[AMF]

Yeah, I'm not sure that it is just a matter of "being the kind of person that can separate what happens in the game from what is outside of the game..."

I would say it's more fundamental than that. I really, honestly, would feel bad if I backstabbed someone. Just not something I can do, even in a game. I did it once, in another game, ten years ago and I was good at it - and I used to love the game Diplomacy and was great at that - but to this day I feel bad about what I did. I mean, I would play Diplomacy with my best friends and screw them just to win. That seems, well, wrong. And over time, I have gotten to the point where (forgive what may sound melodramatic) the psychic or ethical cost to acting that way tires me out way too much. As Slynky said, why play a game if you feel bummed out/can't sleep/etc...afterwards?

It is related to what I think of as a fundamental aspect of human perception: I think that, deep down, people expect other people to behave as they behave. I expect that people would help me if they saw me by the side of the road with a flat tire. So, when they go driving on by, then I am, first, very confused. Then angry, etc...It's just hard to understand someone else's motivations, becuase we're all different, eh? (to continue with the driving metaphor, I still cannot, for the life of me, get into the mindset of someone who would own a hummer, but nevermind)...when a person betrays me in a game, I sometimes think I have a hard time not taking it personally. Like it's some personal failing of theirs - when in reality, it is an inevitable result of the nature and structure of the game.

Perhaps, just perhaps, if SE5 has unlimited technologies - as advertised - and if it might have MASSIVE universese - like thousands of stars - then the scope might be so vast that this becomes less of a problem. Things tend to fall down in the endgame - when there is nothing left to do, after you built those ten ringworlds, and every single planet is breathable, then you might as well go to war to see who is burliest. But, given a massive universe, that might take so long to get to that it becomes irrelevant. Maybe.

Thanks for listening to my babbling.

And, I did have a question: how the heck can I get my Posts to stop putting – in them? I know it's from the quotation marks I tend to use too often, but how can I still use quotes but get rid of the resulting –?

Thanks for listening to my babbling...

Alarik

Ps: I still highly reccomend Proportions games for people to RP in...