Chris Kelly Interview
Added : 13th August 2007
Background information:
My name’s Chris Kelly, I’m 24 and I’m from Buckinghamshire in the UK.
Any fun or interesting facts you would like to share?
I’ve managed to achieve the nickname ‘Master of 1,000 Beginnings’ because of my infuriating habit of starting something, getting part of the way through, then growing bored with it and wandering off to start something else. This applies to just about everything I do, from writing to sports, and it’s incredibly frustrating.
How long have you been playing?
I originally joined the Blue Dwarf back in October 2000. I can’t honestly recall how I came across the group - I was a huge Red Dwarf fan at the time, so it may have been a discovery made through a Red Dwarf site. I’d played tabletop RPGs before, and the idea of an online roleplaying group (albeit more flexible and with less concrete rules) appealed to me - as did the general friendliness of the group as a whole. So I signed up and have been enjoying it ever since - despite what almost became a 3-year hiatus when I went to university! I still love it now, although we’ve had many players come and go, and the vast majority of our members are just as friendly and helpful as they were back when I began.
What types of games (IRC, PBEM, [....]) do you play?
Well, as mentioned, I’d played a few tabletop RPGs (including AD&D, naturally) before I joined Blue Dwarf, and while I’m not a member of a regular gaming group any more I do have a small collection of RPG books that I occasionally pore over. My gaming activities now are mostly limited to Blue Dwarf (http://www.bluedwarf.co.uk) - I dabbled with a couple of other sims, but none of them appealed to me as much as the Dwarf, either in content or style. I’m a science fiction geek at heart, which unfortunately rules out vast swathes of PBEMs!
One of the things I like the most about simming is that it forms, for me at least, a kind of hybrid between writing (which I love) and face-to-face gaming (which I also love)! I’ve got time to actually stop and consider what I’m writing before I post it, but at the same time I get to interact with other people in a way that writing alone doesn’t allow. One of the downfalls of this, of course, is that if you’re waiting on somebody else to post a continuation of something you’ve left hanging for them, you’ve no control over how or when it concludes! It’s a type of collective creativity with all the positives and negatives that that implies, though I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Who are your main characters?
Aboard the Blue Dwarf I play Doctor Charles Keto, the somewhat sociopathic, purely self-involved, amoral Chief of Medicine. Despite being technically incompetant (Doctor Keto firmly believes that any malady, ANY medical emergency, can be cured by the application of enough ointment) and violently power-hungry (in one story arc Doctor Keto and the chief psychiatrist formed an alliance with the intention of taking over the known universe), Keto has managed to hang grimly on to his privileged position for over six long years, complete with sometimes unexpected displays of actual human emotion (when he’s not busy murdering his medical staff). Keto is my outlet for my sarcastic side and I absolutely love being able to play him.
Do you have any good stories or fond memories (related to playing these types of games) you would like to share?
The aforementioned story arc has to remain as one of my favourites - with Keto and the chief psychiatrist attempting to rule the universe with and iron fist, together with elite hit squads of clowns and mime artists armed with ointment-firing rifles.
If you think that’s not surreal enough, the main plotline that was running when I initially joined the Blue Dwarf involved the crew suffering from hallucinations that became solid (Red Dwarf fans may recognise the inspiration for that one), with Keto struggling to find a cure - which, for a relatively new player, was something I felt really honoured to be involved in! Incidentally, one of the hallucinations survived and is now a permanent member of the crew. It’s a big pink tree.
No, really.
Please name and describe a few things you feel it is important for a GM.
Being a GM (or moderator, on Blue Dwarf) is an incredibly tough job, and I don’t envy the people who do it. It’s a labour of love, I’m sure, but there are just so many factors that have to be balanced. You have to have the ability to enforce rules (Blue Dwarf doesn’t have many, but those that do exist are there for a reason) and to adapt those rules to special circumstances. You have to be able to punish those players who repeatedly break the rules without appearing too harsh or too soft, without damaging the experience for the rest of the players and (preferably) without alienating that individual player.
Aboard the Blue Dwarf, the GMs are also usually responsible for keeping the main plot arc (the Action Plot) running in something approaching a normal fashion, which sometimes means having to step in and push people gently in the right direction. If you end up with somebody who won’t be gently pushed or who just steamrollers straight through the main plot without giving a thought to the other characters involved, it can get tricky, and those are the situations that I *really* don’t envy the GMs in!
Above and beyond that, the GMs are held to OOC (out of character) standards that other players don’t necessarily have to worry about. If a particular player is rude or uncooperative, most people will just not interact with that character any more than they have to. If a GM is seen to be the same way, players are more likely to feel oppressed or slighted. There’s a delicate balance between appearing powerless and absent, or appearing overbearing.
Who else do you think should be interviewed and why?
Any of the moderators of Blue Dwarf (though I see you’ve already got a Spotlight on Andy Longman!) would be ideally placed to give a mod’s-eye-view of the sim. Any of the long-term players would vouch for the somewhat addictive nature of the game (one player, a personal friend of mine, has left the game and rejoined at least eight times, unable to drag himself away permanently!). And any of the newer players would be able to speak of what current first impressions of the game are like (my own being somewhat coloured by time!)