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When people sit down to game with each other, there should always be some sort of 'social contract' that players adhere to. To facilitate the fun, and to help avoid disputes. The last of these rules is that when you're no longer having fun, you have to pack up your toys and go home. Having a certain understanding of the rest of the rules should help you avoid ever getting to this point.

Here are some of the other rules (or guidelines if you prefer) to help players enjoy their time here, or in any other gaming environment...

1. This is a game. If you're not having fun, then you need to step back, do something else, then come back when you have a fresh perspective.

2. This is a game. I recently lamented to a friend that gaming was so much easier 25 years ago, when all my fellow players lived spitting distance from each other, and didn't have anything more important than homework to occupy our time. But a lot of us here are adults, and that means we have "Real World Obligations." I know that Eyeonthemountain was disappointed that one of his (few) threads died; his fellow player has been busy, and his GM went AWOL. This happens, because Real World > Game World. When this happens, you can either wait until your fellow players are free to play again, and/or request a new GM help you resolve the thread.

3. You get back from playing here what you put in. Unlike a sit-down RPG, with one GM that spoon-feeds you plots, most of what happens here is player driven. Don't wait for things to happen, take some initiative and make things happen.

4. Roleplaying should be a social hobby. Take advantage of the Chat function. Meet some people 'in real time.' Use it to plan future adventures.

5. When you are getting frustrated with someone you need to relax, and and try to see things from the other side. I was more than a little distraught at how quickly that Mutant Mafia thread went from collaborative to confrontational. There's just no reason this should happen.

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5. When you are getting frustrated with someone you need to relax, and and try to see things from the other side. I was more than a little distraught at how quickly that Mutant Mafia thread went from collaborative to confrontational. There's just no reason this should happen.

Yeah, he's right. Hellbound, why not take a week or two off and see how you feel after that?

eyeonthemountain, I'm sure if you PMed some of the more active players (*coughavengercough*), they'd be happy to start a thread with you so you can get some more playing in.

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I have thought about it, and it's a shame to dump Hellbound now. He was just starting to show some development as a character rather than a set of stats that enjoys hitting people. But all of that development came out of solo threads rather than mutual participation on the site. Any thread he was a part of that relied on GM input tended to dry up in spite of those same GMs making daily appearances on the thread.

I just don't feel as if Hellbound were a part of Freedom City. Plus I got the vibe that Archeville never cared much for him anyway -- he's already been seamlessly cut from any thread that the board chairman is part of, plus the two NPCs I submitted have not just been archived, but deleted.

MBCE is the only GM who seems to expect (or even desire), a return from Hellbound, so there just doesn't seem to be any point in reconsidering.

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I have thought about it, and it's a shame to dump Hellbound now. He was just starting to show some development as a character rather than a set of stats that enjoys hitting people. But all of that development came out of solo threads rather than mutual participation on the site. Any thread he was a part of that relied on GM input tended to dry up in spite of those same GMs making daily appearances on the thread.

I don't make 20 lengthy posts a day like you do because my job that prevents me from doing so, and I have two very ill family members (a godmother/aunt and a wife) whom I spend time caring for and worry about, and I'm trying to write more (see the link in my .sig). Before you complain about people not posting enough for you, you might want to consider why they're not as prolific as you instead of assuming it's some personal slight.

I just don't feel as if Hellbound were a part of Freedom City. Plus I got the vibe that Archeville never cared much for him anyway -- he's already been seamlessly cut from any thread that the board chairman is part of, plus the two NPCs I submitted have not just been archived, but deleted.

Almost every bit of that paragraph is untrue.

Dr. Archeville the character doesn't like Hellbound b/c he is, deep down, an intellectual snob and has seen Hellbound as nothing but a musclebound thug, an easily-moved pawn on the battlefield. His opinion was starting to change during the "Placement Test." Dr. Archeville the poster thinks the character is so-so, but that's mainly because I don't care much for Lobo/Wolverine-type brawlers.

You haven't been cut from every Genderswitch, no more than Wesley Knight was. True, no one replied to Hellbound's most recent idea, but that's b/c we all thought you'd left and were never going to come back, so there was really no need to. Ditto on our "Placement Test," you gave every indication you'd left for good so I saw no reason not to close that thread.

Your two Mutant Mafia NPCs were archived, not deleted. They're in the archived character forum, along with every other never-approved character.

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Sorry, dude, but I just don't buy it. Last month I acted as the sole support for my own mother's breast cancer surgery -- which included more time at hospitals than I've ever spent in my life.

On top of that, I'm the sole support at work for our online image archive and I'm the only one in my group that's capable of coding in every language we touch (particularly the C++ code). Yet I still get my workload accomplished and then some.

And I managed 165 posts last month on top of that. Why? Because I was forced to write a friggen novel for Hellbound since his official threads were being ignored. The only thing that such distractions caused for me was the lack of accuracy on character sheets. A large number of the errors were due to my mind being elsewhere, but I was still on the board working to expand the universe and develop my character.

Why? Because I care about this site as a creative outlet.

But my reward for that was to watch GMs wander away from threads they'd comitted themselves to so that they could go play in new ones. Plus I watched numerous people sign on EVERY DAY only to spend hours of their time on resources that had nothing to do with the campaign world.

Face it, Doc, the admins just aren't dedicated to seeing this site develop and grow as it's capable of doing. They leave it up to the players to generate new aspects of the campaigns and then display nothing but resistance when those aspects are introduced to the campaign beyond their own personal storylines.

You can deny that if you wish, but it's true regardless. It's also true that favoritism is shown on a regular basis. It took weeks to get Roman Michaels approved even though multiple refs were all over Shane's submissions which came shortly after -- which resulted in approval after a matter of two days rather than a month.

That had nothing at all to do with outside obligations. So, no, I won't be returning. Hellbound is a blast to write for, but eventually I'm going to get tired of him living inside of his own little bubble.

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I can't believe I forgot to add this to my list...

The Admin of this board are volunteers. They aren't paid to work here, and they are here to have fun like everyone else.

...To some degree, this means that you will see bias, or at the very least preference. Once I submit Pompadour, I got the character approved in less than a week. I make no apology for that, either. Here's my thinking.... My first submissions have been unsuitable as characters, so I've been waiting to get an approved character for almost two months. I also visit Chat often, so I have the social connection with the people here. I was able to get my first approval by chatting through the character sheet with Sandman in about ten minutes. Then, I unabashedly asked Ecal if he could do the 2nd one, "hey man, can you do me a favour?" "What do you need?" tada!

I had noticed you were online A LOT. You never come visit the chat. I also read A LOT of Hellbound posts, because there is both Quantity and Quality. Having said that... there are days when you make new solo posts every hour (or less). You cannot expect any Player or Admin to match that kind of volume... and the cold hard truth is, once you go from Player to Admin, and see behind the velvet curtain, and get saddled with a stack of responsibilities... you suddenly feel less creative. Hanging out in Chat, or doing some of the "silly useless crap" that goes on at Freedom City pbp is sort of the equivalent of having a beer after some jackass drops a Metamorph with four distinct forms on your lap and asks you to audit it (that would be me, FYI).

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Insulting to outright lording over a guy for his personal troubles and being busy with admin work. Stay classy Hellbound, stay classy.

Stay classy somewhere else mind you, because between this, the "jacking off" type cracks, and.. no, I'd say really the clincher is hanging around on a site you claimed to have left to tell someone he's doing a bad job taking care of his sick relatives compared to you. Go be better than everyone else, someplace else.

Also, as you might guess, this is another one of those threads that's race has run.

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