if it made sense, it wouldn’t be called forumwarz. Log in to see images!

EDIT: ignore this post.

man-man Posted:

You know what else makes no sense?

Some old experienced guy sending you an “almanack” (Firefox insists that that’s spelled wrong… the internet says otherwise) that you then have to write all the information into for yourself. If he wants to be helpful, why isn’t he sharing so much as a single item of information? What’s the point of publishing a blank almanac? Why not just send me a notebook for all the good it’ll do me?

Yes, I know, game mechanics. Just having all the info handed over would be kinda cheap. But almanacs are supposed to be informative…

Yeah, the almanac is blank. WTF? That’s a very good example.

Everyone’s like it’s just a game blah blah blah… If it’s just a game why aren’t we paid in little balls of monkey **** from Stephen Hawking to pwn forums? Obviously there should be a reason for things.

man-man Posted:

The counter to “it’s just a game” is that suspension of disbelief only really works on the fictional premises of a story, not things that break the rules that have been set up (internal consistency fail) or that just don’t make any sense in any setting (common sense fail).

That Hobbit example, Tolkien’s readers are willing to nod along with the fantasy setting of elves and wizards and dragons, because that’s the setting the story chooses, but if halfway through The Lord of the Rings it was suddenly declared that elves can fly then we’d all be going “WTF, no they can’t, you should have mentioned that before if you wanted flying elves”. I haven’t heard about this “bringing the gold back” complaint but it’ll be out of some perceived illogicality within the rules that Tolkien created for the setting.

So for forumwarz, we’ll go along with the idea that people are willing to pay good money for you to “pwn” forums, we’ll even go along with the idea of “pwnage” being a real thing that everyone will notice happening to a forum. We happily accept a storyline full of conspiracy theories and borderline insane characters, because all of that is just part of the story. But when you have something that doesn’t make any sense within the little fictional world of fwz, then it breaks that willing suspension of disbelief and reminds us that it’s all very very fictional by making us think “what the hell were they thinking when they wrote this?”

tl;dr – In fiction you can make up new rules because it wouldn’t be fiction without them, but people will call bull**** if you break your own rules or have characters do things that are stupid even with fictional rules.

Exactly. Both I and my BFF Jalapeno Bootyhole have a new favorite poster.

burningpopsicles Posted:

on the off chance that i am a devious mastermind who cleverly breaks the fourth wall from time in order to shatter their minds and have them post long long threads about their suspension-of-disbelief issues in a forum i created

Breaking the 4th wall (characters directly addressing the audience/acknowledging the fact that they’re fictional) wouldn’t be a problem for me, and the main way of doing it wouldn’t even work in Fwz – the “audience” is another character. You clearly have no understanding of what I actually said.

Likely doomed attempt to keep things civil: I freely admit that I will overanalyse most things, given the chance. It’s what I do, and I don’t see it as a chore – it fills a bit of time with something approaching thought where it would otherwise be spent clicking Stumble a couple of times and realising that the internet is full of idiotic ****. But a point being nerdish doesn’t make it wrong; it’s still not good technique to include things in a work of fiction (whatever format it takes) that breaks the illusion.

I’m not saying it needs to be fixed; I can accept it as a game mechanic even if it doesn’t make good fiction, but if we all spent all day saying how awesome it was, or saying nothing at all, then we’d be doing the writer(s) a dis-service by letting them think that everything’s just fine when they could be better. Can’t improve as a writer without feedback/criticism.

This is how I see things.

There are many things that aren’t believable/possible in real life. That’s why it’s a game. No where can I see where CZ has suddenly “LOL WE JUST CHANGED THE STORY, NOW YOU ARE UBER LEET LOLOLOLOLOOLOL”. Sure pwning forums may not be believeable, but that’s why we play games isn’t it? To do things we can’t do in real life.

And with the whole fans sending you gifts and bla bla bla, well instead of gifts think of them as emails wanting to donate to your cause of pwning ****ty forums. Would that make it more “believable” rather than funny and interesting?

man-man Posted:

I’ve lost track myself, it’s much more fun arguing in the abstract Log in to see images! (it means you don’t have to keep track of all those annoying “facts” that might contradict you)

I think I was saying it made no sense to have an almanac from an experienced “farmer” come with no information in it at all… that was my contribution to the list of stuff that doesn’t really make sense anyway.

IT does come with information. It comes with information of which type of element your attacks are.

man-man Posted:

That’s true… it did have that small nugget of information. But it’s not really an almanac’s worth of info there.

Because you are supposed to fill it in?

I suppose it could make more sense if the CZ team put in

“Well, I dropped it in the pigs water, so the words are a little bit washed out, so you’ll have to fill it in yourself” or something like that.

man-man Posted:

Likely doomed attempt to keep things civil:

Log in to see images!

oh noes! Log in to see images! i really was just having a laugh…i’m sorry if i bothered you…really. i just meant to point out that everyone is human (even ET…gasp!) and makes silly decisions sometimes. critical thinking is good and all, but if you apply it to EVERYTHING it can ruin your enjoyment of what is, after all, just a game.

man-man Posted:

Never ruins my enjoyment of a pretentious argument though Log in to see images!

point taken Log in to see images!