COUGAR RIDGE GAZETTE // SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18th, 2007
Good morning Cougar Ridge!
That slowdown I’ve been talking about since the game started? Well, I reckon it just hit. However, as someone mentioned earlier this week, 124 posts (as it currently stands) is nothing to sneeze at, and if I’d been offered a haul of 600+ posts for the first month of entries I’d have laughed crazily and snatched it from the hand of your mouldering corpse. So to speak.
Unfortunately the day’s now arrived when I’ve had to borrow Mamma Mei Chen’s cleaver and hack at some scrawny chicken necks of my own. We bid farewell to a number of characters this week, and here’s the roll call…
Adrian Haze: you drank coffee at Jack’s and looked lonely, but you never really made an effort to get to know anyone. CHOP! Foster Nance: you came to town looking for your missing sister but when other characters ran with your story you went missing yourself. CHOP! Dinah Elliott: couldn’t understand a word you said, love. CHOP! Bjorn Waaler: spending half your time at the motel and half in the woods, you were bound to come a cropper. CHOP! Ronald Felps: I’m afraid you haven’t left me with a leg to stand on. CHOP! Daria Reimes: someone went to the trouble of creating a character whose name was an anagram of mine but then bailed, making the effort all rather pointless. CHOP! And, last but not least, Doctor Tom Berkland: after becoming embroiled in a number of other characters’ storylines it would’ve been courteous at least to pass on your LJ account details, no? A particularly disapproving CHOP!!!
Tim Calvino has also departed, but of his own accord (and possibly Cole Jackson and Gina Rose, although I don’t know if they’ve definitely gone yet). This week’s non-posters were Harold Reimes (although the player concerned made contact) and the decidedly disappointing Marshall Teabow, plus the mysterious Marcus van Himst, who has never got beyond the Town Directory. A welcome, however, to two new arrivals in Kevin Eidelman and Thom Jacoby!
Of the seven characters on the end of Mama Chen’s cleaver this week, another player has expressed interest in taking on Felps and Berkland, so we’ll see if anything comes of that. Otherwise, whilst it’s best to let Dinah and Adrian fade away, if anyone wants to take on Daria, Bjorn or Foster before they meet a moderator-inspired end, please let me know.
Just one other item of business. After a couple of email conversations this week I want to reiterate a point about general gameplay. This game, by its very nature, is fluid; therefore, anyone attempting to channel their character along a certain plot path is liable to become disappointed and frustrated. Sometimes - very frequently, in fact - another player/character will come along and post an entry that will inevitably twist your intentions into something completely unrecognisable, taking them off in an entirely different direction than the one you’d anticipated. This is not only acceptable, it’s encouraged. This is, after all, one of the biggest factors of the game. The challenge is how you deal with all these spanners thrown into your works.
However, a couple of posts recently have flirted with stepping over the line of making declarative statements about other characters. Remember, you’re allowed to use other player’s characters to your heart’s content, and have them saying and doing just about anything, provided you DON’T set anything in stone that they can’t manoeuvre their way out of if they wish. So, no killing or permanently maiming and no drastically altering another character’s status (by stating or ‘showing’ definitively that they’re gay, or having an affair, or that they’re a secret murderer, or that they’re a nutjob, etc) You can IMPLY (as blatantly or subtly as you want) but not be DEFINITIVE. Okay?
So long as you don’t cross this line, though, anything goes. It CAN be frustrating. I understand that - believe me, at some point or another each of my characters has had to deal with story twists that I wasn’t expecting and which nullified things I’d personally been hoping to do in the near future. But that’s the game, pure and simple. You have to be completely flexible all the time and work out your problems through the writing of your characters. This is especially important when you consider that there are player/characters out there who take a truly wicked delight in giving other characters’ storylines a hearty shake to see where the pieces fall. Whilst I’d hate to lose any players, I can only say that if you’re not happy with this aspect of the game then maybe Cougar Ridge is, regrettably, not the environment for you. Sorry.
But, anyway. Thanks for listening and for playing, all those who are left, and enjoy the week ahead!