Amber related, life related, you name it, we've got it. Welcome to the Lost and Found.

 
Wow.

I'm sitting here on this huge bundle of nervous energy, incredible shyness, and intense pride. It's a heady mix.

See, I wrote this entry about Morgenstern thinking, "Surely someone's done this already..." Well, okay, I figured other people had made guesses at his height before, and I was equally certain that other people had guessed at his speed. I figured that at best, I was taking the idea to new (okay, okay, and obsessive... *grins*) levels.

And it wasn't even because I'm obsessed with Julian - it's really because I'm obsessed with horses. (Is this the point where I have to admit I spent the last part of Courts of Chaos more angry at Brand for shooting Star than for trying to rewrite the universe?)

So, I post my commentary on my blog... and all of a sudden, all these people that I've been watching from my little corner of the Amber community, people that seem to come up all the time and who I can't help but respect and admire, are paying attention to my idea. Not only that, but they want to use my ideas.

Whoo. Heady stuff. I swear I've been blushing furiously for a good hour now.

Thanks, guys.

...I'm going off over there *vague wave* to blush some more...
posted by sandrayln at 12:26:00 AM ( )

 

WISH 57: System, Setting, Style, and Play

Do you find that you play differently when you play in different game systems? For instance, do you approach D&D or Champions the same way you approach Vampire or Werewolf the same way you approach Amber or Nobilis? Do you build the some kinds of characters? What are some examples of different characters in different systems, and why do you think they evolved that way?

Yes, definitely.

My D&D characters have tended towards the more combat-oriented - in small part due to the fact that I usually don't want to mess with the magic system. Fighters and thieves seem to be my preference (okay, I admit I have a soft spot for thieves in fantasy anyway...); they're simple to remember the rules for. I usually emphasize constitution and strength when I create the character. Alexandra, my fighter/thief from our evil party campaign, is the best example of that. I mean - fighter/thief, right? Her personality solidified when I got to the game; that's the other thing that tends to happen with my D&D characters - and why I hate to create them. I can never think of a good personality beforehand, so I feel like I'm wielding a cardboard cutout of a person; that bugs me to no end. For Alexandra, I lifted most of her personality (and her name) from one of my Lost and Found NPCs, but she became much nastier when we started to play.

On the other hand, my White Wolf characters seem to have a knack for being useless in combat (my first character defended herself with a phone receiver because she had no weapons; my second one is Faline, she of the "hey, maybe if I throw Lucky Charms at these Redcaps, they'll go away" episode) and yet completely unconcerned for personal safety. I tend to emphasize knowledges over physical abilities, and physical attributes over social attributes. I like to have some vague idea of the character's voice before I start staring at the character sheet for a WW game; the voice tends to shape the stats. That's pretty much what happened with Faline and Cecilia - vague personality became a character sheet that defined the character. On the other hand, since my first WW character was my first RP character, I just kind of went through the stats and picked things that looked mildly useful. This may have something to do with why I consider her such a failure.

Amber characters get the next step from WW character creation. I literally sit down with a piece of blank paper and write down things that apply to the character for a while, then come up with a name. Then I start thinking of and/or drawing a picture of the character... and then I start worrying about stats and powers. The voice of the character tends to come last, and it tends to be the part that bothers me the most if I can't get it settled. Oriana came about that way, and I'm very pleased with the way she's turned out; I'm still struggling a little with Sophia's voice a little.

In terms of types of characters I tend to play - the main themes I seem to run with are fearlessness (not the right word, but I'm not sure of the correct one; it's more of a lack of concern with the possibility of being injured), impetuousness, high levels of patience when it comes to one or two character-specific activities, and artistic or musical interests. I'm sure there are others, but I can't think of them offhand.
posted by sandrayln at 5:03:00 PM ( )

 

Morgenstern: a few calculations

Okay, I'm indulging in too much knowledge of horses and an urge to do math here.

"Morgenstern was six hands higher than any other horse I'd ever seen..." -Corwin (NPiA, ch. 4)

So how tall IS Morgenstern?

It depends entirely on the height of the tallest horse Corwin's seen, and whether he was talking Earth horses or not.

Let's assume he was talking horses here on Earth; otherwise, there's no basis to even make a guess.

The two tallest horses on record are 21.2 hands (about 7' 2", recorded in 1846; I'm not sure of the veracity of that particular record, since I can't get my hands on a Guinness reference) and 19.115 hands (about 6' 5", recorded in the Guinness Book of Records). If Corwin saw either of these horses, it would put Morgenstern in the 25 to 27 hand height - 8' 4" to 9' 0" tall at the shoulder.

But what if he didn't?

In that case we turn to the tallest breed of horse - the Shire. Shire horses stand taller than 16.2 hands (5' 6") and can be over 18 (6' 0") hands high. The 19.115 hand horse mentioned before was a Shire, so they're generally under 19 hands (6' 4") high. Let's assume, therefore, that the tallest horse Corwin likely saw was 18 to 19 hands high. That makes Morgenstern somewhere between 24 and 25 hands high - 8' 0" to 8' 4" at the shoulder.

Assuming Corwin was using Earth as a reference, we can probably guess that Morgenstern is 8 to 9 feet high.

That is a ridiculous amount of horse.

So the next question would be how much Morgenstern weighs (well, it is for me...). I'm assuming that he's built like a light horse - a Thoroughbred, for instance - instead of a heavy horse like a Clydesdale. I'm making this assumption based on the fact that he's a high-speed horse, which heavy horses tend not to be; given that Julian uses him for hunting, he is also at least an adequate jumper, again something heavy horses tend to not engage in. Morgenstern is of sufficient height (as already established) that if Julian wants to engage in knightly pursuits, a heavy charger-style build is entirely unnecessary. Probably the best analogue for what I'm thinking of is a warmblooded horse like a Holstein or a Trakhener, something with the versatility of a light, hot-blooded horse (again, like a Thoroughbred) and the toughness and sturdy build of a heavy, cold-blooded horse (like the Shire or Clydesdale). (And I'm using terms like "light horse" and "hot-blooded" kind of loosely here - for an explanation, go here.)

Okay, at this point I have to go really esoteric here, so bear with me.

Normally, a horse's weight is estimated using a tape measure to measure the heartgirth (the circumference of the chest right behind the highest point of the shoulders and the elbow) and then comparing that measurement to a chart of weights. Obviously, we can't do that in Morgenstern's case. I only found one method of measurement that allowed one to take the height and guess the weight. It also requires a measurement of the horse's physical condition (described here). The final guess, expanding the chart from method one of this page into this chart, leads me to suggest that Morgenstern would weigh at least 1150 pounds. Shire horses average around 2200 pounds; since they're heavy horses, I hesitate to suggest that Morgenstern would be in quite the same weight class, but that might be an upper-end weight. So call him at least 1150 to 2200 pounds - around a ton of horse.

Okay, I'm finished being completely esoteric.

Looking at that again, I think my estimate for Morgenstern's weight is WAY conservative. I just found records on Man O'War that indicate he stood 16.2 hands and weighted 1125 pounds. So I should probably revise my statement to an estimate of 1500 to 2500 pounds, at least, and possibly more.

Now on to something else that I've been wondering about: the kind of speed Morgenstern can produce. Corwin states that the car is traveling at around 75 mph at the point Morgenstern catches up with them - and since the horse tosses his head, I can't believe that he's at full speed. If you watch horses at a gallop with riders on their backs (say, in a race, or a steeplechase, or barrel racing), they never toss their heads if they're running all-out. Random mentions that Julian was playing with them... so I doubt he was pushing for speed anyway; he had to know that the hairpin turns in the road were approaching, so there was no reason to contest the car in a straightaway. I'm going to come back to this in a moment...

Let me go a little father afield here and look at stride length.

I looked up some things first. According to this .pdf, horses tend to have an average stride length of 19.5 to 22.5 feet. Average horse height is around 15.1 to 15.2 hands (5' 1" to 5' 2"). To give myself a few more points, I looked at the Thoroughbred racehorses Man O'War (1917-1947; stride length is 28 feet; height as three-year-old was 16.2 hands) and Secretariat (1970-1989; stride length approx. 24 feet [inferred from this picture, where the red/white pole farthest to the right is Man O'War's 28-foot stride and Secretariat's stride is marked by the red/white pole farthest to the left]; height as two-year-old was 16.025 hands). Using those points and an exponential growth curve, I got this chart. Looking at it, it appears to suggest that a horse of 24 to 25 hands should have a stride of 64 to 68 feet. I'm not sure the exponential curve is the one I want, but 68 feet seems a lot more likely than the 72 to 78 feet suggested by a linear forecast. But, just for the sake of arguement, let's take the average of the two ranges, and call Morgenstern's stride 71 feet.

According to this .pdf, horses tend to have a stride rate of 2.25 strides/second at a gallop; looking at the race records for Secretariat and Man O'War, I calculated a stride rate of 2.31 and 1.94 strides/second, respectively. Just at a guess, using those three numbers, here's what Morgenstern's values would be:

Average (2.25 str/sec): Feet covered in 1 second: 158.33 ft. Feet covered in 1 minute: 9499.8 ft. Feet covered in 1 hour: 569988 ft (107.95 miles) Max speed: approx. 108 miles/hour

Secretariat (2.31 str/sec): Feet covered in 1 second: 164.01 ft. Feet covered in 1 minute: 9840.6 ft. Feet covered in 1 hour: 590436 ft (111.83 miles) Max speed: approx. 112 miles/hour

Man O'War (1.94 str/sec): Feet covered in 1 second: 137.74 ft. Feet covered in 1 minute: 8264.4 ft. Feet covered in 1 hour: 495864 ft (93.91 miles) Max speed: approx. 94 miles/hour

If you assume a stride length of 64 feet, you still get the following values: 98 mph (average), 101 mph (Secretariat), and 85 mph (Man O'War). A stride length of 78 feet yields values of 120 mph (avg), 123 mph (Secretariat), and 103 mph (Man O'War). So I think it's safe to say (by these calculations) that no, Morgenstern was not running at full speed when Julian chased the Mercedes through Arden, and that yes, 75 mph is well within his range of speed.

"His legs were a blur," Corwin says - yeah, I'd say so.

Okay, I'm finished now.
posted by sandrayln at 5:42:00 PM ( )

 
*twitch* There is just something wrong about going for an $11.90 oil change and spending $142.66 for an oil change, air filter change, gas filter change, and fuel injection system cleaning instead.
posted by sandrayln at 2:30:00 PM ( )

 

WISH 56: Friends and Associates

Do your characters have friends and associates who play a regular role in the game? What about henchmen and hirelings in the old D&D sense or Champions-style DNPCs? How does your group handle playing them? What sorts of things are they used for in the game? Is their influence good, bad, or indifferent?

Well, once again dipping into the rather shallow pool of my experience...

In our Changeling game, my Pooka's one real non-major-NPC friend has been George, the old gentleman who runs the art store she lives (and occasionally works) in. I can't really call his role "regular", because the only thing regular about Faline's habits is that she eats around mealtimes. But when she actually remembers that she works there, she tries to visit. And after one of the other PCs enchanted George without her permission, she started a two-day-long revenge campaign against that PC.

Then there's Groth, our bodyguard. Yeah, okay, we kind of needed one. He's become a major NPC at this point, for various reasons, but my character still takes time out to harrass him. She's taken to eating from his plate while he's trying to eat, sleeping on top of him in animal form (and started a few rumors in the process... which aren't true....)... oh, there's a whole list. None of what she does to pester him has anything to do with the plot - she's just adopted him and decided (for some obscure reason) that he needs cheering up.

Oriana has a whole group of friends she hangs out with, but one in particular has played a larger role in her life recently: Boris. Poor guy; I really feel kind of bad for him. First he gets stuck inside a Black Road manifestation with his younger brother. Then he gets mostly rescued by this girl he's been playing hockey with for a while (Oriana)... who then falls three and a half stories while he watches. And then the place blows up while she's still inside - and then she shows up a few days later, perfectly fine, and makes some sort of strange explanation. Then she keeps pestering him to find out why he's weirded out; when he finally tells her, she tries to explain and finally gets frusterated and drags him off through Shadow. Then he gets injured in a game the next day and finds out when he wakes up that Oriana is suspected of attempted murder... and when she shows up to check on him, she's freaked out. When he asks, she explains that this guy they've been playing against for years turned out to be a shapeshifter... I mean, jeez. Poor guy. I think he still doesn't have a job - the Black Road manifestation was the factory where he was working, and it's rubble at this point. At the rate it's going, Oriana is seriously thinking about dragging him with her when she leaves her Shadow, mostly to make sure no one kills him... or uses him as a hostage against her.

One of the more priceless moments so far with Oriana has been walking into the local diner, after destroying the Black Road manifestation and being unconscious for several days, and being mobbed by six or seven of her buddies - who all thought she was dead. It was this huge charge to her mental state to have the place go from almost silent to full of the yelling of her friends - and to know that they missed her that much. Then she had dinner with them; by the time she headed home again, she was more than ready to call Caine and (she thought) 'fess up to what had happened.

I guess that's the kind of thing I like to see friends provide in a game - an opportunity to deal with someone who isn't involved in the complicated (and usually dangerous) crap that the PC is involved with. A moment of recharge, if you will. A chance to relax.

Associates, henchmen, and hirelings aren't things I usually carry around. Associates - which I take to mean allies and people a character knows but isn't necessarily friends with - aren't something my characters tend to seek out unless they have information or we're going through a typical day in-game or something. Henchmen - well, my characters tend to either do things themselves or convince other PCs to do it for them... Pretty much ditto for the hirelings.

*chuckles* Only one of my players in L&F tends to use any of the above (at least if we're talking non-Amberite NPCs). That's Chetwin; he's got his own Shadow full of associates/henchmen/hirelings (they're one of the above...) - Averick, land of the medium-sized red fuzzy people. They've been used and abused in so many varied ways that I can't even begin to list them... I mean, there's the army of Averickians convinced they're in VR every time they fight... and the 25,000 of them that Chet drug off to Chaos at one point... one of them was mentally "broken" by a trip through Shadow... And that's just barely touching the tip of things. *shakes head* They're sort of a combination of the guys he sends to do dirty work and the guys he does experiments on...

Hmm... Right. Stopping now... I'm not sure if I communicated any sort of point, or even answered the question... so it's time to stop.
posted by sandrayln at 2:48:00 PM ( )

 
Yikes.

Right after the Fourth of July, after four days of no game emails, I emailed the GM of D&SN and said, essentially, "Hey, what's going on? Is it real life, something else, or the need to put a brake on our group before we get a week ahead of the others?" That's a paraphrase, but I remember that last clause is pretty much spot-on. I meant in-game time, but I didn't specify...

Today we get this (paraphrased) message from the GM: "Hey, talk amongst yourselves, I need a few days to get the other group where I want them. Shouldn't be more than a working week - five days or so - I think."

Of course, I'm fully aware that this is just a coincidence. But still...
posted by sandrayln at 5:41:00 PM ( )

 
Ohyeah - and warm-fuzzy for the day: The GM for Dark and Stormy Night said my picture of Sophia was "almost how [she] pictured her."

I have to admit that I'm a self-confessed perfectionist when it comes to my artwork... and I'm not convinced that picture was perfect... but damn, it's nice to have someone other than my boyfriend and a friend who just says crap because she thinks it'll make you feel good say something nice about my art.

Yup. Warm-and-fuzzy feeling.
posted by sandrayln at 7:19:00 PM ( )

 
Just finished a new section on Oriana's page - a list of people she knows in Shadow.

Again, it's Angelfire, expect pop-ups.

Y'know... when I start actually having money, I think one of the first things I'm going to do is pay for a domain or something. I know my browser of choice (Mozilla) kills pop-ups... but I have to wince every time I think about the attack that greets visitors to my sites. It's just... not right. (And just to keep myself humble, I periodically look at my pages in Netscape or IE... so that I never forget the pain...)
posted by sandrayln at 7:15:00 PM ( )

 
I spent some time doing mild tweaks to my template the other day - ideally, unnoticeable tweaks, since most of what I did was convert all the fixed-pixel font sizing to relative sizing.

However, in the process of doing so, I've added links to pages for my characters. The following holds true for now: Faline and Sophia have a picture, a background, and not much else; Oriana's page is the best-filled-out but lacks information and pictures of the lady in question still. I'm working on it...
posted by sandrayln at 12:41:00 AM ( )

 

WISH 55: What's In A Name?

How do you choose character names? What makes a good or bad name for a character? What are three examples of really good (or really bad) character names, and why are they so good or bad?

Umm... With a book of 20,001 baby names at 2 AM? *grins* I only wish I was joking - the last couple of characters gained names like that. I tend to just flip randomly through the section on the appropriate gender, read the facing pages wherever I stop, and write down the most interesting choice. Then I do it again. And again. I usually end up with a list of 10-30 choices from that; by then I either have a name or two I particularly like, or I start crossing off the really bad ones until I get a smaller list (or find that none of them appeal and start all over again...). Once I have one or two names, I'll usually ask someone's opinion on which they like better - but that tends to be a formality, because I always know which I prefer by then.

I do take into account meanings on most of the names, but it's not a huge factor. I won't turn down a name I like just because it means something like "donkey's breath" (I hope there isn't a name out there that means that...). However, I have to admit that I'm also not above stealing names from novels and short stories - as long as it's something I can pronounce. (Why no, I don't like Elvish names, why do you ask?) I also sometimes use websites and randomly-generated lists to find more choices.

I have no idea how I decide what the good and bad names are; some names just don't fit. I can't imagine, for instance, Oriana being named Lorelai, Rebecca, or whatever other options there are out there. (If I could find my list, I could say what the actual other options for her name were, but I suspect it may have made it into the trash already.)

As for good or bad names... Hm.

I'm still pleased with Oriana's name; her full name is Oriana Falk. For whatever reason, a first name meaning "golden" or "dawn" and a last name (according to what I just looked up) with a meaning that relates to falconry just fits a young, blonde, hockey-playing Amberite. The last also conveyed a bit of the idea that her mother was a ridiculously wealthy "entrepreneur" (a smuggler, actually, but I hadn't specified at the time...) and sponsor of the fine arts.

Cecilia Angelina, the Redcap I made for a Changeling one-shot, is another one I liked. The first I dredged out of the baby name book in a list and couldn't shake. And, of course, there's the amusement value of having a short, violent woman apparently named after the Simon and Garfunkel song "Cecilia" ("Cecilia, you’re breaking my heart,/You’re shaking my confidence daily./Oh Cecilia, I’m down on my knees,/I’m begging you please to come home." *snicker*). The last name was from my ex-boyfriend, who actually had it as a middle name (the last name he suggested was so awful that I've blotted it from my mind...); from that, one of her quirks was that she would reserve the right to beat the crap out of anyone who called her "Angel".

A third one... ah. Josephine, who I haven't actually been able to play yet. She's another Changeling character, a Sidhe knight (of House Dougal) and computer programmer extraordinaire. She's Josephine to everyone but her friends, who call her Jo. On the one hand, long and kind of aristocratic (Napoleonic, even) - on the other, short and to the point. Just like her.
posted by sandrayln at 1:19:00 PM ( )

 
Okay, I promised myself I'd expand on the idea of the Hellhounds' bones being crystal, so here goes... (And please excuse any organizational strangeness - writing skills are good, organizational skills are as bad as a blind, hopped-up rabbit...)


The main reason I even started contemplating what Hellhound bones were like is because of certain circumstances in Lost and Found. A pair of dire wolves appeared in our very first session - and I realized later that I probably needed to account for their presence within the running distance of a 16-year-old Amberite from one of Julian's camps. I already knew that Julian's son Valerian was... erm... let's call it playing fast and loose with his father's rule in Arden (he was doing the Robin Hood schtick, only without the giving to the poor part - among other things). I also had planned for Valerian to have a pack of Hellhounds on loan from Julian.

Therein lay the seed - what if Valerian had crossbred Hellhounds and dire wolves? So I had him do it; these creatures have gained the undignified nickname of 'wolf-dogs', mostly because Valerian isn't around to tell anyone what he called them. And they're monsters - one of them managed to kill one of Gerard's daughters.

Later on, I came to a situation where I had to explain how a certain NPC (Digit) knew that the bones in this burned-out kennel in Arden belonged to these wolf-dogs and not to a Hellhound or a dire wolf. Well, it's easy to say they're not dire wolf bones if they're not the right size... but they could be a crossbreed with anything else.

That's when I considered the fact that Hellhounds could tear the bumper off of a Mercedes. That's a lot of shearing force to apply to bone; they really ought to have lost teeth (at the very least) on that job. So what if...

Okay, bear with me here, because I can't convince the internet to tell me what I want to know for this. I seem to remember that certain crystalline structures are very strong - and some of them (you know, like diamond) are very hard. Bone, while hard, also breaks, shears, cracks, and performs other interesting breakage tricks. Corwin would have mentioned if the Hellhounds had metal teeth... therefore they must at least look like bone...

So why can't they be crystal?

One of the peculiar properties of this particular crystal (and of the Hellhounds) is that while it looks like bone, it makes a distinct ting sound when you tap it (versus real bone, which just makes an uninteresting thock noise). This sound can be produced from any of the bones in the body, but the sound is particularly clear and distinct with a longer bone like a femur or a rib. (The sound from the teeth is rarely audible when a Hellhound hits a tooth on something due to the muffling influence of cheeks, lips and tongue.) All Hellhounds and all the bones in a Hellhound appear to produce the same tone when struck, so the likelihood of anyone creating a Hellhound-xylophone is pretty low.

The Hellhounds pass the bone structure on to their descendants.

Of course, the strength of the bone doesn't preclude injuries like gunshots or compression fractures - the strength comes in the resistance to shearing and clean breaks.

So, that was my rationale... as for the implementation...

[Digit]"Dead dog. Probably a wolf-dog. See?" Digit holds up a femur. "Looks like a funky dire wolf bone. But it's not." He taps the femur, which makes a noise like crystal. "See?"

[Dylana] "Quite odd."

[Digit] "Nah. The Hellhounds' bones sound like that."

posted by sandrayln at 11:26:00 PM ( )

 
I'm playing with the Lost and Found site today. I decided I didn't like the new-background-on-each-page routine anymore, so I'm putting the parchment background on all the main pages - whether I do so on the non-main pages has yet to be determined... It depends on how irritated I am when I get to that point.

I also posted quotes from session 50.
posted by sandrayln at 6:25:00 PM ( )

 
Okay, I feel better now.

I got a little disconcerted this weekend - after a couple of posts Friday morning, I hadn't received anything related to D&SN until a few minutes ago.

Now, I know it was a holiday. By all means, I don't want to disrupt anyone's holiday - even if all I did on the 4th was what I do every other day (stare at the computer, turn on the tv for noise, read a while, rinse, repeat...) with a little jumping like a stepped-on cat when the fireworks started up (the local fireworks show is set off somewhere between a quarter and a half mile from my apartment). But to suddenly go from 15 to 25 emails a day (out of five people - *grins* I jumped on the fast thread...) to nothing was disconcerting in the extreme.

I knew we were all waiting on GM replies to stuff as of Friday morning, so finally about an hour ago I emailed the GM and did a "hey, what's up" email.

It was the holiday, other real life things, and the fact that she had 300 emails (!!) to sort through. So, paranoia appeased, I'm going to go back to trying to being relatively patient...
posted by sandrayln at 10:42:00 PM ( )

 
*laughing* Now I'm remembering one of the one-shots I was in.

It was Star Wars d20... IIRC, the setup was that we were on this backwater planet as part of the New Republic... and these peculiar aliens showed up (something from the later books, from what I gathered from the rest of the guys). These aliens were practically unbeatable, and they shot us with these bioorganic weapons. It was peculiar.

Anyway, our mission (successful, I might add) was to get to the next town and borrow their spaceship to go beg the New Republic for help. All fine and good. We do so; the flight takes ridiculous amounts of time and involves a firefight in space (which was cool, 'cause I took out three of the five enemy ships).

Right. We go beg for help, the New Republic finally agrees, and they takes us back to the planet. SOP for diplomatic maneuvers, I'm sure.

But here's the part that I'm still laughing about. We get back to the planet and there just isn't much left. It had holes in it.

So what does the New Republic decide to do?

Land on the planet.

*shakes head* We all died. The aliens killed us. (I think the GM wasn't planning to tell us this, but we pestered him.)

My official story is that the New Republic killed us. *grins*
posted by sandrayln at 10:10:00 PM ( )

 

WISH 54: Background Hooks

Do you like to have bits and pieces from your characters’ backgrounds appear in the game? Do you write hooks into your character background for the GM to use in the campaign for your character? Do you like it when the GM gives you a background hook into an adventure or scenario with a previously unknown hook, such as creating an old friend of your character’s who is somehow involved? What are some examples of cases where hooks have worked or not worked for you?

I do like it when one of my "hooks" crops up again in-game (kind of one of those 'hey, look, the GM likes my toys!' feelings)... but I have to confess that I don't always realize I've made hooks.

Here's the thing - my style of playing a character is very, very organic. I do things and come up with things because they're right, and I don't stop to analyze those things until someone grabs me and tells me what they've analyzed out of the situation (usually that's my boyfriend's job :) ). So, once I realize that yes, that was a hook, and yes, it got used, I tend to be pleased, but unless someone points the hooks out to me, I'll never know the difference if they don't show up.

Let me give an example, using Oriana... I wrote this little piece of a story at the same time I did the character quiz; mostly I was trying to get a feel for her voice, but I wanted to detail some of her hockey buddies, too. So I wrote this eight-page story that does so. I've already had one hook show up out of that; when it was pointed out to me that it was a hook, I recognised it as such. Beforehand, all I knew was that things had to work the way they did. (For those interested, the hook in question was that she'd recently acquired a new friend who excelled at hockey - basically he was able to keep up with the pace set by an Amberite playing down to the level of an extraordinary local... *grins* She has since learned that the guy was hired by someone in the Family to keep an eye on her...)

Aside from the one with the new friend, she's also been roped into helping search for the niece of one of her buddies; the fact that she didn't know what her mom and uncles did turned into the knowledge that they were smugglers who got killed by someone they pissed off - and it's still coming around because she let the police look at the family records after everyone else was killed and now the police think she's a smuggler, which seems to be a handy way for at least one enemy to try and trap her.

Hmm... honestly, when it comes down to it, Oriana's my best example of hooks. Not because I don't consciously know when I make them, but because I've only had a couple of characters that lasted more than a session or (at best) two. Of the ones that lasted - one is Oriana, one is Faline, one doesn't have memories at the moment, and the last was pretty much undetailed in terms of past (in large part because we were playing D&D). Faline has what can best be described as a sketchy past - she's not communicative about her past at all to her player, so it's hard to pull out hooks. Fortunately, she's got a lot of curiousity, so she's not hard to tie into things ("ooo... shiny...").

Anyway, in terms of the "old friend" method of making hooks - that's cool with me, so long as it doesn't strongly disrupt my character's worldview to insert that into his/her past. (You know, like giving someone an ex-boyfriend when they swore off guys at the age of 12, just to give an awful and thankfully unexperienced example.)

Y'know, I always end up rambling when I try to write a response to these things... *shrugs and grins*
posted by sandrayln at 7:06:00 PM ( )

 
Jeeeeeeez. Okay, Sophia (D&SN) is getting a little peeved now - and she's a patient person, so... *shakes head*

Here's the thing... Lily, one of the other PCs, has been insulting and sarcastic at this guy that's about to give us useful information. For the fourth time now. And she hared off earlier when we'd agreed that there is some safety in numbers - hared off alone into a grocery store in what is not the best part of town, dressed like a gangster's moll. *shakes head* Sophia is becoming convinced that Lily's got a death wish, and she's about to tell her (nicely) to shut the hell up.

Ah, wait... too late. The guy is answering our bombardment of questions now. *laughing* Ya know, I hope the other group wasn't doing anything interesting... 'cause we were leaving them behind before... and now we're on to our second stop before meeting up again... I'd hate for them to be way behind us still...

And he's not a vampire, apparently. Hmm... I wonder what "when the veil between worlds was ripped asunder" means? And he called Quanah (PC) a demon with "so much Chaos in it that I'm surprised that you people can't feel it." Heh. Well, I know what that means, I believe... but Sophia has no bloody clue.

Okay, rambling a little. Going back to waiting for the next post. :)
posted by sandrayln at 6:37:00 PM ( )