A good friend of mine, Bearesta, and I were talking about Rosie-The-New-Rogue the other day, and she was commenting on how Rosie’s RP has been slightly inconsistent since her inception, and how ‘it’s to be expected, Adel took me six months to get straight’. At first I wasn’t sure if this was some huge failure on my part, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. You come up with a bare bones sketch of a concept, in my case “I play a hard knocks life kind of girl who only trusts her sister. She got herself into an abusive relationship and is men shy”. That’s honestly all I had in mind for her when I started playing her. First time I really sat down to rp her, she had tattoos. I didn’t know why, but she did. Then it sort of sunk in “They cover the scars.” WHAT SCARS? “The ones left from her last relationship.” This phenomenon, of course, was covered very very well here. You keep building on small ideas and the next thing you know, your sketch is a beautiful nerdy portrait of fun.

But what happens when you want to rescind something? That’s more my focus here than waxing poetical on what Threnn covered oh-so-well.

My hard edge “SHE WILL NEVER BE IN A RELATIONSHIP EVER” I -think- is still the right idea, but during inception, I almost leaned more towards “NO ONE WILL EVER GET CLOSE TO HER BESIDES HER SISTER”. That was wrong. Rosie’s working very hard, despite my original intentions, to make friends. She is starting to care about people even if it scares the crap out of her: Adel, Arrens, Tiforis. All of them are going to remain her friends IF she’s not so stupid that she doesn’t screw it up, and they’re starting to garner some trust. Not what I intended. However? Much more fun than I intended. Thinking back on the initial idea, how entertaining would Rosie be if she kept everyone at arm’s length? How much RP potential is there? People wouldn’t keep her around based upon her good looks. Usefulness? Maybe, there are some folks like Tarquin who’d see her and her sister as an asset and would just ignore the broken bits that aren’t as useful. Most, though, would just shrug and walk away and rightfully so.

So, her being more friendly and open . . . inconsistent from concept? Yes. Is my style with her changing? Absolutely. During her first month or so I was rp’ing Rosie against Aelflaed, the main of THIS LADY HERE, and Aely asked her why “She was being a wee twat”. Rosie was acting in accordance with how I’d originally planned her: standoffish and smug and generally uninviting. At the time, I laughed of course because Aely’s line was awesome, but I also started thinking about it, and where Rosie’s story could go. I think THAT is when I really made the effort to change a few things around (did I want all RP to end up with people asking her why she’s being a twat? Nooooo.) Thus, in game, Rosie sort of had an “Oh shit” discovery moment. Is it okay that I did that? Yes, I think. People are going to be patient as I work through the kinks. If she wasn’t fleshed out properly and was going totally out of character another three months from here in blazingly obvious ways, I think there’d be more of an issue, but at the beginning, people will sit back as you figure things through. It comes down to trial and error sometimes, and really, it’s okay to change some things early if they make a character more interesting and playable.

I think that’s all I have for today. Ta!