What You Once Were

[versatileVirtuoso]

I have been wondering recently, the game obviously deals with with its Players becoming more mature in some way and dealing with their greatest faults, right. Its the reason why Players in their first session usually get titles that are the opposite of their personality. (ie: a meat-head bully being the Sage of Mind or a stereotypical nerd being the Page of Rage)

So what I'm asking here is, what were you guys like before you got into your first session and started maturing and dealing with your problems? Also what did the game make you do to ensure that you did mature?

[extravagantGesture]

well i am still in my first session, as a smith of sound. i think i know why i am one now though. first of all, i'm deaf. sound is the aspect of communication. before the game, i made little to no effort to learn to talk, or read lips. i spent no real time interacting with people and instead used my sister as a crutch, she usually would translate for me. now i guess i've been learning that i need to communicate all on my own! my role is to extend the plot with communicaation..... i think i am doing pretty alright with it

[musicalDecay]

I was a waste of doom my first session, I still hate that class with all my heart. I can understand why I got waste back then, I was being trained for my apprenticeships which meant I spent a good amount of my time being alone learning the insides and out of my future job. At that point I was frightened with the thought of most social interactions, most of my social interactions were actually with pets that I helped now that I think of it. I had to learn to deal with the fact that I just couldn't hide and do my own thing most of the session, mainly by the fact that I created some monsters that would kill me if I kept on trying that.

[ExtropianDreamer]

I was a Page of Rain, my first time round.

Like most Pages, I was pretty pathetic before the game started. Had all these ideas and dreams that I just would not start talking about, all these principles and ideals I thought were so great, I never fucking shut up about all these things I was thinking.

But you know what I did with all those awesome ideas? Jack shit. I never did anything. I thought about what I'd do, I had the fucking skills to pull it off, but while all my coplayer buddies were off at uni, getting their PHDs so they could go change the fucking world (have I mentioned that all of my original coplayers were fucking genius scientists or engineers or some shit? I might have been in fucking mensa but in that session I was the dumb one. I was the artist, the passion to their reason, the unaugmented madman to their cybernetic visionary), I just sat at my parents house, dreaming and thinking and never putting words to action and actually doing something. And it wasn't anything new. I hadn't drawn anything, hadn't made anything in years by that point.

I felt trapped. I knew what was wrong, and I knew what I had to change. I wanted to fucking change. I wanted it so bad it fucking hurt. But I'd gotten used to not doing anything, like a bad fucking habit, and deep down inside, some part of me wanted to stay that way. I might have been a failure, I might not have been doing anything, but that was okay. It was safe, familiar. I was used to the shame and the disappointment and the self-fucking-loathing every time I failed to drag myself out of the pit I'd fallen into. Didn't want to leave my comfort zone on some level, you know? I'd sit down to draw something, even the simplest, smallest of things, and I just wouldn't be able to. I literally couldn't bring myself to put pen to paper, I'd built up this huge mental block about it and I couldn't figure out a way to get past it. I was fighting against myself, really.

Stayed that way, being all depressed and useless and a failure, until about halfway through the game. I'll admit, I'd picked up a bit of corruption by that point. Us Rain aspects are fluent in Broodfester, see? So when the Others spoke, I could understand them perfectly. They knew just the right things to say, the right carrot to dangle, the right levers to pull. Offered me an easy way out, a way I could avoid having to do anything at all. Went against the things I stood for, practically anathema to the ideals I held, but I fucking listened. I was so used to failing, so used to doing nothing, that I fucking took their goddess damned offer. Hated myself every moment of it, but I was used to that too.

And then my bro went down in what I'd now know to be an Ebonpyre. We didn't know you could just snog the dreamself to stabilise it back then. We thought it had to be the corpsesmooch every time. He sounded so fucking scared, thought he was going to die - my bro was never scared. Snapped me right out of it, brought me right around from the brink of those broodfester throes. No matter how bad I got, I could always make an effort when my friends and family were right there in front of me. So I did.

Out of the six players in that session, I was the only one who could hold their own in a straight fight, even the Sylph was more of an assassin than an actual fighter (but she was fucking terrifyingly good at it). But we had a whole lot of scrying and prophesying going on, and they all said it had to be me, had to be the Page on this little quest. So I did my thing. I put one foot in front of the other and I fucking did it. I had to, for my bro. I tore off my face and let all the crazy goodness locked inside my head out, pouring out of my skull and into the world, unleashed my fucking madness and said 'fuck you' to my comfort zone. No more standing still, no more just talking, no more saying 'I'll do it later', I do it fucking NOW. And that was the start. That was the moment I made the switch from being the pathetic, useless slob I used to be, to being the bleeding-faced madgod I was meant to be, to doing and making instead of saying and thinking. That was was when I finally shut up, sat down and put my money where my mouth was (or used to be, as it so happened to be). I started there, in that instant when my fingers pierced my skin and tore it away. (I should show you folks a picture form back then. I looked fucking horrifying like that - always have been okay with being a monster godnotmonster.)

I even managed to save him, for a while.

[lucidChthonia]

Ah-hah, once upon a time.

I was born and raised as a member of the ruling class, and groomed for my civil service examinations by my governess and tutors. My governess -

I was supposed to call her Governess.

I'm calling her Lai.

In any case. Lai... she came to the country a poor immigrant lady, sponsored by my grandmother, who owned Skaianet. She came to work for room and board and send money back to her family in Europe for a few years. And then she stayed here for ten years, to supervise me from the age of nursery, and would gladly had continued to the age of majority had the end of the world not have occured.

I learned later on that she had been a Muse of Life pre-scratch, that she had known quite well that the world was going to end years before I was born, that she concealed her origins until I came along. To that end, I learned how to fight with an electrical cord, twelve and twenty-five feet long standard, loops held in one hand and the other end used to trip and snag and snap. I learned the real history, the one that hadn't been sanitized to pink processed paste by editorial board after editorial board.

Between the mock exams I was taking in my parents' hopes that I would be the youngest to pass the civil service examination ever, she set me other assignments. Save at least a certain percentage of my allowance outside the Northern monetary system, with the absolute bureaucratic nightmare that entailed. Find an obscure portal to the outside Internet that was not affected by the Firewall. Trap a rabbit in a snare made entirely of household objects, and then butcher it.

She never told me why, and that's why I hated her.

But she also gave me the computer and programs I had to use in order to connect to those who became my best friends, in the lands beyond. I learned a lot from them, too. How people really lived elsewhere, what kind of other things they were watching and listening to, politics and public opinion, the cutting edge of scientific research; casual cultural and intellectual tidbits that I wouldn't get from anywhere else, and that stretched my mind on a regular basis.

I took up all the information I could, that much I've kept, and yet, when I was young, I never judged my remembered facts, never compared the merits.

I was afraid to have an opinion strong enough to act on.

Sburb cured me of that right quick, after it became a do-or-die prospect.

Pity there was an asshole veteran speedrunner who ruined the entire experience of growing up for me the first time around. I spent most of that session, and the next, and the next, trying to understand what the hell had happened. It took until Ross for me to realize that some of it wasn't my fault.

A lot of it still is, though.

[societalFlame]

[Rrangoon warrning]

I was a minorr officerr in thhe Imperrial grround forrces. Everry thhing hhad its rrules and rregulations, and everry trroll hhad its rrank. I obeyed thhe rrules and my superriorrs unconditionally, and enforrced thhe forrmerr so well thhat my suborrdinates hhad a rrathherr unflatterring nickname forr me.

In my firrst session, I was thhe Bane of Stage. I took it thhe entirrely wrrong way. I thhoughht of Stage as being strrict and unyielding, whhichh it can be. But a perrforrmance withhout flexibility is wooden and hharrd to bearr, and I did not learrn thhis until thhe final hhourr. It was only durring my second go at it thhat I was able to adapt to unusual situations withhout being told to, instead of just pushhing thhrroughh.

[genesisArtificer]

wow, ok. so what makes future Seer of Space? For starters... you know that most of the Space Players live in the skaian tower. this is really obvious. it symbolizes "ivory tower" from which you would have to move your ass from in order to live and learn. i was raised till my fourteenth birthday by a potential Dame of Space, one that scratched the former iteration of my session. She had teached me combat, endurance and nuclear sciences, not tactics and planning.

I never was the dumb one, even if i act like a dumbass sometimes. That is cause Seers are reckless and hubristic. we have to get shit erupt in our faces to finally get the lesson of our Class. in my case it was a brief stint with Angels and trying to fuck with the code of the Game. Only after survival, (and a total reset of my echeladder elevation BT) i finally got it, the lesson of "watch before you step" and " THINK BEFORE YOU FUCKING ACT"

[iDea]

I...

I lived in a country pretty different from most of yours, I think. It wasn't like someone sat down with you and gave you a test that would determine what you did for the rest of your life or anything.

But you did what the community decided you were good at. Mostly your family, but everybody else too, to a degree. I was supposed to be an archivist, so an archivist I would be, and never mind that I didn't want to go off to a whole other island to go to the university there, that I had friends at home, that I wasn't interested in fiddling with whatever dusty relics they wanted me to look at. Nobody questioned it. It was almost unthinkable.

I think the only reason I didn't roll Space is that my co-player was even weirder than me. So I got Rain, for going off the beaten path, and Witch, because Sblank could tell I would really rather not be involved. So of course I was supposed to make the whole session completely nuts by way of annoying and alienating the only people whose opinions actually mattered to me.

Trying to get around it didn't work, obviously. My RPC tanked up until post-Slaying of the Beast. After that I just kind of stopped caring what anybody thought. Mission accomplished, I guess. Go Sblank.

[seraphicCounsel]

Ah, yes. Well I think I've managed to boil it down to a concise enough evaluation of my pre-SGRUB psyche.

I was a hermit prior to my first session, and one would assume that would be grounds for an automatic assignation of an Explorator role. But the reason why I was a hermit was due to the fact that I was the troll version of a heretic. I worshipped angels- not the mockeries that exist in SGRUB- but more idealogical constructs that promote a certain philosophy. Perhaps being so deviant from the norms of my society would have been grounds for me inheriting the title of Witch, in a doomed timeline or such.

But what's important here is that the philosophy of Angels and White Magic promoted self control and discipline to counteract the violence and tendency towards madness that permeated troll society. Control of the self to find peace with your surroundings, in place of forcing yourself upon others. And hence, my assignation of Rage. It seems pretty clear in hindsight that it would happen. It almost seems to be that Rage fits my culture as a whole very well. I daresay that few trolls are ever assigned Rage as a result.

I figure I was a Seer ultimately because I was sort of a condescending asshole. I assumed I knew the 'true path', that in my calm and peace that I was far more capable than my fellows. Hence, a Tactician assignment. What SGURB taught me, in it's own admittedly godawful way, was how to understand the merits in every point of view and how being self controlled and passive all the time is not ideal. I'm still learning, this is only my second session overall, but the outlook for my growth looks good. As good as it can considering I am doomed to an eternity of playing a shitty game.

Oh, and I still believe in Angels.

[graveMusic]

I am on my second session, but my first was a bane of heart.

I wasn't doing what I wanted, but what would be the moral choice. I would never really care about feelings either, explaining the heart.

I guess that my new thing kind of goes with my feelings at the end of the game, never wanted a damn thing with the others, now I am doomed to fuck everything up at some point... and the flow thing? I needed optimism, that's what the flow does. I actually am optimistic, just when people weren't sticking to me like glue and using me as a meat shield.

Or while not being set on fire and then frozen in ice to put the fire out.

My team mates had more boondollars than sense.

[iD/sR/sT]

I just lived on a desert planet filled with monsters and usually just made things to keep them away Which resulted in me being a Knight of Doom I mean I wasnt strictly against fighting I just tried to avoid it whenever possible