Granpa, I don't... (build a wonder; gold, please)

[pez]

Wow, so much work involved in character creation for desktop RPG. So much brain power needed. @_@ Gotta come up with some kind of character background, which is something I don't particularly enjoy (one of the reasons why I don't write orig fic). And of course there's the naming issue. The thing about names in fantasy genre is that people are restless unless they can change an I into a Y (eg Trystan, Fyona), CH into K (eg Mikael), and add dots and dashes and apostrophes above some of the letters. If they don't do that, they feel something is wrong and they'll twitch and weep in despair. So, I was tempted to just call mine Bob. In the end, though, I think we've figured his name is Socks. (Or could he be Söcks?)

And then there's this business of learning what the following words mean: charms, caste, anima, essence... etc, and how they work. (Because ordinary words such as "type" and "level" and "race" and "spells" are too ordinary. Which I can understand, you gotta distinguish your RPG from others out there. XD) And because I am stupid, I let Liz keep talking about charms until I figured out "oh, SPELLS" rather than ask her what she's on about. (Pick attributes. So... what do they do? Later on I figure out that they let you have charms. But uh what ARE charms? And oh so what charms I can have is based on how many dots of attributes I've given my char...? But how do I know which charms are good if I've never played before? And charms affect die rolls? How the die actually work into the whole game, I still do not know. My experience of using die is limited to rolling numbers for snakes & ladders, Chinese drinking games and mahjong. But apparently what number you get affect what you do in a fight and... what else? How do I use essence - actually, what is it, and when do I decide to use it? What? No, I have no idea what's going on. At all.)

This just totally illustrates what I said to Unni that time about how completely non-understand I am when they're geek-talking. It's not like I don't know half of it, it's not like watching raw anime where I can work out what's going on by picking up words I know and looking at the screen, it's more like listening to people talk about, oh, aeroplane construction in Greek.

One day, I'll get the hang of this maybe... but I have the feeling this will be quite hard to play at my home. The problem with not having a table. >> NEED A TABLE DAMMIT.

I've also been relearning AOE2, first by playing Wonder Races. It took me 35 minutes to build a Wonder. Oh God. OTZ

Comments

[giving-ground.livejournal.com]

I'm a really bad person to have explain all this stuff. D: I keep realising I've skipped over basic stuff which would HELP WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THING. T_T

[yuki-scorpio.livejournal.com]

It's lyke it's nöt in Ênglýsh! D:

[giving-ground.livejournal.com]

Must work on way to make things actually comprehensible. :|

[yuki-scorpio.livejournal.com]

Chances are I'm just slow at picking up these things. >>

[solaas.livejournal.com]

*snort* I don't think you're slow or ever will be. I've played D&D (of the 3rd/3.5rd kind) intensively for, uhh, seven years or so. There are still code words I don't understand or remember, shit I mix up and so on. Especially if it involves fighting. XD;

And in protest to the fantasyefied names, I always give my human characters normal (in my language, cos I don't give a rat's arse about what's normal in English! HAH! Me rebel!) names like Valdemar, Tormod, Theodor, Roland, Mari and so on. Elves and dwarves get names that sound appropriate to those races. :D

[yuki-scorpio.livejournal.com]

But what are appropriate names for Elves though? You can make up a name that sounds Spanish or French or Japanese, but Elvish as a language doesn't actually exist. >>

....omg I still haven't written my tag. D:

[solaas.livejournal.com]

Elven names? Oh, nick something from Lord of the Rings or construct a name from any two or three LotR-elf names and you're golden. 8D

[solaas.livejournal.com]

Or just google: http://www.candlekeep.com/library/articles/elven_names.htm

[yuki-scorpio.livejournal.com]

................ >___> Wow, some of these look Welsh.

[solaas.livejournal.com]

Yep. Tolkien constructed elvish from all kinds of funky languages, including celtic. RPG geeks tend to follow in his footsteps, whether they're actually aware of this or not. XD;

[yuki-scorpio.livejournal.com]

Oooooooh~~~

Unni, make the spinny go away. D:

[solaas.livejournal.com]

*shoos the spinny away?* ♥

[elyndys.livejournal.com]

Oh, don't worry, soon you'll be able to understand them perfectly. I've been hanging out with roleplayers for years now, and I can follow their conversations almost as if they made sense. ^^'

[yuki-scorpio.livejournal.com]

I hope the day of understanding will come.................... XD;

[elyndys.livejournal.com]

I like when they talk about bashing. That always makes me laugh. :D

[seka.livejournal.com]

*whispers* Do you know the Aegis cheat?

[yuki-scorpio.livejournal.com]

That's.... the one with the fast building or lots of gold, isn't it? *don't remember*

[seka.livejournal.com]

Super fast building! 8DDD I love it

[calindy.livejournal.com]

I played with someone who had a character called Bob. We loved Bob. I once got sick of all the strange names that I usually came up with (see I confessed!) and called a chara 'Norm'. Stood for Normal human being. Don't RP anymore. :) Have fun!