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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Social Hooper McFinney's RPF Bar & Grille 7.5 - "Loving the lens flare since 1977!” -!

Discussion in 'Role Playing Forum' started by Penguinator, Feb 8, 2013.

  1. Sarge221

    Sarge221 Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Sep 9, 2006
    And of course soon after that last post I jam my thumb pretty good into a box of product and injure it pretty good. Now I am making this post by having my Droid phone on the table and only using my index finger to type.

    That's karma for ya! >.>
     
  2. Rampani

    Rampani Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 25, 2003
    So, Ramza, I'm going to take it that you are mildly excited for SMTIV? Just a wee bit? :p

    In other news.......Saintheart, remember that gaffe a while back accusing me of having a job? Well, I've succumbed to the nature of the world and have GONE BACK TO WORK :_|. I got a job! A real job! Thought that does mean I'll have to resign as the regional alien hunter in my area. Man, my boss there is going to be disappointed......
     
  3. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    Nah, karma would be if you were reincarnated as a book, or something, if I remember right. :p

    Congrats on the job! And, yeah, maybe just a little bit.

    [​IMG]
     
  4. Penguinator

    Penguinator Former Mod star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 23, 2005
    7 days until my birthday.

    I really hate surprise parties guys.

    Like, hate.

    ;)
     
  5. Sarge221

    Sarge221 Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Sep 9, 2006
    Oh good because that would be too much of an opportunity for God to be funny :p First time in my life I do a surprise party and things end up going wrong.



    Depends on the book [face_thinking] I'm still reading the EU after all.
     
  6. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    NINTENDO STOP TRYING TO FULL COURT PRESS ME INTO GETTING A WIIU. Gah.

    Okay, then, karma would be if you were reincarnated as a book by Kevin J. Anderson.
     
  7. Saintheart

    Saintheart Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2000
    Well done, Rampani! :)
     
  8. Rampani

    Rampani Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 25, 2003
    :eek: Sir, you are frightening me. Your diabolical mind knows no bounds. That is truly one of the worst fates I have ever heard of........

    I applaud you for the very idea =D=

    Thanks :D. Though now those pesky Aliens are going to be running around town again.....
     
  9. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    There's a reason I'm rocking a Louis avatar. [face_devil]

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
  10. tjace

    tjace Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 11, 2008
  11. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    I know, right? They're going to show, like, exactly one trailer of Aleph duking it out with Ike and POOF! there goes all my money.
     
  12. Penguinator

    Penguinator Former Mod star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 23, 2005

    FAIL

    The correct answer to the Blond Man's question is "Please allow me to introduce myself; I'm a man of wealth and taste..."
     
    Ramza likes this.
  13. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    The Blond Man is still speaking in the second image, actually. That is Louis.
     
  14. Penguinator

    Penguinator Former Mod star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    May 23, 2005
    Ah, gotcha.

    BUT STILL :p
     
  15. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    If I might allow myself a bit of rambling introspection, today is... a very important day, in some senses of the word:

    Fear and Loathing on the Information Superhighway
    Strange Reflections from a Strange Land, Five Years On

    Relative to a lot of registration dates, 2008 ranks somewhere approximately between "piss all" and "bugger all," and I'd be the first to fess up to that assessment. It doesn't really feel like I've been a member of these boards all that long - but I'm forced to confront the reality of the situation: a five year anniversary trophy, over 15,000 posts, and nearly 3000 of these like things the kids are so goddamn wild about these days.

    I'm old hat: yesterday's newbie by now, and by god I'm drunk on cheap whiskey, I'm giddy from math, the Beach Boys and the Dead are playing in my iTunes, and I'm going to ramble if it kills me. See, as much as I like to hedge around the issue, and as much as I like to appropriate foreign slang for my own purposes, first and foremost in my cultural identity I am an American, and if nothing else, we are remarkably good at sticking to our guns. Currently, said guns are aimed at "meandering retrospective with no respect for conventions thereof."

    It's a metaphor, or something. I believe the hidden message is "eat your vegetables." Which you really should do.

    It's hard to remember the July of 2008 precisely, mostly because in the spectrum of my personal life it wasn't so much a defining month as a period of transition - I had just graduated from high school in May, and I was about to kick off my collegiate pursuit of chemistry in August (This is what snobby writers refer to as dramatic irony). I was doing a bit of research at the time, actually, because I was the ambitious sort, but research does not an entertaining night life make. Thus, like all the cool kids, I decided to resume the practice of roleplaying on the interwebs, a practice I had previously sworn off in the fall of '07, owing to health reasons (Read: not getting enough sleep).

    Now, said itch was of a peculiar sort, in that I found myself hankering for some Star Wars RP. I think, now, with the benefit of hindsight, this was due to media buzz surrounding The Clone Wars, even though I had no desire to see that particular film - and indeed, having seen a few selections from the show it spawned, still don't. Nevertheless I wanted a Star Wars game, and I couldn't find one.

    I had recently acquired a laptop computer of my very own, and this meant a significant increase in web browsing time. Digging deep into my memory banks, I happened to remember a site where I had briefly maintained an account - TheForce.net.

    I couldn't remember my old account - that would eventually be addressed at a later date - so I adopted my own alias from the boards for a now long defunct tabletop gaming podcast's fan site, and became "darthramza." For added measure, I joined a game being run by GrandAdmiralJello that… honestly, I don't remember the name of. It seemed very official, however, and only later did I find out it was one of those EUC crossover games we see every now and again. It was fun, though.

    That really is the only word I could use to describe it: fun. Sure, I would periodically venture over to movie discussion boards, or even (gasp!) the YJCC, but I was an RPFer at heart, acting out all sorts of facets of my own psychology through poorly written, broad caricatures, and loving every minute of it. One minute, I was an Imperial officer, the next, I was a ninja with self-confidence issues, then perhaps a Sith lord, then a vampire, then a crazy bard. I'm still a bit too much of a crazy bard, but that's another story.

    Eventually I managed to earn the attentions of the then-senior moderator, Imperial_Hammer (Who, I kid you not, I used to think was the junior moderator. I was a bit of an idiot.), and that led to my becoming a regular in what was then "rpfchat" on AIM (It's since become "jcrpfchat," primarily my own fault). It was there that I became better acquainted with all sorts of my fellow RPFers: Impy, Sarge, Solo, Xan, Peng, Sey, Grey, Reynar, Trimaj, Kahn, I could probably go on and on without managing to list them all. This was really my first introduction to the notion of having Internet acquaintances, and it was really a brave new world in every sense of the word (Save perhaps Huxley's alcoholic fetuses).

    … Speaking of alcohol, my glass is getting a bit empty. I'll go refill before I continue.



    Now where was I? Ah yes. So during all of this, I was adjusting to my first year of collegiate studies, and eventually disaster was bound to strike. This happened in May of 2009, when I suffered what I would now call an outright nervous breakdown. I quit and discontinued all of my games, and tried to swear off the boards altogether. Personally, I was a wreck, and I wasn't really prepared to deal with the added nuances of online interactions. Nowadays, I think it was just my system adjusting to the shock of being relieved of pressure for the summer, coupled with certain personal revelations I'm obviously a lot more comfortable with now, but at the time I was losing sleep, sobbing hysterically, and I'm told I would be pacing the hallway outside my bedroom at 4 in the morning. I don't really remember doing that, which kind of makes it all the more terrifying.

    I was a wreck, is what I'm getting at, but when I somehow managed to pull myself together I came crawling back: I rejoined most of my games (In extreme hindsight, luckiest of all was my ability to rejoin A Tide of Flames. That game has, for lack of a better term, been my rock.), came back to the chat, and settled in to a comfortable tenure.

    So it went, honestly. I grew up a lot in college, moreso than I ever had in high school, to the point where my old posts seem completely alien to me now. In that sense alone I've kept evolving, still posting my goofy caricatures, still working through my own thoughts in a bizarrely public fashion. Staff changes came and went - first Impy stepped down, then Saintheart; in their place came DarthXan and Penguinator.

    Oh, come on, you knew this part was coming.

    Just under two years ago, not two days after my own birthday, I got perhaps some of the best news I ever received: I'd been picked to become the next RPF moderator. Let me tell you, when you've spent as much time with an online community as I had by that point, it's hard to get a better present, and I would've been giddy as a school girl had I not been suffering from gastrointestinal distress (It's strange what sticks with you after a few years, I tell you what). I was nevertheless pleased as punch, even though my tenure began at arguably the rockiest point in the history of the forum - new user registrations were impossible, and The Move, capitalized in the manner it came to be known in, had yet to occur.

    I like to think I did my best to hold what was only capable of being a shrinking user base together. I like to think my contributions have been positive. But nevertheless I wake up daily to a very hard fact: the RPF's activity has declined under my watch. Was it the move? Was it the long sojourn on the temp boards? Was it me? Was it the inexorable march of time?

    I don't know the answer to that question. But I am first and foremost a mathematician (There's that irony part I mentioned), and I am secondly a realist, so I know they're questions that beg asking. Because it has happened. And while I'd give anything to go back to the level of activity and enthusiasm we had back when I joined, I know that's not possible.

    To a certain extent, I'm okay with that - life marches on. We are better for our experiences. We are always better now than we were when we started. We are always improving.

    So when I ask myself, five years later, "was it worth it?" I know the answer. To a certain extent I knew it back in 2008. I was always going to know the answer to that question.

    "Of course it was."
     
  16. Rampani

    Rampani Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 25, 2003
  17. tjace

    tjace Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 11, 2008
    Tbh, I know nothing about Shin Megami Tensei. But I have put over a hundred hours into my first playthrough on Awakening over the past two months.
     
  18. Saintheart

    Saintheart Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2000
    Ramza, from pretty much the first few times you posted in the RPF Impy and I were saying to each other you were one to keep an eye on, in a good way. You've done pretty damn well to my mind, junior. ;) :D

    EDIT: And I think I speak for everyone on Tide of Flames when I say losing you, even for a short period of time, was a grievous loss. And in view of everything Evelios has contributed since then, in retrospect I thank whatever Platonic gods are responsible for mathematicians that your absence didn't become permanent. Your character, which is to say, you, is one of ToF's best features and it constantly reminds me of the standard I have to keep the game to. :D :D

    EDIT THE SECOND: Not to mention that you are, putting it mildly, a pretty damn decent human being if your posting is anything to go by, and it has been my pleasure to know you and play with you.
     
  19. cassie5squared

    cassie5squared Jedi Knight star 2

    Registered:
    Dec 8, 2010
    =D==D==D==D==D=

    That's awesome, Ramz. Congratulations and hugs. [:D]
     
  20. Sith-I-5

    Sith-I-5 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 14, 2002
  21. Sith-I-5

    Sith-I-5 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 14, 2002
    I'm cool with that.

    How you felt, RPF numbers falling under your watch, and wondering if its you - it wasn't - similar to me and the Adoption Program. I can empathise.
     
  22. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    Thanks everybody. [:D]

    They say write what you know, and what I know is drunken reminiscing about things I love. So I went with that. :p

    Oh jeez. [face_blush] It really is a continued blast to keep playing in ToF. To say I will miss it when we get to the end of that gloriously long and winding road would be a severe understatement.

    Yeah, I'm reasonably sure it was a lot of different factors all adding up to a drop-off, similar to what happened with adoptions, but since I was kind of going for a tell-all I thought I should mention it. It's a very real bit of self-loathing that will probably never go away, but I think it comes with the territory as regards this otherwise fantastic volunteer position I hold. That said, I believe I am memetically obligated to post:
    [​IMG]
     
  23. Sarge221

    Sarge221 Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Sep 9, 2006
    [​IMG]

    I'm kind of hoping that the new Star Wars trilogy will bring back the numbers to the RPF. Not only by bringing in new people but perhaps rekindle a desire for a bunch of the old regulars to come back and have fun within a possibly new, expanded portion of the Star Wars universe.

    ...............................Of course we're still going to have to wait about a year before we see even a preview for what to even expect. This will be an agonizing wait :oops:
     
  24. Skywalker_T-65

    Skywalker_T-65 Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Nov 19, 2009
    Summer slump be bad. I don't think I've ever seen the RPF this slow.
     
  25. HanSolo29

    HanSolo29 RPF/SWC/Fan Art Manager & Bill Pullman Connoisseur star 7 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Apr 13, 2001
    And yeah, summer slump is not helping! :p