Since you're a gamer, picture this situation: You get an e-mail from someone who says they've seen your name on the net, and they also play RPGs. You get the impression they're from your country or general area, and you have an opening in your group for a new player. What do you do now?
Another situation: You join a mailing list that has in the order of 891 other gamers on it. All you see of them are their names and signatures, and because you only have their posts to go by, it'll take quite a while for you to figure out what these people like and don't like when it comes to gaming. How do you figure out what everyone is like more quickly?
Chances are that in either case, and many similar ones, you'll be spending a lot of time e-mailing back and forth before you're any the wiser.
That's Where the Gamer Classification Code Comes In!
It allows you to describe yourself by assigning ratings to a number of categories, which other people can then quickly decipher to see what kind of gamer you are — and where you're from, in case you're in their area. By placing it into the signature underneath your e-mail messages, on your web site, or in other places where others will come across it (you could even write it onto a T-shirt you wear to a convention, if you want) other gamers will be easily able to identify you as a fellow gamer.
The GCC is currently in version 0.3 of 16 October 2002, which looks to be the final "beta" version before 1.0, which will be released in plain text and HTML, and probably also as a PDF file. See below to download the GCC.
In relation to the GCC, anyway :)
Most importantly: I'm looking for suggestions to make the Gamer Classification Code better. If you have any, send them to me at <gurth@xs4all.nl>. However, since version 0.3 is probably going to be the last "test" edition, I most likely won't add whole categories unless something is really missing.
Art: If it were entirely up to me, I'd include funny/comical/cool illustrations with some or all of the categories in the HTML and PDF versions, to spice up the look of the GCC. Unfortunately, I'm no artist, but if you are, then this is an appeal to help me achieve this ideal :) Please contact me at the same address as above if you want to help out.
Only plain text versions of the GCC are available at the moment. The good side of this is that they will be usable on any platform, even though they're not much to look at.
The Gamer Classification Code is basically the result of rekindled interest in the Shadowrun Geek Code, which was developed several years ago based on Robert Hayden's original Geek Code. When discussion on the ShadowRN mailing list once again turned to the Shadowrun Geek Code in early October 2002, the idea got into my head that a more generic variant, suitable for many more games, would be a nice thing to have.
So on the afternoon of Saturday, 12 October, 2002, I sat down, fired up Emacs, and started writing. The result was version 0.1, which was posted to the ShadowRN list at Sat, 12 Oct 2002 19:06:21 +0200. Comments by Jeremie Bouillon lead to version 0.2 of Sunday, 13 October, 2000, which was also shared with the Millennium's End mailing list. More suggestions by various people lead to the current version 0.3, of Wednesday the 13th of October.
Some of the items in the GCC can use a bit more explanation. Here are links to them.
by Gurth –=– GCC0.3: y!>?.nl[Zld] G90 SCP/F:@@[OTE] B++ f= RM rm= rr+ l- m=(+) w= s=:+ GM++:=(-):=(+) h++ p*!(++$) LA= mf++(**) W=(+) C=(--) CG= OG+ F=(-) c+ K-