I don't mean to judge but I don't envy the site mods. They deal with so many cheats and liars that I'm sure they have a bit of an edge in their dealings.

Flipside is that in general they seem pretty reasonable in their dealings. From casual conversations with bigbadron he seems like a decent sort. Maybe send him a picture of your family with all the posters labeled so they know :)

Flipside though is that if you are lying they don't have any tolerance. The last aswotter I know of seemed to be talking them down but then her story changed or they caught her on a half-truth or something and they slapped her with the banhammer. Again I don't know the details but honesty is the only policy when dealing with rPoL mods. They're like the well worn beat cops...they've heard it alllllll before. You don't maintain a site with hundreds of banned players and not get really good at catching them.

If you're running multiple accounts just fess up and throw yourself at their mercy...as well as figuring out why you needed so many accounts in the first place. Take a good long look at your personality that you need so many alternates :)

I didn't say what I did to create a discussion about bigbadron, or multiple accounts.  Just wanted everybody to know that L wasn't going to be around anymore, nor Athena as far as I can tell.  My own participation will of course be waned until everything passes over, and if I too get banned then I'll just find someplace else to play.  LuLu and I had every intention of finishing the Royal Recorder, and Keeper of the Hall duties, but due to this I wanted you to know that may not be possible, that is all.  My feelings on the mods are negative, and perhaps I spent a few to many words venting those feelings.

@Heath: I know it wouldn't be under their RPoL names. I just didn't look far enough back to see LuLu's account name.

Hope everything works out for you and Athena and LuLu. I'll be sorry to see you go.

Good luck. Every ASWoTer is special :)

I have not really found this to be the case.  If you've had true run ins with them, I think you learn to just try to stay off their radar.  Every time I go back and start posting something in Community Chat, for example, it's not long before I vow not to go back there again due to the stronghanded and overbearing moderation that really does not let people engage in lively discussions--shutting down discussions just because they veer from the original topic, for example, was my latest WTF moment this morning.  If something doesn't violate the ToU, then why moderate it?

Duuuude I always wanted to play a legit paranoia game. I joined one once but it died shortly after and I was left quite disappointed. :(

You should go join Heath's then. He's always happy for ASWoTers to apply.

RL has abducted me quite thoroughly these days, what with college and work and all, so that would be a bad idea. xD I'll definitely go read it though.

Ew, RL.

Yeah, it does that to me too though... well, that and WoW...

Oh I miss WoW, so much...and MMOs in general really. RL sucks, I had more fun when I had free time for internets. XD

Yeah, WoW is a major time-suck for me. I usually spend most of my Saturdays playing it, as well as a few hours every evening. I don't play as much on Sundays because I have to run errands and stuff like that.

It always surprises me when I find out that other people that I know, or people who are in the same social circles as I am, play WoW. It shouldn't, since the game has so many players, but it does. Every time.

I always used to run across fellow players online, but I've met very few IRL.  It turns out my caliber of geek-nerd-thing is a good bit less common than I've always thought.  Side effect of not going to school/not being normal, I guess. (: *not complaining*

Hmm... I don't know. I "met" a whole bunch of people in the NaNoWriMo network who play WoW.

Admittedly the only people that I know in real life who do are family (firelizardkimi) or friends from high school and college. But there are relatively few of them.

In reply to Kitty (msg # 77):

As luck would have it, I did have someone drop out over the weekend, in case you are interested in joining a Paranoia game at RPoL.

When Heath runs a game you know it's going the distance. his AD&D game which I sadly dropped has been going on what...the entire run of rPol?

That game started as a PBeM game in 1998, then went to Playbyweb, and then migrated over here soon after jase started up RPoL.  This is technically it's third incarnation, since the first group all died or got turned to stone, the second group was a "high level campaign," which also did not turn out well for the players, and then this one, which has been going for nearly 10 years now, I think.  Yeah, since June 2005.

It has more private messages than most games have posts, and the characters have already witnessed the destruction of their entire planet, traveled through time a few times, and have killed almost every creature in the Monster Manual--still have a few more to go.

My Star Frontiers game started in September 2004 and is still going strong.

I had a strong Matrix (GURPS) campaign that ran from 2004 to 2007.

So what you're saying, Heath, is not only are you a HUGE nerd, but your game has literally been running longer than this site has been in existence. :D

In reply to Kitty (msg # 83):

Oh look WoW conversation, and to think their 10th anniversary is the 21st.  I am going to reactivate my account for the first time in like three years on the 20th :p  Also, pretty much all old accounts just got auto updated to mists...  So if you really like WoW, now is a good time to try it out again, as I am.

Yes, and I must say I was very stoked--and perhaps a little giddy--when Wizards of the Coast became my client, and I got to tour their facilities and see it from the inside.  People there really care about the games, even the attorneys and executives, most of whom grew up playing the games.

In reply to Just a girl passing through (msg # 89):

Yep. Also the new expansion, Warlords of Draenor comes out on Thursday. And due to that, during the anniversary they're running a special event - 40-man Molten Core upgraded for level 100 players dropping a mount for everyone 100% on completion. I'm super psyched for that, actually. It should be fun.

In reply to Heath (msg # 90):

Neat-o. You know when they first picked up D&D from TSR I raged and fumed with all my nerdling might at how they were changing everything. Overall I always hated how linear D&D 3.0 and 3.5 was. All those powers and "+1 to this, +2 to that" just didn't have the same appeal as AD&D's vastly wildly different power levels.

In D&D 3.0 a ring of fire resistance was something like "Subtract 15 damage from all incoming fire..." while in AD&D the ring said "You were immune to fire damage. Period."

Then they added in all those magic crafting rules that most GMs I played with basically just let you custom order whatever magic item you got so everyone ended up with the same magic items (primary stat bumpers, then weapon bumps. then armor bumps). Any magic items we got were quickly converted to cash to fuel our character's progress and it became very Progress Quest-y.

ANYWAY I was upset about the switch from AD&D to D&D 3.0 and took it out on WotC. Then I got older and learned about all the behind-the-scenes stuff that happened at TSR after Gygyax was ousted and it really made me appreciate how WotC stepped up when TSR fell and was really the bastion of games and nerd-dom for years until other companies got on their feet. While I might not like how they went a little too "balanced math, small steady progression" with D&D at least D&D still existed and again even though 4E was a collosol bomb in my opinion it seems like they learned from their mistakes and 5E actually has a bit of appeal again.

All in all it's bad form to hate on WotC because they're successful and/or because they try new things. Look at MtG, their flagship product. I barely recognize it even though the basic rules haven't changed and yet they've basically created several unique games out of the same basic concept of draw a card, play a card.

In conclusion I would say your assessment doesn't surprise me. I think of WotC as really the penultimate "for us by us" kind of place, right up there with Blizzard, Valve, Steve Jackson, Fantasy Flight and the other giants of the gaming industry.

Funny, when they asked me about what version I liked best, I told them I like AD&D best and though I read the later rules, never had the energy to really run a game with 3.0 or higher.  Now, they are no longer my client.  Connection?  (No, just kidding.  I changed firms, and my contact there also changed companies.)

I was just looking at my pocket army and I realized that it's still in a time vortex thanks to Kagura

HEY! KAGURA! GIVE ME MY POCKET ARMY BACK!!!!

*frowns* I don't remember that... I'm, uh, not sure it's there anymore. Things have a habit of kind of just vanishing when time vortexes are involved...

Sorry about that.

/sigh

Description updated :(