Of Maine Coons, LARP writing, and languages (topics meme)
Three more topics, courtesy of redfishie. As a reminder, her topics were:
- What gets me excited about costuming
- Why Maine Coons are so very awesome
- The art of writing games
- Vampires, in all their forms
- Other languages, those I speak/read
- Fanfic - or tormenting Hellsing fans :P
- How to make period correct clothing (does hand stitching matter?)
- Lovecraft, what everyone should know
Why Maine Coons are so very awesome. First, a definition: Maine Coon. Of my four cats, three of them are Maine Coons--Burnbright, Brianna, and Lirazel. Clearly I think they're awesome, since I have three of them. But why?
- They are beautiful cats. I mean, lookit Helmi there on the CFA page. Lookit my Lirazel.
- They have a good-natured, "gentle giant" personality... for the most part. Brianna is kind of a bitch.
- They have teeeeeeeny tiny voices. They don't vocalize much, but when they do, it's a tiny little chirp.
- They are relatively free of health problems that plague some breeds. Saying that, I fully admit that two of my three Maine Coons have had serious issues with stomatitis, but I'm not sure that's breed specific, or particular to that line (they are all related)
- Even though they are long-haired cats, they require relatively little brushing and maintenance
The art of writing games: Hahahaha. You do know I've written, like, one game ever, right? So I am not an expert on this. I will say, for me some of the toughest questions have been:
- How do I figure out how many characters there are? This is always a chicken-and-egg problem--to bid a game, you generally have to have a pretty close count of how many players are needed. But sometimes it's hard to know if a certain character is going to work out until you write it. At some point you just have to say, "screw it, there will be seven men and eight women in this game, and I will make it work."
- When do I start writing actual character sheets vs. scribbling notes? With LXHS, I held off for a very long time because I was SO AFRAID that something would change and I'd have to change it in 23 character sheets. Well, it turns out you've have to do that ANYWAYS, so my approach in the future is going to be "sooner rather than later." You can't really be said to begin writing until you write character sheets, and the character sheets are more central than rules, bluesheets, etc, after all.
- When do I bid a game? There's a constant war in my head between "don't bid something that isn't at least pretty far along in the creative process" vs. "if I don't bid something, I'll never write it, because I'll never HAVE to write it."
- Why do some characters that look good on paper just not work? Mina Murray in LXHS, for example. I don't think anyone has ever had fun in that role. It feels like it *should* be a "student version of Van Helsing" kind of role, but usually people just seem to breeze past her on their way to wait in line for Van Helsing. I don't know why. I think at this point I've accepted that the character just does not work, and I'm going to scrap her for the next run.
So that's all I know about writing games. Which, really, is nothing.
Other languages, those I read/speak: I lived in France for a year and understand French pretty well still. That said, that was like fifteen years ago now and it has decayed quite a bit. I can still read it perfectly well, but sometimes spoken French throws me for a loop. I was embarrassed to realize that the trailer for Les Visiteurs--a movie I loved when I lived in France--is no longer fully comprehensible to me.
I've been working on my Spanish, but I'm only at the "understand one out of every five words" point in time. Last night three men in a restaurant were having a conversation in Spanish, and I could pick out words I knew, but I couldn't put them together at all. I can read it much, much better.
My Japanese verbal skills are about at the same level, but written? Man, I can barely even remember my kana any more. And I don't think I EVER knew very many kanji... I studied this for three years in college, but I so did not apply myself. Unless you consider trying to translate Hellsing manga as applying myself >.<
I've spent enough time studying Romance languages that I can pretty much puzzle out something that's written in one of them. (Uh, except maybe Romanian. Romanian is different). This tends to mean that sewing pattern instructions--usually written in English, French, and Spanish--are VERY confusing to me. I think if you don't know these languages in the least, you tend to just disregard that side of the instructions, but for me, my brain tries to read all three sets at once. It's painful.
- What gets me excited about costuming
- Why Maine Coons are so very awesome
- The art of writing games
- Vampires, in all their forms
- Other languages, those I speak/read
- Fanfic - or tormenting Hellsing fans :P
- How to make period correct clothing (does hand stitching matter?)
- Lovecraft, what everyone should know
Why Maine Coons are so very awesome. First, a definition: Maine Coon. Of my four cats, three of them are Maine Coons--Burnbright, Brianna, and Lirazel. Clearly I think they're awesome, since I have three of them. But why?
- They are beautiful cats. I mean, lookit Helmi there on the CFA page. Lookit my Lirazel.
- They have a good-natured, "gentle giant" personality... for the most part. Brianna is kind of a bitch.
- They have teeeeeeeny tiny voices. They don't vocalize much, but when they do, it's a tiny little chirp.
- They are relatively free of health problems that plague some breeds. Saying that, I fully admit that two of my three Maine Coons have had serious issues with stomatitis, but I'm not sure that's breed specific, or particular to that line (they are all related)
- Even though they are long-haired cats, they require relatively little brushing and maintenance
The art of writing games: Hahahaha. You do know I've written, like, one game ever, right? So I am not an expert on this. I will say, for me some of the toughest questions have been:
- How do I figure out how many characters there are? This is always a chicken-and-egg problem--to bid a game, you generally have to have a pretty close count of how many players are needed. But sometimes it's hard to know if a certain character is going to work out until you write it. At some point you just have to say, "screw it, there will be seven men and eight women in this game, and I will make it work."
- When do I start writing actual character sheets vs. scribbling notes? With LXHS, I held off for a very long time because I was SO AFRAID that something would change and I'd have to change it in 23 character sheets. Well, it turns out you've have to do that ANYWAYS, so my approach in the future is going to be "sooner rather than later." You can't really be said to begin writing until you write character sheets, and the character sheets are more central than rules, bluesheets, etc, after all.
- When do I bid a game? There's a constant war in my head between "don't bid something that isn't at least pretty far along in the creative process" vs. "if I don't bid something, I'll never write it, because I'll never HAVE to write it."
- Why do some characters that look good on paper just not work? Mina Murray in LXHS, for example. I don't think anyone has ever had fun in that role. It feels like it *should* be a "student version of Van Helsing" kind of role, but usually people just seem to breeze past her on their way to wait in line for Van Helsing. I don't know why. I think at this point I've accepted that the character just does not work, and I'm going to scrap her for the next run.
So that's all I know about writing games. Which, really, is nothing.
Other languages, those I read/speak: I lived in France for a year and understand French pretty well still. That said, that was like fifteen years ago now and it has decayed quite a bit. I can still read it perfectly well, but sometimes spoken French throws me for a loop. I was embarrassed to realize that the trailer for Les Visiteurs--a movie I loved when I lived in France--is no longer fully comprehensible to me.
I've been working on my Spanish, but I'm only at the "understand one out of every five words" point in time. Last night three men in a restaurant were having a conversation in Spanish, and I could pick out words I knew, but I couldn't put them together at all. I can read it much, much better.
My Japanese verbal skills are about at the same level, but written? Man, I can barely even remember my kana any more. And I don't think I EVER knew very many kanji... I studied this for three years in college, but I so did not apply myself. Unless you consider trying to translate Hellsing manga as applying myself >.<
I've spent enough time studying Romance languages that I can pretty much puzzle out something that's written in one of them. (Uh, except maybe Romanian. Romanian is different). This tends to mean that sewing pattern instructions--usually written in English, French, and Spanish--are VERY confusing to me. I think if you don't know these languages in the least, you tend to just disregard that side of the instructions, but for me, my brain tries to read all three sets at once. It's painful.