WTT: [RP]

Hey.

Hey you.

Do you like good books?  Do you like books in which there is ass-kicking, magic, hot elf chicks, evil wizards, bards, pissed-off dragons, and famous warriors?  Do you like laughing so hard people give you funny looks on public transportation?

Then you probably ought to go pick up Stuff of Legends by Ian Gibson.

Jordan the Red has done it all.  He’s slain dragons, rescued princesses, outsmarted minions and henchmen and evil overlords.  Now he just wants to live out the rest of his life in the village of Cheese, where nothing ever happens and people don’t know he used to be a famous hero.

Except, nothing ever goes as planned.  Jordan’s biggest fan, Eliott, gets a wishing braid for his birthday and does what any Number One Fan would do:  he wishes he could go on an adventure with his idol.  Jordan wants none of it, but his old agent would love for him to make a big ol’ comeback (which means scads and scads of money in his own pockets, of course) and Eliott’s the perfect pawn for making that happen.

Jordan finds himself picking up his old sword and acting as a reluctant mentor to Kess (Eliott’s hot Elvish babysitter) and a wannabe bard sent by Central Casting to tell the tale.

Stuff of Legends was a finalist in the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel awards, and the author is one of Feathermoon’s own.

If you’re a fan of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, hie thee to your local independent bookstore (or their website!) and pick up a copy of Stuff of Legends. Then come back here, tell us how awesome it was, and join me in my chant of “Sequel!  Sequel!  Sequel!”

Tags: Books, feathermoon, review, stuff of legends

((A precursor to Jak Balthasar and Yva Darrows leaving for the Icecrown battle.))

“I can’t find my fucking shoes, Jakob.”

“Yva, the lich king doesn’t give a horses’s arse what shoes you’re wearing. JUST PUT SOMETHING ON.”

She stormed past him – tried to shoulder past him, really, but that failed spectacularly considering how large he was – and began rifling through the closet. “These are special shoes. Enchanted ones. I am not going toe to toe with Putricide in my bloody socks.”

Jak’s cheek ticked. “You have five minutes.”

“DON’T YOU DARE TRY TO RUSH ME.”

The answer was the clang of his sabatons across the floor, and then the slam of the front door.

“Jakob? JAKOB BALTHASAR GET BACK HERE!”

No answer.

Flaadhun lifted his head at the sing-song tones of his mistress having a complete and utter hissy fit. He padded over, stretching and grunting as he leaned against her legs. She cast him a sideward glance and a scowl. “Don’t think I don’t know this is your fault, Dog. I don’t know if hiding my shoes is your way of saying you don’t want to go, but it’s not going to change a damned . . . that miserable sod left without me. He really did. He went after ARTHAS on his own, after all we’ve been through. That horrid, domineering son of a bitch.” Her hands went to her hips as she glared at the spot Jakob Balthasar had occupied a moment ago.

She was getting ready for another round of ranting when there was a thud by her feet. She looked down. The mysteriously missing shoes were suddenly there, and Flaadhun was sitting beside them, the scaly monolith of his tail thudding against the carpets.

“Yes, you want me to tell you you’re good for returning what you stole? I think not.” He whined as she stooped to pull the shoes on, bitching all the while. “And believe you me, Flaadhun, when I find Jak, he’s going to wish he’d never heard my name. No one simply walks out on me, especially not when the most important fight in . . . EVER presents itself. Cad. What an utter CAD.” She grabbed her satchel of runes and stomped through the living room, felhound snorting in tow behind her. She felt one of his tentacles winding around the hem of her robe and tugging, as if he could hold her back.

“Good gods what! I’m in a mood, if you haven’t noticed, and you can thank your father for that.”

“I am not that thing’s father. It’s a fucking demon. Can we GO now?” She jerked her head up to see Jakob staring at her through the glass window of the front door. She blinked, her irritation fluttering away, replaced by red faced embarrassment that she’d likely been cursing him to the nether and back and he’d heard every word.

Because he was standing just outside the door waiting for her the entire time.

“Oh, of course. I . . right. I think I’m ready to . . . ”

His cheek ticked again.

She flashed him her best makeshift smile. “Shall we then?”

1) You can’t make everyone participate, even if you want to. You can’t make everyone interested, or commit their time to your project.

2) One dissenting voice can change everything, for better or for worse. If you’re running a story, and it’s your story, be ready to break some eggs and make some omelets, because no matter how good your ideas are, someone’s always going to want to change it or break it or do something differently with it.

3) Delaying projects is as bad, if not worse, than rushing them. You need to act on the enthusiasm your people have up front. The longer you wait, the more likely it is to dwindle.

4) Your RP arc is only as strong as the person leading it. If they’re unfocused, lazy, or short on time, the story will suffer for it as will anyone investing into it. It will not work.

5) It’s okay to offer to help a GM. In fact, it’s appreciated a lot of the time.

6) Keep hard dates for deadlines and events. Nebulous dates allow for procrastination which facilitates number 3. Hard dates keep you honest and on a timeline.

7) Understand that you can’t please everyone, and if you’re trying to, you’ll hate GM’ing the event. Please yourself and as many people as you can.

Be flexible when it’s not a pivotal matter. Being open to other people’s ideas makes small plot lines into major ones, and stories flourish.

9) You don’t know everything. You might think you do, you don’t. Keep humble.

10) People who make commitments of time and effort might not live up to them. Have back up plans.

11) Have a soundboard. Running major RP arcs is stressful. Find someone who’s willing to listen when you need to bitch, and tell you when you need to shut up and work.

12) Make a promise, keep a promise. You’re only as good as your word. If you say X, Y, Z will be done, buckle the hell down and make sure X, Y, Z does happen.

13) Ask for feedback. Don’t be a dick when someone gives you constructive criticism.

14) Don’t overwhelm people with too many big arcs. Give other people limelight time.

15) Know that it’s okay to delegate to others who want to help. If you have open communication about what needs to happen about an event, and they’re willing to run with it, let them.

Anything YOU can think of, readers? Lay it on us.

Ta!

Upon returning home at the end of the night, your character finds… a box before his or her door.  It’s rather common-looking, as boxes go — a simple wooden crate, about two feet on a side.  There are no markings telling its point of origin, but your name’s stamped in big, block letters right on top.  It’s closed with a simple brass hasp.  No one appears to be around that witnessed its delivery.

As you peer at it, something shifts inside:  just the faintest sound of movement, then all is still again.

What do you do?

((Just a little bit of tomfoolery for you to pass the time.

The rules, such as they are!

1.  Anyone can play along.
2.  If you have six million alts, please have mercy on me and pick one.

3.  If your character doesn’t have an apartment, that’s fine!  The box can be wherever it is they go to settle down for the night — if they sleep in a tree, it’s at the trunk of the tree.  If they’re planning on drinking the night away in a bar, that’s okay, too — if they get up to order another round or use the facilities, the box is on or beside their chair when they return.
4.  I’m kicking this off late in the day, which means my responses might get waylayed by commuting and dinner, but never fear, I’ll be peeking.
5.  Have fun!))

Tags: audience participation, ohgodMonday, RP

Quick question: What races does your toon just not like? Bricu (and Threnn) have nothing but negative feelings for Blood Elves (like this one):

Their antipathy stems from a number of interactions with some less-than-savory Belves, and an interesting bit of random RP during BC, when a new Draenei character nearly died to a Blood Elf ambusher.

So share with us: What races does your toon despise–and why!

Tags: belves are stinky, in game, prejudice, race

I commissioned a post-it note portrait by the talented Lore given the news that RealID isn’t going to be implemented yet. Given that we won a battle today, I figure this is an appropriate time, and place, to share the celebration picture.

And yes, that’s Bricu and Threnn. Gold star to anyone who recognizes the inspiration.

Tags: Bricu and Threnn, realID, RP

Taken from Nethaera’s post here.

Hello everyone,

I’d like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

It’s important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as conversation threading, the ability to rate posts up or down, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it’s clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you’ll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard’s success from the beginning.

Mike Morhaime
CEO & Cofounder
Blizzard Entertainment

Those emails and forum posts and, yes, account cancellations have, for the moment, paid off.

Well done, everyone.

Tags: real ID, speaking up is important

I have a huge amount of respect for This Lady. Not only has she put heart and soul into a blog I enjoy reading, she’s become a good friend. We ran a ten man ICC together, we’ve spammed healer chat together, we’ve bitched about things, swapped recipes and animal stories. We’ve planned rp, co-written rp, and laughed about rp together.

And she’s leaving at least temporarily. And I can’t blame her.

Bricu’s linked SaveBlizz for folks to go see. It’s a great idea. If you’re against this invasion of your privacy, you ought to really consider things like canceling that Cata pre-order or that SC2 pre-order. And hey, if you don’t want to? That’s okay, too. I get that we all game for different reasons. Unfortunately I don’t think what we WANT re: Real ID matters so much as what we do with our money. The biggest weapon you have right now is that fifteen bucks in your pocket. If enough of us take it away, they have to pay attention. I’m not sure they want to take the gamble that the Facebook Farmsville players will pick up our slack when their integration goes live.

Oh, and just so we’re clear on where I’m at? I’ve already canceled my second account, and I’m mulling over my first. We’ll see. I’m watching and waiting.

One thing I’ve toyed around with, for the sake of our little community of people, is how to stay in touch and to keep the RP alive outside of WoW. If we have enough people fall by the wayside because of this situation, I may start up a Tuesday night IRC RP room for us until another MMO catches our fancy. Our network of friends is close enough I think this might actually work. I know I’m not done with Yva, not even close, and WoW doesn’t own her. I do. Her character concept is /mine/, and I know I’m not the only one who’d be more than happy/willing to carry that character concept over into another venue for the sake of keeping my community in tact.

It’s going to be a tough few months, folks, so I’d recommend buckling down and gritting your teeth. We’re going to see people drop off that we care about. We’re going to have to cope with changes we don’t like. My only recommendation is to keep doing what we’re doing, making noise and rabble rousing, and look towards alternate solutions like IRC chatrooms for RP. Just becomes one venue closes doesn’t mean the stories have to end.

Tags: bullshit, real ID

Based On http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobloo17/508079830/

Today, in protest of the Real ID Fiasco-and believe me, this is now Fiasco Status–I canceled my Star Craft 2 Collectors Edition Pre Order.

Tags: are you paying attention yet Activision?, cancel, Put up or shut up, real ID, vote with your money

Hey Blizzard-

All this hullabaloo over Real ID and Facebook shows that this social-network idea isn’t really your thing. Your thing is:

1) Come up with a game including:
A) A Good Story
B) Balanced Mechanics
C) Pretty Graphics

2) Maintaining The Game.

3) Building Fans

That’s it. That’s what you do well. Don’t discount those facets of your model: Parts 1 and 2 made you Friggin Huge and Awesome. Part 3 occurred before Facebook, Myspace or Twitter. Hell, I’ve been a Fan of you goes long before MS released Internet Explorer.

The fan community is your biggest success. Keep that in mind. Because you’ve treated us well, we’ve responded accordingly. We’ve built our own communities, supported you through thick and thin (granted, it hasn’t been all that thin) and we have bought your games. We even bought your virtual items. Fans do that.

Until we are poked with sharp sticks.

Forcing Facebook Integration and adding a person’s real name is poking your fan base with a big, sharp, flaming stick. Granted, in this case the stick is to corral your fans into a commodity. Fans being social doesn’t bring in any more money; however, with Social Networking, you can generate all sorts of revenue. It also runs right over your what your fans want: Good games.

People chose who they want to be social with. And being social behind your toon is one thing. Being social when everyone knows your name is something completely different. The Pig and Whistle may seem like Cheers on a Tuesday night; however, that did not happen overnight. That happened over time, as we developed trust in each other. You are asking far too much of your fans–to show off their identity–far too soon.

Stick with developing ideas for your games. Lately, you’ve been coming up with some brilliant ideas in Cataclysm. Seriously, love the work in the Plaguelands and Hyjal. Leave the social networking to someone else.

Best regards
Bricu

PS: Heard you guys made the BBC News. That can’t be good. Do the right thing and back down.

Tags: idea, open letter