Dragon's Eye

I like the classics. You can't beat a classic 1x2, 3x4 story, but the part that always seems a little sad is that 5 is either alone or in a random 5xS, 5x6, or even 5xR. And you know what? I rather like 5. That means that the alternate 1x5, 2x5, or even 1x2x5 makes me happy.

Then I run across something truly different, in the form of a 3x5. Can't get more alternate than breaking up the 3x4, especially for the always alone 5. But you know what? It works. Now I'm not going to imply that it is totally IC, but it is fairly close, and the characterization is good enough that I enjoy it.

The even cooler thing? There is more than just one story! There aren't a lot, but at least the ones that are there are one's people have thought about. It isn't the easy story, they aren't the easy characters. Anyone can write a 1x2, and 3x4 is even easier, though perhaps not as exciting. But writing 5 isn't easy, and when the other half is the ever silent/stoic 3, then you really have your work cut out for you.

Keeps things interesting!

My hat goes off to Oone and their campaign The Road to Revolution.  A fabulous pre-written for pathfinder, the game takes place in their campaign setting The Great City, and is unlike any other game I've played in or DM'ed.  One of the main differences for me is that the whole game is in a city, and while there are adventures into tunnels or sewers underground, for the most part the adventure is in dealing with people and situations that occur in civilized locals.  The party doesn't have to worry about getting lost for days traveling through the forest, but they do have to worry about public opinion and innocent bystanders.  What's even more fun about it is that there are a lot of different paths that the party can take - there is enough information about everything going on that it's not too hard to DM when the party goes off script, and the scripts themselves involve a lot of "if your party does this then A, and if they do that, then B" so that there are a variety of options for the characters.  This way no one feels like they are being railroaded, and instead there is plenty of room for adventure and exploration.

The story is also fun in itself.  Having only run the first two of six segments, I don't know what is going to happen next, and that is also fun and exciting.  There are so many different interested parties that who the ultimate mastermind is, and what their goals are, is still something of a mystery.  Also, the introduction of new and different creatures for the party to encounter has been a lot of fun too.  My current favorite: cerebral rats.  They do 1d3-4 damage, so they really aren't at risk of killing the party, but they drain spell levels from casters, which is absolutely fantastically cruel!  So wonderful they have given my casters paranoia about anything that scurries.

Nothing like a shift away from online world and back into real games to get my mind off of the work I should be doing ^_^

 Novella Background 
( Story )

So after applying for a number of play by posts, and even getting chosen for a few, I have discovered that the chance that any game actually continues past it's conception is minuscule. Because of that, I haven't been putting so much effort into the backstories any more. That said, I still write them, and really like the ten minute background format, but I don't stress out about them as I did in the past.

I can also see why the stories don't take off - creating the character, coming up with their background, reasons why they have the abilities they do, figuring out how they fit in the world - these are almost more fun than actually playing. Also, it's really hard to see what kind of a player someone is going to be by their background. Someone who doesn't have any creative background to speak of can be an awesomely detailed poster with fun and witty dialog, whereas someone else who has put a ton of effort into their character creation may not post more than a sentence or two together.

The games I have been the most interested in because of their story have been the ones that have fallen apart, for whatever reason. Now I think I've learned that to make a good game, you need to have players that are genuinely excited to *play* the world, who want to explore and see how the mechanics of the game will work out. Hopefully this means that I've found a game that will actually continue, but we'll see.

I no longer get my hopes up...

at least.. not too high...

The Legend of Zelda - Darkest Days

An awesome idea, only 3 players chosen, and totally stalled out, with one player only posting once, another posting one sentence posts, and me trying to be interesting... and the DM posting next to nothing...

*sigh* it could have been so awesome!  oh well... 

A Short Summary:

After starting this post, I realized that in my extensive collection of posts, I've already addressed this for one fandom, but now another - Avatar!

As mentioned, I've been part of a pbp d&d game based on Avatar the Last Airbender. To that end, I started reading the fanfic Embers. The fic is a well researched masterpiece, as it references plenty of cultures and histories of our own world, and uses them to explain what is going on in the fic. The amount of world building is quite fantastic, and though it diverges from cannon, there is a good reason for pretty much all the deviations. The logic is so awesome, in fact, that it's almost hard to watch the show any more because there are so many things that no longer make sense.

Once again, I'm running into the cannon vs fan problem. I love the original show. I think that it was amazing in a lot of ways, and because I love the show I enjoy the fanfiction. But the fanfiction is leading me away from the cannon world and into a whole new realm. This isn't a bad thing, but it isn't necessarily a good thing either. It is changing how I perceive a story I love, and is taking away from that original memory... But in return I'm getting a whole new perspective, and an altered world to replace the memory one with.

I'm still not sure if this is a good thing, but I do know one thing: I couldn't stop reading if I tried.

Building a world from scratch is just hard. I don't know how authors do it. How can they make something so new and original from scratch? I feel like any "original" world building I could come up with is just a copy of something else. I suppose a lot of authors are actually borrowing from other sources a bit, but still, the originality is something I have a lot of respect for, because it isn't something I think I could do well.

That said, borrowing a base from someone else and expanding upon it is quite a lot of fun! Working right now on a PBP (read that as play-by-post) game based on Avatar the Last Airbender, but set many centuries before the show. Working with the frame given by the show, and some details given by the DM, we are fleshing out the societies and their interactions with one another, and it is a lot of fun! Creativity is always awesome, and with such a fun building block to start with it only gets better.

Yay writing! The fun of picking out the right words is now being replaced by the framework building before the story really takes off. For some reason I though this would be tedious, but it's actually a blast, who knew?

Also... Dang I need to change my airbender! Now that we've been working on the history of the world, and fleshed out some of the cultures, my bard needs a bit of a personality revamp..

Another character, another background. This one has both the ten minute background, as well as a cinematic one. The cinematic one came first, then I added the ten minute one for all the extra stuff... should have been the other way around!



Ten Minute Background
( Ten Minute Background )

So I finally decided I needed a creative outlet, and since I can't reliably think of things to write here, I figured I'd give D&D play by post a try.

Little did I know what I was getting into!

The biggest hurdle that I've found so far is that there are a lot more players than there are DM's, so it's actually hard to get into a game. The second hurdle is that I get way too wrapped up in creating my character for my own good. A "simple" character and background shouldn't take me a whole week. It shouldn't be distracting me from getting real work done. I shouldn't be obsessing over it the way that I am.... However, knowing this doesn't change things.

Hopefully someday I'll get into a game, and this effort won't be wasted.

For now, I give you Asa:
( Read more... )

When I read a book, I have a horrible habit of not actually "reading" a character's name. I recognize the letters, almost as a picture, and recognize when their name shows up again. This leads to problems. For example, the first time I read Lord of the Rings, I didn't realize that Sauron and Sarumon were two different people until half way through The Two Towers. This is also a problem because it's hard to talk to people about a book if you don't know the names of the characters. When I started reading Dragonlance, I read Caramon as "Carmon" and because I'd never "said" the word in my mind, it wasn't a problem. It wasn't until I was talking to someone else that I realized A: Carmon is a girl's name, and B: Carmon isn't his name.

So I don't read a book "out loud" in my mind. Similarly, I don't pay a whole lot of attention to physical descriptions. I can go through a whole book and not know the color of a character's hair, unless it is related to the story. This is usually not a problem, and actually makes some things easier. I don't watch a movie version of a book and get upset about casting choices, for example. I care much more about the story.

That being said, there are some things that I picture very vividly.

*** Potential Spoiler Alert for Game Of Thrones (Book/Season 3) ***

Game of Thrones is a wonderful series, and HBO is doing a great job at adapting it to the screen. The books are great, and in general it doesn't matter too much what someone's name is as long as you know if they are a Lannister, Stark, or Tyrell, and even then RR Martin often helps you out with references to Casterly Rock, Highgarden or the North. The epic parts of the book, however, are so epic that I feel like I've seen them. I don't usually play these things out in my mind, but for some moments, I can picture it perfectly. And this is the problem that I've had with the show, and even then, only recently.

From reading the books, I saw them find the wolves, I saw the events at the fist of the first men, I saw the red wedding.

The last is the one that prompted this post, and perhaps I should apologize that it took this long to get here. I've seen the red wedding. I think I can picture that moment the best out of all the books, and even now, years after I read that scene, I still feel like I was there. The weird part is that I don't remember the exact details. I couldn't tell you who did what specifically, I don't even remember who's chapter it was. But I remember the scene, and the feeling, and mostly the music. That's the part that really bothers me. The music. They were playing the Rains of Castamere so loudly from the towers that they drowned out the screaming. I picture the music being so much a part of that scene that when I saw HBO's version I just couldn't believe they had left such a big piece out of that moment. I did appreciate that they played the music a little before everything happened... but the episode before the wedding they explained what the song was about, so it seemed the perfect setup... then nothing. And that music would have made the scene so much more powerful! I cannot understand how they would have left something so dramatic out! I don't picture a lot of things in my books, but that, and the slaughter of the men out in the field, just didn't live up to the craziness that I remember in the books, and it makes me sad.