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Elsewhere: Idle Chatter (OOC)

We've got some good players on board with characters nearing final approval. Hopefully we'll start the actual RP this weekend. Hopefully we'll get some more players soon too. I'm looking at you guys that commented on the poll:









Now in interests of promoting good communication, I'd like us to do some idle chatter in the mean time. I'll get ya'll started off with a topic:

I like to custom tailor RPs to my players so I want your opinion on how we should start this thing: All in one large group with all characters in the same place, in smaller groups/pairs scattered about the world, or with each character on their own?

I also like to know my players so give us a brief introduction to You with your answer. Don't feel obligated to tell personal information but just a little bio to promote communication.



Now I might as well be nice and go first. Yours does not need to be nearly as long.

I don't really have an opinion on how we start, which is why I'm asking, but y'all please come up with one for yourselves.

As for the intro, I go by a few different names but Umbraja's one that's been with me a while. Friends call me Mel. I've been doing RP in various forms since 1995, making me older than I like to admit. My roots are in tabletop (D&D, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, White Wolf) but I do mostly online freeform these days. I don't have a favorite genre (hence the eclectic nature of Aelswyr) but tend to prefer plot and character driven games over grinding action, though sometimes it is nice to just kick butt. My GM style is very hands on (as you've probably noticed) and I've a tendency to treat every RP a bit like a writer's workshop, particularly the character creation. Don't be offended if you get PMs asking to clarify or clean up a post once the RP begins and don't be surprised if I ask y'all for critique back every now and then. This sort of back and forth helps everyone and makes the games not only better written but more fun by tailoring them to the players involved.

Yes, y'all. English is the only major language without a plural second person pronoun and that is a terrible shame. I use y'all because I am from the south.

I'm a graphic artist/web designer by trade but have an educational background (certified to teach high school English and history) and am working toward an MFA in creative writing to teach at the college level.

I love animals and plants, most living things really so long as they aren't soccer moms or mosquitoes. I detest the willfully ignorant and bigoted (which are unfortunately numerous down here).

My hobbies include: writing, RP, drawing, gardening, rescuing animals, baking, web programming, mixology, random research, and annoying Vay with my raw musical talent which I will never practice.

So much hatred.

You know I'm fond of the group stuff but I guess that might be difficult here. Unless we go with the old cliche inn beginning as Mule's suggested. Just no one Magic Missile the darkness.

Just for you darlin'.

And as long as they don't Magic Missile the crowd they should be fine.



Yeah, that will not be pleasant. In fact he's probably going to have a migraine most of the time he is in Aelzwyr. Something akin to casting detect magic in a magic shop. Which is not advisable.

Time ta go to work. *draws sword from lute and wades in to mercilessly slaughter the audience*



She speaks from experience.

And I just realized I totally blanked on the intro. In case you've not been keeping up, Umbraja (or Mel) and I have been gaming together for a long time, 15 years long time. The above exchanges are inside jokes from previous games which I would be happy to tell you about if anyone would like to hear.

As for me, not much to tell. I'm a music teacher and gamer who occasionally pretends to be a cook and lately a lumberjack (we've been cutting down trees that got killed in a drought. There are quite a few of them).

I did sorta vote for this option. I fully intended to participate, but I can't seem to narrow down to one character, and I don't have the time to play two in one thread.

I'm thinking either an eccentric inventor (probably an industrial era engineer, but also possibly a Greek philosopher) who has been lost in elsewhere for decades, knows all the major players, and has vast powers of intellect, but has made very little progress in finding himself because he overcomplicates everything and gets distracted easily.

OR

A new arrival, someone from a time so far in the future that no-one gets lost anymore because the entire universe is clearly labelled and easy to navigate. But he got lost, because he's utterly incompetent. But he's a famous celebrity in his time because he's a champion in competetive eating. In fact, he can eat pretty much anything. But he's weak, flabby, burns easily, and completely incompetent.

Dunno if I'll ever get around to writing out a profile, but I'll introduce myself anyway.

I've been doing casual freeform roleplaying since about 2001. I did some of what would technically be considered LARPing before that, but it would also technically be considered child's play. Most of my experience is online, about half of it around Gaia. I did a whole lot of GMing in Barton Town around about 2007-2009, before I realized that no-one there saw roleplaying the way I do and gave up. That's right about when I joined this guild, I think. Been mostly inactive since then. I've been wanting to get a Battletech set for like 4 years, but I'm afraid it will consume my soul.

Time to put my bid in I guess!

Jikial (Chik-eye-al), 22 year old student of the arts. I've been roleplaying since I was 15 but I took about a 3 year hiatus, so it's not really too impressive.

I'm extremely flexible but half the fun for me in any RP is getting to know the world so that my characters can be a true part of it rather than learning the ropes (though I do those too).

The character I pitched and will sometime today finish is a traveling merchant and as such is flexible to start anywhere. Due to his unique breach-finding abilities any of you who wish to start off just entering Aelzwyr could possibly have him as a sort of guide (as well as the NPC cat) and someone to play off of until we find the rest of the group.

This is umbraja's suggestion and I like it, simply because it'd show what entering Aelzwyr is like as well as giving a character new to this world a rather zany welcoming committee.

My RP style depends on the kind of character I create, in this particular case a rather social character, meaning lots of interactions. This would tend to lead to fast-pace short posting as I'm not one to just let my character haul others around without getting their reactions, retaliations, refusals, and acceptances. If my character does things that do not hinge on the reactions of others, however, just put your character's reactions to it as a "while he was verbing..." type dealy.

In short my style always lets others have their say.

My shortcomings are run-on sentences, unclear (and sometimes archaic) dictation and syntax, and the occasional use of a word that does not mean what I think it means.

During the RP, if you're curious about my character and his trains of thought, ask here. I can't guarantee an answer (no spoilers) but I can conjecture.

So is that us good to go now, yeah? smile