The Blog of Roon

It’s my fault this week: Game WISH asks for character concepts for other people to play. The theme so far seems to be making people stretch themselves a bit, and I’ve no intention of deviating.

For once in her ever-lovin’ life, I want to see Li play it straight. So… I think I’d roll her up a bodyguard and counsellor to a smart and respectable diplomat. A big, silent woman, smarter than people think she is, who doesn’t draw attention to herself, but makes her presence felt in other ways—especially when her patron gets into trouble.

Iron Llama, who plays Nacreon in Passions of the Tide, has got a marvelous turn of invective—in fact, he’s incredibly articulate, period. Seeing him play a fast-talking double-dealer would just make my day. A cyberpunk setting would work well, I think, or perhaps something sort of Regency.

Now, from what I can see Ginger plays ladies—or women who think they’re ladies. I think she’s due for a plain old peasant. Middle-aged, I think, probably widowed; finds her vocation (possibly arms, but more likely magery or religion) late in life, and clings stubbornly to it despite well-bred sneers at her origins and her lack of education.

I would definitely play either the first or the third of these; the third, indeed, is not unlike a one-off character I did named Bellis. Fast-talking is beyond me, I fear, so I leave the talkative types to others. But I do enjoy seeing them played well, which is why I brought one up.

Sorry less blogging last couple days. Hands hurt.

In the meantime, the rest of Renate’s adventure is available for perusal.

The results of my Secret Vice are up also, but they’re unlinked because the GM is a gent who knows I grimace at having my Secret Vice exposed. You’ll just have to guess the URL, but it isn’t exactly difficult.

Update: Oops. The unlinked status was a momentary error, no more. My secret vice is now perusable by all. My sincere apologies to Alan, whom I inadvertently embarrassed.

Heh. For once I pegged it. The mysterious newcomer to the funeral of House Amyriand’s seer was indeed Prince Pirion, Tamasi’s husband-to-be. So she’ll get a good hard look at him on their way back from the burial grounds, undistracted by court flurries and running-the-household issues. And vice versa, naturally.

Good-looking enough chap, Pirion is. Quite the boy-toy, I must say. And polite as polite, something that does recommend itself to Tamasi.

As for Renate, she did indeed have it out with her brother, though he was a canny fellow and didn’t give her an excuse to really unleash her anger on him. So she turned it on herself instead. Long, rambling conversation, as the significant ones tend to be, and she left no happier than she went in… but you’ll see when the logs are posted.

The GM is going to post my fluff-piece as an epilogue to the prologue, so y’all get a firsthand look at my secret vice. (Seriously. Some people have porn collections. I write RPG fluff. Roughly equal societal merit, believe you me.) No use emailing me brickbats; I’m a fluff addict, and that’s all there is to it.

Passions of the Tide just picked up again after the GM’s recovery from illness. House Amyriand has made its way to the burial-grounds for the funeral of its murdered seer; some unknowns have just popped up out of nowhere and are coming toward them.

(I suspect I know who it is—I certainly know who it’d be if I were GM. Suffice to say that I believe both Tamasi’s and Nacreon’s suppositions entirely incorrect.)

Renate, after an agonizing series of visions, successfully bargained for the return of her family’s heirloom magic bow on Forfeit Isle. After she apologized abjectly to Godfrey for dragging him into the Sea of Possibility, they made their way to Gereval—where after all her trouble and sorrow, she found that her much-loved brother had gone so far as to reject their family name, not to mention blowing off her shock and disappointment with completely unwarranted cruelty.

(Oh, and she got a second heirloom returned to her by her brother’s commanding officer.)

She is not happy about this. She is not happy about a lot of things. In a session tonight, barring scheduling difficulty, she is going to confront him over lunch. I’ll let you know how it goes; I have a plan in mind for it.

I also finished and sent the GM a piece of fluff about Renate’s homecoming. (I do send fluff to GMs; most of them have been willing to accept it into canon.) Desperate to fill in for her brother’s absence and redeem (what she believes to be) her failures on her journey, Rennie overworks herself into a deadly heatstroke. The story is from the point-of-view of Renate’s sister Sabine, because I strongly believe that worthy female characters, in gaming as in writing, should have strong relationships with other women, and because I don’t think Sabine should get lost or (worse) become no more than a pawn in all the upcoming fuss over Renate and Emil.

(Renate’s mother Clara is bad enough—where she’s not a fluffhead she’s a complete nonentity—so I really did feel I needed to build up Sabine, who turns out to be wise and levelheaded far in advance of her fifteen years. In addition to telepathic.)

Besides, there’s an aspect of heroism here that interests me. So many heroes are so dreadfully ungrounded. They’re completely sui generis—no family to speak of, no home (or if they do have a home they’re never in it), no responsibilities or ties other than feudal, practically no history that doesn’t boil down to a list of unconnected exploits. They do what they do because it’s what they are; they have no context or history to explain it.

Renate is potentially different, in the tradition of, say, the Cid rather than Roland. (I have always liked the Cantar de mio Cid better than the Song of Roland. I think this is why. The Cid has a wife, daughters, friends, lands when he’s not been kicked off them, an ambiguous and shifting relationship to the throne, a cultural context that he understands and works within. By comparison, Roland is total cardboard.) I want to play with that difference.

I also have an evil and completely un-RPG-ish idea for how Renate is going to change her world. It’s so un-RPG-ish, in fact, that I can feel myself resisting it, which probably means it’s the right way to go. One word: Satyagraha.

And the Grand Ellipse is finally over; I thank Li and Alisa for a genuinely brilliant campaign.

The last London Times neglected to mention (for the very good reason that they did not contact Shirley for a comment) Shirley’s near-apoplectic outrage at being turned into a comic opera character. Margaret managed to talk him down, but she never could convince him to see it; he contracted a conveniently-timed excuse ailment on opening night.

Just as well. The world-renowned comic tenor they got to play him would have offended his sensibilities mightily… as would what the libretto did with his marriage proposal.

The brief later history of the Addams neglects to mention a few things. Within a year of their return from the Ellipse, Shirley Addam and Esperanza Garcia y Gutierrez co-authored a book of stories entitled Tales of the Taiga; Miss Garcia’s lush illustrations garnered especial acclaim. All proceeds from the book’s sale went to a society in Russia whose aim was buying up lands in Siberia for conservation.

Shirley’s overt functions as part of the Foreign Service were in no small part cover for investigative operations at the behest of various government agencies. (He was never a spy, detesting intelligence work; but show him an international crime ring, and he’s your man to break it.) It needled him occasionally that his covert status was too important to allow him the promotions that his overt accomplishments merited, but he had an understanding wife and work he believed in—he could not much repine.

Shirley and Margaret never had children, but on their visits to England they were invariably welcomed joyfully by their nieces and nephews.

Herbert Addison clashed again with Shirley and Margaret Addam, indeed he did; but that story has no place here…

Game WISH wants to know three games I might use to get people started roleplaying.

Well, depends on the people, and depends on the venue. (Yay hey, feeling wishy-washy today.) For a play-by-email, I would be strongly tempted not to use a system at all; the point is to get people coming up with characters they want to write about, and giving them situations to write about them in. I would probably outline the genre and setting and turn ’em loose (with Everway-style questions, if necessary) to write me descriptions.

Face-to-face gaming… For a new female gamer, I’d probably pick Trollbabe for its quick mechanics and unabashedly chainmail-bikiniless outlook. If the restrictive character creation (in Trollbabe, you are a trollbabe; you have no choice in the matter) doesn’t appeal, I’d go for Everway. Everway would also be my choice for a visually-oriented gamer, as the art (not to mention the possibilities for adding more art) is spectacular, and vital to the game.

Everway also has hooks for New Age types, of course, and I think it particularly suited to the novice gamer because of the non-crunchy but still very detailed and above all interesting process of character creation.

Some people do like crunch, though. I don’t typically play with them, but there you have it. For them, GURPS Lite would probably be my pick. But I’d rather turn them on to Warhammer; that way I can play with people who are more my speed.

Li has posted answers to unsolved mysteries vis-a-vis the Grand Ellipse. Enjoy!

I forgot one, by the way. Has Lady Hester managed to collect anything from Vroomfondel’s estate? Small point winning the largest court award ever if she doesn’t get to spend it!

The latest Dragonhunt logs are up.

Some not un-powerful stuff in there, though I admit to having gotten a little overhappy with the exclamation points once or twice. The final scene, with Emil and Renate all but spitting on each other, is particularly nasty. (My esprit d’escalier moment: If I’d been on the ball, Renate would have shot back at Emil’s comment about childhood ambitions with a demand to know how long he had harbored the ambition of killing his father and his sisters.)

The two competitors previous to Emil in the tryout scene are Elder Brothers from previous incarnations of the campaign, just so y’all get the in-joke. It appears that Elder Brothers take much of their personality from the Noble Child who is their next-younger sibling (that is, Emil from Renate, James from Morgan, and so on). The variety is intriguing; one genuinely can take a character template in widely variant directions.

In Emil’s audition, one can see reflected Renate’s native politeness, her ever-present awareness of her own youth and inexperience (Alan was very clever there, turning that to good account), and the modesty she is still learning—the kind of modesty that lets him hide his real prowess behind practice swords and a rustic style. She hasn’t gotten there yet; she’s stuck at what Godfrey drily calls “self-castigation.” But she will.

Renate is a change for me, I’ve realized. She’s the first character I fully intend to play as a hero. (I generally do sidekicks, anti-heros, flawed almost-heroes, ordinary folks, or people who resolutely refuse to take on the mantle of hero.) I’m not entirely sure what sort of hero she will turn out to be, and even now when she isn’t a hero yet I constantly have to fight my own tendency to diminish or break her. She will be a hero, though, whatever I have to do to make her one.

Ah, well… everybody ought to play a hero once, you know?

If a child can grow up in a night, Renate von Adler just did. (Logs aren’t up yet; I’ll post when they are.)

To get to the Lord of Faerie who bought her family’s bow, she had to travel what she eventually learned to be the Sea of Possibility. Alternate realities. Except starting out, she didn’t know they were alternates.

She saw her beloved, idolized older brother fail his entrance exam for the elite military unit he left home to join. Then she saw him broken, ruined, addicted to a drug called Glitter and member of a violent street gang. (Until he let her escape them, at which point he rather violently became an ex-member.)

Getting him through detox meant giving up the statue with which she meant to buy the Lord of Faerie’s favor. She did so willingly, loyal little soul that she is. Then she refused to leave him when the plot device scene-shifting sea-mists came for her. Mistake. Her manservant Godfrey had to come after her—through what hellish visions she doesn’t know—and explain enough to pull her out. She’ll be a long time forgiving herself for that one.

Her final vision was of her own home, invaded by authoritarian Andragar—with her brother leading their army. He demanded their surrender. She told him off right and proper, she did (though I will admit to one esprit d’escalier moment afterwards). I was proud of her. He returned her the statue right before he left. She now stands on Forfeit Isle, as ready as she can be to face its Lord.

Like a lot of teenagers, Renate has been bluff and bluster over a terribly self-conscious and uncertain heart. Bless her, though, she comes through in the clutch. It’ll be a while yet before she recognizes that—as far as she’s concerned, her entire journey so far has been a string of mistakes and failures. But there’s real steel under the gilt, and a real heart under the affectation. A fine young woman, Renate is now. Not a child any longer.