The Blog of Roon

This is the official Game WISH catchup post.

Game WISH 70 asks about challenging games. The greatest challenge to me in games is figuring out how best to fit my style to suit that of others. The number of games I’ve been kicked out of does tend to indicate that I have work to do in that arena. Still, there is hope even for the meanest and lowest of us, so I’ll keep trying.

WISH 71 asks if we buy into NPCs as presented, or expect them to be as devious and otherwise non-straightforward as PCs. Well, I do tend to play pretty straightforward PCs, so… no, come on, what do you think I am, stupid? Of course NPCs have their own agendas. What’s the point of them if they don’t? That isn’t to say an NPC’s personal agenda necessarily has to conflict with that of the PCs, of course—but NPCs aren’t henchlings and shouldn’t act as if they were.

The plain fact is that I do my best roleplaying when the other characters I’m playing with are strong. Cardboard (N)PCs turn me cardboard. I had far rather be part of a true ensemble cast than the nonstop center of attention. Which may seem odd given my propensity for overposting, but it’s true; I only overpost to games that intrigue me enough to pay attention, and that invariably means strong other characters. A good plot helps, but isn’t anywhere near enough.

Okay, now I get to answer my own question, about characters untimely cut off. I wish I had managed to finish Afletana’s story. She deserved a nice wedding to Elmo and a good life with lots of kids. (Afletana is perhaps the only character I’ve ever played who really would have wanted kids and been a fine mom.) We were really close to finishing the story when that group broke up. Too bad.

And I do miss proud, lonely, capable Tamasi. I’ll play others like her again, but she was in large part a creature of her environment. There won’t ever be a character exactly like her. I’m not sure what would have happened to her. It seems likely that the logic of her fate (as she saw it) would have gotten her killed.

I have other characters who deserve more of an outing than they got—Bellis and Aino spring to mind—but they don’t have incomplete stories the way Afletana and Tamasi do.

I’m still two WISHes behind, but this feels like enough for now.

It suddenly occurs to me that I haven’t talked about my games in a while. Can’t have that. I’ll lose all my geek cred.

Ruth Green in Galactic Renaissance rescued an infant noble from kidnapping, has been tapped as the infant’s mother’s new bodyguard, and has gotten her family’s permission to accept the role, which was harder than it might at first sound. Ruth is (by design) profoundly plebeian; she should shake up the palace quite nicely. And, of course, she can rebuild it when she’s done. She’s handy that way.

We just finished the Dragonhunt prologue for Renate’s new brother-in-arms Aryk Lazarus. I pitched in to play Sabra Congreve, a brusque but conscientious young archer, and much fun was had by all—especially over my string of unbelievably hideously bad die rolls in the climactic fight. (Like, five twos in a row on a d20. The Fates were just not my friends.) The third prologue, for the ever-so-enigmatic Rien, is scheduled to begin shortly.

Ex-mermaid Delphine of Enclaves is learning to walk, getting into and out of fights with her lover, and establishing quite clearly that while she will sacrifice many things for those she cares for, her pride is not one of them. In the associated Green Room (for out-of-setting character chat), Delphine has just assisted with a lovely prank involving hanging a man’s lower garments from the stage lights—you wouldn’t believe it of me, would you?

I have also been invited to play in Murder at Christmas, a short murder-mystery game played during winter holidays. I shall be playing Mary St. Pierre MacKenzie-Brown, new wife of the new laird of Verrisay, Scotland. Expect mayhem, my best Wodehouse pastiche (guess which character! go on, guess! I’ll give you a hint: she’s from the Jeeves-and-Wooster cycle), and of course murder.