Here’s an interesting story by Gordon.Freeman12 from GmodNation. It chronicles his experience as a Gmod user, from when he first started out (a “mingebag”) to being an otherwise well-behaved Gmodder. Whether or not all of it is actually true, that's for you to determine. But otherwise, it's an interesting read.
Chapter 1 - Dumb beginnings
My first experience with Gmod took place about a year and a half ago from this date. I was at my friends house and he showed me this really cool game called “Garry's Mod”. Two months later, I got Gmod. For the first few months, I downloaded a lot of poop. If it looked cool, I would download it. I mostly screwed around on single player, building weird poop and killing NPC’s. It was a simpler time for me. I was content (except for the fact that my Gmod would crash often from the amount of crap I downloaded )
Chapter 2 - Enter Freeman, the Mingebag
For about 4 months, I played single player in complete bliss. All was well for me. Then I saw multiplayer. I joined a server (build on gm_flatgrass) and I played on there. It was pretty fun playing with other Gmodders from around the world. After a week or so of playing multiplayer, strange ideas got into my head filled, with evil “Hey! Gmod gives me the power to do whatever I want without consequences. I can hit people with melons and all they can do is ban me!” And then it began… The most horrific stage of my Gmod career… I became a Mingebag; a really big one at that. I spammed at least 49 servers crashing them all! As I crashed servers, I found that there were more fun ways to tick people off. I would go on killing sprees, placing dynamite on peoples contraptions, spamming lamps, ect. It was horrible. I was probably one of the worst Mingebags… From the big picture, my Gmod career was in the pooper…
Chapter 3 - Slow, but effective recovery
I continued to crash servers and piss people off for about 2 months. However, people began to show me better things to do. After a while, I stopped crashing servers… Instead, I built contraptions to kill people. Surprisingly, this was my first step to recovery! I had reached the point where I stopped downloading things (our computers hard drive had to be wiped ) obsessively. Building contraptions showed me that Gmod had more to offer than just killing people and crashing servers. I taught myself that anything in Gmod is possible! I can make a house, or a boat, or I could make a house boat! Hell, I could even make a CD player! I learned more and more and surely, I began to recover. I stopped crashing servers. Instead, I went on to ask people for advice. I wanted to know how to do stuff! People gladly taught me what they knew, and also I watched many YouTube tutorials. I had reached the end of my Mingebag phase at last.
Chapter 4 - The Freeman Renaissance
Over the next few weeks, I began to experiment with other game modes like space build and RP. I was very curious about how things worked in Gmod. I spent a while searching for what made Gmod tick! I discovered the Source SDK and LUA coding. I experimented in many fields for a while such as modeling, creating game modes and making maps. I was not very successful though. I had rushed into these fields of modding too fast! I had not done any research on these topics. So I gave it up for a while and went back to learning the ways of Gmod, and for the next year, I played and played Gmod. Then one day, an announcement on GarrysMod.com caught my eyes “
Gmod Nation Is Born” and so what did I do? I joined! I posted constantly. I learned a lot from GmodNation and I would post on there every day.
Chapter 5 - Gmod Enlightenment
GmodNation taught me a lot I had never known before. It helped me learn wire, gave me great ideas for contraptions and I made a lot of friends. With my new found knowledge in multiple fields, I gladly jumped in front to help anyone who needed it. I was glad to be a part of GmodNation. Everyone was so kind and friendly. I was truly happy and felt like I belonged for the first time in Gmod. When GmodNation got an RP server, I went nuts! I begged and begged for an admin position because I felt so grateful to the community that first took me in. However, the server was run by a 13 year old named Colton. He was the first person I truly hated for the first time on Gmod. He ran a super tight server and thought so much of himself! However, Colton’s time on GmodNation taught me a lot about RP. It’s not about getting guns or earning money. It’s about living life in a way you couldn’t in real life. Though I hated the guys guts, I learned so much from the time on his server. My imagination went wild on RP servers from there on out. However, Colton left and the Lord Gollum came to provide GmodNation a new RP server. It became the server we all know and love today!
Chapter 6 - Freeman, the activist
Only recently have I looked back on my old days as a Mingebag and realized how bad it was. After that day of realization, I began to dedicate all of my time on Gmod to stopping Mingebags at every chance I got and to spread my knowledge of Gmod and the source engine to everyone to inspire a new generation of Gmodders to have a good time, and to know the joy I felt of being able to help others. My first step was the organization of the GRE (Garry's Mod Reclamation Effort) whose goal was to rid Mingebags from Gmod. A while back, there was a horrible mingebag crisis. Every server you went on, there were Minges. It was horrible. Server numbers went down every day. I don’t know if many of the GRE members followed in my footsteps, but I went onto as many servers as I could to tell admins of multiple safety precautions they could take to protect their servers and continue a constant flow of players to enjoy the servers. I spent almost an entire week going onto servers warning admins about how they can save their servers. Finally, the situation had been contained. Things seemed bad but the numbers had gone up again and Minge attacks had decreased. I don’t know if it was just a coincidence, but I like to think I made a difference in the Gmod community during those tough days. After that, I quieted down a little. I played Gmod for many hours a day enjoying every minute of it and fighting every Mingebag that came into my sight.
Chapter 7 - Freeman today
Now, I spend my time doing many things. I spend a lot of time on Gmod, still building contraptions and RP’ing the crap out of myself. Over the last year and a half of owning Gmod, I learnt so much about gaming, and a lot about myself along the way. Not a single moment of my Gmod career have I regretted, not a single moment. Now, I can be seen RP’ing, building and mapping on GmodNation servers. I do my best to spread my knowledge with the community that gave me so much knowledge to begin with. I hope in the future, you will see me making mods and hopefully, the release of Final Stand in a few years. No matter where I go though, I will always come back to the GmodNation. This is the place that started me on the right path after my minge phase and during my renaissance. The reason I tell this true story is so that others may learn from it. I hope that other players may find the joy I have in the Gmod community. I would like to thank Mutank for starting this great website and also, I would like to thank everyone on Gnation for helping me in every way you have. I hope that I have also helped you all in some way. Also, I would like to thank LordGollum for granting me admin position on the RP server and also for just running the best darn RP server in the whole Gmod community!
