Player's History of Particracy Classic

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Hello,

My History of this game is probably a bit different than a lot of folks', simply because I've played it so long but spent much of that time completely disconnected from much of the at the time OOC back and forth going on in the forums. I never really felt that I knew what most of those people were talking about. They all seemed like they were good friends, and I was never really part of the club, and so I just stuck to writing in Kalistan and looking for opportunities to play with my country's neighbors as much as possible, but staying well away from a lot of the stuff that people said was toxic at the time: A lot of the things the older players look back on and say this or that was bad, I really don't know a lot about. Here's the questions

How and when did you discover Particracy? How old were you and where were you in life around that time (to the extent you are comfortable sharing)?

I started playing PT in I think 2008, or maybe 2007. I had been looking for online government sims, had played a yahoo groups based one for a little while, but wanted a more International type one. So I probably did a yahoo search for online government sims, and PT popped up. I logged in, went to Saridan for my first country, and promptly didn't know how to do anything, how to get votes, how to write bills, nothing... And literally nobody was interested in telling me how to do that. I could see others doing it, and I could see my positions changing as I voted on other people's bills, Trial and error, and I found out the difference between a resolution and and an actual bill, started making bills, and in a few months, I decided that Saridan was probably never gonna go for any of the socialist things I wanted to do, so I moved to Kalistan, and met a really helpful and friendly player there who had been playing probably since the beginning named Pentalarc. He brought me into a number of the RPing aspects of the game and I've been there since, with a couple brief moves to Mordusia, Telamon, Lourenne and Gaduridos. I also played in Badara for a little bit to try something new. But ultimately, I just went back to Kalistan. I was probably 32 when I started playing PT.

What country did you first play in? What was your earliest experience with the forum? What were your first impressions, generally?

As above, I first started playing in Saridan. My first experience with the forum was after the old old forum ended and the new one was just getting going. Once the new one was up, I think it must have been 2009, it took a while to start using it, but Pentalarc was doing RPs there around what he called the 4th Crisis, and I was a junior partner in that whole thing, so I stopped RPing, for the most part in the Classic nation's page and started using the forums. There were always so much stuff going on there, it really was overwhelming, and never really felt all that welcoming to outsiders, so I just sort of stuck with our country's newspaper, and mostly missed much of the history of PT, none of which made any sense to me, none of which even concerned or mentioned or interacted in any way with Kalistan (because it was mostly groups of friends just playing with one another, it felt like, in the same space that I happened to be playing. Some of that took a long time to go away) And a lot of the banter that takes place on Discord now took place in the forum, and I really didn't have a lot of frame of reference for any of it, didn't understand what most of them were talking about most of the time, and didn't really have a lot of incentive to participate in it.

What was your most memorable RP experience or arc? Did you help shape any regions, lore, or political systems that you’re proud of?

There are a few arcs that I am very proud of. I was very happy to work with Liu around the invasion of Kalistan as part of the Terran War. That one was so well planned out, and it was, I think a great story. I never felt like Liu was trying to powerplay. Liu was very willing to communicate, and work out ideas so they came out in a way we both could live with, and tell a larger story too. That was a lot of fun. And Kalistan was not originally supposed to even be a part of that--I came to it late because I didn't know it was even happening until the last minute and decided to join it. Luckily, Liu Che worked with me and I had a great time.

There were some other ones. I worked with I think it was Hepburn in Valruzia on their Valruzian Beatles arc. The idea was for a British invasion of sorts, where the Beat Brothers were gonna come and become megastars in Kalistan. They founded a record label in Kalistan named VMI, or Valruzian Music Industry, the Valruzian Beatles had a whole arc, and then when Valruzia had moved on to other things, and Kalistan kept making music, Kalistan ended up nationalizing VMI, changing its name to KMI, and beginning Kalistan's first record label. I owe so much of my subsequent articles to that arc, I can't even tell you what a difference that made in the cultural history of Kalistan.

Pentalarc, while he still played the game, kept the Monarchy going, in name only. I got to Kalistan in 2591, and because Pentalarc was so into the lore around the monarchy, but he eventually quit playing, I kept almost everything in tact, hoping he would return to Kalistan. He never did, so I wrote him and asked if it was ok if I abolish the monarchy, and he agreed, and the monarchy went vacant in I think 4053. But I still had access to much of the lore when I decided I was bored playing as the Socialist Party: Others had commented about how the Socialists wanted everything to remain exactly as it was, which was true, because I liked how it was, and so to bring RP more in line with the way I played the Party, I abolished the SP, and reinstituted the Monarchy. That was fun then to try to develop what was, in essence a constitutional figurehead monarchy that nobody who came to Kalistan wanted to play with at all: they'd come in, do everything EXCEPT ask the monarch about which laws should pass, and then leave, and I'd have to fix everything when they left, but that got old, so I abolished the monarchy once more for about a hundred or so years, and the re-established it as an absolute monarchy as soon as I could so I didn't have to deal with republican parties coming in and completely disregarding, or sidestepping the monarch. Turns out, soon afterward, the nationmaster concept was installed, and then the game collapsed, and it was not a problem anymore.

What do you think your biggest impact/legacy has been on the game and the community (if any)?

I'd say Kalistan's biggest legacy on this community is to be the place where things do not really change. I have resisted change during Classic, and now even more so. As a result, I also get to do something I think I am pretty suited to do, though I know that it annoys a lot of players: I have a lot of institutional memory about this game, and about its history. Especially as it regards my neck of the woods. Others do too, and I think combined, that sort of memory creates some continuity with the past. I am a fairly good archiver and a fairly good researcher, and can find links to the past, and I also was lucky enough to get the chance to save all of Kalistan's archive, most of which is accurately dated, so there are a lot of world events in there that would have been lost to all memory otherwise.

Kalistan has regrettably had very little influence on the game or the community outside that. I wish that were not so, but I am afraid it is. I don't tend to do well with cliques, and we can see the examples of cliques and groups of actual friends moving about the game, raising up whole parts of Terra and putting their mark on world events for nearly 20 years, when Kalistan has been content to do posts about music, talk about how good we are at the few things we actually try to do, and write posts about drugs, most of which never get read by anyone except me. Certainly nothing compared to the global RPs which fill our collective memories of this game that involve the same groups of players over and over again.

Who were some of the players or moderators who had the biggest impact on you? What were your most memorable interactions, collaborations, or rivalries?

• Pentalarc certainly had a massive influence on how I play this game. There was another player in Kalistan, a super early adopter (like in the very first set) who played a party called the Pansexual Peace Party. I don't remember their name, but they were also very helpful in helping me kind of figure out how to play this game and build coalitions and such.
  
• Siggon in Lodamun was always very inspirational and they left a lot of tools which I have used countless times in my own economic RP.
  
• I got along really well with Hepburn, I like to think.
  
• I liked Gabriel-- A lot of their RP was strange, but they were always interested in what I was doing and always tried to include me in what they were working on.
  
• LiuChe, Gotta give props to them for excellent RP
  
• I'd say Farsun- He and I don't agree on most things, and I am fairly certain I trigger that dude, but also the job of moderator sucks and everyone used to get after him for making that decision or this one when they asked him to, and maybe there's some argument, but I always kind of had a grudging respect for him, because he put up with a lot of bullshit from a lot of people and I'd say I kind of sympathized with him, and tried to not always be that guy who fucked with him all the time. I never knew about all the behind the scenes bullshit that Zanz talked about, because I wasn't part of the group that knew about things like that.
  
• I liked and respected Chitin's participation in Kalistan, and was so glad that he was willing to play with Kalistan as it was. I feel the same thing about James, though I am fairly certain that James spent a good portion of time both in Kalistan and then especially after leaving Kalistan just pissed that I existed.
  

Of the folks still currently active

• I appreciate Aethan for including me in things he's doing in Valruzia.
  
• Imperial is willing to work with me
  
• Weimarska helped me tell the story of an expansionistic Empire in Gaduridos
  
• I like Louis' RP and envy Louis' popularity and the ease with which he can do things in this community that there would be no way I could. It's envy, not jealousy: I would like to have that too.
  
• Greek and MBites both put up with a lot from me that I don't think others tolerate. We've had some disagreements, but I value you.
  
• I wish Alaskan and Vesica were still around. As much weird things as I wanted to do in Kalistan, especially Vesica always saw that as an opportunity to be a little weird too, and would always want to join in. I appreciate that.
  
• I do like Hyraemous, Facts and Lig, and Brad too. I've had positive interactions with those players, and we've had some opportunities to cooperate recently. That's fun.
  

How did the community culture evolve during your time within it?

It has evolved because it got smaller. There are fewer cliques. Still as many outsiders, I think, but fewer player groups who just like RPing with one another.

It also got younger I think. There were a lot of people my age when I started playing. Now there are just a few of us dinosaurs still around. In this way, I'd say the community has also grown more coarse: the younger generations have a different brand of humor than people my age did. Insults and what I would consider to be just straight up disrespectful discussion, which all falls under the definition of "banter" now is taken as a just the way we speak to one another. I definitely think that is a change in our culture as a community, I am fairly certain it has alienated more than one player, has alienated me on a number of occasions, and there doesn't seem to be any desire to really do anything about it, so I guess I am just the old guy who didn't get with the program. It's kind of sad to see actually. I kind of fear what this place will be like if and when we attract a whole new crop of perpetually online folks who like to talk about nazis and sexual assault as if its a joke, and who just ignore the polite reminders by hands off community moderators because they are part of a culture of "Come on: Its funny because I declare it so and who are you to censor me? And besides, its all just banter anyway..." I think that's where its headed, and kind of makes me not want to really open the community to a whole bunch of gen alpha brainrot lords...

I also think, on the positive side, we don't really have a way to game the game anymore. In this sense, the death of the PT Classic mechanic was the best thing that could have happened to this community. If I ever did participate in the OOC discussions on the old forums, it was to point out how the game mechanic was just plain broken in like 50 different ways, and in ways that allowed players to come into a country, essentially nation raid it, game the algorithm and not RP in line with what their Party was doing. They'd get a slim majority, take over power for everything and change all the laws, without RPing any sort of civil disorder around that, ignore all RP from those who tried, and more or less just grief random countries, because they are either trolls or they don't like how YOU've been playing there and decide that they want the country to look completely different. You'd get people wanting to cosplay some nazi racist shit in a nation that never actively supported that in the past, and they'd be able to do it because they knew how to get majorities in the elections. I'd complain about that and of course others would respond that I was just bitching about it. Or about the monetary system. I still get made fun of about pointing out how unrealistic that was. I'm glad that mechanic is dead and now its all RP, because at least people have to RP the changes they want to make rather than simply getting to come manipulate an election and then just doing it all just to mess up the country.

How did Particracy influence your interests, writing, or worldview?

For better or worse, I have interacted with communities in this world I never would have otherwise. I've learned an awful lot from that interaction, both good and bad, about the people in the world. I definitely think my writing has become more systematic over the years: I have found that if I don't spell something out, and then refer to it later, I will get called on it, mostly by folks who do not think I should have been able to do something. It is nice to have posts I can link then to show that, yes, I did do something that informs my current RP, and yes, repeatedly, and yes, nobody had any problem with that at the time, so that no matter what, folks can't accuse me of godmodding. It also allows me to learn things about things I didn't know anything about. Though my fusion RP arc got squashed about 25 posts and several months into it, and had to be essentially retconned when someone decided to finally read what I had written about it, I still learned how fusion worked, the things that were necessary for it to do so, and what the practical application of that theory could look like. I heard about fusion on the radio while driving the bus around town, found it inspiring what they were doing with it in California, and got the opportunity to research it and write extensively about it for Kalistan. This was a very rewarding experience for me, even though it was later ruled that I should have never done it in the first place.

How do you feel about the end of Particracy Classic — and what do you hope remains remembered?

I'm glad its gone. I wish we had access to the old newspapers. But, I am optimistic for its continuation in Legacy, and I hope that Kalistan's history remains remembered. Not only just as ourselves, but also in the context of wider world events. Other stuff is always going on around Seleya, most of it goes wide around Seleya. But I'm glad we can still observe it, and sometimes get to play a tangential role in it, and I'm glad we can comment on it in our nations: Never being one of the movers or shakers of the world allows us a certain objectivity that others do not have because their goal is to write the history of the planet with their name in it on every page, while I'm content to just have a book called Kalsitan.