A legitimate question here.

It's no secret that the whole OpNet forums have been silent lately, but OpNet 2018 is especially bad. I count four threads with a post from 2008 in them, one of which is a New Year's Day thread. The chat itself has been a graveyard. Even 2010 has been on the light side.

It's a bad idea to point fingers without coming clean on your own, so yes, I do admit that I have been posting less. My reasons are that Vixen is semi-retired coming on permanently so, since her story seems to have more or less ended as far as N!Prime is concerned; that Knockout's developing into the sort of character that wouldn't really feel at ease around a large swath of 2018s; and as for Nathan, well, I've written insane levels of fiction for him so I feel no guilt there.

Now that aside, I have to ask: did we all spontaneously get busy, or is there something more to this? Is the notion of a shared Aberrant universe dying out on its own, or are we all just getting to the point we're sick of each other? It's no secret that there's been shouting matches throughout the years, and it's also a fact that the number of copies of Aberrant that are in print aren't going up. Has the game's time come and gone? Has the OpNet's?

If you used to post here, let us know: why did you stop? And if you haven't ever posted in here, let us know: why didn't you start?

(EDIT) Some mod please be kind to shove this over to the OOC forum, please.

It has been dead lately. Many of our regulars, people who've turned out some really great stories have all gone silent. I have characters in 2018 that are somewhat occupied so I don't post there, and I seldom find anything for my 2010 characters to comment on.

Many of those who were the driving force to establish 2010 are no longer active, or in some cases simply gone.

I haven't been around as long as some but I'll second the comment that it's gone very dead around here. Only the PbP games are showing real activity.

For a while we had active IC and OOC chat. I wasn't around for all of it, but I do the best I can. I'll admit I probably spend the most time logged into the site, simply because it's my only means of talking to certain people.

I don't want to see it all die like this. Is there something that can be done to revitalize it? The games been great and I don't think it's time for a final curtain on it.

That's my take on it.

Justin/Long/Cade/Mech/Deepwater and a small horde of others.

I've been doing what I can. January wasn't a good month for me. I've also been pretty busy in the PbP game I'm in. Beyond that, I don't have too many ideas at this late hour of the day. I'll think on it.

I am more than willing to post. I have, however, put my character into Chrysalis until May. I didn't want to speed up the time he was away. If you're character is to be out for 44 weeks, then he should be out for that long.(that is my opinion) He will be back in a few months with lots of posts.

Hint: He has no idea that Waki was killed.

I want to start first by saying I love this game (flaws and all) and I love this site. That said I stopped posting a while ago for a few different reasons. The main reason I stopped posting in the 2018 boards was because it just seemed pointless to me. The power levels of most of the characters has reached mind-numbingly inane levels just to "keep up" and the whole place just feels like it's "jumped the shark." Note this isn't meant to be an attack on anyone or anything in specific, it's just my overall feeling.

I do love the 2010 boards but I find I'm just not motivated to write. I have a few characters there that have great story potential but between no internet connection outside of work and a lack of connection (my own fault really) with most other characters, it makes posting anything more than short posts in threads problematic even when I do get the urge to write. Sometimes I barely have time in the day to quickly scan for new posts here let alone sit daown and give any of the fictions a thorough reading

Whatever else happens I do hope that this site lives on. I'd sorely miss this place and in all my wanderings on the 'net I've never encountered a community site quite like this one.

Two issues.

1) I have a hard time with an environment where there is no story/plot direction. I prefer to have an environment where there is something definite for my characters to get involved with and things to react to.

2) I did create a character for 2010 at one point but I felt like an outsider. I even had one person gripe at me for joining in on what appeared to be an open thread that lots of people were posting in, but apparently I was somehow stepping on her interaction. After that I just didn't feel very motivated. I do have to say I've been very impressed with some of the fictions I've read. I wouldn't be averse to trying it again at some point, but only if I thought there would be some interaction with folks.

I would hate to see the 2010 and 2018 forums die though. I like the concept, even if they don't really appeal as much to me as the PbP format.

I've been giving this a lot of thought. I know why I have dropped out and I have suppositions on why some other folks have.

Me?

When I came aboard long, long ago I made some folks I consider really good friends. Which is weird considering I've never met them. Both of them are far and away the best players and/or writers I've interacted with here. Ashnod and Jack. Neither of them come around her for the most part anymore. They have their own reasons but they are some of the main reasons I really got into the swing of things.

There are other folks I've enjoyed interacting with but they've also disappeared. Apep. Metropolitan. Bungee. Singularity. And others. Gone. And with them some of my enjoyment.

I've also experienced a number of really unpleasent interactions here. Dreamer sucked up a huge amount of my emotional energy. My fault, not his. I shouldn't have bothered but I did. What Kris did massively soured me on dealing with this place. And the rampaging disagreements that seem to pop up on a semi-monthly basis made this less a haven from stress than a provider of it.

There are a number of other folks, more recent arrivals, that I really enjoyed that also have disappeared. Velvet. Revenent. Flicker. Etc.

So I pretty much don't post anymore. If invited to do a fic I'll be happy to do it if I can trust the person involved, but a lot of my get up and go got up and went. But I'm still lurking. Maybe things will change.

For the curious - I've never actually left Prime. I check in usually once a day.

A couple of things from my point of view - I used to frequent the chat and speaking with the other players often made me want to continue working with the personalities I'd created. When the chat started eating up so much of my processor time that working in other applications was hindered or made outright impossible, I stopped coming in, thus lessening my interaction and after a while my urge to go into chat vanished completely. I don't know if it was my machine(s) or this was a shared problem, but it was enough of one to me that it prevented me from going to the chat.

I lost the ability to access Prime from work as well - this was a major inconvenience since it meant I was forced to use my Hiptop to do any web-browsing, and anyone who is a Hiptop fan can tell you that forum work can be a serious drag on your time if you're dependent on that and the network is being slow. Also, it was impossible to chat on my last Hiptop - I must confess I haven't tried since switching to the LX. But frames seem to give Danger's browser trouble, so i never bothered trying.

In game content that slowly lessened my urge to post - I'm really hesitant to say anything here because it will seem like I'm pointing fingers, and I'm not. It is simply that there are stories that I felt compelled to participate in and those that I did not, and the ones that I did not feel compelled to began to outweigh those that I did until eventually I stopped looking for ways to work myself into them. Every story is not meant for every player - that's a fact of any game or multi-author collaboration.

With that being said, the WCK part of Prime went from a novel idea from Interceptor way back in the day to THE DOMINANT part of the 2018, with a sizable percentage of the character base either being part of, related to, friends with, or friends of a friend of the Knights. This wasn't a bad thing, I have to say that because it stimulated a LOT of play and a lot stories and it was fun for a lot of players. It just wasn't the part of Aberrant that I enjoy and I stayed away from it rather than muck up the fun of everyone who does enjoy that part of it. There was also the Wakinyan Show and all the drama that surrounded that, which is a real shame because for a very long time I liked the character concept and how it was developing. It's unfortunate that it spiraled downward as it did and ended the way it had to.

Part of it was, what felt to me, a usurping of part of Ashnod's philosophy by Procyon and the Third Path idea, which I'd written out some of the framework for something very similar to it earlier so far back in Prime's past that it was for the most part non-existent to the player base of the time. It felt wrong of me to say "you're stealing something I've already done!" when that wasn't the case, and it would have felt cheap to dig up the posts and point links at to steal Procyon's thunder.

That his Third Path idea met with such antagonism within the Teragen itself, to the point where NPC's were attacking him and forcing him to declare his independence and disgust with the movement as a whole, was unfortunately, a very large nail in the coffin that represented my efforts through my time here to portray the Teragen as something other than power-mad narrow-minded lunatics, something that went back further than Jordan Rossi claiming that the Teragen attacked him when they couldn't successfully recruit him peacefully.

My idea of what the Teragen was - and by way of that what Aberrant was - was rapidly dissipating from how everyone else seemed to see it. Within the multi-author environment that is 2018 and without a single governing storyteller to approve or disapprove plots, I found myself consistently at odds with the differing viewpoints of each author and unable to reconcile their visions with my own. This had two unfortunate side-effects.

The first was that the Teragen Ashnod interacted with was obviously not the Teragen everyone else apparently was which made it very difficult to RP out. I tried approaching it as though Ash had reached a Mathematician level of isolation - the idealists were crawling into unwanted "old and out of touch with the new" roles facing a younger, more fanatical or more radical membership. This was leading into the supposed Night of Long Knives that people were clamoring for - and at the same time nobody could really agree with the result of that plot could be. Once again - no single governing or guiding hand to make that decision meant that it was left up to group discussion, and opinions on this (and how it leads into Trinity) vary greatly.

The second was the butting of heads with other players OOCLY about all of this, and my own apparently perceived notion that my word was THE LAW when it came to the Teragen. I admit to being quite opinionated on the subject, somewhat passionately so, but after having enough replies tell me basically that my opinion meant nothing and to just shut up and let everyone have their fun, I backed off and just went away.

Other things here and there - the number of Second Generation novas that somehow started popping up as an example. I hate to say I'm partially responsible for that with Apep's story - while Apep was technically a Second Generation nova we normally treated her as though she was First Generation because she was born before N-Day and was the victim of some awfully severe brainwashing. Kelly, to the best of my knowledge, never attempted to RP Apep as a representative of the Second Generation, and never approached her power level or abilities as Second Generation enhanced.

Other minor quibbles - the tendency to completely ignore the rules or game mechanics. This eventually led, in my mind, to exceptions being the rule and the rules being the exception. I know the Golden Rule of the ST system is to ignore whatever prevents the story from working out - but when EVERYONE is doing that some of the solidarity of the world is lost.

Kelly leaving and taking Apep for the most part of Prime (I have permission to write her, but it's really hard to write Apep accurately) is a tough loss for me. Singularity's absence leaves Fracture somewhat in limbo. Jack leaving and taking Wizard/Elizabeth is really rough, even though she hadn't posted actively in years. I don't know what happened to Codex (yeah I know she doesn't use that name anymore, but she'll always be Codex to me), but I miss interacting with her. At this point, Ash would have been in Chysalis for the better part of two years, maybe more. I said I'd bring her out when ROADS TO MADNESS was finished, but I also didn't expect to lose my inspiration in Aberrant when I said it.

As a rule though, my stories always involved how having powers and quantum-based senses changed the nova's perception of who they were and how they fit into the world. Ashnod as the flag bearer, Juri as an upstart, Fracture as the student seeking her own way, etc. I don't enjoy superpowered gamed for the sake of playing a superpowered character - nor do I normally like stories about superhuman characters who act as though they are completely normal people. Especially those who want nothing more than to be a completely normal person who just happens to have a few advantages. Once again, not every story is for every player, and I know for many, the stories I tell are not the ones that are interesting to them.

Somewhere, lurking in my mind, is the rest of ROADS TO MADNESS and the 2nd half of the Juri/Lemmy collaboration. I haven't abandoned them completely, but it's really hard to get inspired to work on them at the moment. Somewhere, further back, I have at least two more stories for 1,001 Aberrant Nights as well, but finding Sherazahde right now requires more effort than I can muster.

Hmmm...

You know I found NPrime way back. I mean YEARS ago when I first got my books, which was after the game had been out of print for awhile. When I finally decided to try the online gaming thing I found it here but didn't find the Open style of non-STed games accessible.

Years later and I have been on Eon for maybe 3 years now in PbP games and then here with The Long March.

It was only at the end of last year, as i started readin some of the hillarious IC thread discussions did i have the urge to make a character and jump in...to 2010 that is. Without an ST 2018 seemed rather pointless. Might as well yell Bang! youred dead! No Im not! i blocked it with my chesser-shield...

Now I have two PCs actually and they were finalized and approved back in December but after the holidays hit 2010 sort of died. I hope the characters come back that inpspired me: Drew, Mellow, Paramancer, Kitty, Primal, even Alptraum added a funny element with his virulence.

When things pick back up if ever in 2010 i look forward to participating.

Wow, I'm suprised that stuck with you Ash. As Jordan's creator that is one of the things I regret doing with the character here. Not because it's an invalid interpretation of the Teregen but because I was so insistant that the Teregen were the "bad guys" at the time that it hurt your experiences here.

And then, there's me.

I want to stay active with 2018. I do. But....

* Real-Life (TM) has exploded. When I started with N!Prime, it's pretty safe to say that I had not much of a life. There was the day-job, there was N!Prime, and there was the occasional house game. Now? Day-job. Elected city official. Volunteer stuff for autism/Aspergers peer support. And oh dear gods, the Camarilla, which consumes every drop of spare time I give it and greedily begs for more.

* Disappearing folks. With so many characters disappearing over the past few years, so many ties to my various characters cut, writing for my own characters feels disconnected, disjointed, off-kilter.

* Poor choices. Dear gods, I've made a bunch of them. Backing Timeslip into a corner that forced her to take permanent leave from Earth Prime was a pretty dreadful move. Ripping Sandcaster out of the Knights and chucking her in the middle of nowhere didn't help. And then there's Ptesan-Wi; while I enjoy the hell out of the character and think she has a lot of depth, it was a deeply controversial move to play a psiad at all, let alone to play it how I have.

* Wakinyan. I loved the character... and desperately wish that the player had not gone down roads that made it impossible to work with the character anymore, that eventually led to a death storyline that turned out to be just one more in a long series of controversies. Having that whole mess go down the way it did soured me - a lot - on the whole N!Prime experience.

* Canon. We're off the canon map, a map that ended in 2015. But we're still tied to it. But we're not. But we are. And that nasty conundrum leaves the place feeling like we're stuck in time, in a sort of limbo where no broad-impact things can take place. It's stiffling and bothersome and a serious drag.

* Arguments. We're a pretty opinionated bunch. And we let each other know it. Loudly. And I'm one of the worst offenders of the bunch. The seemingly non-stop arguing over just about anything and everything of any significance took a heavy toll on my desire to continue here.

* Dead-end collaborative stories. We've all had it happen. We start a story with other folks... and before it can end, said other folks stop posting. I've been in too many of those, seen too many fics wind up in limbo because the participants just plain stop posting. It drives me around the bend.

* Cheese-monkery. Sorry, but when things get up into Dragonball-Z levels of planet-busting power, good old suspension of disbelief gets a bit frayed around the edges.

That's my two bits.

- Jessica, player of Timeslip/Sandcaster/Ptesan-Wi/The Crusader/Cassandra Foster/Brother Jacob

I'd be entirely ducky with a Slattern/Ptesan-Wi fic.

Hey all.

I feel the hurt too. I love this place, and like Ashnod I'm checking it out and keeping up with it about one a day. My biggest problem though is time. I have none.

I regret it because it's killing my Exalted game, it's slaughtering my story archs for Revenant, and it keeps me from not only enjoying myself here with friends but from enjoying my self with Velvet, whom I rarely see anymore.

I really wish I had more time and I'm currently looking for way to make of it for myself (like dropping a 60 hour work schedule).

Anyway, a lot of what Grit Britches said is true, but I don't think anyone here is the particular cause for any extended leaves. You're all good people, we're just in the RL slump right now.

Hopefully we'll be back in the mix soon.

Peace n' Hair Grease
Dave

I've been thinking about this since yesterday, and I can't find an inoffensive way to write my thoughts, so I'm just going to write them and depend on the readers not to react overly poorly. Since my definition of "apology" includes "regrets the action," I cannot apologize in advance for what I write here, since I cannot regret something in advance. Hopefully my one constructive suggestion will help ameliorate any wounded feelings,

2010:

The sheer volume of posting on 2010 prevented me from ever being as active as I'd hoped. There were too many stories to read and too little time to read them all. As a result, my characters fell out of synchronization with the shared world.

(Besides which, a lot of the stories were unpleasant to read, either in terms of content or skill.)

The other problem with 2010 was the proliferation of characters. People used the "one character per month" mechanic not as a limiting factor, but a guideline. Within a short time, the board was overrun with new novas who all had unique stories to tell and I could not possibly read them all. I find it strange that on the one hand I am partly guilty of this excess, having three characters in 2010, namely King Felix, Pew Pew Pew, and White Widow, but on the other hand I am an amateur compared to the excesses of others.

(Besides which, a lot of these new characters were penned by the authors who I dislike reading.)

2018:

The shark has been jumped. The power levels are absolutely preposterous, and the authors are not up to the task of breathing life into these demigods.

The 2018 era needs a reboot. I'd turn the calendar back to 2013. Keep the same character names and personalities, give everyone the option to use no more than 50 or as few nova points as they wish, and watch it go. This would not be a retelling of the same stories. We would not be literally re-starting from wherever the forum was on that day. Instead, it's an all-new story, using familiar faces. If you want to change your character's backstory or abilities, here's your chance. If you want your character to zig when last time around they zagged, here's your chance.

Think of the old Battlestar Galactica and the new one. They have the same names and the same settings, but are completely different stories. I think we could do that.

Since it's a retelling, we can learn from our mistakes and not make those specific mistakes again. (Obviously we'll make new ones, but at least they will be novel.) The range of potential nova levels in a 0-50 point spread means that one can play an "old" powerful nova if they wish, or a recent eruptee.

Maybe the train will wreck again, but we got many good years of of the elder forum before it imploded. Perhaps it will work again for just as long.

N Prime:

There are several authors who I simply do not like. I find reading their stories to be a hateful experience. This is a major disincentive for me. Like most people, I avoid that which I dislike. Despite that, if I had a choice in the shape of the world to come, I would return and be active in a re-booted unmoderated 2013 forum.

I love writing Flicker and Mithril. Of all of my characters, I put the most of myself into them. (I like to think that I avoided Mary Sue territory, though. . .) I'd love to see their lives play out in new and different directions. I would love to see Nova Madigan debate philosophy with Ashnod. I'd love for Meghan Cutter to meet Timeslip a few years sooner. I'd love to see Revenant trading barbs with Apep. I'd love to see a confused Lakota boy embrace his destiny in a completely different way. I'd love to see a young frightened Psiad take shelter in somebody else's cave. . .

I've always appreciated your honesty, it's refreshing. Now that I'm done kissing your ass...



It's funny you should bring this up because to my knowledge it was you may submit one character per month after your first submission. Once you had done that you were permitted a character submission only once every three months.

From what I can tell it's never happened that way. Perhaps it was my imagination.




Oh yeah! Well... well... Revenant doesn't breathe... so there!



I'm game. That sounds like a blast.



Oh, it'll wreck again... but half the fun is riding it into the ground.



See, I half agree with this. Because honestly I like all the authors here on N!Prime. It's thier ideas and lack of forethought that has always twisted my nipples the wrong way.

But what can you do? I just steered clear of the ideas I didn't agree with.



Yeah... I'd put most of myself into them too... <.< >.>

WHAT?!?



I'm not one to give two farts in the breeze whether I'm playing a 10 point nova or a 1000 point nova as long as I'm having fun doing it (and have the time to actually 'play').

If we were to drop the entire 2018 universe into an AU realm where we all started over I wouldn't even bat an eyelash. It sounds cool. I've never been a fan of being tied to cannon (I know it's 'canon', but it irritates the shit out of Blinky when someone uses 'cannon' ) but what the hell, majority rules.

Then again I'm not a big fan of turning it into an Aberrant/Marvel universe either simply because I've seen what some of us addle-coves can up with and it would lose it's fun factor quickly once we had a flame war over someone destroying New York... again... for the fourth time...

Chosen has always been more than accomidating to us, the players, in terms of allowing us to dictate the direction we'd like to see the forums take and the rules we decide to follow. If there are those that think something is lacking or to much of an abundance of, we, as players, should discuss it.

Stay fuzzy my peaches.

~Revenant

Okay, that's one.

If the reset (as proposed) happens I'm in. unless it causes to big an uproar.

2018 will always feel like the sight I came to all these long years ago. I'm okay with the section going away, but not a reboot. From time to time I still want to revisit the characters I've created and nurtured as they have grown to be. I'm not comfortable with all that history just going away.

If we want to create a new "2013", lets do it. I think that would be fun.

I don't think she means 'reboot' in terms of 'delete everything' but more of an 'archive it, and lets do something else but with the same characters'.

I do that in PnP games. I walk in and say "Hey, what do you think would have happened if..." and before we know it the Paladin get's to experiment with the opposite of his choices and play as a Blackguard.

There are several different ways I could have taken Revenant, and actually plying him exactly like he was in our PnP game always seemed appealing.

I think it'll be a hoot. If Waki wants in I have no problems with it.

So let me understand... you guys are considering starting 2013, some using the same characters as 2018 but rebooted, other perhaps starting with fresh characters entirely.

Is this going to be like 2010 where there is a group of hidden mods that give ultimate approval over what is done or not done, or is this going to be like the old 2018 where anything goes? If you guys start anew, I might actually consider joining in. My biggest problem with 2010 was that there were all kinds of character interactions going on but everyone was already established and I just didn't feel like I could get my foot in the door. Although I do like that 2010 has mods who approve new characters and arbitrate.

If I might make a suggestion, I'd say start from cannon, but from that point on it is a new universe with the characters being able to do with it as they will subject to moderation.

No interest in re-writing any of my characters. Burned out on that road. But hey, 2010 never really blew my skirt up either so a different shot at it could be cool. But only if there was also a way to prevent anymore sick ass godlings.

So much for 40 weeks of down time, in Chrysalis, to become a godling. However, the thought of 'tweaking' WR a bit is appealing.

No nova with more than a 50 np build to start

I'm game

One of the problems with rebooting entirely is that was the basic motivation behind 2010, and people seem to have problems with it as well.

As Jager says, retooling the whole boards back to 'earlier times' is an erasure of history that he's worked hard on. Ditto for the White Rat's chrysalis. That said I do see Nova's POV in that 2018 is perhaps a bit too far advanced and in an awkward spot in the metaplot. Writing the middle story is no fun. I know I've just about had a gun in my mouth while doing so.

There is, however, a way for us to have our cake and eat it too. A way to 'reboot' and retool on a case-by-case basis - not negating 2018, but giving characters who could use it, a fresh start, without adding a third forum for OpNet roleplay.

In the 2010 Charter, there is this clause:



What if we erased that?

We don't have to retool characters if we don't want to, 2018 stays where it is, and any character that fits within 2010's other guidelines can make the jump and enjoy 2010's lower power levels. The story possibilities from the characters interacting alone, is tremendous. The first thing that leaps to mind is the possibility of Machina and Nathan Dayes co-planning an op, which is something so cool that we can't afford NOT to do it.

The downside is that the other features of 2010 may not be to people's liking, such as submitting through the moderation team. I'm not saying my solution is flawless, but from my perspective it saves us having to open up a third section or shut one down, and it accomplishes much of the stated goals with a minimum of fuss.

a 30 np Long.... just to see if I can pare him down that much...

why the hell not.

I'm game.

First of all, thank you everyone for your interest and comments! When I posted my initial idea, I had no idea that it would receive this much commentary. Suddenly it appears as if my crazy dream might actually happen. It's a little bit overwhelming and delightful. *Ahem* Now then, on to a few ideas from the discussion that I'd like to reply to:


A little of both. I'd like to make it an area where 2018 characters can be reinvented or dragged in whole-cloth, and where new characters can be played too. Look at (again) the new Battlestar Galactica. It re-uses some characters from the original, but there are many wonderful new characters too.

I prefer informed peer pressure to moderation. This time around we know each other a little better, and know where we can go if we're not careful.

Replace "moderation" with "the agreement of the other players" and I think that's an awesome idea.


Would it really be fair to 2010 to do this? Besides, it would require people who have no interest (or worse: dislike) for the established 2010 setting to play in it anyway. 2010 has an established tone, and I don't know if it's compatible with 2018.

And I would be sad not to see a KO-LiberTeen-Mithril-Pew Pew Pew 4-way story, but I'll live without it somehow.

Oh, almost forgot:

Allowing 2010 characters to be reproduced in 2013: bad idea or good idea?

On the one hand, it would cannibalize energy away from 2010, which is bad, but on the other hand. . . well. . . Pew Pew Pew Mithril LiberTeen and KO all in one place!