I feel the same way. At first, the colored text was not my jam, but it's been so beaten into me by now--and let's be fair, I can post A LOT OF DESCRIPTION/scene blocking around the darned dialogue--that I automatically do it.

And (beams) I'm glad you are. I feel like I'm roasting academia a bit, which is always fun. :grin:

You are up incredibly early...!

Couldn't sleep for a few hours. Started with allergies, and then turned into irritation about the concept of a free and democratic society.

Understandable.

I mean, y'know... the danger looming over the concept of a free and democratic society.

I rather expect you do know, one way or t'other...

I do know, alas.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Also, perhaps you could keep track of XP the way we keep track in your games, in the biography? I would like that.

I... believe I am already doing that...

Guess I did it right after my last message, and just hadn't posted again until just now...

Ah, weird... It didn't seem to show when I went into character details, but maybe it's a cookie thing... :handwave:

Aaannnnnnd if this were a TV show this right here



would definitely be in the trailer.

I think you need a "favorite quotes" thread, young lady

We'll see! I do generally like those...

So yeah I like playing guys who talk their way out of stuff. Not even always CON MEN, not Rinaldo/Lukes, just guys who do something else but who always act like conflict is just a misunderstanding that they can straighten out if you'd just listen to them for like four minutes (even when it is NOT actually just a misunderstanding).

In a Dungeon World game I'm in, every other player but me disappeared (as often happens on RPol), and the GM has decided heck with it it's this guy's solo game now.

--A thief stole a list of names that we were supposed to get back.
--We trailed the thief to some bandits in the woods that he's hiding out with
--My teammates killed two bandits guarding the perimeter.
--I cast invisibility and just walked in and found the thief. He'd given the list to the bandit chief for safe-keeping; it was in the chief's tent
--I walked out and cast a different spell (meaning Invisibility wore off)
--A new bandit patrol showed up and my teammates (who hadn't gone AWOL yet) started picking a fight with them.

--Then the last players went AWOL... and I took over.

--I calmed down the bandits
--A monster suddenly showed up to attack
--We all ran from it into the bandit camp
--I got the bandits to go attack the monster. Charge!
--I told the thief to go get the list from the bandit leader's tent and give it to me
--THEN we went and helped defeat the monster
--Then I asked the bandit leader if he'd seen the thief with the list we were looking for
--He offered to sell me the list THAT I ALREADY HAD IN MY POCKET for 200 gold
--I said we'd go tell our employer the offer
--The thief caught up with us and we ran before anyone found out about the perimeter guards.

This is what an Istvan can bring to the party.

Glad to hear it!

Characters who try to talk their way out of things (...not necessarily conmen, but sometimes conmen...) are my preference for playing, too.

I alllllmost said obviously--but then realized you haven't actually seen more than two of my PCs (how is this possible? I feel like we've been gaming together now for so long, but I guess it isn't that long really) and Lyric is not a good example of this. Ballad is, though. She'll try to talk her way out of something (or, uh, into something) every time...  I just think the 'can I social through this?' option is usually more interesting. I ... uh, also like to play characters who value life, even if it belongs to NPCs... otherwise, boring, right? I think so anyway.

But a character who talks their way out of stuff (or tries to, anyway) is also my preference for GMing... so much more scope for shenanigans... Nothing wrong with some combat now and again, but if combat + getting cool things is all you want from a GM, this GM will be bored out of her ever loving mind.

Lyric is a good example, I suppose, of the other character I tend to play which is... Arrogant, but community-building? I GM so often it's hard not to play a character who's motivated to get other characters to do stuff :grin:
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:01, Sun 17 Jan 2021.

Do you have a personality in mind for Martin? Are they wisecracking or enthusiastic or serene or anything else or... no preference...?

Like Loiosh in Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos books

Buuuuut if you haven't read those...

Wisecracking. Little sarcastic. Devoted to Istvan, really, but also acts like he thinks he needs taking down a peg sometimes a little. (This is incorrect. Life does this more than enough for Istvan. The real reason is that Martin simply thinks this is how male-gendered friends talk to one another.)

Alas, the only Brust I ever read was the one he co-authored w/ Emma Bull, Freedom & Necessity... and I think one other, which I was kind of meh on, so thanks for the expansion! :)

Not only do I highly recommend the Vlad Taltos books, they came out of his RPG sessions with his friends (and his ex-wife). Some people say that-- aside from, perhaps, the Wild Cards series of books-- it never works to bookify RPG campaigns, but Brust is another example of a time when it absolutely can/did work.

Huh. That's interesting, I didn't know that bit of trivia about them. I feel like the only book I've read that I know came out of an RPG 'campaign' was a YA by Patricia C Wrede and Caroline Stevermer--and it was an epistolary game, so just letters back and forth. I went through quite a kick of diggling epistolary novels (that's when I read Freedom & Necessity).



Hurrah for perfect, but :sheepish: what's vaguely Runyonesque mean? Tell me more of this preferred flavor, because I am extremely intrigued.

When characters talk like cheap, funny gangsters from the '30s or so, that's because of insanely-popular-at-the-time author Damon Runyon. Basically, gangsters, pickpockets, and gamblers who talk like they're in GUYS AND DOLLS (because it, like a ton of other things, is based on Damon Runyon's writings).

Low-class hoods and criminals (often with a heart of gold) who try to pretend that they are law-abiding citizens, officer, by being in the habit of trying to use the best possible diction and vocabulary they can possibly manage (and sometimes failing).

"Honestly, officer, I am deeply hurt and insulted by your odious insinuation that dis stiff youse has happened to find in the trunk of our automobile was bein' transported to the river by us fer nefarious poiposes. I leave youse to considah that perhaps de poor gentleman was simply a freezing hobo who, seein' our trunk open whilst we wuz preparin' fer our excursion to the countryside, crawled in to get out of the cold, there to subsequently just happen to expire." (Takes off hat for moment of silence for poor frozen hobo.) "Why his feet are coincidentally encased in cement, I cannot venture to offer a hypothesis."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damon_Runyon


To expand slightly on what I mentioned earlier, in one chapter of L. Sprague DeCamp's classic The Compleat Complete Enchanter, all the trolls and frost giants in Asgard talk like this, which is hilarious.

Ha! Okay, I getcha. Thanks! Never even heard of him or that term, or if I did, I've long since forgotten. Is that a quote from his work? Trolls and frost giants talking like that sounds darned hilarious.

See... I just like slangy PCs/NPCs in fantasy/SF, with hints of noir/pulp/gee gosh golly 50s-type aesthetics + elevated poetry. Feels more genuinely otherworld than thee and thou and all that jazz. :grin:

But all that begs the question, have you read or do you read the online comic Lackadaisy Cats?

No, I just made it up as an example





IKR




I have not.

(Goes and looks)

Mm. I'm not really getting into it...

...You don't write it//draw it, I hope?

... Huh, solidly impressed. Nice 'un.



Aww, too bad! It feels like the kind of thing you'd maybe like? But I admit I haven't read it for some years. It IS cats, but the character dynamics are nice and the research into the era/swanky over-the-top 20s-style glory is *chef's kiss*



:grin: No, and if I did, I wouldn't be offended if you didn't like it! I wish I had the patience/sticktoitiveness to put up an online comic.

Thank you; I put effort into it




Mmmmm, no, it's not for me... I don't like the sepia... nor the dialogue-writing... nor the plot, really... (So, it therefore doesn't matter that they apparently eventually get past the sepia...)

Webcomics I do keep up with:
--Girl Genius
--Modest Medusa
--Kill Six Billion Demons
--Godslave (I don't check in on it NEARLY as often though)

There were a bunch of others, back in the day...

Girl Genius I loooove, but it has been an age since I checked that one, too. Never heard of the others, maybe will check em out.

I think the only webcomic I check semi-regularly anymore is Order of the Stick. Which I also recommend highly! And is definitely more of a comedy...