge of the bin as if I was bobbing for apples. 

If you're wondering how funny that looked, one of the school teachers accompanying the leaders with this job spotted this and asked what I was doing, only to break out into non-stop laughter for 5 minutes when I told her; while I continued to desperately find the rubber plug beneath all the cans of drinks with my remaining arm. Good times.

Thankfully, as luck would have it, I eventually managed to find the rubber plug and pulled my now shinning pink arms from the water. If I'd seen that colour on a hunk of meat I would have called it pork most likely. And it hurt... a lot. Thankfully, this was during the spring so they warmed up quick enough. As an added bonus, the still cackling teacher decided to thereby dub me "Plugless", hero of the cooldrink bin from there onward. In good humor of course. Still, what a sight my round bottom over the edge of that tub must have been. (Teehee)

In any case, since then, Plugless has been one of the many strange nicknames that I am known by. Still not quite as strange as "Dr. Unikorn" though. In any case, if you think that Plugless suits me as a nickname, or perhaps just want to let me know how stupid you think I am, make sure to do so in the comments below; and make sure to share this with any of your friends who appreciate stories of people doing things that make no sense. Everyone likes a good laugh. And of course, if you would like to read more stories like these, make sure to like my Facebook page and/or follow me on Twitter using the associated button on the bar to the right so that you can get the latest articles as I post them. Regardless of what you do however, I thank you for taking the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again tomorrow.

Fare Footing (and solidly held plugs) in your travels.