SFR 2006:
90,000 / 90,000 to go | 0 / 90,000 done
90 / 90 days to go | 0 / 90 days gone
Due to some medical logistics of the head honcho, this year's SFR is going to occur in two legs - a May/June run, or a June/July run. Either way the idea is to write 1k words per day for 60 days, for a total of 60k words in two months.
Or, if you want to be extra insane, do May/June/July at 1k words per day for 90 days, and end up with 90k words in three months. ;)
It so happens that I'm working on Temple again and am hoping for a good bit of progress in the next few months. Hopefully it won't be much of a stretch for me to do it for SFR too. Since roleplay counts, same as it did last year, I won't have to put anything on pause, either.
Of course, at this point I'm a bit stalled out with Temple ... I went back and revised the prologue yet again, because I'm still not sure how I want to continue the next scene (and the book as a whole). Maybe I'll figure it out by the time I have to start wordcounting (in 1.5 hours).
Oh and - here's the link to the details: http://www.sffmuse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1522
2006/04/30
2006/04/29
A tad stalled out Take Two
Okay... let's see if this works out on the second try... I'm not even going to bother conjuring up the original words, but I remember the basic gist of what I wanted to say... soo ... here goes.
So one of the bigger things that stalled me out last time around was the concept that, in order for Temple to be great (as opposed to merely good), Janis needs to die.
I don't want Janis to die. I like Janis. She's a sweet, caring individual and probably the one who least deserves to die out of all the characters I have. (Which would of course be precisely why she needs to die...) To make the story work out to best effect, she has to be destroyed. Permanently. And what's worse, she doesn't mind.
I think she knows that it has to be that way and she's already accepted it while I'm still going around in circles looking for ways to get out of doing it. And of course she's right. Anything I do to save her would sabotage the story. It wouldn't kill it completely, but it would weaken it.
Now, there are ways I could resurrect her without sabotaging Temple - such as writing it up as a plotline in one of the other books that happen later in the timeline (Birthright being the most logical one). It would have to be a fairly major plotline, though, with a lot of effort expended by those trying to do it, and with her return occurring at (or at least near) the end. Otherwise it would still feel too much like a cheat.
Of course, Birthright already has its main plot, which means that anything big like that about Janis would probably have to be a separate book. Aside from the fact that I like Janis as a character, I do have other plotlines about her that are supposed to occur after Temple - which would of course require her to be not dead and reasonably herself. So it's something to think about on backburner while I try to focus on Temple.
At this point I'm done working on the prologue, and trying to move on to the next scene in line. Which would be the king arriving at the meadow two days later and trying to piece together what happened.
Right away I noticed a plot hole. Two days? What was he doing that kept him from showing up the morning after the battle? Did he have advisors that would try to keep him from going, for safety reasons? no. Would they be able to stop him even if he did have them? no. Was there something else going on in the city that's bigger than the demolishing of the temple? not a chance. :p
Well, it took a bit of thinking, but I finally worked out that maybe he did visit the scene of the battle the morning after. However, all he got then was the initial battle report, and he let everyone else take an extra day to get their act together before he started demanding organized reports.
This solution has the added benefit that, I can now take the initial battle report completely off-stage. Which means I can omit Rebecca from the POV lineup altogether.
Rebecca has always been problematic. Basically, there is no good reason for her to be included in the book. Yes, she was there leading the army, but she has no vested personal interest in it one way or another (aside from the general public shock and dismay that the temple got demolished, of course). But she doesn't even care that much about the people in the army she was leading, because it wasn't really her army. She was just there to do her job.
Of course, along those same lines, I'm not sure that Josephine needs to be included in the book either ... and for that matter, there needs to be better justification for Iorli to be there than what I had thought initially. (And if we go down the thought path that I kept going for all last year, wherein I started questioning the presence of every single character I have, pretty soon nobody needs to be included in the book, the story is silly anyway, and why am I writing it again? :p)
So at the moment I've got Rebecca definitely on the chopping block, and Josephine probably will be out too. Maybe. Haven't quite figured out whether I need her yet or not. The only way Rebecca will have any POV scenes, though, is if I need a scene in a tavern where people pass out plot-crucial secrets to each other, who additionally don't know who she is. I'm keeping that in reserve just in case, but the chances of that happening aren't terribly high.
As for Iorli, ruminating on his presence caused a lot of additional worldbuilding. Basically, I need to better define what a clan totem is, where they come from, how they propagate, etc. So... new thought. Janis is the cougar clan's totem, and the reason she is such is because she's descended from Aliacorba's line. Aliacorba was the clan totem back in the times of Amulet I. Iorli would know all the historical background for the clan totems, of course, but not know that Aliacorba is still around. (In fact, nobody knows except Janis, until the end of Temple when the truth comes out to basically everyone.)
This works out well with the way that the wolves have their Golden Flame, which also propagates in individual flowers of fire that become 'blessings.' In the new version of events, the reason Brightspot is the Matriarch during the time of Temple, is because she discovered the Golden Flame. That's where Matriarches come from. The Patriarch before that, Darkstorm, was holding the last of the line of the previous clan totem, which had no offspring. (And I don't have to figure out what exactly it was until I go back to Amulet II.)
So... problem solved again. Heh. In a way that's so obvious that I don't know why I didn't notice it sooner.
Meanwhile, another stall point comes about in the whole structure with the circles. In my original plan, I was going to have the king walk the meadow in a circle and get told lots of nifty things about what led up to the battle. Then I was going to have Pedro walk the meadow in an opposite circle, wherein he'll tell lots of other nifty things that the king doesn't get to hear about, which would wrap up all the loose ends and lingering questions (hopefully) (and by the time I get there, I hope my beta readers will be ready to point out what all those lingering questions are, and make sure I address them. ;) But that won't be for a long while...).
Unfortunately, there are a very large number of scenes that make absolutely no sense in that kind of structure. Notably, nothing that the spirits do would realistically show up as something to tell the Tainted king, except secondhand. Furthermore there's all those Janis scenes that just kind of float there without fitting into any structure. I'd said something about spirit owls last year, but really, I think the simplest thing to do is to ditch the whole concept and do something else.
So... the king will still get to walk the meadow in a circle, and he will still get to hear all the nifty things about what led up to the destruction of the temple. However, there's going to be a key difference between what he hears (what the advisors say out loud to him), and what the advisors are really remembering. Some of the advisors are on good terms with the spirits, and they would just tell him a much-condensed version of the spirits' side of things, while remembering the whole thing in flashback form.
Hmm. Actually, thinking about that as I type it, that's not really a very satisfactory way to do it either. Perhaps the spirits should get their own little circle somewhere else... hmm.
Either way, the king's circle isn't going to be as prominent in the book structure. It'll only cover the flashback portion of things. There's also quite a few scenes that take place after the battle, which describe the aftermath. Those would occur after the king is done getting his reports. Then Pedro's circle would be last, after those.
So that's the plan as it stands.
The next scene I'm working on introduces the king as he arrives at the meadow and meets the first advisor. Since Rebecca is no longer in the running, that first person is going to be Jacob. Which, coincidentally enough, is who I had in the first and second drafts as well. And my second draft version is already pretty good - the framework of the scene is all there, it just needs some polishing.
Okay. Let's see if I can get this to post ...
So one of the bigger things that stalled me out last time around was the concept that, in order for Temple to be great (as opposed to merely good), Janis needs to die.
I don't want Janis to die. I like Janis. She's a sweet, caring individual and probably the one who least deserves to die out of all the characters I have. (Which would of course be precisely why she needs to die...) To make the story work out to best effect, she has to be destroyed. Permanently. And what's worse, she doesn't mind.
I think she knows that it has to be that way and she's already accepted it while I'm still going around in circles looking for ways to get out of doing it. And of course she's right. Anything I do to save her would sabotage the story. It wouldn't kill it completely, but it would weaken it.
Now, there are ways I could resurrect her without sabotaging Temple - such as writing it up as a plotline in one of the other books that happen later in the timeline (Birthright being the most logical one). It would have to be a fairly major plotline, though, with a lot of effort expended by those trying to do it, and with her return occurring at (or at least near) the end. Otherwise it would still feel too much like a cheat.
Of course, Birthright already has its main plot, which means that anything big like that about Janis would probably have to be a separate book. Aside from the fact that I like Janis as a character, I do have other plotlines about her that are supposed to occur after Temple - which would of course require her to be not dead and reasonably herself. So it's something to think about on backburner while I try to focus on Temple.
At this point I'm done working on the prologue, and trying to move on to the next scene in line. Which would be the king arriving at the meadow two days later and trying to piece together what happened.
Right away I noticed a plot hole. Two days? What was he doing that kept him from showing up the morning after the battle? Did he have advisors that would try to keep him from going, for safety reasons? no. Would they be able to stop him even if he did have them? no. Was there something else going on in the city that's bigger than the demolishing of the temple? not a chance. :p
Well, it took a bit of thinking, but I finally worked out that maybe he did visit the scene of the battle the morning after. However, all he got then was the initial battle report, and he let everyone else take an extra day to get their act together before he started demanding organized reports.
This solution has the added benefit that, I can now take the initial battle report completely off-stage. Which means I can omit Rebecca from the POV lineup altogether.
Rebecca has always been problematic. Basically, there is no good reason for her to be included in the book. Yes, she was there leading the army, but she has no vested personal interest in it one way or another (aside from the general public shock and dismay that the temple got demolished, of course). But she doesn't even care that much about the people in the army she was leading, because it wasn't really her army. She was just there to do her job.
Of course, along those same lines, I'm not sure that Josephine needs to be included in the book either ... and for that matter, there needs to be better justification for Iorli to be there than what I had thought initially. (And if we go down the thought path that I kept going for all last year, wherein I started questioning the presence of every single character I have, pretty soon nobody needs to be included in the book, the story is silly anyway, and why am I writing it again? :p)
So at the moment I've got Rebecca definitely on the chopping block, and Josephine probably will be out too. Maybe. Haven't quite figured out whether I need her yet or not. The only way Rebecca will have any POV scenes, though, is if I need a scene in a tavern where people pass out plot-crucial secrets to each other, who additionally don't know who she is. I'm keeping that in reserve just in case, but the chances of that happening aren't terribly high.
As for Iorli, ruminating on his presence caused a lot of additional worldbuilding. Basically, I need to better define what a clan totem is, where they come from, how they propagate, etc. So... new thought. Janis is the cougar clan's totem, and the reason she is such is because she's descended from Aliacorba's line. Aliacorba was the clan totem back in the times of Amulet I. Iorli would know all the historical background for the clan totems, of course, but not know that Aliacorba is still around. (In fact, nobody knows except Janis, until the end of Temple when the truth comes out to basically everyone.)
This works out well with the way that the wolves have their Golden Flame, which also propagates in individual flowers of fire that become 'blessings.' In the new version of events, the reason Brightspot is the Matriarch during the time of Temple, is because she discovered the Golden Flame. That's where Matriarches come from. The Patriarch before that, Darkstorm, was holding the last of the line of the previous clan totem, which had no offspring. (And I don't have to figure out what exactly it was until I go back to Amulet II.)
So... problem solved again. Heh. In a way that's so obvious that I don't know why I didn't notice it sooner.
Meanwhile, another stall point comes about in the whole structure with the circles. In my original plan, I was going to have the king walk the meadow in a circle and get told lots of nifty things about what led up to the battle. Then I was going to have Pedro walk the meadow in an opposite circle, wherein he'll tell lots of other nifty things that the king doesn't get to hear about, which would wrap up all the loose ends and lingering questions (hopefully) (and by the time I get there, I hope my beta readers will be ready to point out what all those lingering questions are, and make sure I address them. ;) But that won't be for a long while...).
Unfortunately, there are a very large number of scenes that make absolutely no sense in that kind of structure. Notably, nothing that the spirits do would realistically show up as something to tell the Tainted king, except secondhand. Furthermore there's all those Janis scenes that just kind of float there without fitting into any structure. I'd said something about spirit owls last year, but really, I think the simplest thing to do is to ditch the whole concept and do something else.
So... the king will still get to walk the meadow in a circle, and he will still get to hear all the nifty things about what led up to the destruction of the temple. However, there's going to be a key difference between what he hears (what the advisors say out loud to him), and what the advisors are really remembering. Some of the advisors are on good terms with the spirits, and they would just tell him a much-condensed version of the spirits' side of things, while remembering the whole thing in flashback form.
Hmm. Actually, thinking about that as I type it, that's not really a very satisfactory way to do it either. Perhaps the spirits should get their own little circle somewhere else... hmm.
Either way, the king's circle isn't going to be as prominent in the book structure. It'll only cover the flashback portion of things. There's also quite a few scenes that take place after the battle, which describe the aftermath. Those would occur after the king is done getting his reports. Then Pedro's circle would be last, after those.
So that's the plan as it stands.
The next scene I'm working on introduces the king as he arrives at the meadow and meets the first advisor. Since Rebecca is no longer in the running, that first person is going to be Jacob. Which, coincidentally enough, is who I had in the first and second drafts as well. And my second draft version is already pretty good - the framework of the scene is all there, it just needs some polishing.
Okay. Let's see if I can get this to post ...
2006/04/27
A tad stalled out already ...
ARRRRRRGHHH!!!!!
I wrote something lengthy to post, and was logged out when I tried to post it, and then the post cache button flipped out, so I lost it all. Please, please please, fix the stupid "remember me" thing!
Think I'll just go with a bullet point list this time around. I know what I'm talking about. :p
1. Janis needs to die.
2. Rebecca needs to be cut out.
3. The circle needs to become less prominent.
4. Thoughts of the advisors, not what they tell the king.
5. in media res
6. King's circle for back half, move on for forward half, Pedro. The End.
Maybe I'll come back to do the long version again later when I'm less annoyed.
I wrote something lengthy to post, and was logged out when I tried to post it, and then the post cache button flipped out, so I lost it all. Please, please please, fix the stupid "remember me" thing!
Think I'll just go with a bullet point list this time around. I know what I'm talking about. :p
1. Janis needs to die.
2. Rebecca needs to be cut out.
3. The circle needs to become less prominent.
4. Thoughts of the advisors, not what they tell the king.
5. in media res
6. King's circle for back half, move on for forward half, Pedro. The End.
Maybe I'll come back to do the long version again later when I'm less annoyed.
2006/04/24
Temple revisited
Last weekend I started on the third draft of Temple. No particular reason beyond the fact that I felt like it. It wasn't something I needed to psyche up for, or force myself to do. I just kind of sat down and started.
Guess that means the time has come. Guess that means I know what specifically's time has come, too. :)
I'd had that feeling deep in the core of my being for a few months - that some time around May I would be taking an important first step toward something. I didn't know what it would be, other than that it wasn't supposed to be roleplaying (so, not the mage expansion to my game that I'm supposedly working on but really haven't been). I didn't think it would be writing, either - but it looks like it is.
So far I've rewritten the opening prologue. The same one that I whined about last January, in fact. The first draft version (from Nano 2004) was exceptionally corny. The second draft version just kind of sucked, period. I wrote it up (sort of) last June, didn't like it, posted it up anyway (to my rpol non-game). Still cringe every time I try to look at it.
The third draft version is pretty decent, isn't corny, and although it still needs some tweaking it's basically the final version. And it looks nothing like either of the other two. ;) It only took me 1.5 years to get it right ... could be worse. It's 523 words so far, though there's a few places where it might inflate a bit. It isn't as magnificent as I'd hoped it would be a year ago, but at least I don't cringe when I look at it. It gets across everything I wanted to convey. It'll do.
Now that I'm done with that, what's next? Well, it looks like I'm going to revise the next scene in line - the opening that introduces the king. He's visiting the battleground the morning after. I don't actually know who else is going to be joining him in that scene. Neither of the two main possibilities make much sense, so it'll involve some rereading over my first draft and subsequent notes.
Lather, rinse, repeat until I get through the whole thing. That's how it looks like it'll go. One step at a time. One brushstroke at a time, without getting too intimidated by the Big Picture while I'm doing it, because right now the Big Picture just doesn't matter that much. Also, I'll work on it when I feel like it. Right now I feel like it a lot. And I feel like I'm finally back on track again.
Longterm plans ... well, Amulet II needs to be finished. If I stick with the same pattern I used for Temple, I would do that during SFFMuse Summer Fun Run - just start writing the odds and ends that I need to do to fill in the rest of the plot, finish off the plotline in general (unlike Temple, Amulet II isn't actually a finished story), do bits of editting here and there as I run across the things that need work. Also keep a roleplay log like I did last time, as that was just fun to do. If I'm lucky, I'll have a complete first draft version of Amulet II by the time I'm done.
Then for Nano 2006, I'll be writing the first draft of either Birthright or Triangle. At the moment I'm a tad more excited by Birthright. In Amulet II, there are a few extremely obscure side mentions of a few elements important to Birthright. It's kind of buried in there, but I ran across them while I was looking up some details for Temple. Now I'm excited by that story again and want to write it next.
Either way, both Birthright and Triangle need to be written before I attempt Fall of Myan. That one is dead last because it's at the very end of the timeline, and a lot of it will depend on what happens earlier in the timeline.
I don't think I've ever written down my timeline here. It goes like this:
Amulet I - 1882
Triangle - 1920s
Amulet II - 1965
Temple - 1982
Birthright - 1988ish
Fall of Myan - 2000
The timestamps are where they fell when I first made up the timeline for a fictional city in southern Florida, and bear no resemblance to timekeeping in the Fortress Launne universe, but I still find it easier to keep track of things thinking of it in those same terms.
By the same token, I'm probably going to have to change everyone's names just before I submit anything for publication. However, I can't rename them right now because to do that would be to turn them into different people from who they are. Once a character is named (or has claimed a name) it can't be undone. I've had a few complaints about some of my names before, so I know they aren't the best. But there's not much I can do about it until I'm completely done.
I might end up with a couple more novels set before Amulet I as well. From running my Dark Ages game, I've been firming up some backstory details that are important to Amulet I, while also tossing in a number of plotlines that will be important to Triangle/Fall of Myan. In the process I have a whole new plot coming to light - about Arthur Glorian, a chaos mage who was originally just going to be a background element so far buried under everything else that there was never going to be a need to detail exactly what happened to him or why. Well, now I know - or will. It's going to be the central plotline of the Mage component of my game.
As for Taint, it's not listed above because it spans a very broad range of timeline. At the moment I'm not even sure it's going to end up as a separate book. It might get mashed in with the two Amulet stories. I've already started doing that with Jacob's story embedded in Amulet II, and it would be easy enough to do the same with Thomas' story in Amulet I. Maybe. Will have to see how it all plays out when I get back to Amulet I (which isn't likely to be anytime in the next year).
So that's where I stand at the moment. It feels good to be writing again. :)
Guess that means the time has come. Guess that means I know what specifically's time has come, too. :)
I'd had that feeling deep in the core of my being for a few months - that some time around May I would be taking an important first step toward something. I didn't know what it would be, other than that it wasn't supposed to be roleplaying (so, not the mage expansion to my game that I'm supposedly working on but really haven't been). I didn't think it would be writing, either - but it looks like it is.
So far I've rewritten the opening prologue. The same one that I whined about last January, in fact. The first draft version (from Nano 2004) was exceptionally corny. The second draft version just kind of sucked, period. I wrote it up (sort of) last June, didn't like it, posted it up anyway (to my rpol non-game). Still cringe every time I try to look at it.
The third draft version is pretty decent, isn't corny, and although it still needs some tweaking it's basically the final version. And it looks nothing like either of the other two. ;) It only took me 1.5 years to get it right ... could be worse. It's 523 words so far, though there's a few places where it might inflate a bit. It isn't as magnificent as I'd hoped it would be a year ago, but at least I don't cringe when I look at it. It gets across everything I wanted to convey. It'll do.
Now that I'm done with that, what's next? Well, it looks like I'm going to revise the next scene in line - the opening that introduces the king. He's visiting the battleground the morning after. I don't actually know who else is going to be joining him in that scene. Neither of the two main possibilities make much sense, so it'll involve some rereading over my first draft and subsequent notes.
Lather, rinse, repeat until I get through the whole thing. That's how it looks like it'll go. One step at a time. One brushstroke at a time, without getting too intimidated by the Big Picture while I'm doing it, because right now the Big Picture just doesn't matter that much. Also, I'll work on it when I feel like it. Right now I feel like it a lot. And I feel like I'm finally back on track again.
Longterm plans ... well, Amulet II needs to be finished. If I stick with the same pattern I used for Temple, I would do that during SFFMuse Summer Fun Run - just start writing the odds and ends that I need to do to fill in the rest of the plot, finish off the plotline in general (unlike Temple, Amulet II isn't actually a finished story), do bits of editting here and there as I run across the things that need work. Also keep a roleplay log like I did last time, as that was just fun to do. If I'm lucky, I'll have a complete first draft version of Amulet II by the time I'm done.
Then for Nano 2006, I'll be writing the first draft of either Birthright or Triangle. At the moment I'm a tad more excited by Birthright. In Amulet II, there are a few extremely obscure side mentions of a few elements important to Birthright. It's kind of buried in there, but I ran across them while I was looking up some details for Temple. Now I'm excited by that story again and want to write it next.
Either way, both Birthright and Triangle need to be written before I attempt Fall of Myan. That one is dead last because it's at the very end of the timeline, and a lot of it will depend on what happens earlier in the timeline.
I don't think I've ever written down my timeline here. It goes like this:
Amulet I - 1882
Triangle - 1920s
Amulet II - 1965
Temple - 1982
Birthright - 1988ish
Fall of Myan - 2000
The timestamps are where they fell when I first made up the timeline for a fictional city in southern Florida, and bear no resemblance to timekeeping in the Fortress Launne universe, but I still find it easier to keep track of things thinking of it in those same terms.
By the same token, I'm probably going to have to change everyone's names just before I submit anything for publication. However, I can't rename them right now because to do that would be to turn them into different people from who they are. Once a character is named (or has claimed a name) it can't be undone. I've had a few complaints about some of my names before, so I know they aren't the best. But there's not much I can do about it until I'm completely done.
I might end up with a couple more novels set before Amulet I as well. From running my Dark Ages game, I've been firming up some backstory details that are important to Amulet I, while also tossing in a number of plotlines that will be important to Triangle/Fall of Myan. In the process I have a whole new plot coming to light - about Arthur Glorian, a chaos mage who was originally just going to be a background element so far buried under everything else that there was never going to be a need to detail exactly what happened to him or why. Well, now I know - or will. It's going to be the central plotline of the Mage component of my game.
As for Taint, it's not listed above because it spans a very broad range of timeline. At the moment I'm not even sure it's going to end up as a separate book. It might get mashed in with the two Amulet stories. I've already started doing that with Jacob's story embedded in Amulet II, and it would be easy enough to do the same with Thomas' story in Amulet I. Maybe. Will have to see how it all plays out when I get back to Amulet I (which isn't likely to be anytime in the next year).
So that's where I stand at the moment. It feels good to be writing again. :)
2006/04/07
Ah the "joys" (agonies) of roleplaying ...
I still read the blogs and forum posts here. Just haven't done anything worth mentioning myself. I'm kind of watching the April Fools group and sort of wishing I'd had my act together well enough to join in - but I don't, so I'll just sit on the sidelines and watch.
These days I'm fairly well sucked into roleplaying and it's hard to find time to do anything else. At the moment I'm caught up, though. It's a rarity these days that I have nothing to do in any game (and even now there's a couple threads I could be updating in mine, plus work on the expansion I'm planning to add).
Current count is 11 characters played in 7 games. 3 of those are in the process of being replaced by a single character, though, so that should go down eventually. Then I'm running my game (14 characters) and helping run two characters in another.
My game is still going well overall, though I've been assaulted by some major OOC road bumps in the past six weeks. One player was blatantly cheating on his dice rolls. I've put a stop to it by taking over all of his rolling for him. Even after I told him that, he was still trying to get me to "give him the benefit of the doubt" on his roll results. Hah! I sent back an 8-paragraph rant that told him in no uncertain terms exactly what I thought of his cheating, and that he would get whatever my dice said he got. Period. The same as everyone else. Everyone in the game has rolled badly and taken their lumps for it; it's an integral part of the fun. Otherwise why bother playing? There's no challenge - and hence no story - if you auto-succeed at everything you try to do.
But that wasn't the worst of my woes. I'm still having some problems with another player. To put it down concisely, I discovered that he's the guy who had originally started my game last summer and then disappeared without a trace. (...) It turns out that he came back to rpol in October, assumed that the game had died in his absence, created a new account name, and went about his merry way. (At the time, two of the three games that launched from the original game were still extant; the third one was in the process of dying.) He didn't even look. He didn't even care. And when he did notice that my game was originally his game, back when he applied to it in December, he decided it wasn't important enough to mention. (... ... ...) He wasn't planning to tell me this at all; I had to figure it out on my own while I was looking over some archival PMs in the old game and ran across his email address, which coincidentally happened to be the same one that he used to send me something else a few days earlier.
The most ironic part of it was that I was looking in the archival PMs because I wanted to know what we'd decided about the mage component of the game to see if I could use anything for the expansion I'm working on now. Said mage expansion is in the works largely because he was going around in the public forums advertising my game (unbeknownst to me until someone else pointed it out) to potential mage players - even though I had nothing prepared whatsoever at the time. And in point of fact I hadn't planned to advertise for mages in public at all; I already know where I wanted to find my players for it.
We were friends. Possibly could've become close friends. I was too pissed off to speak to him for almost a week. But we talked about it, and he apologized for the error of his ways. I'm still not convinced he really, truly realizes just how wrong it was - but he's a very good roleplayer and I wanted him to continue playing in my game. I held him at a little more of a distance than I had before but otherwise life went on.
Until earlier this week.
Before I can continue this sad little saga, I need to explain a bit more background to it. A couple weeks back, a brand new Hunter: the Reckoning game started up. The abovementioned 'friend' signed up to it. So did my favorite GM. I was sorely tempted, even though I had no time; after I failed to find anyone to talk me out of it, and indeed managed to talk one of my other players into signing up with me ... after much waffling, I signed up too.
I talked freely with both my 'friend' and Favorite GM about the GM of the HtR. He was apparently new to rpol, was playing in one of Favorite GM's games and seemed like he had potential to be pretty good, and his new game looked good too. The game started. I had a problem with the way he was running things, and so I told him. We discussed it and came to an amenable agreement.
And in the process, the suspicions began to form in the back of my mind. The GM bore a very striking resemblance to my abovementioned 'friend' - the way he organized and handled things, the way he wrote, the fact that I'd only ever seen one person make a smiley with a capital O for a nose ... and the overall vibes. It's not any one thing that I can point to, or even a straight list of things, but the whole pattern.
Now, normally, in the past, whenever I've had these types of suspicions before - that person B is actually person A in disguise - I've always, always given them the benefit of the doubt. "Nah, that can't be right. Why would they do that? They're my friend. They would never do that to me. It must be a coincidence."
And every single time I've been screwed over for it. This guy is the fifth such occurrence in the past five years, and if I'm right (the jury is still out at the moment), he would also be the sixth. The most unlikely possible people turn out to be lying to me on high orders of magnitude, and everyone has a different reason for doing it. There is always a reason. It takes a lot of energy to pretend to be someone other than yourself, and nobody does it for that long (months at a time, even years) 'just for fun.' But the reasons are so diverse and individual that I don't bother trying to guess at the whys and wherefores anymore.
I would much rather believe that I'm wrong and just being paranoid. But I've never been wrong about this before. Five times bitten, sixth time shy. :p The lesson just took a while to sink in.
I asked one of the rpol moderators to check the IPs on all the account names. Not in an official report or anything - but informally, in the site's chatroom. More as one friend to another than as user to mod. I didn't want to get him in trouble for having multiple accounts (which is against rpol site policy), because he's still a good player even if he turns out to really suck as a human being. After a bit of digging, we noticed that they seem to be deliberately hiding them - both names, my 'friend' and the HtR GM. It's now out of my hands. The mods are going to dig long and deep, and they are extremely persistent and tenacious, and if it turns out that he's the same guy, it's their music that he has to face, not mine.
Because if it does turn out to be the same guy, I'm never speaking to him again. We can roleplay together - I do still think he's a great player - and we can talk about things directly related to our games. But he's not my friend and I'm not his friend. He got his one chance to shape up out of me, and that's it.
I hate smurfs. (That's the technical term for the behavior on Battlenet.) I hate them with a passion.
I hadn't originally planned to rant at such length about this, but I guess it's the uppermost thing on my mind for the week. So there it is.
It was exactly this sort of OOC nonsense that killed the last game I ran. And that was exactly the reason why I wanted to co-GM with someone else rather than go everything alone - which was why I'd signed up to help someone else's game last summer in the first place. Doing Stargate was hard without anyone to vent to. It's better for me at the moment because I spend a lot of time whining to my Favorite GM, and he vents about his player problems to me in turn. It works out well, and at this point he's my best friend on the site. I also vent a lot in the rpol chatroom. I have outlets to go to. It's not intolerable.
Other than that ... roleplaying is going well. :p My game is rolling along nicely. The mage component is in the works whenever I manage to gather enough time to sit down and look at it. I write a lot slower than I used to and therefore have less total time. It's kind of depressing, because I used to be able to play a lot faster. I remember one evening where I was writing for characters in four different games at once, all of them at 20 minutes between posts. I don't think I know how to do that anymore. Somewhere along the way it started taking a lot more effort to think what my characters would say or do, and I don't know what changed.
Nothing external has changed. My life is the same as it has been for years now. I work 40 hours, sleep 8ish hours a night on average, and spend the rest of the time either chatting online or roleplaying. I do slightly more housework than I used to. And that's all.
I need to get back to writing at some point, though. A couple nights ago I reread every blog entry I've written since I first arrived in Dec. 2004. There's a lot of great projects afoot in there. Occasionally they call to me. But not enough for me to go do them. Maybe it's time to plan some writing back into my daily life. Two nights of roleplay posts, one night of writing other things. Repeat twice. Take one day off from doing any writing whatsoever unless I really, really want to. I'll see if I can try that schedule out...
These days I'm fairly well sucked into roleplaying and it's hard to find time to do anything else. At the moment I'm caught up, though. It's a rarity these days that I have nothing to do in any game (and even now there's a couple threads I could be updating in mine, plus work on the expansion I'm planning to add).
Current count is 11 characters played in 7 games. 3 of those are in the process of being replaced by a single character, though, so that should go down eventually. Then I'm running my game (14 characters) and helping run two characters in another.
My game is still going well overall, though I've been assaulted by some major OOC road bumps in the past six weeks. One player was blatantly cheating on his dice rolls. I've put a stop to it by taking over all of his rolling for him. Even after I told him that, he was still trying to get me to "give him the benefit of the doubt" on his roll results. Hah! I sent back an 8-paragraph rant that told him in no uncertain terms exactly what I thought of his cheating, and that he would get whatever my dice said he got. Period. The same as everyone else. Everyone in the game has rolled badly and taken their lumps for it; it's an integral part of the fun. Otherwise why bother playing? There's no challenge - and hence no story - if you auto-succeed at everything you try to do.
But that wasn't the worst of my woes. I'm still having some problems with another player. To put it down concisely, I discovered that he's the guy who had originally started my game last summer and then disappeared without a trace. (...) It turns out that he came back to rpol in October, assumed that the game had died in his absence, created a new account name, and went about his merry way. (At the time, two of the three games that launched from the original game were still extant; the third one was in the process of dying.) He didn't even look. He didn't even care. And when he did notice that my game was originally his game, back when he applied to it in December, he decided it wasn't important enough to mention. (... ... ...) He wasn't planning to tell me this at all; I had to figure it out on my own while I was looking over some archival PMs in the old game and ran across his email address, which coincidentally happened to be the same one that he used to send me something else a few days earlier.
The most ironic part of it was that I was looking in the archival PMs because I wanted to know what we'd decided about the mage component of the game to see if I could use anything for the expansion I'm working on now. Said mage expansion is in the works largely because he was going around in the public forums advertising my game (unbeknownst to me until someone else pointed it out) to potential mage players - even though I had nothing prepared whatsoever at the time. And in point of fact I hadn't planned to advertise for mages in public at all; I already know where I wanted to find my players for it.
We were friends. Possibly could've become close friends. I was too pissed off to speak to him for almost a week. But we talked about it, and he apologized for the error of his ways. I'm still not convinced he really, truly realizes just how wrong it was - but he's a very good roleplayer and I wanted him to continue playing in my game. I held him at a little more of a distance than I had before but otherwise life went on.
Until earlier this week.
Before I can continue this sad little saga, I need to explain a bit more background to it. A couple weeks back, a brand new Hunter: the Reckoning game started up. The abovementioned 'friend' signed up to it. So did my favorite GM. I was sorely tempted, even though I had no time; after I failed to find anyone to talk me out of it, and indeed managed to talk one of my other players into signing up with me ... after much waffling, I signed up too.
I talked freely with both my 'friend' and Favorite GM about the GM of the HtR. He was apparently new to rpol, was playing in one of Favorite GM's games and seemed like he had potential to be pretty good, and his new game looked good too. The game started. I had a problem with the way he was running things, and so I told him. We discussed it and came to an amenable agreement.
And in the process, the suspicions began to form in the back of my mind. The GM bore a very striking resemblance to my abovementioned 'friend' - the way he organized and handled things, the way he wrote, the fact that I'd only ever seen one person make a smiley with a capital O for a nose ... and the overall vibes. It's not any one thing that I can point to, or even a straight list of things, but the whole pattern.
Now, normally, in the past, whenever I've had these types of suspicions before - that person B is actually person A in disguise - I've always, always given them the benefit of the doubt. "Nah, that can't be right. Why would they do that? They're my friend. They would never do that to me. It must be a coincidence."
And every single time I've been screwed over for it. This guy is the fifth such occurrence in the past five years, and if I'm right (the jury is still out at the moment), he would also be the sixth. The most unlikely possible people turn out to be lying to me on high orders of magnitude, and everyone has a different reason for doing it. There is always a reason. It takes a lot of energy to pretend to be someone other than yourself, and nobody does it for that long (months at a time, even years) 'just for fun.' But the reasons are so diverse and individual that I don't bother trying to guess at the whys and wherefores anymore.
I would much rather believe that I'm wrong and just being paranoid. But I've never been wrong about this before. Five times bitten, sixth time shy. :p The lesson just took a while to sink in.
I asked one of the rpol moderators to check the IPs on all the account names. Not in an official report or anything - but informally, in the site's chatroom. More as one friend to another than as user to mod. I didn't want to get him in trouble for having multiple accounts (which is against rpol site policy), because he's still a good player even if he turns out to really suck as a human being. After a bit of digging, we noticed that they seem to be deliberately hiding them - both names, my 'friend' and the HtR GM. It's now out of my hands. The mods are going to dig long and deep, and they are extremely persistent and tenacious, and if it turns out that he's the same guy, it's their music that he has to face, not mine.
Because if it does turn out to be the same guy, I'm never speaking to him again. We can roleplay together - I do still think he's a great player - and we can talk about things directly related to our games. But he's not my friend and I'm not his friend. He got his one chance to shape up out of me, and that's it.
I hate smurfs. (That's the technical term for the behavior on Battlenet.) I hate them with a passion.
I hadn't originally planned to rant at such length about this, but I guess it's the uppermost thing on my mind for the week. So there it is.
It was exactly this sort of OOC nonsense that killed the last game I ran. And that was exactly the reason why I wanted to co-GM with someone else rather than go everything alone - which was why I'd signed up to help someone else's game last summer in the first place. Doing Stargate was hard without anyone to vent to. It's better for me at the moment because I spend a lot of time whining to my Favorite GM, and he vents about his player problems to me in turn. It works out well, and at this point he's my best friend on the site. I also vent a lot in the rpol chatroom. I have outlets to go to. It's not intolerable.
Other than that ... roleplaying is going well. :p My game is rolling along nicely. The mage component is in the works whenever I manage to gather enough time to sit down and look at it. I write a lot slower than I used to and therefore have less total time. It's kind of depressing, because I used to be able to play a lot faster. I remember one evening where I was writing for characters in four different games at once, all of them at 20 minutes between posts. I don't think I know how to do that anymore. Somewhere along the way it started taking a lot more effort to think what my characters would say or do, and I don't know what changed.
Nothing external has changed. My life is the same as it has been for years now. I work 40 hours, sleep 8ish hours a night on average, and spend the rest of the time either chatting online or roleplaying. I do slightly more housework than I used to. And that's all.
I need to get back to writing at some point, though. A couple nights ago I reread every blog entry I've written since I first arrived in Dec. 2004. There's a lot of great projects afoot in there. Occasionally they call to me. But not enough for me to go do them. Maybe it's time to plan some writing back into my daily life. Two nights of roleplay posts, one night of writing other things. Repeat twice. Take one day off from doing any writing whatsoever unless I really, really want to. I'll see if I can try that schedule out...
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