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Post by Agrarvyn on Apr 21, 2008 13:08:07 GMT -5
The flobotinum staff of macguffin I believe Indeed. I'm dreadful with that site
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Post by Balgin Stondraeg on Apr 21, 2008 21:56:49 GMT -5
2. An ability to break the rules of a setting in either a very distinctive fashion or in multiple fashions of visible significance. Hmm, not thinking of any of John Grant's characters here are we? Strangely enough one or two of his really spring to mind when I see that sentence (especialy the sequence where Alyss slags off Ishir and "hangs up the phone" on her which almost reads like a transcript of (John Grant's version of) a telephone conversation between him and Joe Dever). Okay, now I never really posted in the West Watch but, just to set things straight: Balgin Stondraeg: Balgin comes close to being an unashamed extension of my own persona. However, he does not break established setting rules and is not immune to "things and stuff". Often he is robbed, tricked and ends up in bad situations but rarely anything too nasty (although it has been known to happen). His personality differes from my own in some ways but he's a lot closer to me than any of the other characters I used in the TOTS games. I reserved him for the occassional main TOTS post but didn't want to get into writing his story too much as I'd prefer describing the exploits of different characters. That way I wouldn't fall into the trap of just writing myself all the time and becoming uncreative and bored. He was fun to use but often it was to demonstrate a point rather than to tell an extended tale. Sort of an example/diagram character. He could easily be described as being a bit like Del Boy (Only Fools and Horses) but more serious and rigid. He was tough and sturdy but not indistructible. I often felt that I might be a tad too protective of him, and so I didn't use him (to avoid bad writing). He's been fun to play in many games in the past (and never perished) but it's fun to do other stuff from time to time. Also Stondraeg isn't a very Magnamund sounding name so that's another reason why I didn't use him much. Adric Gemmel: Adric Gemmel was similar to Balgin in certain ways but had a much less outgoing personality. He shared a lot of Balgin's structured defensive thought patterns but had been altered to fit into the setting (rather than just importing a character from elsewhere). I also made efforts to make Adric different from Balgin in other ways (his formal speach patterns and the ways he reacted in certain situations, wanting to blow a cursed item up whereas Balgin would have burried it somewhere, trapped the burial site and gone off looking for a wizard to come and deal with it). Whilst Balgin often views "lanky topsiders" as children, and himself as the parent who has to look after them, Adric viewed foreigners more as ignorant folk who he didn't need to be responsible for so much as tollerate and coexist with (and be responsible for a bit in dangerous situations if it looked like they couldn't handle it). Adric also travelled light by Balgin's standards. Balgin always bore a lot of equipment "something for every occassion" regardless of how impractical it was (bizarrely piles of equipment & treasure have occassionaly saved his life by acting as cover). Adric kept more equipment than the rest of the group but it was fairly minimal by dwarven standards. Vellia Breshen: I hardly got to play her so she didn't get to display much of a personality. She was a pacifist who took her role as a herbalish druidess fairly seriously (but wasn't a serious person with tunnel vision). Unfortunately she was pretty traumatised and weakeneds when the others freed her from captivity but, had the game carried on, she would have began showing a playful sense of humour (nothing drastic) and various other personality traits (like enjoying weather, not any partricular kind of weather but all weather). I hardly got a chance to play her really as the rest of the group struck down a major villain and ended the campaign about two thirds of the way through. It would've been nice to play her for a bit longer so she could become more of an established character. Wild Foal: That game pretty much stopped before it started. She would've made for an interesting kai initiate (some elements of her personality were recycled for Vellia Breshen since the game Wild Foal was in had blatantly ground to a halt a long time ago). Wild Foal was actualy a "reformed shopaholic". As a child she'd been reckless with money, running up a series of very large debts (claiming her parents or friends would pay for it, basicaly she had no concept of the value of money and loved aquiring personal possessions, not owning them, but the act of aquisition itself had brought her joy). Eventualy her parents sold her off to the kai monastery to cover her debts (she was in her mid teens by this point and all the younger novices intimidated and mocked her). She had trouble keeping the vow of poverty (oath of fire) and sometimes had nightmares of going shopping and then nasty people's hands snatching her treasures away from her. She was not exessively weak willed but any encounters with shops, trading or money involved troubled her. I remember how she stood outside a shop gazing longingly, and waiting for her companions to emerge forth, not daring to enter in. Vellia completely lacked this trait. It was supposed to be something Wild Foal would play out over a series of adventures but as I said, that campaign pretty much doed a death before it could even get started . I had various other character ideas but never got round to using them.
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Post by zipp on Apr 21, 2008 22:57:39 GMT -5
Oo! Now we're covering our RPG characters as well?
Valestar: The crazy Dessi Mage from KL's long lasting game. Though he ultimately died in that game, Valestar will always have a place in my heart, and I've tried to bring him (an ancestor I suppose) into the WW (I believe Al encountered him in Kalte).
Because I joined KL's game late, I missed out on a lot of the main story. So, to counter this and have something to play against, I tried to create a large back story for Valestar. He was a character tortured by guilt for destroying the love of two of his fellow classmates, and also for having a near incestuous relationship with his sister (who would've made her way into the game had it lasted any longer).
Midake: I seem to be really intent on playing a Shadakine buccaneer. They just seem to fit my rougeish style of gameplay. They also have more opportunities to create a backstory then I think the other characters do. I mean, most of the classes belong to some kind of organization that scouted them out at an early age (Kai Lord, Knight, Brotherhood, etc.) and furthermore doesn't allow them to freely adventure. I'll admit they aren't the strongest class, with a few of their abilities being limited to the sea, but I enjoy playing them.
Midake was my first attempt at a buccaneer, and I wanted her to be a lesbian. Maybe to fulfill some desire of my own, I must admit, but also I'd been reading something at the time which influenced me towards that... I can't remember what it was now. No, it wasn't porn.
She had a pretty solid backstory, I felt, but what I really liked was her avatar. I really really liked her avatar.
Josiah Sealorde: Still miss this guy. By far my favourite of the characters I played on the RPG. I really want Sara's game to come back so I can keep playing him. He was a complicated rogue. And, hell, we ended just after he'd sent the two women of the party to be the Zahkan's sex slaves.
C'mon, man! You're killing me, Sara! That was really a great game all around. All the characters were so dysfunctional and had complex relationships with each other. Goddamn... who can forget Solar Death? And Allain and Josiah had such a "father son" relationship.
Galindorf: I really liked Galindorf's character concept. A dwarf fanatic who worshipped old (possibly false) gods and who in almost every way acted against dwarven tradition and standings. That's why I was a little dissapointed when I lost XP for using dwarven language in front of outsiders. That was Galindorf's whole essence. He was a non-dwarf, an outcast, a pariah. Everything he did was against dwarven tradition and intuition.
Ultimately, though, I think Galindorf makes a better NPC than player character. He's more interested in peace and scholarly pursuits than adventuring and killing. Ironically, this gave him the perfect excuse to leave the game when I got too busy to continue on.
God, I hope I haven't forgotten anyone...
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Post by Beowuuf on Apr 22, 2008 0:23:39 GMT -5
I like your take Balgin, nothing wrong with having a character with your own personality, as long as they get altered by the world so some divergence, and healthy to decide not to use him much as someone with the same personality as you is boring to take that character though things! And yes, it's lethal if you are over-protective of your character.
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Post by Balgin Stondraeg on Apr 22, 2008 7:01:00 GMT -5
And yes, it's lethal if you are over-protective of your character. I think we might have slightly different takes on over protective . Balgin is a very defsneive protective character but I suspect that once in a blue moon I might be a little too careful ('though it's rarely an issue, it's just that he's been very lucky and good at assessing risks in the past). He's also got a relaxed/laid back sort of attitutde, he's not one of those fools who rush in (where angels fear to tread). That common sense/laziness has saved his life on more than one occassion. He doesn't do the whole rash undisciplined berserker thing (he could try but he's just too narrow minded). One character trait of my own that most of my characters share is that I think very quickly and can often come up with many multiple plans of action towards a certain goal and then narrow down and adjust them as time progresses. Sometimes I even think so quickly that I skip a few steps in a progression of thoughts and ideas (making a shortcut) and wonder how I got there at all. I would find it hard to play a slow thinking character. Sometimes some things are too alien. Now Adric and Vellia showed their thoughts and ideas in out of character comments during play. I never really got to display the workings of Vellia's mind much (the game didn't last that long). If I had played Balgin as a character in a TOTS game the inner workings of his mind would have been exposed, similar to Adric's but with noticable differences in outlook & attitutde. Adric was almost a sort of Balgin surrogate, but altered enough to be a different character.
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Post by fallingphoenix on Apr 23, 2008 10:45:03 GMT -5
Sarra: She's just an ordinary college girl trying to fit in, when she finds her cool necklace is PURE EVIL and is forced to go on a mission. Falling Phoenix: He's just an ordinary evil turned Kai trying to make his way in the world by cpmpleting an inverse-Lone Wolf quest for glory, when he discovered the cool necklace of PURE EVIL he needs is with some valley college girl - wackiness will no doubt ensure BWA HA HA HA HA!!!! That is one of the most humorous summaries of Falling Phoenix I've ever seen! In contemplation of the original concept of this thread, you've made me wonder, Beo. Falling Phoenix started in the WW as a Kai Grand Master due to a position granted outside of the WW, so I started out with serious power, which can be a dangerous thing for fanfic, if one is not careful. Then I proceeded to invade Sommerlund...wait, first FP went on a mission to the Darklands and got captured. An evil duplicate of him (a la Wolf's Bane) then proceeded to invade Sommerlund, specifically Toran, beat up some NPCs, then got into a fight with Dusk Fox and Ghost Bear in the Shadowgate room before getting thrown into the Shadow Gate. This worried some people, who were excited to see some good bad-guys, but their fears were unfounded since the real Falling Phoenix was still captured and got turned into a NAK by the Nadziranim. He then proceeded to take over Kaag and be in charge of the NAK order. Now he's on a quest for Supreme Huntmastery, which would put him (theoretically) on par with Lone Wolf at the end of Book 20. I'm not sure if that's Mary Sue-ish, but it does kind of give me ultimate power. That kind of worries me sometimes, although I have to admit that the invasion of Toran seemed pretty entertaining for everyone that got involved! FP, who knows that power doesn't corrupt...honest!
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Post by Balgin Stondraeg on Apr 23, 2008 10:50:29 GMT -5
What's a colledge girl? Seriously, in Magnamund, what's a colledge? The few students who could afford such a luxurious education would probably be the sons of wealthy nobles who kept their daughters for marriages of alliance.
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Post by Maerin on Apr 23, 2008 11:09:09 GMT -5
Well, strictly speaking I think you are both correct to be asking "what is a college" and also probably forcing a real-world perspective upon the setting that does not have much basis within the setting in implying that there might even be such a "luxurious education" institution present at all.
Though there ARE institutions and organizations that fill some of the roles filled by universities in our own world, those seem to be much more rare and regionally-limited in Magnamund. There is little evidence to suggest even a Varettian institution going by the name "Halls of Learning" (which is one of the closest named references to a university we see in the Lone Wolf books) is one with a particularly cosmopolitan (or even social class-specific) "student body". Now, there are a couple such "institutions of learning" that fit the overall, if not actually the literal, concept of a university. Sommerlund has a couple of them in the form of the Order of the Kai (which is more military school than university; but still has elements of both) and the Brotherhood of a Crystal Star (which straddles the line of distinction between a corporate entity and a university/private school). But those are relatively vague examples, at best; and the suitability of each as an example requires one to take a very literalistic approach to defining what an "institution of higher learning" might actually entail. In the end, I think Magnamund's collective approach to scholarship has more differences than similarities to that of many cultures in our own world (particular western/occidental cultures).
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Post by fallingphoenix on Apr 23, 2008 11:13:07 GMT -5
I'm not too worried about the semantics of Beo's summary, but you both bring up a good point which may be worth considering.
Although if Sarra starts saying "Whatever!" and "like" every other word, I may have to yarf...
FP, who, like, never talks like that.
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Post by Ghost Bear on Apr 23, 2008 13:13:14 GMT -5
Ghost Bear is perhaps a little bit Mary Sue-ish. He doesn't break world rules - in fact, for a near demi-god, he's positively normal. I think that might be a bit of a subconcious ego thing. It's how I'd like to think I'd behave if granted power/wealth. I didn't deliberately write GB as me though.
He has been angsty on occassion - his failure to 'save' Falling Phoenix being the reason. I did this both because he's a noble and forgiving character, and because I was getting a bit bored with the 'normalcy' of the character. Eventually I realised that this normalcy was perhaps what made him different, so I went back to it.
The whole overly powerful thing has been tricky, but tricky in a good way. I've really enjoyed trying to play down Ghost Bear's power realistically. I don't know whether I've done this out of an (again subconcious) desire to prove that it can be done, or whether it's just because it's fun.
So maybe Ghost Bear is a bit Mary Sue like, though you'll all have to tell me if anyone other than myself can see it.
-GB
PS: Excellent thread - I'd never even thought of this before.
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Post by Beowuuf on Apr 23, 2008 15:42:29 GMT -5
I see Ghost Bear as completely non mary sue, he fits the world beautifully, isn't a demi-god even with those powers, and your insistance on keeping your character grounded in the monastery generous for new players and grounding plots around
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Post by Agrarvyn on Apr 23, 2008 18:31:35 GMT -5
Ghost Bear is perhaps a little bit Mary Sue-ish. He doesn't break world rules - in fact, for a near demi-god, he's positively normal. Other than that is an amazing quote ( ), that was the fundamental problem with playing our post-level avatar in the WW.
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Post by Simey on Apr 24, 2008 17:10:11 GMT -5
I've always been well impressed by the way that Black Cat and Ghost Bear have continued to remain human, even though they possess super Kai powers. Neither of them have ever come across as anything like invulnerable, and they've both had their doubts and made their mistakes rather than simply striding forth and righting wrongs with a mere flick of their eyebrows.
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Post by Ghost Bear on Apr 24, 2008 17:20:14 GMT -5
I've always been well impressed by the way that Black Cat and Ghost Bear have continued to remain human, even though they possess super Kai powers. Neither of them have ever come across as anything like invulnerable, and they've both had their doubts and made their mistakes rather than simply striding forth and righting wrongs with a mere flick of their eyebrows. I guess this is perhaps the greatest evidence for GB's non Mary Sue-ness. If Ghost Bear had my eyebrows, then Naar would be dead... -GB - will stop now.
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Post by Agrarvyn on Apr 24, 2008 19:03:16 GMT -5
Well, when you're a 40th-level Kai Lord, you fall under Superman syndrome. There's barely anything that can hurt you and everything either has to be targeted at your few remaining weaknesses or you have to focus on the emotional issues all the time.
Having played a Superman-esque character before, it's actually very difficult.
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