Monday, February 16, 2015

Latest Max Magellan Covers & New Home Campaign!

First things first: my talented daughter has created three new covers for the RPG game we play with our friends in the west end of the city.




It's Family Day today, which made it a perfect time to launch our own Marvel Saga RPG. Hubby was the Game Master and wife, son, and daughter played the heroes on their inaugural adventure. Set at a fictional university, the protagonists had to battle Circuit Breaker, a power-hungry villain greedy for energy. The new team consists of:

  • Miss Myst, a prank-loving student with the ability to become invisible and intangible
  • Velocity, a physics professor with super speed
  • Putty, a quiet janitor who possesses stretching elasticity powers
We had a great time playing together and look forward to playing more frequently, since we live together, making coordinating the games much easier! Our resident artist has agreed to create covers for this new campaign and we've had fun brainstorming the name of the new team.

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Analysis of a Rage Quit

I have taken a break from Left4Dead because during one particularly heated game, I "rage-quit". According to Urban Dictionary, rage quitting is:
To stop playing a game out of an anger towards an event that transpired within the game 
 The four of us (husband, wife, son, daughter) were playing a scenario (my girl thinks it was "No Mercy", the hospital mission) and I kept failing at my task. After I was resurrected, again, I whipped off my headphones and declared, "That's it. I'm DONE." I quit Steam and left the other players to finish the game one person short.

Later that night, I thought long and hard about what had occurred. Was it really just anger? It turns out that there were a lot more feelings behind my rage-quit. It took distance from the event and some time for me to reflect before I realized what I was experiencing.

  • I felt helpless and useless (because I believed the team was doing poorly because of me).
  • I felt frustrated (because I knew what I had to do but I couldn't figure out how to do it successfully).
  • I felt disappointed (because despite all the suggestions yelled during the heat of battle, I couldn't change things).
No one wants to feel useless and frustrated. Games are supposed to be challenging enough to be difficult yet still fun, and I wasn't feeling the fun. Since my self-imposed exile, the family has moved on from Easy Mode to Normal Mode and been quite successful. They occasionally mention that it would be enjoyable to have me play again, but until I can reconcile those other-than-anger negative emotions, it won't be good.