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[FallacyofUrist]

Show posts. 781 pages worth of messages. Default messages per page. Can that even be adjusted for the profile 'show posts' feature?

You are Fallacy. You have a legal name, but that's mostly for your convenience. All the people who know the real you, call you Fallacy. There's a fair bit of 'Fal', too, thanks to the tendency of people to shorten things down. As much as your social life is basically all online, you're fairly satisfied with that. It's not like you stay inside all day. No car means work is something that has to be walked to. Same for the grocery.

You just stay inside most of the day. Maybe you should change that, start jogging more often than to and from work.

But that's not what you're here for, typing in this kinda crappy simple-machines forum rich text box.

You're here because you have been on Bay 12 for the very longest of all your social media. Longer than Spacebattles. Longer than Discord. Longer than... what else, that one post on the Order of the Stick forums? Did you ever follow up on that? Gods, did you sign up for a mafia game there and then forget about it entirely?

... if you did, it was years ago.

It's too easy to ramble.

Your point is, you've been on Bay 12 for a long while. A... literal decade? That can't be right. Can it? Can it really be that long?

Thank goodness no. Your first post looks to be in 2015. You registered back then. Imagining yourself as a socially inept 13-year-old on the forums makes you cringe internally.

Not that your 15-year-old self was too much better, but you've grown a lot since then.

Show posts. Show... topics. There we go, you think.

This isn't your sendoff. You still like it here on Bay 12, even if you aren't as active as you used to be.

This is your attempt at doing something strange.

You want to give each and every forum game you started and then never properly ended, a proper, written, ending.

Isn't that something.


Listing. You hit the last page of your created topics, and scroll up them one by one.

Roll To Survive The Game Master's Whimsy. The cringe hits again, as does a strange sense of nostalgia. You've loved making games for a long time. Even before Bay 12. As a kid, you made long, elaborate, strange hopscotches on the neighborhood sidewalks, numbering dozens of steps. Invented fun paper games. Card games. Tried out running an introductory Pathfinder module once. 'Whimsy', despite the fact that you rigged a roll, publicly, just because you didn't like the original outcome (you learned very quickly that that was a horrible idea), somehow had some strangely innovative concepts. Or maybe you just borrowed them from somewhere.

Page 40. 'I think I'm going to put this game on a hiatus.' That's one.

We Are Final Boss. Suggestion game, five pages long. Surprisingly, this one might not be on you. The very last post is an update. Nobody replied, it seems. That's two. What is this, some weird fusion of D&D casting rules and mana points?

TACTICUS PRIME. Tactical piece-building game, where the players could design their own units on an ASCII grid. Based on an earlier game that got into the Hall of Fame itself. You're feeling increasingly awed at your younger, bolder, unpolished self's audacity. Jeez. Multiple resources. Custom units all around. You really allowed this to happen? That's three.

Wizard's Tourney. Kinda comedic deathmatch game. Boy, you've run a lot of deathmatch games. Players get odd spells and... right, impromptu NPC spam and Warrens of Oric The Awesome fan inserts. Ew. Ew ew ew. Great freaking game, that, but why would you ever insert random characters from it into an entirely unrelated deathmatch. Right, 15-year old brain. That's four.

Not counting Glyphics. That's an interest check. You move on.

Wacky Death Race Omega. Wouldn't be a 15-year-old without weird OCs. Introducing this 'Null' guy. And his buddy, 'Nowhere'. Thankfully they're just plot devices. Game never really started? Players got midway through building their vehicles, then you stopped updating.

Auction Deathmatch. Like, holy shit. Sometimes your younger self had some incredible ideas. A deathmatch (boring) but the players bid on a pool of items and abilities with Tokens before things start. Incredible. And... shameless fan inserts again, this time from the Princess Bride. You're suddenly much less impressed.

Fifth and sixth.

SCP League. Double holy shit. Each player gets their own little fledgling anomalous-entities-capture-and-experimentation-and-usage-and-public-safety organization. Granted, you ripped the anomalies right off the SCP wiki using a random number generator to choose which page was rolled, but it was still a good idea, and good luck figuring out a good enough pure random generator to use for that purpose. At least, at the skill level you had then. Also never got an ending. Seventh.

Fallacy's Looter's Delight.

((Running a LD game in a nutshell:

"Oh, this doesn't seem too bad, everything looks pretty straightforward. I just roll here and here... Yeah, I could totally work more people into this."
...
"What do all of these rolls even mean? Did I even get everyone? Who's moving first? Crap, did someone die? What's their loot? Ah, gosh dang it, it's an NPC."

I have fallen into this same trap three times now. So don't beat yourself up too hard over it.))

... yeah. Eighth.

Wizard's Wacky Death Race. Died in preparation. Seriously, did you ever run a car-building racing game that actually started? Ninth.

Fallacy's Titans of Creation. Absolutely fantastic premise, but then again, you stole it. Then again, the best artists steal. And shamelessly, too. Wait, you finished writing the update, posted the point totals, and then didn't get any followup from the players. Similar situation to 'We Are Final Boss', you guess. Tenth.

The First Christmas RTD. Arguably ended! Not counting that one.

And lo, the deadline passed, and Santa Claws became the new Santa Claus. But was that truly the end?

Perhaps not. The question was, would no Christmas at all be better than an evil Christmas?

You Are A Planet. Suggestion game. You didn't make very many of those. This one is... limited in scope, despite the players being a planet. Eleventh.

A Choice. Also a suggestion game. Maybe you spoke too soon. This one has the hints of grand ambition that went really, nowhere. Originated from a brief 'dimensional travel' interest phase in your life. Also died due to lack of player voting. Twelfth.

Twelfth? Is that really how that's spelled?

Fallacy's Looter's Delight 2. Second verse, same as the first. Had an actual random generator, though. And the fox boots! Oh right, those. The receiver never figured out that they could evolve and gain potency. If that's what it was.

Or was that a different game. Grr.

You number that as lucky thirteenth.

Mighty Fists - An Arms Race Test. Oh boy, you used to make a lot of arms races... Fourteenth.

From here on you decide you're not going to add commentary unless a game is particularly noteworthy.

You Are An Alchemist. Fifteenth.

Mad Science Arms Race. Sixteenth.

The Most Interesting Year Of My Life. This... you actually wrote another self-insert SG before this one, huh? Seventeenth.

Border Crossing and Special Ops Arms Race. Papers Please but it's an arms race. You actually really liked this one, huh? A beautiful premise. Eighteenth. An intelligence and counterintelligence and infiltration arms race. Absolutely beautiful.

The Castle of Bizarre Magical Items. Does this even count as nineteenth? It's a succession forum game. Theoretically anyone could take it, revive it, and start running it right now. But would anyone even do that? You hesitantly give it nineteenth.

Rule Of Cool - Young Gods Have Fun. Yeah, that old thing! Your headmate seems amused. Why's it matter, anyways? It doesn't, really. Not technically 'your' game, given the situation, but it's connected to your account. Twentieth then.

Wanderlust. Twenty-first.

SPAMNINJA. Twentysecond.

all lowercase bizarrely awesome sorta-minimalist rtd. You were feeling spiteful towards that all-CAPS RTD, huh? Twenty third.

LOOTQUEST. Twenty fourth.

Standoff. You still like the Jojo 'Stands' magic system, though these days you fantasize about applying it to a JoJo/Worm fusion crossover fanfic. Twenty fifth.

SILENT. 'No politics allowed!' Not anymore. These days you see why allowing things to be, potentially unfair, allows for better games. Life isn't always fair, is it? Twenty-sixth.

Sinking Tower Arms Race. Much more original. A very dynamic game, huh? Twenty seventh.

Deckmasters - Collect and Kill. Twenty eighth.

Amber Dream. Ambitious. Twentyninth.

Warden. Thirtieth.

Cardquest. Thirty-first.

The Gate of Dreams.

...

...

...

What is not dead may eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die. Or whatever that quote was. You... may revive this game. Once you muster the will and focus to create a more accessible behind-the-scenes system to use. You decide to not make this one your thirty secondth game to send off fucking jeeeeez.


Thirty-one games.

That includes two racing games.

Five cooperative adventures.

Six suggestion games.

Seven deathmatches?

Three god games.

Three point five arms races.

How the hells are you going to handle this?


A Eulogy For All? Each game gets its own little descriptive sendoff, describing whatever virtues it possessed.

The Pyre Of A New Year? Leave them all behind. The best memorial to your past is to pursue the future. Gate of Dreams this Sunday, once you've finished building an accessible, expandable behind-the-scenes ruleset and pseudo-dictionary. After your Exalted remote tabletop session, if that's gonna happen.

The Worthy, Reborn? One and only one game gets a reboot. You'll decide which the very best of them is, and rekindle it, with your more advanced maturity and game-expertise.

The Memorable Alone Are Respected? A lot of these are, frankly, garbage or mediocre at best. But some of them... are so much better. You'll respect those memorable few by giving them longer, more detailed sendoffs, including a few character aftermaths. You'll leave the rest unmentioned.

Choose.

[Supernerd]

Huh. Apparently I've been around here for like 12 years. So thanks for that.

[Devastator]

New Year

[Fluffe9911]

Hey I remember some of these... well atleast three of em. Honestly, it is very common for forum games here to go without a proper conclusion to the point I sign up for a decent amount of em with pretty much the expectation that they are just gonna suddenly die outta nowhere. In all my years being here the only two decently long-running games that I participated in that I remember having a proper conclusion was Minimalism and Milk 3, and The Title is Dead there were others like SCP Dollhouse or The Deputies test game but those were much shorter experimental type games so I don't really count em.

Kinda just how it be I guess sometimes it can only take 1 person to burn out a player or GM for the entire game to just fall apart.

Anyway New Year because I still wanna play that magic girl game but ya can still give some of your games a send-off if you feel like it.

Edit: Also out of curiosity what killed Cardquest for ya? I enjoyed messing around as a Yugioh Ripoff in that.

[King Zultan]

New Year

[Egan_BW]

Oh I'm older than Fal huh how about that.

....

........

PYRE BURN THEM ALL.
WHATS DONE IS DONE CLEANSE THIER SOULS IN HOLY FLAAAAAME

[notquitethere]

The Worthy, Reborn?

Deckmasters was a good idea. I can understand getting burned out on a game midway, but to not even get beyond character creation seems a shame.

[Superdorf]

Eulogy

[syvarris]

Aww, this is... heartwarming?  Or, what are the kids saying these days?  Relatable?  Makes me smile, despite the somewhat mournful tone.

Memorable Alone.  I think that's what you want to do.  Plenty of these are just a kid messing around, experimenting and learning, but some of them are clearly dear to you.  Give them a nice retrospective, maybe think about what you learned from them if anything.  What made you happy, what made the games fail.  I'd certainly love to read someone else's navel gazing about their games, I do it enough about my own.  After that you can run something; why not?  You've clearly loved doing it for years.

Gate of Dreams isn't as important as you think it is, BTW.  It's just the most recent one.  It's got a great core concept, but you're good at coming up with core concepts.  The rest of it might be great too, but it probably won't be, simply because that's how things go.  That, and it's a PvE Perplexion-like, which is generally a very unintuitive and difficult genre of game to do well.  I'd happily talk to you about it, and I'd love to help you improve the backend system.  I'd even excuse myself from the game proper for it; I enjoy system design as much as--or more than--playing the games, anyway.

[FallacyofUrist]

You parse the words of the wise watchers, looking for their decisions.

It is only natural that they're divided. That's not really, a problem, though. You're taking all the options taken, in proportion to the proportions in which they were taken.

Four advocate The Pyre Of A New Year. This must be the dominant result, then.

Of the rest, one advocates The Memorable Alone Are Respected. One advocates A Eulogy For All. One advocates The Worthy, Reborn.

It's clear enough how to handle things. A brief discussion of the historic game genres in general. A brief remembrance of the very best of what was made.

The opening of the Gate of Dreams.

And oh-so-gently taking something from what was forgotten and passing it through the Gate.

You note that any such inclusion would have to be recontextualized, but you can handle that.


The deathmatch is perhaps the most classic of those games you've run. Even the adventures, it seems, bear the elements of deathmatches. The very root concept is simple. Each player controls a character in an arena. They fight, some die, and to the victors, go the spoils. You stood on the shoulders of giants, and did not match them then, but the games were enjoyed, weren't they? Your mirrors of the Looter's Delight? Various other bloody battles. It took some time for you to refine the roll system you used. Early on, it was far too difficult for any player character to die. Eventually, you designed a wounds system, where increasing damage led to increasing penalties, eventually making it possible to reach death. That, combined with results scaling - rolling a 5 with a fist would do less than rolling a 4 with a laser cannon - eventually produced enjoyable games. Simple in concept, but enjoyable.

You think you liked the arms races better, though. If not for the bloat in game-master difficulty running them, and the difficulty mustering both player activity and morale - a deathmatch remains more accessible, you suppose, but the sheer potential of a good arms race is hard to beat. You're a little proud of the concepts for the two main arms races in your history - Sinking Tower Arms Race and Border Crossing Arms Race.

You seemed to have the most issues running adventures. It makes sense. Creating direction, you muse, is so much harder in the absence of 'kill that guy over there'.


Sinking Tower Arms Race gets points for the sheer innovation of the setting and conflict involved. You've never seen another arms race where the battlefield itself changes, both advanced magic and advanced technology are allowed... the potential is unreal. But it was bloated, wasn't it? You never trimmed the fat. You'd have more to say if the game lasted beyond two phases.

Border Crossing And Special Ops Arms Race was more concise. Funny, since it came before Tower.

... You've just had a realization. The pattern exists and returns, again and again. You achieve a brilliant design, but fail to trim its edges, sharpen it to its essence - and after a short period, the bloat costs you too much energy to run the game, and it dies.

While both arms races ended after approximately the same distance, one had greater potential to continue on. You've always been the weaker link. No more of that.

Fallacy's Looter's Delight 2. You think this is the best deathmatch you've ever actually run. Thirty-eight pages, fifty-six turns. You went ahead and got rid of stats in character creation - possibly the best move ever. That made the game much more about the loot items and creative strategies. It also had... multiple waitlists. Why would you do that. Why would anyone ever do that. These days you know 'it's cool' isn't good enough of a reason, knowing the bloat it added. Maybe two separate waitlists, or something like that, but you had four different tracks for one game. Good grief. It was chaotic and violent and many people died.

SCP League. Possibly the best game you've run, in general. Neatly managed scope, humor and conflict, substantial strategy and resource management, and the possibility for player-on-player conflict. It was your answer to RTD Horrors, and it was a good answer. One of the players stumbled into running an anomalous amusement park. While in debt to the Mafia.


You finish writing the discussion of your prior games. Perhaps you missed a good few, but it was the will of the voters, wasn't it?

Now for the main event. The Pyre Of A New Year.

How should you go about this, you wonder?

You have ideas already.

The main schemes, you'll keep to yourself. The peripherals? The rebirth of the worthy? That you'll share.

Looted Dreams? Rarely, anomalous items may be found and claimed, and unlike temporary creations, maintained between missions without cost.

The Tower Collapses? The entire Inner Realm of Dreams has been destabilized. While it is too self-repairing to fall entirely, every so often a layer of reality will collapse - the Inner Gate of Dreams must be relocated by the players before this happens, transferring it to a higher layer. Succeeding in missions will stabilize the Realm, failing the opposite.

Words, Stripped From The Soul? Defeating noteworthy enemies may grant the victorious new words of power to use, ones that do not fall within an existing Domain.

Choose.

While the wise choose, you prepare to craft a background-system that will be easier to use, easier to expand, and less straining on your capacity.

[Egan_BW]

Words Stripped from the Soul.
In loving memory, we rip flesh from bone and carry a keepsake with us. A talisman of death to always remind us that we are alive, and that we too shall die.

[syvarris]

Tower Collapses.

Firstly, it's an area that I think Perplexicon-likes could work well for.  Exploring new and strange areas, without necessarily having your primary goal be murder (which is inevitably relatively straightforward).  Taming the land, making it function according to your needs, that has a lot of potential.  I suspect it could also be easier to design for, depending on how freeform your system is.  Just build environments, without necessarily baking in solutions and limiting the dangers, as one must do with enemies.

Secondly, it implies loss.  Classic perplexicon-likes have a very substantial problem with power creep.  In OG Perplexicon, whether or not you were a magical god or a dingus with a "summon poison gas" spell depended purely on how complete your knowledge was.  All the knowledge could make you virtually almighty, even as a starting character.  In Perplexicon-likes where you collect words, especially with built in quality/power levels for the word, I've seen a tendency for those words to become very broad and become the apocryphal hammer that makes everything look like nails.  Perplexicon-likes are at their best, IMO, when you're puzzling out how to do something, and I think that you'd need to have some kind of loss of words couple with a gain of new ones to maintain that.

[notquitethere]

Tower Collapses sounds like a good external goal. I find that helps cohere things in a forum game.

[Fluffe9911]

Tower Collapses.

[FallacyofUrist]

You carefully finish your preliminary background ruleset. Doesn't matter if it's not complete exactly if it's complete where it matters. You recall that video games unload objects that aren't in the player's vision. It's a little like that, you suppose. If everything that can be seen is seamless, does it matter if there are parts unfinished behind the curtain, ready to be assembled as time goes by? You're prepared to improvise and plan in equal measure, and allow yourself that leeway.

Maybe you'll start the game tonight instead of right now, though. You're hardly sleep-deprived, but you remain a little tired, and you'd like to be at your best before you well and truly, begin.


There is nothing left to Choose, now.

Fin.