Positives & Negatives...
Apr. 13th, 2010 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magicaddict...abounded in the bringing out of the one type of character I never thought I would play as a PC. Drow required too much makeup, too much care and too thick a skin in order to make them viable for me.
In part, I was right. In others, I was wrong.
Firstly, the event itself was shaky at times but an overall success. It wavered due to indecision over what direction to take, but it had enough righting mechanisms that the players moved towards the resolution of the plot in a fairly smooth fashion, rather than randomly jumping forward with no coherence. The site was it's normal, beautiful self, remaining second only to JLW as my favourite site. The people were, for the most part, entirely well behaved and pleasant, and the resolution of the plot gave people a feelgood finish OOC and a very poignant moment IC.
All in all, really quite good, and worth doing again.
In terms of the new guy, I have a lot of work to do.
Firstly, his name is Alantha, and there are damn good reasons why he didn't give his name up, but we'll get to that later.
The costume came within a hair's breadth of not showing up on time. It required Velvet Glove to drive it down personally after missing the last special delivery post the day before, and it showed up not four hours before we disappeared off for the site. The fact they did is genuinely immense, and cause for absolutely everyone to go and buy their stuff. They make kit to order, are very reasonable, and in the event of a tight deadline, are willing to make a 200 mile round trip to make sure it arrives on time.
The trousers and tunic countain a little more green and brown than I intended (he was supposed to have mottled greys only), but along with the raggy waistcoat breaking up my outline, it still performs wonderfully as nocturnal camouflage, and I think I did quite well at vanishing into the forest. The dagger sheathes that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
helbling made for me also work a treat, and only require the slightest modification to make the lower leg knives entirely secure. Finally, the makeup isn't bad, and quite water resistant, but I still think that if he survives for longer than a year, an airbrush might be in the offing.
Physical performance wasn't bad, but could be improved. He's got a swagger about his gait when he's comfortable with his situation, a weak shamble when it all goes wrong, and a determined stride when he's got his game face on, but I need to work harder to integrate the three together into something that is definitely all part of a whole, and doesn't smack of disparate indecision.
The two occasions I had to open up and sprint were successful in absolute terms, in that I got away and caught my target respectively, but I haven't properly floored it for too long and it felt very rusty, and no doubt my form was a joke as well. Longer distance cantering was better in that I managed to outdistance most of the party, but I was left feeling way too out of breath for a two hundred metre run. Must do better.
Vocal interaction was the first of the miserable failures. I had so much planned for the way he spoke to people, comprising a whole raft of speech techniques that would disturb some, intrigue others and generally make him a more interesting as a character. Instead, that got thrown out the window and all I managed was a wise-cracking attitude monkey.
Seriously, what the fuck was that all about...
His attitude towards people was quite close to what I intended, but when bereft of other options and having to think quickly, my mind defaulted to cheap jibes and he came out with strings of pathetic insults, when he was supposed to be demonstrating his intelligence and resourcefulness. One line elicited a half-decent reaction, and the rest just got (quite reasonably) laughed at. Other conversation happened far too freely when he should have been guarding his tongue more, and he gave away much, much more than I wanted him to. Useless, and requiring a lot of work.
Arboreal ninjitsu wasn't as poor as normal. I've been followingxanthipe's lead for long enough now that I can sometimes work off her actions without thinking too much about it, and there was a lovely moment while Rosalind and Alantha were leading the party to the ritual circle, where we wordlessly parted ways and two-pronged all the way there, meeting on the opposite side of the circle as though we'd both been independantly trained to do the same thing the same way. It made me look almost professional.
Visibility in the forest is quite high during the day, so spotting the targets before they spot you is the order of the day, and I didn't do that badly. At night it's a different matter, and I managed to spend the first night fairly close to the player hut without their noticing, to the point that a small group walked past no more than six feet from me and failed to notice. Mostly the costume doing its job, but I must be learning to be a little more visually quiet.
Combat was as bad as I'd become used to, so I can't call it so much of a failure as I can a reaffirmation that I'm crap. Alantha's first physical interaction with the party was supposed to involve a whirlwind of blades and vanishing into the trees. Instead, he caught two sword blows on the way in and went down like a sack of shit before he landed a meaningful shot of his own. First physical interaction with the party involved their picking his sorry arse up.
I continued to fail to connect in a meaningful fashion throughough the weekend when I faced off against monsters. They bounced two blows off my locations with pitiful regularity, even on the odd occasions I did manage to sneak up on them, and I got dropped more than most. Pretty pathetic for a highly mobile scout.
Keeping my own secrets went so much better than usual, however. No-one knows his name. No-one knows his reasons for leaving the underdark. This may seem fairly trivial when you consider that keeping such secrets was fairly fundamental to the entire character concept, but it's still a source of great pride to me that I didn't immediately spill all the beans I could in an attempt to make people pay attention to the character. It wasn't all good - half the party got to look over his heavily scarred body, I pointed out I used to have corp, and I revealed how the spider was after me without so much as an attempt to fob it off on someone else, but they can be glossed over, I think.
Unfortunately, keeping my own brief cannot. The alacrity with which he went from tight-lipped silent treatment to sharing his views with all and sundry was truly shameful, and demeaned the character immensely as he changed to make my portrayal easier. My attempts to balance mysoginy and misandry in equal measure failed miserably, with what appeared to be everyone coming to the conclusion that he was simply recovering from being a male slave by taking it out on women only. His going off on an existential one was awfully timed during the night seige, and revealed far more about his ideology than was sensible at such an early stage. My attempts at being broody and mysterious came off as comically ridiculous, and reduced him to little more than sulky teenager.
The one redeeming part of the entire thing was the number of people who came over to attempt to talk with him on the Saturday afternoon, for whatever reasons they had. Alantha hated the attention with a violent passion. Doug was dancing about inside his head, clapping his hands and yelling "Yay! People are paying attention to me!". If nothing else, it showed it wasn't 100% awful and kickstarted the upward progress from the rock bottom I'd hit not much earlier, so I thank people for not ignoring him entirely, and hope that it revealed that there may be layers to probe.
Use of stats was hard to measure in a Level 1 event with discretion applied to the rules, but he made use of everything, didn't leave much out, and didn't seem to be an complete waste of space, paricularly with the refs throwing me bones about the traps at most every turn. I do wish, however, that drow got Track as a vet pick - it was hugely useful this weekend, has been in the past, and will likely turn up again and again. There are plenty of viable options for if he makes it past Renewal (who am I kidding), but we always want what we can't have.
Free At Last: This is gratuitous, but I'd been waiting for seven years to finally be able to perform Fisher's outstanding dirge in a relevant setting. Every one of my fest characters since it all started with Rhinyn have had provision for them to be able to sing (yes, even Vaex) so I'd have the chance to do it, and doing it for my best friend's character made it all the more special when it finally rolled around. I started a tone too high, so I fell off the final high note, but there was silence and everyone was listening, so I can't have been doing that badly.
Overall, I'd call it a selection of polar opposites, hopping between the sublime and the truly terrible on a regular basis. Much improvement necessary if he's going to be long-term playable, interesting and engaging to me and other people.
On a final note, the new guy's journal is going to be quite revealing, and give away a fair amount about the character, so while I don't normally hide my LJ from people, I'm willing to make an exception in this case. Far from asking if there are people who want in on the journal, I'm asking instead if there is anyone who specifically doesn't want to read his thoughts. If so, pipe up here and I'll make a filter (if there are only one or two who don't, though, I might ask you simply not to click on the cut).
In part, I was right. In others, I was wrong.
Firstly, the event itself was shaky at times but an overall success. It wavered due to indecision over what direction to take, but it had enough righting mechanisms that the players moved towards the resolution of the plot in a fairly smooth fashion, rather than randomly jumping forward with no coherence. The site was it's normal, beautiful self, remaining second only to JLW as my favourite site. The people were, for the most part, entirely well behaved and pleasant, and the resolution of the plot gave people a feelgood finish OOC and a very poignant moment IC.
All in all, really quite good, and worth doing again.
In terms of the new guy, I have a lot of work to do.
Firstly, his name is Alantha, and there are damn good reasons why he didn't give his name up, but we'll get to that later.
The costume came within a hair's breadth of not showing up on time. It required Velvet Glove to drive it down personally after missing the last special delivery post the day before, and it showed up not four hours before we disappeared off for the site. The fact they did is genuinely immense, and cause for absolutely everyone to go and buy their stuff. They make kit to order, are very reasonable, and in the event of a tight deadline, are willing to make a 200 mile round trip to make sure it arrives on time.
The trousers and tunic countain a little more green and brown than I intended (he was supposed to have mottled greys only), but along with the raggy waistcoat breaking up my outline, it still performs wonderfully as nocturnal camouflage, and I think I did quite well at vanishing into the forest. The dagger sheathes that
helbling made for me also work a treat, and only require the slightest modification to make the lower leg knives entirely secure. Finally, the makeup isn't bad, and quite water resistant, but I still think that if he survives for longer than a year, an airbrush might be in the offing.Physical performance wasn't bad, but could be improved. He's got a swagger about his gait when he's comfortable with his situation, a weak shamble when it all goes wrong, and a determined stride when he's got his game face on, but I need to work harder to integrate the three together into something that is definitely all part of a whole, and doesn't smack of disparate indecision.
The two occasions I had to open up and sprint were successful in absolute terms, in that I got away and caught my target respectively, but I haven't properly floored it for too long and it felt very rusty, and no doubt my form was a joke as well. Longer distance cantering was better in that I managed to outdistance most of the party, but I was left feeling way too out of breath for a two hundred metre run. Must do better.
Vocal interaction was the first of the miserable failures. I had so much planned for the way he spoke to people, comprising a whole raft of speech techniques that would disturb some, intrigue others and generally make him a more interesting as a character. Instead, that got thrown out the window and all I managed was a wise-cracking attitude monkey.
Seriously, what the fuck was that all about...
His attitude towards people was quite close to what I intended, but when bereft of other options and having to think quickly, my mind defaulted to cheap jibes and he came out with strings of pathetic insults, when he was supposed to be demonstrating his intelligence and resourcefulness. One line elicited a half-decent reaction, and the rest just got (quite reasonably) laughed at. Other conversation happened far too freely when he should have been guarding his tongue more, and he gave away much, much more than I wanted him to. Useless, and requiring a lot of work.
Arboreal ninjitsu wasn't as poor as normal. I've been following
xanthipe's lead for long enough now that I can sometimes work off her actions without thinking too much about it, and there was a lovely moment while Rosalind and Alantha were leading the party to the ritual circle, where we wordlessly parted ways and two-pronged all the way there, meeting on the opposite side of the circle as though we'd both been independantly trained to do the same thing the same way. It made me look almost professional.Visibility in the forest is quite high during the day, so spotting the targets before they spot you is the order of the day, and I didn't do that badly. At night it's a different matter, and I managed to spend the first night fairly close to the player hut without their noticing, to the point that a small group walked past no more than six feet from me and failed to notice. Mostly the costume doing its job, but I must be learning to be a little more visually quiet.
Combat was as bad as I'd become used to, so I can't call it so much of a failure as I can a reaffirmation that I'm crap. Alantha's first physical interaction with the party was supposed to involve a whirlwind of blades and vanishing into the trees. Instead, he caught two sword blows on the way in and went down like a sack of shit before he landed a meaningful shot of his own. First physical interaction with the party involved their picking his sorry arse up.
I continued to fail to connect in a meaningful fashion throughough the weekend when I faced off against monsters. They bounced two blows off my locations with pitiful regularity, even on the odd occasions I did manage to sneak up on them, and I got dropped more than most. Pretty pathetic for a highly mobile scout.
Keeping my own secrets went so much better than usual, however. No-one knows his name. No-one knows his reasons for leaving the underdark. This may seem fairly trivial when you consider that keeping such secrets was fairly fundamental to the entire character concept, but it's still a source of great pride to me that I didn't immediately spill all the beans I could in an attempt to make people pay attention to the character. It wasn't all good - half the party got to look over his heavily scarred body, I pointed out I used to have corp, and I revealed how the spider was after me without so much as an attempt to fob it off on someone else, but they can be glossed over, I think.
Unfortunately, keeping my own brief cannot. The alacrity with which he went from tight-lipped silent treatment to sharing his views with all and sundry was truly shameful, and demeaned the character immensely as he changed to make my portrayal easier. My attempts to balance mysoginy and misandry in equal measure failed miserably, with what appeared to be everyone coming to the conclusion that he was simply recovering from being a male slave by taking it out on women only. His going off on an existential one was awfully timed during the night seige, and revealed far more about his ideology than was sensible at such an early stage. My attempts at being broody and mysterious came off as comically ridiculous, and reduced him to little more than sulky teenager.
The one redeeming part of the entire thing was the number of people who came over to attempt to talk with him on the Saturday afternoon, for whatever reasons they had. Alantha hated the attention with a violent passion. Doug was dancing about inside his head, clapping his hands and yelling "Yay! People are paying attention to me!". If nothing else, it showed it wasn't 100% awful and kickstarted the upward progress from the rock bottom I'd hit not much earlier, so I thank people for not ignoring him entirely, and hope that it revealed that there may be layers to probe.
Use of stats was hard to measure in a Level 1 event with discretion applied to the rules, but he made use of everything, didn't leave much out, and didn't seem to be an complete waste of space, paricularly with the refs throwing me bones about the traps at most every turn. I do wish, however, that drow got Track as a vet pick - it was hugely useful this weekend, has been in the past, and will likely turn up again and again. There are plenty of viable options for if he makes it past Renewal (who am I kidding), but we always want what we can't have.
Free At Last: This is gratuitous, but I'd been waiting for seven years to finally be able to perform Fisher's outstanding dirge in a relevant setting. Every one of my fest characters since it all started with Rhinyn have had provision for them to be able to sing (yes, even Vaex) so I'd have the chance to do it, and doing it for my best friend's character made it all the more special when it finally rolled around. I started a tone too high, so I fell off the final high note, but there was silence and everyone was listening, so I can't have been doing that badly.
Overall, I'd call it a selection of polar opposites, hopping between the sublime and the truly terrible on a regular basis. Much improvement necessary if he's going to be long-term playable, interesting and engaging to me and other people.
On a final note, the new guy's journal is going to be quite revealing, and give away a fair amount about the character, so while I don't normally hide my LJ from people, I'm willing to make an exception in this case. Far from asking if there are people who want in on the journal, I'm asking instead if there is anyone who specifically doesn't want to read his thoughts. If so, pipe up here and I'll make a filter (if there are only one or two who don't, though, I might ask you simply not to click on the cut).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-04-14 12:08 am (UTC)You'll be fine; I found that Korr became more a developed character the second outing with him. I'm starting to sneak in his raccoon nature a bit by touching things and engaging his senses publically with the odd occasion his mischievous nature slips (such as unnecessary giggling).
no subject
Date: 2010-04-14 07:04 am (UTC)I would wait and see how Alantha (or Uncle Albert) does at NotWigan. There will be more going on, more people to interact with and more chances for you to tweak the things you think need tweaking.
And Free At Last almost made me cry :(
no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 10:17 pm (UTC)There's a lot for me to get sorted in my head, not least how I interact with those in the faction, and how far I push it - I doubt I'll get the balance right, but it's interesting playing someone to whom all this nastiness lark doesn't jar.
Glad you enjoyed Free At Last. I confess I did too.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-14 06:19 pm (UTC)For what it's worth - most of the faults you see are minor and not actually spotted by those of us who don't know just what a perfectionist you are ;)
He came over as three-dimensional, competent and very much worth the effort of eventually getting to know. Oh and faster than the rest of us broken old Vipers.
I liked him a lot and he got onto Raye's list of 'people actually worth keeping alive' in almost record time - and for the record she loathed the way he was being treated a lot of the time and came very close to doing something messy to our head ritualist when he decided that it was perfectly within his rights to slice you open.
I really look forward to attempting to get to know him....although I suspect that may be as challenging an IC task as discussing religion with Bo'run. ;)
See ya soon
no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 10:20 pm (UTC)I'm glad he came across well - perception is 99% of the truth, after all.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-15 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-21 10:21 pm (UTC)