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I told my brain I could write this post if I got my editing done last night and then I was too tired after I had my editing done to do it so I am writing this post now.
Things that profoundly entertain me about the party as established in the Deliria game: the party's reactions to discovering that they are in a magic-works world full of the Good Neighbors.
Thomas: This is kind of a lot and I am not sure about it.
Isobel: I will appropriately sort through and organize all the weird things that are going on so I understand them properly and know how to help.
Danny: WHEEEEEE I AM IN. (Except for faerie court events, those give me Class Anxiety.)
After this latest round of experience-spending I think I've corrected all the "you know I should've put a point in that" stuff that I've noticed, which means I'm now up to "where to go from here". And of course Danny has decided to leap in the deep end of "No, really, I don't care about a semblance of being a normal person" with literally wishing for shapeshifting powers and accepting the consequences of that wish with ... reasonable equanimity once he got over being startled by it.
The shapeshifting is going to be fun. He's not going to improve it in a controlled fashion until several things happen: one, several more uncontrolled changes, to give him a broader basis of variety of shapes to take. And two, he needs to deal with some of his Personal Issues. (I am reasonably sure what precipitating event will help him solve that, and that's a way off.) But the way it's falling out at this point I'm wondering what sort of personality aspects and facets will give him new animal experiences, and what those animals are.
Right now, what he has a shape for that he can control is the cat. The cat carries his skittishness, his uncertainty about humans, his vigorous independence; I have a sort of scene-fragment in my head where he comments that he always reflects the cat. But because of what the cat is, the cat is also carrying a lot of his trauma. Not as intensely embodied as his human self, but there's a lot of fear/anxiety in the cat.
And then he has an uncontrolled shape that's happened once: the fox. And the fox carries playfulness, flirtation that he actually is doing as more than a show, a certain adventurousness. Possibly more things, but that's what I've got. He's mostly struck by the fact that the fox doesn't carry any of his dissociation.
But that leaves so much to tinker with, to figure out what else is true. I cracked a joke about black sheep a while back and it makes me wonder what would get his past to surface enough for that to happen. (I have a notion for one thing that would do it, but we are nowhere near a situation where he would go that direction.) Where does the music go; he's absolutely a bard, so what animal has that? I don't actually think he's a corvid; I toy with the idea of a starling. Nothing has really surfaced the thing that will make him fight, that potent sense of justice and protection of the marginalized/weak that he has in him; what animal is that? Does he go mama bear for it? That would be startling all around. Does the mischief of his fox have a full-bodied manifestation as a coyote? What other animals are True? (His shapeshifting has to express a truth. What animal embodies, for that matter, his notion of Truth?)
(And of course I know MG has plots and I look forward to seeing what chaos will ensue with them. And part of why I'm writing this is to support MG in developing Ideas.)
I hadn't originally planned on going magical practitioner with Danny; I figured the music and the shapeshifting angles would be interesting enough. I had not, however, taken into account his WHEEEE I'M IN attitude, and given the game is structured so that someone with the right stats can haphazardly make magic go, he has been absolutely fucking haphazarding his way through the scenery with reckless abandon. "Can humming the William Tell Overture make me better at aiming a squirtgun? No way to know but trying! How about singing 'The Sound of Silence' at a door to muffle the noise it's about to make when the Majestic Sword Lesbian knocks it down? We can try that too!" So that's just a thing that's going to happen, apparently; I wrote up his approach to magic and have it noted on his character sheet now.
Which means I've got two solid things that he's developing at the speed of plot filed there.
Meanwhile, I'm very clear that linguistics is absolutely going to be an experience sink for him. (I need to bump the key to three so he can achieve accented conversational fluency; current thing I am saving up for around the things I'm spending.) He is capable of understanding basic Feline even when he isn't one, because this is a fairy tale game and there is absolutely a mechanic for talking to the animals. He's learning Vulpine because it will make his personal life easier. He has plans when he's not otherwise occupied to drop by the place with the other shapeshifter he knows with a couple tins of sardines and a shiny object and saying "Hey, could we see if I can learn Corvid even without turning into one?" to that guy. (This may also wind up picking up a little Canine; that house has a big dog.)
Basically he is going to slowly but steadily become Dr. Doolittle. And it's going to be hilarious.
(The other thing that's going to be background going up occasionally is his combat skills, not because his not-boyfriend-because-boyfriend-is-way-too-serious-a-word-there-really-isn't-a-word-for-this-situation is a combat-trained knight of the fairy court, but because his not-boyfriend is a fox and playing chase and pounce games is good for unarmed combat and evasion skills. Things that will absolutely not come out as relevant until something happens. This is funny because as I keep telling people Danny's actual combat skillset is "knows how to hold a switchblade in a sufficiently menacing way that he can apply his substantial manipulation skillset to convincing the other party they don't want to have a knife fight." Have not had an opportunity to demonstrate that, either; not that he wants to, particularly. I suspect it would croggle poor Thomas.)
Though of course I keep poking around for other stuff to do, and peer at legacies and stuff. (Adaptation and Charming, for example, were ones I considered for him at build but didn't take.) Picking up Beastfriend at a low level after extensive Dr. Doolittling might make sense (Disney Princess power). The Slip is absolutely the sort of thing the cat would learn. Noodle, noodle.
Meanwhile, the more I play him, the more I notice that Danny's already edging towards Season: Spring for a developing Wyrd. The more comfortable he gets in his skin the more energetic and reckless with that skin he gets. Nobody's made him angry yet, mind... (What animal is his angry?) At this point if he picks up some sort of flaw to balance off some magical effect I'm thinking that this would be a sensible one (and if I were building him for a Journeyman campaign at this point I'd give this to him).
Anyway. My character makes me happy.
Things that profoundly entertain me about the party as established in the Deliria game: the party's reactions to discovering that they are in a magic-works world full of the Good Neighbors.
Thomas: This is kind of a lot and I am not sure about it.
Isobel: I will appropriately sort through and organize all the weird things that are going on so I understand them properly and know how to help.
Danny: WHEEEEEE I AM IN. (Except for faerie court events, those give me Class Anxiety.)
After this latest round of experience-spending I think I've corrected all the "you know I should've put a point in that" stuff that I've noticed, which means I'm now up to "where to go from here". And of course Danny has decided to leap in the deep end of "No, really, I don't care about a semblance of being a normal person" with literally wishing for shapeshifting powers and accepting the consequences of that wish with ... reasonable equanimity once he got over being startled by it.
The shapeshifting is going to be fun. He's not going to improve it in a controlled fashion until several things happen: one, several more uncontrolled changes, to give him a broader basis of variety of shapes to take. And two, he needs to deal with some of his Personal Issues. (I am reasonably sure what precipitating event will help him solve that, and that's a way off.) But the way it's falling out at this point I'm wondering what sort of personality aspects and facets will give him new animal experiences, and what those animals are.
Right now, what he has a shape for that he can control is the cat. The cat carries his skittishness, his uncertainty about humans, his vigorous independence; I have a sort of scene-fragment in my head where he comments that he always reflects the cat. But because of what the cat is, the cat is also carrying a lot of his trauma. Not as intensely embodied as his human self, but there's a lot of fear/anxiety in the cat.
And then he has an uncontrolled shape that's happened once: the fox. And the fox carries playfulness, flirtation that he actually is doing as more than a show, a certain adventurousness. Possibly more things, but that's what I've got. He's mostly struck by the fact that the fox doesn't carry any of his dissociation.
But that leaves so much to tinker with, to figure out what else is true. I cracked a joke about black sheep a while back and it makes me wonder what would get his past to surface enough for that to happen. (I have a notion for one thing that would do it, but we are nowhere near a situation where he would go that direction.) Where does the music go; he's absolutely a bard, so what animal has that? I don't actually think he's a corvid; I toy with the idea of a starling. Nothing has really surfaced the thing that will make him fight, that potent sense of justice and protection of the marginalized/weak that he has in him; what animal is that? Does he go mama bear for it? That would be startling all around. Does the mischief of his fox have a full-bodied manifestation as a coyote? What other animals are True? (His shapeshifting has to express a truth. What animal embodies, for that matter, his notion of Truth?)
(And of course I know MG has plots and I look forward to seeing what chaos will ensue with them. And part of why I'm writing this is to support MG in developing Ideas.)
I hadn't originally planned on going magical practitioner with Danny; I figured the music and the shapeshifting angles would be interesting enough. I had not, however, taken into account his WHEEEE I'M IN attitude, and given the game is structured so that someone with the right stats can haphazardly make magic go, he has been absolutely fucking haphazarding his way through the scenery with reckless abandon. "Can humming the William Tell Overture make me better at aiming a squirtgun? No way to know but trying! How about singing 'The Sound of Silence' at a door to muffle the noise it's about to make when the Majestic Sword Lesbian knocks it down? We can try that too!" So that's just a thing that's going to happen, apparently; I wrote up his approach to magic and have it noted on his character sheet now.
Which means I've got two solid things that he's developing at the speed of plot filed there.
Meanwhile, I'm very clear that linguistics is absolutely going to be an experience sink for him. (I need to bump the key to three so he can achieve accented conversational fluency; current thing I am saving up for around the things I'm spending.) He is capable of understanding basic Feline even when he isn't one, because this is a fairy tale game and there is absolutely a mechanic for talking to the animals. He's learning Vulpine because it will make his personal life easier. He has plans when he's not otherwise occupied to drop by the place with the other shapeshifter he knows with a couple tins of sardines and a shiny object and saying "Hey, could we see if I can learn Corvid even without turning into one?" to that guy. (This may also wind up picking up a little Canine; that house has a big dog.)
Basically he is going to slowly but steadily become Dr. Doolittle. And it's going to be hilarious.
(The other thing that's going to be background going up occasionally is his combat skills, not because his not-boyfriend-because-boyfriend-is-way-too-serious-a-word-there-really-isn't-a-word-for-this-situation is a combat-trained knight of the fairy court, but because his not-boyfriend is a fox and playing chase and pounce games is good for unarmed combat and evasion skills. Things that will absolutely not come out as relevant until something happens. This is funny because as I keep telling people Danny's actual combat skillset is "knows how to hold a switchblade in a sufficiently menacing way that he can apply his substantial manipulation skillset to convincing the other party they don't want to have a knife fight." Have not had an opportunity to demonstrate that, either; not that he wants to, particularly. I suspect it would croggle poor Thomas.)
Though of course I keep poking around for other stuff to do, and peer at legacies and stuff. (Adaptation and Charming, for example, were ones I considered for him at build but didn't take.) Picking up Beastfriend at a low level after extensive Dr. Doolittling might make sense (Disney Princess power). The Slip is absolutely the sort of thing the cat would learn. Noodle, noodle.
Meanwhile, the more I play him, the more I notice that Danny's already edging towards Season: Spring for a developing Wyrd. The more comfortable he gets in his skin the more energetic and reckless with that skin he gets. Nobody's made him angry yet, mind... (What animal is his angry?) At this point if he picks up some sort of flaw to balance off some magical effect I'm thinking that this would be a sensible one (and if I were building him for a Journeyman campaign at this point I'd give this to him).
Anyway. My character makes me happy.
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