It should have been no different from any other night. A small village, a small tavern, all of them drinking a little too much. But for whatever reason, it wasn’t. Maybe it was the full moon making him uneasy or the fact he had heard someone mutter an insult about true elves as they moved past him at the bar. Something that made him buy a few more drinks than usual, that made his skin a little thinner.Â
He wasn’t quite sure how that had translated to being pressed against the wall of Esfir’s room, her hands on the lapels of his shirt, her lips against his. He remembered a series of snapshots. The others going to bed. Esfir watching him, burning with curiosity as he told some story about his old training. Him finally letting his guard down around her as he never did, their shoulders touching as he leaned back in his seat. He wasn’t used to casual touch, still, even after travelling for so long.
Snapped back to the present, Esfir broke away for a moment. His lips tingled with her absence and he blinked, surprised, wondering if she had realised what an absolutely garbage idea this was.
“One thing.”
“Go on.”
“This doesn’t mean I’m in love with you. I’m bored and you’re here. Okay?”
He considered, then nodding. “Okay.”
And with that, she crashed back into his body.
*
Shattering glass. So much noise he thought his ears would bleed. Metal cutting into his palm, pain exploding across his face. Again and again and again -Â
*
He jolted awake, gasping as though he had been drowning, his skin soaked with cold sweat. For a moment, he wasn’t sure where he was and he scrambled up, the sheets pooling around his waist. Then he blinked and the room solidified. He was safe, he was away and shit, he was in a bed with someone. An awake someone.Â
Esfir was looking at him with those big eyes of hers, not saying a word. She had clearly been awake for a while. Long enough to see the worst of the twisting and turning, the panic. He met her eyes for just long enough to realise that. Then he was up, collecting his clothes in the gentle dawn light.Â
He felt his heart pounding in his chest, his cheeks flushing with sudden colour. He pulled on his shirt, his trousers, throwing his coat over his arm. He paused in the doorway, realising suddenly quite how bad this looked. Esfir was still in bed, eyebrow raised.
“I uh. I just need to. Do some more sparring. This was. This was great, really -”
“Just go.”
“Yep.”
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Drawn This Way: On the Virtues of Pre-Written Characters
On of the first decisions when you sit down to write a larp is whether to have player designed or ref designed characters. Most systems in the UK run off player designed characters however some one off events will provide a pre-written character for each player.Â
The biggest, in my oppinion, advantage of pre-written characters is that it allows for complex netwoks of interacting character backstories which simply are not possible when the players build their own characters from the ground up. Done correctly even high conflict events can be run without monsters in this way. Plot can be seamlessly introduced into backstory and refs can make sure that players have equal access to plot hooks and story.
Lets start by defining terms: A pre written character is a character whose backstory is defined by a document the refs write for a player. In most cases players fill out a form and refs design a character based around their preferences. Briefs are normally written from the characters perspective and can contain false or biased information without the player being aware.
Ex. Character A thinks character B left them at the alter, but Character B thinks character A dumped them via letter. Character C is responsible for the letter.
In terms of players it also allows for very customizable game, assuming the game organizers ask the right questions. For example, if Player A indicates on their booking form they really like puzzles and also want to roleplay with Player B their character can have hooks into the most puzzle heavy plot and background links with Player B. With player designed characters it can be difficult to tell at the beginning of the game which types of plot which types of game.
Of course it is important to get player input before writing a character for them, especially if they are someone you do not know well. I personally would make sure that I had the answers to the following questions before writing a character for someone
1)What would you like to be doing in up time (examples of game types: puzzles, politics, fighting, ball gowning, sneaking/ploting ect. A ranking system is useful for this)
2) What sort of stats would you like (mechanical stats are very different to what people do in uptime but do often impact character design. For instance I might want to play a mage but really like politics and fighting. Or I might want to play a warrior but want mainly to be doing puzzles and ballgowning)
3) People you do not wish to roleplay with (Sometimes people do not get along but this is not immediately obvious to event organizers. It is important to know who is happy doing what with who and that everyone feels safe. This information should stay confidential)
4) Are you ok with romance (self explanatory. some people enjoy IC relationships, some people don’t)
5) An opt out system for starting in bad positions. (Some people like being screwed over at events, some don’t. Some people are ok with some types of being screwed over but not others. Example: Player A is ok with having false information in their brief but not ok with being the target of another characters grudge) An opt out system means people are guaranteed any specific things, but they can avoid the things they don’t like.Â
There are many more questions that can be asked, but I personally feel these 5 make up the core. The important thing to get as much information as possible about the sort of game players want rather than character specifics.Â
It is worth being wary of people using real world references when talking about what they want to play. Someone writing I want to play Harry Potter might mean “I want to play an orphan with a wise mentor who undergoes a crisis of faith” or it might mean “I want to play an unwitting celebrity who is the subject of prophesy” or it might mean “I want to play someone marked by their worst enemy”. Or countless other interpretations. There is nothing wrong with wanting to play something similar to another character, but it is worth clarifying which bits people mean.
Pre-written characters take a large amount of work on the part of the event organizers. Backstories need to be thought out and the question of “what will they be doing in uptime” needs to be carefully considered. Simply writing someone an awesome backstory doesn’t make a good event on its own. How different characters would have viewed the same event is another important consideration, which has the potential to both add and take away from plot.Â
Uptime action should always be the guiding light when writing characters. If a part of a backstory does not contribute to a players uptime game it is a waste of ref time to write. It doesn’t matter that you killed a dragon if nothing relating to the experience is uptime relevant. his also holds true to negative events. Having a deep dark secret is useless if it has no affect on anything that happens at the event.
TL:DR
Pros:Â
Pre-written events allow for more intricate plots and different sorts of plots (investigation works very well in this format)
Plot can be spread evenly
Players can get customized experiences
Cons:
Its alot of work
No seriously it is
If done wrong players can feel they are trapped playing characters they do not wish to play.
Secondary characters need to be provided in case characters die or players are not enjoying the characters they were originally given (This blog is a supporter of rule 1. If you arn’t having fun, play something else)
Bit of a sticky one, because CUTT is having a bit of a move away from the casual 'blackface' as a racial physrep (doing it in a big field full of people who know the context is one thing - but in the middle of town, it starts to look like something really crass) but we left it optional for the 3ygb, and a few people decided to show the world how it was done.
And, as is generally the way when people don't just meet physrepping standards, but actively embrace them, it looked awesome.Â
Pain to photograph, though, between the rather low contrast on the subject, and the sunny day. Moved him into tree cover, and figured the background would probably blow out (it did, but some of the brokeh is annoyingly ugly).
The desaturation is just because I wound up using that set of options on the first photo I processed, and copypasting them to the rest of the set kept the theme consistent.
Dark, contrasty, desaturated, was working really well for the 3ygb, actually. It wasn't a colourful event, and we had a lot of black facepaint going around, so it showed it up nicely.
Was feeling a bit down about the photoset originally (was also reffing, so not enough spare attention to pay to shooting) but they've come out quite nicely.
By request (she says she was kidding, but why let that spoil the fun?), the fluffiest of Drow Princesses. And no, that didn't work out well for her.
I mentioned wigs, right? They're a thing.
I'm never sure where to put the horizon when I can't avoid it intersecting the subject of a portrait. I think maybe eye level, but given the lack of eyes here, well.
Oh, and there was a really annoyingly obvious bright spot top-right, so I burned it pretty hard. Then I added vignette. Maybe I'm on a slippery slope.
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CUTT 3ygb, and here we see the PvP start (or, more accurately, end) as the PCs briefly debate letting one of their own bleed out, and then decide that if they're killing him, they should do it properly.
Tilting the camera is not normally a thing I do, but perhaps it should be. Other than composition, or a lens that isn't wide enough, I'm struggling to understand when to do it - it just feels right sometimes, and I'm not sure why.
I think I need to get more abstract with my portraits - right now, you just get a picture of what's in front of me. Need to work on showing what's really there. (Well, FSDO).
Same number of posts as followers. Is that good? Not really a tumblr person - just using it because it does the picture-plus-text format well, and has a simple queue system. Probably doing it wrong by not reblogging all the stuff.
