Sun Nov 16 01:51:49 2014

At 11 o'clock PM, Day of the Moon, 14th of the Month of the Battle
on the Theran calendar Shazidra perished, never to return.

Well, I was hoping to get some time to play again and avoid this, but it just didn't happen. Oh well.

Some thoughts on this character and this recent character challenge:

Concerning Shazidra's role, I really loved the written concept of this character, and was excited about it.

Despite the new job requirements, I probably could have found some more time to play, but there were several discouraging factors that just made it easier to focus on other things.

The first was largely my own fault. I personally detest felar thief, and I didn't think to mention that in my character application as a build that I loath to play. My personal play style of thieves relies heavily on carrying lots of preps, and this is ESPECIALLY true with poisoners or trappers (just poisoner in this case) who need to carry ingredients with them for on-the-spot adaptation to changing situations. Carrying all this stuff requires some strength, and 17 strength just doesn't cut it. It basically left me having to choose between being prepared, or being able to defend myself if attacked, since carrying even a bare minimum would put me over half of my max-carry.

I was also a bit disappointed that I still only got the standard 500 role xp for initial role entry despite the fact that I clearly indicated which parts of the role were pre-written, and which parts I contributed for myself. I spent several hours writing that role, and basically got nothing for it. Had I known my own role contributions would be ignored because of the pre-written stuff, I would have just copy pasted the pre-written role, got the basic 500 xp, and then added my own additions to get some role update xp. It really put a damper on my motivation to add any updates after that one.

The last diminisher of the fun-stick was the rapid deterioration of the quest to recover the Managerie. I understand the reasons for why that fell apart, but it still took a lot away from the character, since that was a major motivating force for Shazidra, and knowing that nothing was likely ever going to happen with it took a lot away from the character.

On that note, I've always wondered why felar were so weak, when cats IRL are so incredibly strong for their size/mass. Would be really great to see even a 1 or 2 point boost to their str.

On the positive side, as I mentioned, I found the role concept for this character very interesting and fun to play. Starting out with a granted tattoo of Jazur was kinda cool, even if it didn't really do very much (charisma boost for another player, and a really cool echo). Also, having an over-max stat on one of my characters for the first time ever was pretty nifty, too, even if it only served to negate the otherwise terrible charisma of a felar.

I thoroughly enjoyed my interactions with most of the characters I interacted with.

Daphrdan -- Thanks for teaching me your gambling secrets. I put them to good use and finally got that lucky roll of matching 3 dice on the first toss with a 100 gold bet. That was pretty sweet! I was immediately wishing I had made it a 1,000 gold bet, though. I could have retired from gold collection until age death if that had happened.

High Herald (I can never remember how to spell your name) -- Excellent job with your character. Definitely one of the better roleplayed characters I've seen.

Sindariell -- Another very well played character. I was sad to see you go to Fortress, and even more distressed when I came back from a long absence and found you had died. You were one of the challenge characters I enjoyed interacting with the most, even if you were occasionally a little temperamental.

I'm sure there are a bunch of others I can't think of off the top of my head after being absent so long. Feel free to shoot me any comments you feel like. I'm sure I'll get around to reading them eventually.

I believe they were magically created and altered to be weak as a means to keep them as slaves/familiars of the mages in Veran.
I haven't gone through Veran in a long time to read the histories that you can see there though, but I think that was the back story as to why they have a low strength.

I enjoyed interacting with Shazidra, well played. Thanks for the help and the company in exploration.

That we all almost died thinking that room was no recall will remain one of the funniest memories I keep from CF for a long while

>I was also a bit disappointed that I still only got the
>standard 500 role xp for initial role entry despite the fact

Welcome to the new role xp awards. Total crapshoot if you get the imm who considers the time/effort put into the role and awards accordingly or the guy who says, well there is a lot of text here, but I don't find it to be "original enough", or I dont like first person stories, or you used a preposition to start a sentence. Here is 500 role xp. Why did I give you that amount, you'll never know! HAHAHAH!!! It's like taking a math test and only seeing your grade after the fact is a D. How are we supposed to improve our role writing if you imms don't give us specific, constructive role xp comments when you dish out what we see as the "minimum". Sure it is all subjective, but not knowing drives me nuts. /end rant

Lets face it the imms are just like us, people that have lives, responsibilities and obligations outside of the "game". We all do what we can do, and most often than not the imms put in much more time than any "player" no matter the opinion. They read your awesome or crap roles, they take the time to snoop you, more often than not they take the time to role a charachter to interact with you to get you priest empowered. Its a game, write your role, play your character or role, rinse and repeat. End rant.
Dont bitch about change.
Be the change.

The amount of exp gained always varies based on who read it, and I'm pretty sure most Imms aren't expected a professional-grade novelette. I've submitted what I thought were stellar roles and got 500. I've submitted roles I whipped up in about 10 minutes and gotten much more.

Get the idea down and play. Then get in there and have fun.

The fact that you feel hard done by sort of shows the balance has been lost. The point of a role was to help Imms understand the rp they witnessed.

Personally I think we should do away with role writing exp altogether and let written roles be used for their intended purpose. As it is players blatantly farm exp by writing.

I've noticed lately that you are infinitely more likely to get XP for entries that actually serve that purpose, i.e. explain your character.

Initial role entry will get more XP when it explicitly shows why you're your sphere/class/alignment/whatever.

Follow-ups will bring you XP when they explain some action you did, that actually calls for an explanation.

I do think that role contests should go away, though -- but I also don't have anything to offer in their place.