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

 

WISH 70: Games That Challenge You

Have you ever played in a game that has challenged you in some way? What was the challenge? Do you think you lived up to it? How did it affect other games you play/have played?

Every time I play, and every time I GM.

As a player, I still feel like a complete and total novice, so new situations (and new characters I play) tend to be challenging in a technical sense. Faline (and my ex-roommate/fellow player) taught me where the line has to be drawn between character immersion and character identification - my ex-roommate still sometimes calls me "Pooka," because it's so easy for me to slip into Faline's mindset that I did it as a joke too many times and she came to identify me (at least in part) as my character. Oriana teaches me to trust my character and to ignore the little voice in the back of my head that asks, "You do know that's a bad idea, right?" That seems to happen every time I play her - whether it's rushing into a Black Road manifestation to rescue a couple of friends or dragging a friend off through Shadow when he won't believe the story she's trying to give him. Sophia shows me how capable I am at keeping OOC knowledge where it belongs, but the real challenge with her is the language of her posts - sometimes a post just happens, but about 60% of the time, I know either what she's going to say or what she's going to do and I have to spend half an hour hammering out the language for the action or speech that needs to go with it. And some days I spend two hours staring at one word that isn't right.

As for GMing - I mean, hell, I started running Lost and Found after having played two Vampire one-shots and about eight or nine sessions of our Changeling game. That first session is still one of the hardest things I've ever done - but I survived it, and the game is still plodding along, albeit at a somewhat erratic pace. The longest-running of the characters have all taught me something. Arwen is a reminder that I need to learn how to best to deal with a character and player who cannot and will not fit the game. I'm still working on how to contain the hurricane that is Chetwin, but I'm getting better at finding and tapping into his weaknesses to keep him on certain paths. (As a side note - some day I want to see someone else try and GM over Chetwin, just to see how it goes. Okay, and to see if they get as many "what the hell are you doing" moments as I do...) Dylana is forcing me to work to keep her involved in any sort of plot besides, "I want Dworkin to teach me chess." Even the NPCs are challenges - I feel like the only Elder I've got down solidly is Random, although Bleys came off well the other night, and members of the younger generation who haven't shown up much tend to have different personalities than their original concepts. I'm constantly spotting things that I've let become standard practice that I have no intention of ever using again. And so on and so forth - I think you get the idea on the GM front.

I'd like to think I've lived up to most, if not all, of the challenges (well, okay, maybe not the Arwen one). The things I do and learn now are the early building blocks for whatever gaming I do in the future - I'd like to hope that they won't crumble underneath me.
posted by sandrayln at 2:58:00 PM ( )

 
I'm working on an Oriana story right now; this is a part that I'm particularly proud of, and even if I change everything else in the story, I plan to leave this as it stands.

"I left the next morning, looking for something new. No more ocean this time, no boats especially – I’d had my fill of trying not to be a disgrace to my sea-faring parents, at least for a little while. No more water, either; it was early fall in Isbrann, and memories of the summer downpours – and summer mud – were fresh in my mind. So I wanted something dry, and inland, and snowless. Maybe something with mountains? It’d been a while since I’d challenged a cliff-face, but that wouldn’t blow enough steam. Someplace where I could fight, perhaps.

I saddled up Offsides and rode down to the summer beach-line, too lazy to pack and not sure yet what to pack for, and rode east, towards the rising sun.

Rising sun. Huh. Like my name. I kind of liked that one. Maybe I’d use it as an alias some time.

Anyway.

We followed the summer shore, Offsides and I, and I was changing things as we rode. The snow melting away to the sunrise, thinning and flattening and speeding off like a stop-gap slow-time series of snapshots I saw one time... Great cracks rippling across the ocean and revealing a vision of a watery hell before the ice floes sped towards the southern horizon, leaving deep blue waters behind... I turn us inland, away from the sea ever-present, looking for a warmer climate and an apexed sun... My attention straying to warmth lets the sea creep back in to my left – I chase it away with a hot south wind and a gallop perpendicular to the approaching shore... There are mountains ahead of us, the silver-gray stone of Isbrann still shining above the timber line, but I melt the snow caps as we approach... I rein Offsides to a trot and add some trees before we reach foothills, just for variation from the slowly rolling coastal plains...

We enter the hills and pace beside a brook bubbling over steel-gray rocks that turn first to copper and then to brown... Offsides snorts at an unwary squirrel that goes skittering back up a tree, quicksilver-swift and twice as loud... He dances a step, and I squeeze him into a canter until the bushy-tailed rodent is but a memory of a sound... I touch Shadow again and pull us into a mixed forest that loses the sweet-smelling pines of home the farther we move beneath the darkening sky... A strange bird sings out once, twice, three times, heralding first the sunset and then the sunrise as I push us away from familiar lands... Hills rise around us, brown and green with the deciduous trees that whisper in that hot southern wind that still dances in our hair... The land rises steadily, and I rein Offsides in again, slowing him, slowing him... We pass huge stones now and again, rust-veined brown boulders lurking in the forest... The spring that feeds the brook is left in our wake as we plunge on through the green... We follow a path ill-traveled that broadens and improves as we begin to tread a rising slope... That hot south wind turns dry and gentles, bringing the green scent of the forest behind and nothing of the salty tang I flee... At the crest of a mountain pass, I let the power go.

A valley was spread before me, patches of dark green and light sprawled across the landscape. A city lay directly on my path, and I caught hints of others on the horizon. And if I’d done things right, there would be a campsite and appropriate clothing and cash just down the slope.

I’d done it right.

I changed quickly and heaved the saddlebags up behind my saddle. There were farms to pass and roads to travel until I found something to do, and that restless, cooped-up crazy feeling was pushing me along. I pushed Offsides into a careless canter down the mountainside."

If only I could get that kind of quality every time I write...
posted by sandrayln at 4:51:00 PM ( )

 
This is from last night's session - reworked into prose instead of IM-speak:

Bleys chuckled. "'Julian's fatally flawed daughter...' So that's what you were ranting about."

Chetwin replied, "Yeah... she was just doomed. She couldn't stay put, she couldn't follow a direct order literally to save her life.... and she wanted to go from zero to full-Amberite in a fortnight. She burned out like a magnesium flare with antimatter poured liberally over it."

Bleys winced. "Where is she now? Dead, undead, on fire?"

"All of the above, any of the above," Chet answered. "We think she got herself captured by [House] Niall.... or fell into the abyss... or got eaten by a Logrus ghost..... or something.

"We couldn't watch her every second.... and every second we couldn't watch her, she'd go off somewhere and do something unbelievably stupid."

Bleys chuckled. "And apparently it caught up with her before she grew out of it like Julian did." He sipped his coffee. "Well, Julian didn't run off to do stupid things. Generally. We did have to retrieve him from the bowels of Arden a few times.

"Make that a few dozen times.

"A month."

Chet cackles.

(Bleys)"He got stuck at the bottom of a ravine one time. Dad sent Brand and I out to find him.

"We took a week off in Shadow after we found him. Left him there to teach him a lesson.

"Dad wasn't too happy when Julian crawled home. But Brand and I had a great time." He chuckled.

Chet laughed again. "Wow...I never knew that. I'll never really look at him the same way again. Not that I look at him much, really..."

Bleys laughed too. "Yeah, Julian has tried pretty hard to forget the years he spent learning the ways of Arden. Too bad he's got older brothers." (The last came complete with a smirk.)

Ahh... spontaneous reminiscences. Gotta love 'em. *grin*
posted by sandrayln at 4:24:00 PM ( )

 
On the amber_diceless_rpg Yahoo! group, a few recent (10/19) topics of discussion were:
a) the idea of a Fire Pattern and where it'd be hiding,
b) campaigns containing "nice" (i.e., not actively scheming against each other) Elders,
c) and keeping a group of people with varying levels of knowledge about Amber on a level playing field.

Well, I don't have much to say about C. We made the one person in our group who hadn't read the books read them. (*grins* And then made it a sport of guessing where she was and what had just happened by the noises she made. But I digress.)

B - well, I think that generally any campaign run straight off the tail of the Merlin books will mean cordial Elders, if not necessarily nice ones. By "straight off the tail...", I mean not including anything that might set the children of Oberon back on the warpath towards each other.

As for the idea of a Fire Pattern... *sigh* Why, I have to ask, is it necessary to follow the four-elemental theory in Amber? After all, Amber is not Earth - why would it have a four-based theory of the elements?

Why not simply Sky, Sea, and Stone? After all, isn't that the way the Patterns are set up? The Sky would hold mastery of the actual flames, but Stone would rule over the ashes. Sky would rule the air and the wind, but Sea could exert control over the moisture-saturated air in storms and directly above the oceans. Stone would be all the soils and plants and animals on land, Sky the air and wind and flying creatures and airy spirits (like ghosts), and Sea the watery plants and animals and the water-borne sediments.

(Heh. Now there's a piece of irony. After four and a half years and 50-some-odd sessions of running Lost and Found, and completely lacking the player who wanted to mess with sorcery, I come up with a scheme I like. *snort* And yes, I was ill-prepared in that department; I just made a few minute adjustments to the time needed for spells in the ADRPG. And that was a nasty and unintentional pun...)

[Edit]
And I've just realized that I know why those three flow together so well - skyseastone.net. *grin* I guess that's not a commercially produced thank-you card - "Thank you for choosing that URL, you've made my brain work" - but the sentiment is there.
posted by sandrayln at 5:14:00 PM ( )

 

WISH 69: Non-RPG Games for Gamers

Recommend three non-RPG games for RPGers. Why do you recommend these three?

You mean I have to only pick three? *laugh* Okay, okay, fine... but I'm going to pick some peculiar ones.

First up is one that I'm not even sure I still own. It's a Star Trek board game, with an interactive video, called something like "A Klingon Challenge." There's a pretty accurate description here. I have to admit that most of the amusement of the game comes from the insane communicator pin slapping and the video itself - but hey, whatever works, right?

Then there's my other oddball choice - Pass the Pigs; I don't know if it's still sold, but it's a Milton Bradley game, with a little bit in kin with Yahtzee and craps, but not entirely like either one. It is, however, infinitely amusing to sit around using small plastic pigs as dice for some reason. (There's an online version here.)

The last one has to be Uno. It's just fun.

And honorable mentions go to Risk and poker for making my pre-college schooldays a little more interesting, and to mancala played while sitting on the dorm room floor. Oh, and Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, which is fun just because of what it is.
posted by sandrayln at 8:30:00 PM ( )

 
The problem with having a hockey-obsessed Amberite in a game that's on hiatus is that hockey season comes around and you have to beat said Amberite back into dormancy. With a large stick. Well, okay, so it's less of a stick and more of a story. But still. *wry grin*
posted by sandrayln at 7:25:00 PM ( )

 
And apparently I have a habit of creating characters who rush into things that are potentially bad for their health, usually in an underarmed state...

Faline found out the hard way that throwing Lucky Charms at Redcaps is a bad idea. She also decided that the best way to cope with a pissy Troll was to take mushy, rotten apple cores from her pockets and smear it down said Troll's front.

Oriana has passed out twice after destroying something - the first after blowing up a Black Road manifestation by wielding the Pattern at it, and the second from blood loss after finally killing this huge, fast dog that wanted to eat her. She shows moments of good sense - like not messing with a sorceress who wasn't doing harm at the time - but mostly she has an impulsive streak a mile and a half wide.

And now Sophia is doing it. She just decided that Hanna (another PC) is obviously having problems with whatever she's doing (using a Trump of Jeremy's office...), and that putting a hand on her arm to get her attention and telling her to stop is a good idea. Sophia has no clue what she might or might not be getting into, but I have this nasty feeling she's going to end up in the Trump contact in a minute... and given that Hanna is concentrating really hard and sweating and shivering, it doesn't sound like a pleasant experience.

Well, at least I know I don't have problems keeping IC and OOC separate...

[Edit]
Yep, I was right. Right into the Trump contact - but fortunately with no ill effects. Although I'm not sure what it means when her addition to the contact caused the view to shift from a place it wasn't supposed to be to the place it should have been. If that makes sense...
posted by sandrayln at 5:55:00 PM ( )

 
Okay, latest two sessions of Lost and Found have quotes posted - sessions 55 and 56.

Last night's session (56) was extremely entertaining. On the one hand, I had Chetwin trying to weasel his way into a thieves' guild in Amber, followed closely by finding out that Bleys was not, in fact, actually dead; on the other, I had Dylana making a Trump of Chetwin's computer and using it because she wanted to have a conversation with the machine (which is was slowly gaining sentience), which turned into an Asimov-esque (or so I'm told - my Asimov is both lacking and extremely rusty) conversation as the computer started learning verbal communication.

Never a dull moment.
posted by sandrayln at 9:14:00 PM ( )

 
Cardinal Directions - a meme from Jvstin

What is the furthest North you have ever been?
Chantilly, France; it's about 25 miles north-northeast of the center of Paris.

The furthest South?
Hmm. Somewhere around the international waters line south of the island of Oahu, on a whale-watching day trip. I know the boat went a bit south of Diamond Head, and I think that's the southernmost point of the island.

The furthest West?
West coast of the island of Oahu - my family and I drove around the island one afternoon during our stay.

The furthest East?
Not entirely sure; it's either Chantilly or the eastern edge of Paris. I just can't recall whether we visited anything on that side of the city. [edit]: I've been told that we circled Paris, both on the Metro and in the taxi on the way from the airport to the hotel - neither of which I remember. So in theory I've been on the east side of Paris...

The highest elevation?
Pike's Peak in Colorado - 14,110 feet.
posted by sandrayln at 11:55:00 PM ( )