Yesterday was April Fool’s Day, so I put up a fake report on a campaign I never ran using the Game That Shall Not Be Named. I appear to have fooled one otherwise quite perspicacious individual, so I figure I fooled a few other readers too.
So, how does this lie rate?
Degree of Difficulty: I think it should be quite difficult to fool your readers on April Fool’s Day on a blog with an ongoing series about how good a liar you are. So I’m giving this a 4.5.
Degree of Preposterousness: In this report I claimed to have played F.A.T.A.L. That’s pretty preposterous. Also I claimed to have played the Date Rape Game with a radical feminist, which is doubly preposterous – radical feminists don’t role play (that should be a badge!) and certainly not in this system. Furthermore I’m occasionally accused of being left-wing, so that should have rung some bells too. But then, on the other hand, I am known for a bit of infernalism, human sacrifice, etc. so maybe people thought this was consistent with such a gaming style. If so, I should hang my head in shame. But it was F.A.T.A.L., and I claimed to have GMd it – that’s preposterous. I’m giving this a 4.
Degree of Success: To be fair, only one person commented, so I can only assume that I fooled one person. But that’s still one more than should have, and it can safely be said that he left the scene fooled. However, my main aim was to get a few outraged comments that I could then deflate with this follow up post, so I think, sadly, I failed. I didn’t outrage enough people, which pretty much means I lost the internet. I’m giving this a 2.
Overall Rating:13.5 out of 25. Barely a pass. Better luck next year…
Compromise and Conceit 
April 2, 2011 at 12:51 pm
I read the post. I wasn’t fooled though.
I think it is getting almost impossible to fool anyone on the internet on April Fools anymore, that’s why I went for the sarcasm.
My 5th Edition post should really be seen as biting criticism of WotC, not as a joke at all really. It is just wrapped in a joke.
April 2, 2011 at 12:55 pm
Yeah, I think the standard approach is to write something funny and transparently obviously wrong, so people can enjoy your craftwork. But I like a challenge 🙂
April 4, 2011 at 12:02 pm
As the fooled party I should probably toss in some numbers, as they may let you at least claim win over one person (and probably the only person interested/involved enough to have an opinion given my frequency of posting and knowledge of that game).
Degree of Difficulty: I don’t think I’d rate this as highly (at least for me). I’ve a long standing indifference to April Fool’s day [1] and much of our friendship is based on sharing of facts that can best be described as Trivia, which I tend to take on faith (unless there is data I can google to cotradict you [2]). With that said, that just shows I’m an easy target. Lets call it 3 all up. I’d give it a higer mark if it wasn’t a known gamer playing known game. [3]
Degree of Preposterousness: Sorry, I’ve got to mark you down on this one. I know that you’ve played games involving objectionable material (including torture and genocide) which would fit right in. Based on my general view of gaming, I assumed that most people hadn’t read the book (including the feminist, who’d reasonably expected to have a heart attack/attack someone/both). I also know that a compelling storyline can redeem pretty much any shithouse system. Given those assumptions I don’t think it’s anything higher than a 3. It’d take a series of poor choices, but compared to the real world choices [4] it seems like it’s bound to have happened somewhere.
Degree of Success: This one is were I suffered the most. Subject to the disclaimers above on how much I believed your actually read it/played it as written (which are accounted for in the other scores), I fell for it hook, line and sinker. 5
Overall Rating: So what’s the maths on this X+Y+Z the total, (X+Y)/2*Z also doesn’t work. I’ve always been a little unsure on this [5].
[1] Generally I don’t pay enough attention to the date to recognise it till someone sends me the links to the funnier cases in mid-April.
[2] Clearly using Google and contriness as my filters against you need work.
[3] Sorry, I’d give you more, but it just occurs to me that saying Obama played it regularly would count as a 5, so a gamer playing it when they were younger has to be infinitely more likely
[4] i.e. attacking Libya without a clear idea what on earth you’re aiming to achive after repeatedly insulting your political opponents for doing the same thing
[5] Sadly a mathematician doing a poor job of explaining maths also fall within the range of my potential beliefs. Unless you want to admit that’s also a trick you’e playing 😉
April 4, 2011 at 12:05 pm
Wow. I have a lot of typos in that post. My apologies. My keyboard at work seems to miss some characters when they’re struck.
Plus I’m helpless without Chrome’s built in spell check.
April 4, 2011 at 7:53 pm
haha, the reason you aren’t sure of the scoring is because I wrote it a long time ago. It’s the difficulty times the average of preposterosity and success. So in your case I get a 12, and fail.
I’m happy with that rating. And you get a +1 for managing to bring a criticism of Obama into a footnote. Well done!
April 5, 2011 at 5:29 am
You should try reading them in reverse order like I did!
I read it on Sun along with three other essays you wrote Stuart so I paid no attention whatsoever to the date it was posted. You should of course, never believe much you read on the internet, but it is a tad surprising to read an article busting myths about Female Genital Cutting, and then a second later, the same author going on about that one campaign he ran all about “The World-Rapist”!!!! I was still going “huh, wtf!” when I then read the “it was an April Fools gag” post which I’d somehow scrolled past without noticing!
April 5, 2011 at 11:44 am
So were you fooled? This is the key issue!