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0. First, select your ten fictional characters (from any medium) by whichever method you like best. Then answer the questions below.
(1) Jessily (Maelstrom)
(2) Tourmaline (Maelstrom)
(3) Talishae (Maelstrom)
(4) Mithril (CUTT)
(5) Thea Chalice (CUTT)
(6) Kallestra Lorelai Aeostare (CUTT)
(7) Tesseract (FD)
(8) Ayeena (D&D)
(9) Vasha (Triad Weyrs)
(10) K'sen (Triad Weyrs)
1. Divide the list up by even and odd. Which group of five would make a better Five Man Band (like a Power Rangers team)? Who would you slot in each position: Leader, Lancer (second-in-command), Big Guy, Smart Guy, The Chick? If you think the team would be improved by swapping one character between the even and odd groups, which ones would you switch?
Right, let's see who the teams are.
Team A:
Tourmaline
Mithril
Kallestra
Ayeena
K'sen
Oh man, these guys are appallingly bad at Power Rangers style antics, although they fit into their team roles quite well. Ayeena would have to be the leader because she's the only one with the will to power, but that's not to say that anyone would *listen* to her. Mithril would then slot into the Grand Vizier, I mean, Lancer, role, not that she wants power, you understand, but she can't help but give advice and she'd step down if you all stopped being so consistently retarded, understand? K'sen is the quintissential Big Guy (look, I has muscles! look at the shiny muscles and be distracted from my total lack of brains!), Tourmaline certainly considers himself a Smart Guy, and Kallestra is undeniably The Chick (but it will mess up my haaair! she wails).
Team B:
Jessily
Talishae
Thea
Tesseract
Vasha
Slightly more likely to form a functional team. There would be a hilarious passive-aggressive leadership fight probably leaving Thea in charge as she would get fed up and just start giving orders anyway. Tesseract would then assume she'd won second place but the real power behind the throne would be Vasha, because Tessaract is the Big Guy (small, female, chainmail, shield as big as her). Talishae would cheerfully step into the Smart Guy role as befits her Teacherite faith, leaving Jessily as this team's Chick (OMG, I'm just a fluffy healer, right, stop poking me with sticks!).
If I could pull Ayeena in to team B to replace Thea then team B would totally hand the world its arse on a plate, or whatever Power Rangers are meant to do.
2. Gender-swap 2, 8 & 10. Which character would have the most change in their story arc? Which the least? Would any of these characters have to have a complete personality change to be believable as the opposite sex?
Gender-swap Tourmaline and you get someone who looks not even slightly different on the surface but is actually much less aggressive, and more likely to deal with frustration by getting mopey and weepy (I HAVE NO TEAR DUCTS AND I MUST CRY) rather than storming around in the dark looking for someone to kill. Oh, and they have to explain their pronoun choice a lot less often :).
Gender-swap Ayeena and you get a dashing bishounen shining paladin of righteousness instead of a dashing Valley Girl shining paladin of righteousness. It doesn't make much difference but somehow seems an awful lot more boring, probably because male plate-clad paladins are, like, totally overdone.
Gender-swapping K'sen gives him a slightly different feel, but actually changes surprisingly little; the concerns take on a different flavour, but are fundamentally the same challenges.
I find it moderately hilarious that the character whose gender-swap makes most difference is the character who is physically asexual, but there you go.
3. Compare the matchups of 1 & 8 and 5 & 9. (Ignore canon sexual preferences for the moment.) Which couple would be more compatible? Which couple would be more plausible to people from either principal's home culture?
That gives us... Jessily and Ayeena, and Thea and Vasha. Which are surprisingly plausible combinations, really.
Jessily would attach herself to Ayeena (definitely that way round - Ayeena might protect Jessily like she would any other civilian, but she wouldn't consider anything romantic without concerted efforts on Jessily's part) partly because Ayeena is dazzlingly pretty and partly because Ayeena is a poor tormented soul with many cares and frustrations and Jessily would see her as a fantastic opportunity to make the world a better place with Healing Nookie, and partly because Ayeena is the protective sort and Jessily's survival instincts tend to lead her to hooking up with people she thinks can help protect her. Ayeena would be happy enough with the comfort, if a little conflicted as to how she could best help Jessily and a little concerned that she might be exploiting the poor cat-girl and that she might become biased towards protecting her at the expense of the greater good
Thea and Vasha would be a much more equal, casual partnership. They would get on well together, have a great friendship based on regaling each other with tales of their respective worlds and exploits, and occasionally their hair-ruffling would turn into play-fighting which would turn into kissing. They are both adventurous and playful, and would be very fond of each other. So Thea/Vasha would be a much healthier relationship than Jessily/Ayeena, although both sets are a good fit for each other's preferences - Jessily wants someone pretty who needs her and will protect her, Ayeena wants someone who will accept her in all her moods and comfort her, Thea wants someone fun and energetic, Vasha wants someone more experienced and fun to be around.
As for their home cultures, the only thing that would raise any eyebrows is Vasha's age, at thirteen. Jessily is already well-known for sleeping with anything that doesn't move fast enough, and she's Free Islands, it's practically expected. Ayeena barely has a home culture, and her deity approves of any relationship in which both sides make sacrifices for the other party in the name of love, ending up in a better combined state thereby. Thea moves in adventuring and special-ops army circles where lesbianism appears to be endemic, and Vasha lives in a Weyr where most people's sexual encounters are determined by basically random selection due to their dragon's sexual preferences and everyone regularly sees each other naked - while lesbianism is not one of these enforced combinations, the atmosphere is such that it's unlikely to be particularly looked down upon.
4. Your team is 3, 4 & 9. The mission consists of a social challenge, a mental challenge and a physical challenge. Which team member do you assign to each challenge?
Talishae, Mithril and Vasha start by having a catfight about who gets the physical challenge. Eventually, the other two forcibly assign it to Talishae on the grounds that she's made of wood and hence distinctly harder to kill or maim than either of them.
Then Mithril and Vasha have a conversation, or possibly a staring contest, the contents of which appear entirely opaque to any observers as Mithril is in full non-sequitor mode. Eventually Mithril breaks and slopes off to the mental challenge, leaving Vasha with the social one, having proved her general superiority in interacting with people.
5. 7 becomes 1's boss for a week in some plausible fashion. How's their working relationship?
Tesseract becomes Jessily's boss for a week because they're going on some kind of military operation (although Tesseract persists in referring to it as an 'adventure') and Jessily is one of life's followers. Jessily stumbles around getting her hair caught in hedgerows and crying a lot, but this only inspires Tesseract to greater acts of support and leadership and eventually they muddle through, leaving both of them with a new respect for the other.
6. 2 finds him/her/itself inserted into 6's continuity. As far as anyone other than 2 or 6 is concerned, they've always been there. What role would 2 be presumed to have had in 6's story, and could they fit in without going wonky?
Tourmaline finds himself inserted into Kallestra's continuity. As far as anyone other than Tourmaline and Kallestra is concerned, they've always been there. You see, Tourmaline is some kind of probably demonic creature that the Tower sent with Kallestra as her minder, and mostly he just impassively watches her and makes sure to intervene when she's about to get herself killed - which explains why she had the good sense to run away from Daramin when she did and why she still hasn't been caught and discorperated, really.
7. 3 and 5 get three wishes. The catch is that they have to agree on all three wishes before they get the benefits of any of them. What three wishes would they make?
Talishae and Thea get three wishes. They spend an awfully long time sitting down with a big piece of paper going over the wording of the wishes they desire to make, and if they're allowed to clarify the conditions of the wishes with the wish-granter they spend a long time doing that, too. Naturally the first one they try is one of those 'infinite wishes pls' meta-wishes that are normally explicitly outlawed in these cases.
Other than that, they generally attempt to ensure they end up as close to omnipotent and omniscient as they can get, without falling into any of the standard pitfalls like 'immortal that can't end their own life when the universe winds down and becomes really boring / isn't powerful enough to escape unpleasant situations', and 'universe and everything in it is destroyed because then there will be no more wars / suffering / stupid people', and 'material goods ordered from wish arrive in an awkward / inappropriate / fatal fashion'.
I offer no precise wording because they would have more motivation and resources to get it right than I feel like expending :).
8. 1 and 2 are brainwashed by a one-time artifact that works even on people immune to mind control to attack and kill 4. They keep their normal personality, skills and competence level, except any Code vs. Killing has been turned off. Can 4 survive? How?
Jessily and Tourmaline are brainwashed by a one-time artifact etc etc to attack and kill Mithril. Tourmaline immediately concocts an elaborate plan involving the construction of an interdimensional teleporter over a combined ritual / mana site and Jessily awkwardly tags along and helps him out where she can, her occasional suggestions that they should just hire someone to do it being waved away by Tourmaline who isn't really listening to her.
Finally the project is complete and they step through the portal and draw their knives, only to be slaughtered by Mithril at leisure - she halts one, freezes the other, destroys the frozen one either with her dagger or her friends depending on her circumstances, then freezes the other and repeats the operation.
The moral of this story is that attacking someone from a high-magic universe is harder than you might think. (If only they'd taken, say, a heavily armed mokosh who wouldn't pause for that fatal moment before pressing the attack...)
9. 6, 7, 9 & 10 must help an orphanage full of small and depressed children have a merry Christmas. Who does what, knowing that at the very least the kids will be expecting a visit from Santa?
Kallestra, Tesseract, Vasha and K'sen help an orphanage celebrate Christmas.
That is:
Tesseract regales the children with Exciting Tales! of her Adventures! (which actually goes down surprisingly well because she's not bad with young children);
K'sen cooks a fabulous meal and still manages to find time to be dressed up in a red costume and a beard and go 'ho ho ho' in hearty but slightly confused fashion;
Vasha runs around doing essential things like escorting small children to the toilet, cleaning up messes and prompting K'sen frantically when he gets stuck for words or isn't quite doing the right thing as Santa;
Kallestra leans against a wall filing her nails and occasionally performing some minor task with an air of extreme put-upon-ness when the others get frustrated enough to demand that she pitches in.
10. 3 and 8 are challenged to circumnavigate the Earth in eighty days or less, using only forms of transportation invented before 1900. Can they do it, or will they be fatally distracted by sidequests or their own personality conflicts?
Talishae and Ayeena are challenged to circumnavigate the world etc etc. They go about the task with extreme confidence and efficiency, with Ayeena breezing through customs desks, effortlessly persuading people that they were happy to have the two travellers borrow or tag along on their privately-owned archaic transportation, and generally believing everything is above board and due to her personal charisma, whilst Talishae greases the wheels with appropriate underhand bribes, subtle threats, and whatever dirty work needs to be done.
There are occasional pauses for icy-cold, quiet and polite disagreements over the correct course of action, which occasionally involve one or both parties storming off and declaring that they will finish the journey on their own and the other having to hurry after them to secure reconciliation, and at least one occasion on which Ayeena loses it and has a total screaming fit at a calm, smiling, and generally unperturbed Talishae (either blaming her for some kind of unavoidable hold-up or having found out some of her underhand dealings and refusing to be involved in that kind of thing any more) who just lets her get it all out and then gently guides her towards directing her energy at achieving the next item on their demanding schedule.
As the tension rises towards the end of the trip, Ayeena becomes more and more likely to lose her temper and/or succumb to despair, claiming that they'll never make it and that they shouldn't have bothered in the first place, and doesn't Talishae know what it *means* if they don't make it? But Talishae gently and firmly keeps them going and they get back to their initial destination with appropriate dramatic timing, probably including the bit where they think they've failed because of a time zone miscalculation and Talishae struggles to comfort Ayeena until the paladin suddenly realises that actually they did make it after all, and everything is right with the world, cue ending credits.
(1) Jessily (Maelstrom)
(2) Tourmaline (Maelstrom)
(3) Talishae (Maelstrom)
(4) Mithril (CUTT)
(5) Thea Chalice (CUTT)
(6) Kallestra Lorelai Aeostare (CUTT)
(7) Tesseract (FD)
(8) Ayeena (D&D)
(9) Vasha (Triad Weyrs)
(10) K'sen (Triad Weyrs)
1. Divide the list up by even and odd. Which group of five would make a better Five Man Band (like a Power Rangers team)? Who would you slot in each position: Leader, Lancer (second-in-command), Big Guy, Smart Guy, The Chick? If you think the team would be improved by swapping one character between the even and odd groups, which ones would you switch?
Right, let's see who the teams are.
Team A:
Tourmaline
Mithril
Kallestra
Ayeena
K'sen
Oh man, these guys are appallingly bad at Power Rangers style antics, although they fit into their team roles quite well. Ayeena would have to be the leader because she's the only one with the will to power, but that's not to say that anyone would *listen* to her. Mithril would then slot into the Grand Vizier, I mean, Lancer, role, not that she wants power, you understand, but she can't help but give advice and she'd step down if you all stopped being so consistently retarded, understand? K'sen is the quintissential Big Guy (look, I has muscles! look at the shiny muscles and be distracted from my total lack of brains!), Tourmaline certainly considers himself a Smart Guy, and Kallestra is undeniably The Chick (but it will mess up my haaair! she wails).
Team B:
Jessily
Talishae
Thea
Tesseract
Vasha
Slightly more likely to form a functional team. There would be a hilarious passive-aggressive leadership fight probably leaving Thea in charge as she would get fed up and just start giving orders anyway. Tesseract would then assume she'd won second place but the real power behind the throne would be Vasha, because Tessaract is the Big Guy (small, female, chainmail, shield as big as her). Talishae would cheerfully step into the Smart Guy role as befits her Teacherite faith, leaving Jessily as this team's Chick (OMG, I'm just a fluffy healer, right, stop poking me with sticks!).
If I could pull Ayeena in to team B to replace Thea then team B would totally hand the world its arse on a plate, or whatever Power Rangers are meant to do.
2. Gender-swap 2, 8 & 10. Which character would have the most change in their story arc? Which the least? Would any of these characters have to have a complete personality change to be believable as the opposite sex?
Gender-swap Tourmaline and you get someone who looks not even slightly different on the surface but is actually much less aggressive, and more likely to deal with frustration by getting mopey and weepy (I HAVE NO TEAR DUCTS AND I MUST CRY) rather than storming around in the dark looking for someone to kill. Oh, and they have to explain their pronoun choice a lot less often :).
Gender-swap Ayeena and you get a dashing bishounen shining paladin of righteousness instead of a dashing Valley Girl shining paladin of righteousness. It doesn't make much difference but somehow seems an awful lot more boring, probably because male plate-clad paladins are, like, totally overdone.
Gender-swapping K'sen gives him a slightly different feel, but actually changes surprisingly little; the concerns take on a different flavour, but are fundamentally the same challenges.
I find it moderately hilarious that the character whose gender-swap makes most difference is the character who is physically asexual, but there you go.
3. Compare the matchups of 1 & 8 and 5 & 9. (Ignore canon sexual preferences for the moment.) Which couple would be more compatible? Which couple would be more plausible to people from either principal's home culture?
That gives us... Jessily and Ayeena, and Thea and Vasha. Which are surprisingly plausible combinations, really.
Jessily would attach herself to Ayeena (definitely that way round - Ayeena might protect Jessily like she would any other civilian, but she wouldn't consider anything romantic without concerted efforts on Jessily's part) partly because Ayeena is dazzlingly pretty and partly because Ayeena is a poor tormented soul with many cares and frustrations and Jessily would see her as a fantastic opportunity to make the world a better place with Healing Nookie, and partly because Ayeena is the protective sort and Jessily's survival instincts tend to lead her to hooking up with people she thinks can help protect her. Ayeena would be happy enough with the comfort, if a little conflicted as to how she could best help Jessily and a little concerned that she might be exploiting the poor cat-girl and that she might become biased towards protecting her at the expense of the greater good
Thea and Vasha would be a much more equal, casual partnership. They would get on well together, have a great friendship based on regaling each other with tales of their respective worlds and exploits, and occasionally their hair-ruffling would turn into play-fighting which would turn into kissing. They are both adventurous and playful, and would be very fond of each other. So Thea/Vasha would be a much healthier relationship than Jessily/Ayeena, although both sets are a good fit for each other's preferences - Jessily wants someone pretty who needs her and will protect her, Ayeena wants someone who will accept her in all her moods and comfort her, Thea wants someone fun and energetic, Vasha wants someone more experienced and fun to be around.
As for their home cultures, the only thing that would raise any eyebrows is Vasha's age, at thirteen. Jessily is already well-known for sleeping with anything that doesn't move fast enough, and she's Free Islands, it's practically expected. Ayeena barely has a home culture, and her deity approves of any relationship in which both sides make sacrifices for the other party in the name of love, ending up in a better combined state thereby. Thea moves in adventuring and special-ops army circles where lesbianism appears to be endemic, and Vasha lives in a Weyr where most people's sexual encounters are determined by basically random selection due to their dragon's sexual preferences and everyone regularly sees each other naked - while lesbianism is not one of these enforced combinations, the atmosphere is such that it's unlikely to be particularly looked down upon.
4. Your team is 3, 4 & 9. The mission consists of a social challenge, a mental challenge and a physical challenge. Which team member do you assign to each challenge?
Talishae, Mithril and Vasha start by having a catfight about who gets the physical challenge. Eventually, the other two forcibly assign it to Talishae on the grounds that she's made of wood and hence distinctly harder to kill or maim than either of them.
Then Mithril and Vasha have a conversation, or possibly a staring contest, the contents of which appear entirely opaque to any observers as Mithril is in full non-sequitor mode. Eventually Mithril breaks and slopes off to the mental challenge, leaving Vasha with the social one, having proved her general superiority in interacting with people.
5. 7 becomes 1's boss for a week in some plausible fashion. How's their working relationship?
Tesseract becomes Jessily's boss for a week because they're going on some kind of military operation (although Tesseract persists in referring to it as an 'adventure') and Jessily is one of life's followers. Jessily stumbles around getting her hair caught in hedgerows and crying a lot, but this only inspires Tesseract to greater acts of support and leadership and eventually they muddle through, leaving both of them with a new respect for the other.
6. 2 finds him/her/itself inserted into 6's continuity. As far as anyone other than 2 or 6 is concerned, they've always been there. What role would 2 be presumed to have had in 6's story, and could they fit in without going wonky?
Tourmaline finds himself inserted into Kallestra's continuity. As far as anyone other than Tourmaline and Kallestra is concerned, they've always been there. You see, Tourmaline is some kind of probably demonic creature that the Tower sent with Kallestra as her minder, and mostly he just impassively watches her and makes sure to intervene when she's about to get herself killed - which explains why she had the good sense to run away from Daramin when she did and why she still hasn't been caught and discorperated, really.
7. 3 and 5 get three wishes. The catch is that they have to agree on all three wishes before they get the benefits of any of them. What three wishes would they make?
Talishae and Thea get three wishes. They spend an awfully long time sitting down with a big piece of paper going over the wording of the wishes they desire to make, and if they're allowed to clarify the conditions of the wishes with the wish-granter they spend a long time doing that, too. Naturally the first one they try is one of those 'infinite wishes pls' meta-wishes that are normally explicitly outlawed in these cases.
Other than that, they generally attempt to ensure they end up as close to omnipotent and omniscient as they can get, without falling into any of the standard pitfalls like 'immortal that can't end their own life when the universe winds down and becomes really boring / isn't powerful enough to escape unpleasant situations', and 'universe and everything in it is destroyed because then there will be no more wars / suffering / stupid people', and 'material goods ordered from wish arrive in an awkward / inappropriate / fatal fashion'.
I offer no precise wording because they would have more motivation and resources to get it right than I feel like expending :).
8. 1 and 2 are brainwashed by a one-time artifact that works even on people immune to mind control to attack and kill 4. They keep their normal personality, skills and competence level, except any Code vs. Killing has been turned off. Can 4 survive? How?
Jessily and Tourmaline are brainwashed by a one-time artifact etc etc to attack and kill Mithril. Tourmaline immediately concocts an elaborate plan involving the construction of an interdimensional teleporter over a combined ritual / mana site and Jessily awkwardly tags along and helps him out where she can, her occasional suggestions that they should just hire someone to do it being waved away by Tourmaline who isn't really listening to her.
Finally the project is complete and they step through the portal and draw their knives, only to be slaughtered by Mithril at leisure - she halts one, freezes the other, destroys the frozen one either with her dagger or her friends depending on her circumstances, then freezes the other and repeats the operation.
The moral of this story is that attacking someone from a high-magic universe is harder than you might think. (If only they'd taken, say, a heavily armed mokosh who wouldn't pause for that fatal moment before pressing the attack...)
9. 6, 7, 9 & 10 must help an orphanage full of small and depressed children have a merry Christmas. Who does what, knowing that at the very least the kids will be expecting a visit from Santa?
Kallestra, Tesseract, Vasha and K'sen help an orphanage celebrate Christmas.
That is:
Tesseract regales the children with Exciting Tales! of her Adventures! (which actually goes down surprisingly well because she's not bad with young children);
K'sen cooks a fabulous meal and still manages to find time to be dressed up in a red costume and a beard and go 'ho ho ho' in hearty but slightly confused fashion;
Vasha runs around doing essential things like escorting small children to the toilet, cleaning up messes and prompting K'sen frantically when he gets stuck for words or isn't quite doing the right thing as Santa;
Kallestra leans against a wall filing her nails and occasionally performing some minor task with an air of extreme put-upon-ness when the others get frustrated enough to demand that she pitches in.
10. 3 and 8 are challenged to circumnavigate the Earth in eighty days or less, using only forms of transportation invented before 1900. Can they do it, or will they be fatally distracted by sidequests or their own personality conflicts?
Talishae and Ayeena are challenged to circumnavigate the world etc etc. They go about the task with extreme confidence and efficiency, with Ayeena breezing through customs desks, effortlessly persuading people that they were happy to have the two travellers borrow or tag along on their privately-owned archaic transportation, and generally believing everything is above board and due to her personal charisma, whilst Talishae greases the wheels with appropriate underhand bribes, subtle threats, and whatever dirty work needs to be done.
There are occasional pauses for icy-cold, quiet and polite disagreements over the correct course of action, which occasionally involve one or both parties storming off and declaring that they will finish the journey on their own and the other having to hurry after them to secure reconciliation, and at least one occasion on which Ayeena loses it and has a total screaming fit at a calm, smiling, and generally unperturbed Talishae (either blaming her for some kind of unavoidable hold-up or having found out some of her underhand dealings and refusing to be involved in that kind of thing any more) who just lets her get it all out and then gently guides her towards directing her energy at achieving the next item on their demanding schedule.
As the tension rises towards the end of the trip, Ayeena becomes more and more likely to lose her temper and/or succumb to despair, claiming that they'll never make it and that they shouldn't have bothered in the first place, and doesn't Talishae know what it *means* if they don't make it? But Talishae gently and firmly keeps them going and they get back to their initial destination with appropriate dramatic timing, probably including the bit where they think they've failed because of a time zone miscalculation and Talishae struggles to comfort Ayeena until the paladin suddenly realises that actually they did make it after all, and everything is right with the world, cue ending credits.
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Date: 2009-02-08 04:21 am (UTC)From:I don't have ten PCs I remember clearly enough to play this game. I GM too much.