Is this place still active?

Luckymoose said:

Third, let's go deeper. Let's argue here that a board game in the vein of CNES was ever the same experience as EoE (again, I use this example because it's the most well-known example of that genre, though countless others existed and failed). In your line of reasoning CNES, a standardized experience, should have run smoothly, on time, and with limited issues. Now, what happened? It didn't. Why? Cause some people wanted more out of it, but you didn't follow through. Some people wanted narrative, and you shunned it in favor of the "game." Now, what did we gain from that besides a colossal waste of time that also failed anyway, despite it being mostly standardized and automated?

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Hahaha, oh, dear, now this is a true waste of effort. I am focusing on this because I believe it represents the very soul of your argumentation here. Do you consider my position to be one of apostasy and betrayal? Is that why you attempt to humiliate me by shaming my work in full view of everyone? You will not succeed in wrenching tears from me, because I regret nothing about CNES. It was a valuable experiment.

You should know that what I learned from CNES seems to be very different from what you took away. CNES taught me that you can't please all the people all the time, indeed - but what it really taught me was that people will expect to be pleased all the time if you don't tell them not to be. Any NES can be anything to anyone unless it explicitly declares it is not. The very fact that CNES might deign not to be a narrative exercise versus a game or vice-versa was inconceivable to some people. CNES taught me how very crucial it is that we define our games. EoE needs no defining because it had an audience that didn't ask for it, and that audience, the only people that played it, the same people that played it for years, did not need to be sold on it; but how many people were told EoE was the height of the hobby, only to end up slinking away, unsatisfied, as it was not to their liking? They exist, whether you like to believe it or not.

I am the voice of the voiceless unsatisfied, the few who demand rules, accountability, structure, and plausibility from my games. There are people in this very thread saying we must be satisfied with islands of success in a sea of failure. I am saying it doesn't have to be that way so long as you look past the superficial into the mechanics of what you are doing. You! Reading this, who have yet commented, and perhaps think I'm a crazy goon with nothing better to do than get mad about NESing. Ask yourself what it really means to "run" a "NES/IOT." Ask yourself what makes it difficult. Ask yourself what it would take to change that. Instead of sitting on your hands and declaring that NES is simply "hard work for smart people," ask yourself why it must be that way - and you will see this place for what it really is.

What you want NESing to be matters little to everyone else. Same as what I want it to be. We all have our favorites and try to bring some of that to each new game we join. You can't please everyone, so stop trying. You can't define a rose in a way that is objectively beautiful. I like pink, you like green, who cares. That's the end of it. Try to fill your own niche and run a successful game in it rather than bringing everyone down in some overzealous effort to save a thing that doesn't need saving.

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What is a rose?

Crezth said:

In fact I don't believe you "never really cared" what a NES is. If that were so, why did you keep playing NESes and not, say, something else? This one's a freebie: if you can answer this question clearly, you have already taken your first step towards defining a NES.

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I kept playing on here because I started when I was fourteen years old and I liked a lot of the people.

So, maybe to me, an NES is "the people who play in them" and not much else. Okay. I'm down with that.

@crezth: I'm unsure if you are even cognizant to what your argument is. You want to be negative and hateful, personal and destructive, without producing or committing to anything on your own. That is why NESing is in the state it is in. No one wants this. No one ever wanted it. I will stop here, before I break rules, because I know what a dozen others did, the work, the effort, and I know what you did, and didn't, do. This is an obvious attempt to winnow the morale and niceties away and gain some moral high ground. But I ain't jumping off this lava droid.

Masada said:

iggy is #nes' one black friend who lets us all point at him and say "see we're stand up guys" while we discretely tuck our hoods in the tray of our F250.

yes I'm alive. ive just been busy, on holiday, at conferences/meetings and most importantly without a pc and/or Internet for the last six months.

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Yeowch. Calling a bunch of us Klansmen is rather harsh.

Azale said:

you must really think iggy is stupid

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Huh? Not sure if I get this. I don't think Masada is suggesting that I'm some guy that's ignorant of the villainy of those around me. I don't think that the regulars on #nes are bad people, they're very good, thoughtful, creative and informative people. One way or another, I don't think he's made a fair assertion there. Anyways, I think he's suggesting that I'm the 'face' of #nes because I'm the person who seems to be the least unpalatable to the most people (double negative intended).

Come off it azale, Iggy indulges us. Dude is our public face... because we don't have a lot of other options. I don't think we're welcoming. That's partly because of who we are. But there's other institutional factors like the fact we've known each other so long. It's intimidating to try to break through. If Iggy wasn't here, we'd have long ago had to face up to this sort of stuff. Even with him there's always some feud or another on the boil. I've got my share of them, all of us do and they'd be a lot worse if Iggy wasn't here.

The only thing we've proven here is the complete contempt Crezth has for other NESers, their work and their silly ideas about what is fun, interesting or worthwhile. Yeah, "working smarter."

Sod off, dude. This is so unnecessary, so "extra"

bombshoo said:

So, maybe to me, an NES is "the people who play in them" and not much else. Okay. I'm down with that.

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Very good. Now consider that most of those people walked away. It doesn't matter why they did it, at this point - if NES is a social club, and that social club has been ground to the nub, then so, too, has NES. Is this place still active? Only this thread is. Only this thread.

Luckymoose said:

@crezth: I'm unsure if you are even cognizant to what your argument is. You want to be negative and hateful, personal and destructive, without producing or committing to anything on your own. That is why NESing is in the state it is in. No one wants this. No one ever wanted it. I will stop here, before I break rules, because I know what a dozen others did, the work, the effort, and I know what you did, and didn't, do. This is an obvious attempt to winnow the morale and niceties away and gain some moral high ground. But I ain't jumping off this lava droid.

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The good ol' "gotta be a chef to judge cooking" argument. I don't need to be Guy Fieri to tell you your hairstyle sucks, and I don't need to be a violin-maker to judge Stradivarius violins. In fact, I don't think it's violin-makers at all who praise Antonio Stradivari. It's violin players. Analysis, production, performance - they are all different skill-sets. Critiquing the state of NESing does not require me to be an exceptional NESer and - as I have argued - it's possible that exceptional NESers don't really exist. Just as I don't need to be a violinist or even a violin-maker to determine when a violin is broken.

But I'm just stroking my own ego at this point. What I am telling you - that NES is broken - you already know. Tearing me down won't change that fact one iota, no matter how you lay pestilence and destruction at my feet.

I wonder, is it breaking the rules to threaten to do so in the most intimidating way this website will allow us? Will you be like azale and judge me to my face? You don't have to continue this public farce if you don't want to; my PM box is always open.

Lord of Elves said:

The only thing we've proven here is the complete contempt Crezth has for other NESers, their work and their silly ideas about what is fun, interesting or worthwhile. Yeah, "working smarter."

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What do you think could be the source of such contempt? Hate and love are phenomenons of a kind, you know.

And I could say this a billion times, but if NESing is so much "fun," then why doesn't anybody DO IT?!

Crezth said:

And I could say this a billion times, but if NESing is so much "fun," then why doesn't anybody DO IT?!

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We did, now we don't. This isn't equivalent. You're stating, poorly, that what we want isn't fun, thus no one does it, but that's silliness. Obviously we had fun doing what you find unfun, and do not have fun doing what you consider fun, otherwise we'd be nuzzling for a teat like a yearning fawn. This entire rant of yours is based around demeaning players who produced fantastic content for years, the games they played, the people who ran them.

The reason I no longer NES is because no one runs the things I find fun. That's the case for a lot of people that you called unexceptional. And you have no right to do so. You're trying to tell me and others that we have no idea what fun even is, which is pathetic, petulant, and borderline sociopathic. To be frank. This behavior of yours is only alienating people who actually did care about the things you find stupid, unfun, and not whatever the flying pig you have to complain about next.

Please, stop insulting hardworking, creative, intelligent people on this crusade. You're only hurting the future of the hobby, in whatever form it exists, by doing so. The message was always that NESing is multiple things. Just because you dislike a large subgenre doesn't mean you have the right to white wash it away, Crezth. If you want to play in boardgames with provinces and dice, go do it. No one cares, man. But for the love of all this cut out the malarkey.

The nerve of you to say that to me in the very ruins of this forum. Again, I'm not the one saying it takes Hercules or Amuro Ray or Char Aznable just to run a NES. The response of several people to my claim that NESing is difficult because it's poorly defined was to say "Well, of course it is absurdly difficult; it's something only a rare breed of person can do." If you ask me, that is nonsense. And it is especially nonsense because your position that NES is hard work done by dedicated people is undermined by this very premise that not just anybody can NES: if NESing is the purview of the special, then the non-special are doomed before they even start. Quality of orders, quality of rulesets, even the quality of writing - none of these are determinant in the quality of the NES and none of them can be used to deduce anything because NES is invulnerable to all critique. It simply Is: a phantom by-product of the effort of that special few who "get" it. You have boiled the hobby down into something so shapeless that it is boring. As a longtime proponent of the hobby, I find this position to be profoundly offensive.

The reason I am on this "crusade" is to tear down this delusion that somehow NESing has never been better; or, rather, that it amounts to the same as it has ever been because the only NES that has ever been worth anything is EoE. Who, I wonder, is really being insulting? The person who is trying to encourage people to improve, or the people who insist that NESing is simply out of reach of the common man - indescribable, undefinable, "fun" by the special occluded metrics of those privileged few who pretend to enjoy it. And yes, I said "pretend," because if you were really having fun then TNESIV would be launched, Azale's timeline would be finished, and EoE would still be alive and kicking. You'd be working on your precious NESes instead of playing D&D and complaining about what a divisive and poisonous influence that dastardly Crezth character is.

Quality of orders, quality of rulesets, even the quality of writing - none of these are determinant in the quality of the NES and none of them can be used to deduce anything because NES is invulnerable to all critique.

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Then what is determinant to the quality of a NES if not the quality of the ingredients that make the NES? You're the hyper-intelligent, creative prodigy who's figured this whole thing out, right? So spit some wisdom and explain what makes a good NES since nothing that goes into a NES apparently qualifies?

Secondarily, nothing wrong with D&D. It takes nothing from NESing, but you seem obsessed with it. Do you want to play? You're welcome to.

I always thought NESing was fun, anyhow. And I don't see that you're really encouraging anyone to improve, Crezth, by attacking the few people who actually do like the notion of NES as it Is, as you put it.

As far as I can see, the only likely way NESing is ever going to work again (even slightly) is if someone can be bothered to run and sustain another large-scale NES of the sort that Is - i.e. an essentially state-based large-scale NES of the historical or N3S type, which is likely to appeal to most of the remaining player base - and somehow deal with or put up with the enormous arguments and acrimony that seems to arise every time any NES runs ever.

I don't really see that happening because, for good reason, I don't think anybody does find modding and doing all this for very long much "fun". But it certainly isn't going to happen through NESers suddenly dropping all their elitism and acrimony - which are in any case, I think, structural factors of the hobby - because you told them to, and deciding to run a NES of the sort that Isn't And Never Has Been.

spryllino said:

I always thought NESing was fun, anyhow.

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spryllino said:

I don't really see that happening because, for good reason, I don't think anybody does find modding and doing all this for very long much "fun".

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Hey, man, make up your mind. You don't have to hit the "Submit Reply" button the exact moment you finish typing. It's permitted for you to go over your post and think about your position and, god forbid, edit it.

spryllino said:

But it certainly isn't going to happen through NESers suddenly dropping all their elitism and acrimony - which are in any case, I think, structural factors of the hobby - because you told them to, and deciding to run a NES of the sort that Isn't And Never Has Been.

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Structural factors...? What, because the "core" of the NES base has been writing the same ASOIAF fanfiction for the past six years, and there's not a lot of room for new blood in that? No, yeah, actually I agree with you. If there is any future, it lies with the proles.

Crezth said:

Structural factors...? What, because the "core" of the NES base has been writing the same ASOIAF fanfiction for the past six years, and there's not a lot of room for new blood in that? No, yeah, actually I agree with you. If there is any future, it lies with the proles.

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What? You're insulting, demeaning, and denigrating the work of dozens of players at the same time as you're asking them to fall in line with you? Do you even know what your mission statement is? Honestly, it's this sort of elitism that alienates people.

Luckymoose said:

I agree with you, BSmith. I do declare hell frozen over.

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spryllino said:

As far as I can see, the only likely way NESing is ever going to work again (even slightly) is if someone can be bothered to run and sustain another large-scale NES of the sort that Is - i.e. an essentially state-based large-scale NES of the historical or N3S type, which is likely to appeal to most of the remaining player base.

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This. Everything else is just hot air. If NES is to continue, there needs to be compelling, long lasting games that people actually want to play. Period. Everything else just doesn’t matter.


Link to video.

I dunno about all those arguments, man. I'm going to start a NES. In NES. This year. Period.

Luckymoose said:

What? You're insulting, demeaning, and denigrating the work of dozens of players at the same time as you're asking them to fall in line with you? Do you even know what your mission statement is? Honestly, it's this sort of elitism that alienates people.

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You're all over the place, dude. I'm half-convinced your posting is accomplished by furious head-smashes into the keyboard. I'm not asking anyone to "fall in line" because I don't have a line. My position is "think for yourself" and if that offends you, then I definitely don't want you on my side, so good riddance.

Crezth: I like playing NESes, as I said. I also don't think there's anyone who likes modding NESes enough to maintain a popular NES for any period of time. These are compatible statements.

And who are all these proles? There isn't anyone here who isn't a long-running NESer. Of course people can and do start games like NESes elsewhere - IOT for example - but if we're talking about the continuation of NESing, as such, then it is pretty much inconceivable that the initiative in starting it can come from anyone other than a preexisting NESer.

spryllino said:

Crezth: I like playing NESes, as I said. I also don't think there's anyone who likes modding NESes enough to maintain a popular NES for any period of time. These are compatible statements.

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Woah there, Minitrue, that ain't how it went down and I know because I have the evidence, like, a couple posts up.

Anyway my assertion from day 1 has been that nobody likes modding NESes, therefore it cannot be said to be a fun hobby for people. So either something has to change or NES is forever doomed. Pick your poison. Most of this lot have chosen the latter because the former is too hard. Me, I prefer hard alcohol.

spryllino said:

As far as I can see, the only likely way NESing is ever going to work again (even slightly) is if someone can be bothered to run and sustain another large-scale NES of the sort that Is - i.e. an essentially state-based large-scale NES of the historical or N3S type, which is likely to appeal to most of the remaining player base

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But this is already happening.

JohannaK said:

But this is already happening.

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No, join this