Sorry Mark

A number of years ago when I first came back to Dark Risings to help run Gypsy, a little feature called Hevige Nacht (HN) was in full swing which essentially gave players a real-life hour where anyone could attack (and loot) anyone else without any IC reason other than it being HN. Considering the fact that I had left the game several years earlier in large part due to roleless PK, I saw HN as an unacceptable deviation from DR's long-held classification of being an "RP MUD with PK," and I made a big stink about it.

Part of the stink I raised involved drumming up support for my "end HN now!" campaign with some old higher-profile DR player pals of mine. One such pal was a fellow (let's call him P) who, for all intents and purposes, was no longer playing the game and would only log in once in a while to read notes and maintain appearances. Upon hearing my tales of HN horrors, he logged his main character and posted a big, two-idea-long diatribe against HN that summarized everything I'd been saying about the whole HN idea all along. Awesome, right?

Actually, the only reason I remember that big posting is because Mark's response was

[OOC] Mark: 'You know what makes me happy? [P], logging on to post a 2 part note about how horrid Hevige Nacht is, after being gone for most of its existance if not all, and then disappearing again.'

Mark did pull the plug on HN the day after P posted that two-part idea, so at the time I just thought Mark was being a sourpus because we complained loudly enough to make him back down on the issue.

Fast forwarding a few years, now I find myself in Mark's position. Players who haven't been logging, much less actually playing and keeping abreast of what's going on in the game, crawl out of the woodwork and posit these grand schemes about how aspects of Dark Risings are fundamentally broken. Forget all that business about actually experiencing the proclaimed brokenness, because Gedankenexperiments and weeks (or months) of absence grant supreme enlightenment.

Now, after having been rubbed the wrong way by a no-show player who proclaimed to have better insight into PK than those of us who actually watch and participate in it on a daily basis, I see why Mark reacted the way he did to P's idea.

So, although it's five years late, sorry Mark! I now understand.

Parviane

P.S. also, sorry to the guy who lost all his character's equipment that one night to prove my point about abusing HN. It was not nice, and rest assured, we did get yelled at for it.