bryant | [Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

My current favorite piece of gaming slang is “lasersharking.”

“Hey, you know, that game concept would be better if the sharks had lasers on their head.” Lasersharking. Leave the poor concept alone; not all concepts need lasers to reach their full potential.

Rifts is all lasersharking, all the way to the bottom turtle.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Is that what that term means? I had NO idea.

Now I know, and knowing is half the battle.

Hey, that would make a great CAH series...

LASER SHARKS!

Can I work on it? *big eyes*

Sure. Make sure to work in a pirate monkey and a robot ninja as well.

"ARRRRRoook," said the one-eyed hook-handed pirate monkey.

Laz, the amazing Laser Shark, teams up with his pals Arook the Simian Pirate, and Shadow the Synthetic Ninja. Together, they fight crime!

A distant planet, home to automatic factories. Hyperevolved monkeys have taken to the high seas to seize plunder, and schools of cybernetic sharks destroy and consume wayward cargo ships.

The only defense for the settlers are the (insert fancy name for Ninja Robots HERE).

Coming this fall, on ABC.

The only defense for the settlers are the original robotic security units developed by the Japanese - the Mechinja!

But would it look good on a Burger King glass?

Dude, how could it not? MECHINJA in red faux Chinese characters, and a scene with a robot ninja fighting an evil pirate monkey.

Marketing gold, baby.

How about MechaNinja? The extra vowel does good things to my brainstem. Plus Inja just works nto at all as a suffix to Mech.

I've spoken with the creative committee, and they accept your proposal. MechaNinja it is.

You'll be hearing from my lawyers, you realize.

Hungadunga, Hungadunga, Hungadunga, & McCormick.

CU

Bah! It's COMPLETELY different! You only had a monkey, a ninja, a robot, and a pirate. We've done the INNOVATION of combining them!

So NER!

However, since I am generous, I will give you 50% of all royalties. Since we project an exact royalty scheme of $0.00, that should be fair.

Check the book. You can play a Monkey Ninja, a Pirate Robot, a Ninja Pirate, a Monkey Pirate Robot, etc.

Hah!

All your (zero) profits belong to us!

CU

...can you "jump the lasershark"?

I believe you can.

I'm pretty sure Vampire jumped the lasershark...somewhere around the Kindred of the East expansion...maybe a bit before.

Tom

I dunno. My personal moment for when V:tM2 jumped the shark was in Transylvania Chronicles IV, wherein one antediluvian launches a nuclear device at another, who (IIRC) holds it at bay with the power of its mind.

"You're... hurting me, Mr. McClure."

Is lasersharking the act of upping the ante, or starting the bid in the first place? In other words, did Pinnacle lasershark when they added zombies and steampunk gear to Westerns, or when they added time-travel and martial arts to Deadlands?

They may have added Zombies, but 'Wild, Wild West' (the TV show, '65-'69) did Steampunk Westerns first. So, if anyone lasersharked that, it wasn't Pinnacle.

My guess is that both are possible.

In some rulesets (RIFTS, Synbarr) you start off with the lasers already attached. In others, there's a kind of "feature creep" that just builds up over time. Vampire Splatbooks and Warhammer 40K army lists are especially susceptible to this.

Tom

Chicken/egg syndrome?

I would guess that since the verb has both past and future tenses ("lasersharked" and "lasersharking"), that the act depends on the perspective of the speaker.

To wit, from the perspective of Westerns, Deadlands has lasersharked the genre. From the perspective of Deadlands, however, time-travel is a lasersharking of Deadlands, and FURTHER lasersharking of Westerns. From the perspective of science fiction, however, Deadlands is not quite up to lasershark-par.

Which brings up another point - what is the antonym of lasershark? "Vanilla"?

The EnWorlders have a verb for it: nerf. To soften, mute, or make less "kewl."

Oh duh. Nerf. I know - I've even USED it.

Cool - now I have a new contribution to my vocabulary, and a rediscovery of an old one. :-)

Oh, I don't like that so much. Nerf feels negative to me, because in the CRPG field it means "weaken." And lasersharking is not synonymous with "making stronger."

Well "ripping the lazer out of the shark" is just too long...

You're right... but there's really no way to express the idea of "making something less over-the-top" in gaming. Who has ever done such a thing? The only things that come close are retcons: Vicissitude is not an alien disease, that sort of jazz.

"There is no word in our language for restraint."

Vampire Revised is about as close as it comes, I think.

"There is no word in our language for restraint."

Tangent: you know that bit in "1984" where Orwell talks about Newspeak and details how, although one could express the idea that "this field is free from weeds," the meaning of the word "free" as we understand it today had been purged from the public consciousness? You just gave me the idea of a culture where "restraint" as anything other than an implement of bondage gear had gone the same way.

Yeah, I like it too.

Etymological note for future scholars: I'm pretty sure the term was coined by Jack Spencer Jr. in this Forge thread here, then developed here. I hope knowing it's one of umpteen terms created at the Forge doesn't take the fun out of it for anyone.

Oh, it's a Forge term?

Well, you know what would make it cooler then? Like if it was super popular but Ron Edwards hated it and threw fits over it's usage like the whole vanilla/pervy deal, but really childish and out of proportion.

I think it'd also be cool if it described some sort of sexual activity. A cool sexual activity, not something stupid. That way, gamers would seems cooler and sexier.

Hey, baby, I'm a Lasershark!
Tom

Funny, I thought it would be cooler if everytime anyone used the term it caused seventeen people to post a comment about how much they hate the Forge and all its pseudo-academic jargon. :)

That way, gamers would seems cooler and sexier.
Cooler and sexier than they seem now? Hardly possible.

Well, if it makes you feel better, Ron Edwards himself has never used the term "lasershark," according to the Forge search engine. "Lasersharking" and "Ron Edwards" gives one hit, a glossary of Forge terminology.

Nice! I'd been wondering about the origin. Google only knows "lasersharking" from Barbelith and a Neverwinter Nights forum. And, um, 20x20. Heh.

The term is clearly coined after the classic Austin Powers quote (classic?): "All I want is sharks with fricking laser beams on their heads!" All our culture is belong to Mike Meyers.

Jesus, that last sentence just collapsed into a geek culture black hole.

"Jumping the lasershark" is great coinage. lasershark.com is not taken. Hm.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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