Try and be funny? FUNNY?!? I am gonna roast you!

Seriously, great we got you finally convinced to do this. Preparing my catalogue of questions. They are a few!

 

Alright Claire...



After all the softball questions from Sinre, it’s time for the real questionnaire:

1. Is a hotdog(equipped in a hot dog bun) a sandwich?

2. Favorite movie as a child?

3. Clearly RPing is relaxing and a hobby for you. What’s your favorite aspect of tabletop RPing vs your favorite aspect of text based RPing?

4. Any weird habits or language uses you see from the American RPFers that you’ve noticed?

5. Have you ever been to America?

6. Does Germany have an equivalent musical genre to American country?

7. Since this is part of the GMing series, what is an aspect of GMing that you struggle with or where do you think your GMing could be improved, if you think it can at all?

 

1. Is a hotdog(equipped in a hot dog bun) a sandwich?

No way.



2. Favorite movie as a child?

I think it was Empire Strikes Back. Saw it when I was six, it stayed with me through my whole childhood as I tried to see it again and again (pre-internet age it is not easy for a six year old to get hold of a VHS and Video Recorder back then), trying to decipher it‘s meaning.

Also E.T. which I loved a lot.



3. Clearly RPing is relaxing and a hobby for you. What’s your favorite aspect of tabletop RPing vs your favorite aspect of text based RPing?

One is clubbing, the other one is Glas of wine with a friend on my balcony. Tabletop is an even and celebrated as such. Meeting old friends and spending an evening with them, being told a story by the Gamemaster. I got a spectacular game master who reinvents tabletop every time, telling deep movie-like experiences over the cause of one evening.

This here has less of an event-character and is more like an ongoing story told post-by-post. One game lasting months, sometimes years. It is a good book, not a movie or if it is a movie it only is when everything comes together. I can dive in, read updates, write one myself and be out within 30 minutes. A quick reprieve from everyday life.


4. Any weird habits or language uses you see from the American RPFers that you’ve noticed?

I think our use of German grammar must be much weirder. Actually I learned American language and most of my English speaking friends are Americans, so the British English is more unusual for me sometimes.


5. Have you ever been to America?

Yes, several times. Mostly California, where I have friends, but also NYC and Florida as a kid with my parents. I love the US actually and it sometimes hurts me how it changed over the years. Had some of my best days of my life in SF.


6. Does Germany have an equivalent musical genre to American country?

Schlager maybe. „Volksmusik“ we call it. Well. No. I cannot really say that. Schlager is primitive crap and country I actually like. But in general German music is either imitating international music or it is terrible. We got very few good German bands. German HipHop in the 90s was pretty good, actually. Schlager has not broad forth a single song I can even endure. It is just straight terrible and usually only heard by old people.


7. Since this is part of the GMing series, what is an aspect of GMing that you struggle with or where do you think your GMing could be improved, if you think it can at all?

I am a perfectionist, which makes me feel like a complete looser. I know I got better, because it became easier and I have less trouble with players and how to handle them nowadays, but seriously I feel I need better pacing, better NPCs, better plots, better descriptions. But that’s part of the fun. I think if I ever feel I delivered a flawless, perfect game I will be done. No need to risk it to make another. The one thing I feel I have problem tackling is „epicness“. My stories feel best when they are small and intimate and when it comes to selling scope and broadness I feel like I am struggling there.

 

Amazing interview. Brought back a lot of memories.

Any game you missed which you wished afterwards you played in?

What are your future plans for GMing? Any projects you got stashed away or in development? Any goals you wanna reach?

You mentioned suffering from player loss. What is your take on it? How does a GM deal best with it?

Two games of yours have actually been forgotten to be mentioned. Your Episode VII - Visions of Peace and The Old Republic: Renessaince. Both were brilliant big Star Wars epics with large casts and both had terrific runs, before slowly dying as many games did back then. Tell us about it? What were the challenges there?

 

Any game you missed which you wished afterwards you played in?

Usually people shout ManCubs by @WingedJedi here, but I was part of that one from the beginning. Really, I think I was in all games I wanted to be in. Can‘t remember any where I cursed to not shave joined. I am a great fan of non-Star Wars games and the only one I have not joined here was Villain, because I joined the alternate version you were running over GoogleDocs.


What are your future plans for GMing? Any projects you got stashed away or in development? Any goals you wanna reach?

Nope. I was actually planning to semi-retire with The Dark Sun, when the whole Crossingverse thing was thrown at my feet. Plans, they are there to make the Gods laugh.

Right now I got three games who are all 12 to 24 months away from conclusion I‘d say. The Dark Sun is just out of the long prologue. The Seeking is half into the first act and The Darkening is basically just beginning. I won‘t do a fourth game, so I am busy for a while, if none of the three games dies down suddenly.


You mentioned suffering from player loss. What is your take on it? How does a GM deal best with it?

Acceptance is not easy for me. I understand if someone leaves because he is busy in RL. Had to do that myself. When they simply hate what you are doing, that hurts. It really hurt. Anyway, if you have a vision and you are not going after crowd-pleasing, that is gonna happen. Either you try to make a game everyone likes or you try to make the game you want to make. If it is second you risk alienating players. I expect this will happen in The Seeking for example. It is a wild ride with time travel and all that.

I want to quote Fins here: We GM for the players showing up, not for those who do not.


Two games of yours have actually been forgotten to be mentioned. Your Episode VII - Visions of Peace and The Old Republic: Renessaince. Both were brilliant big Star Wars epics with large casts and both had terrific runs, before slowly dying as many games did back then. Tell us about it? What were the challenges there?

Haha, I was happy those got no mentions. Both games turned to large games quickly and I gotta say I had problems handling them pretty much from the start. TORR was with the help of the no longer active @TheGoodImperial, which I think was a great help. Yet, key players vanishing or posting very slowly made both games slowly drop into a state of hibernation. Nowadays I would take a different approach and simply play on with the players who are around, back then I had plots very much depending on certain players and those simply destroyed my plans and I was not confident enough to reshape the games. In retrospect I think I learned a lot from those experiences. I also think both were too generic for me. I did not feel like those were my games, but the standard large game of which I happened to GM. I was basically trying to be @Sinrebirth or @DarkLordoftheFins and the storylines I enjoyed where only those who did not follow the back then typical large-games-narrative. I learned doing my own thing is what motivates me.

 

A few of mine ...

A question about your process creating The Seeking, that interest me personally greatly. How did you approach it? HanSolo29 and me spend pages of PMs planning this. How did you do it? How did you deal with the legacy of the two games that came before?


What was your inspiration for The Darkening? What made you do two Crossingverse games instead of one?


Recently you played an amazing double role in in all my dreams i DROWN, playing two versions of the same character. How did that happen? Where you in on the pilot the whole time?


You have had many acclaimed roles over time, Kira Romar and Laura Blohm were already covered. You were also in the original cast of ManCubs, DROWN, CROWN, Twilight as Maul and many more. How do you approach creating characters?


Originally you were a real leading lady in the RPF, but lately you have shown your darker side with Maul in Twilight and especially by taking over Ayshe, the big bad in The Crossing (spectacular!). How did this come about?


Sinrebirth already asked about Kira Romar from 128ABY. You concluded her story in 133ABY - The Dark Odyssey, but recently returned for 138 ABY briefly and then for The Fall of Elyseum as an alternate version of her. You also play her cousin Sera Romar in Episode X. What connects you to her? Do you think there is more in Kira of Claire (SirakRomar‘s real name) than in other characters?


Tell us about your five most memorable character moments as a player. You were in so many games, what were the ones who shaped with you?

 

A question about your process creating The Seeking, that interest me personally greatly. How did you approach it? HanSolo29 and me spend pages of PMs planning this. How did you do it? How did you deal with the legacy of the two games that came before?

Actually I made two lists. One with everything that was The Crossingverse. LordTroepfchen has created a very specific universe there. He provided me the rules of the Gifted and I reread both games, identifying the „DNA“ of Crossingverse. There is always a political dimension to Crossingverse. There is a cold brutality to violence, instead of the usual Hollywood-style battles we see around here. The is the journey of characters towards the final confrontation. The damnation of loops imprisoning characters in an endless struggle. The knowledge of the future, which is often unreliable or limited. The powerful Gifted adversary holding the strings in his hands (Ayshe and Alpha).

Then I picked up what was there that interested me. Parallel timelines, that was one I felt was underused in all games before. Such an interesting concept, especially because some characters seemed to travel between them. There had never been a real criminal Gifted, which I wanted to have and I tasked Lawbreaker with creating me one. I consciously ditched the US setting for Europe, making it more of an Euro-thriller. I tried to broaden the scope by having multiple setting all over the continent. Paris, Zürich, Rome, Berlin. What I did not foresee was the number of new players joining the game. It gives the whole thing this ensemble feel we never had before (except the beginning of The Reckoning).

The third thing I did was looking at trilogies and third parts. Man, there are not many that are that good. Indiana Jones 3 is probably the prime example. Arguably Bourne 3, MI 3 and definitively The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. What do they all have in common? They all return to the origins of the trilogy in a way. They all expand and they all find a logical conclusion to the characters journeys. They all do not care too much about the solution either. So I decided to reintroduce elements from the Crossing in a fresh way. I returned to the principle of Gifted being hunted by killers (@Jerjerrod-Lennox Hugo and of course the returning Jane by @galactic-vagabond422 filled that gap nicely). I have another predicted apocalypse making it a ticking clock game. I have most of the original cast returning, with Adrian Simmons, Maria Liang, Rutherford all showing up again.

Then everything fell into place. I just had an idea how this all connected and pulled my incoming characters around various plotlines. My brother surprised me by returning to the boards and submitting a CS that was a game changer and added another dimension to the whole game.



What was your inspiration for The Darkening? What made you do two Crossingverse games instead of one?

The Darkening isn’t a Crossingverse game per se. It was one of the things that were around in all games and yet never got explored. How does the world look like in those timelines where it was not saved? Most of them failed. I was even considering doing a straight post-apocalypse game in the world of The Reckoning Anna Talbott left behind, when she went back in time. This game developed from it. It is heavy influenced by a Indy RPG called Summerland. Check it out. A real pieced of art available on Drivethru. A gem!


Recently you played an amazing double role in in all my dreams i DROWN, playing two versions of the same character. How did that happen? Where you in on the plot the whole time?

No, all I knew was Elina existed in L.A. as a younger version. For quite some time Lawbreaker had me believe this was a younger version and her contact to Elina was some sort of time travel. Actually I think I believed for quite some time we would have time-travel in the game.


You have had many acclaimed roles over time, Kira Romar and Laura Blohm were already covered. You were also in the original cast of ManCubs, DROWN, CROWN, The Crossing, The Reckoning, Twilight as Maul and many more. How do you approach creating characters?

I usually got an idea when I see the OP. It is really that simple. If an OP does not do that for me I do not sign up. Then I try to give the character some twists and turns. Make something I find interesting to play. That simple.


Originally you were a real leading lady in the RPF, but lately you have shown your darker side with Maul in Twilight and especially by taking over Ayshe, the big bad in The Crossing (spectacular!). How did this come about?

Oh, I got to use a cliché answer here. I do not see them as bad guys. Maul for me is an anti-hero on a mission. I loved he did expect his own death to be his triumph, when he student took the mantle of the Sith by killing his Master.

Ayshe is the classical bad guy who is the hero of her own story. To the players she was the insane world controlling evil seer character, to me she was this abused woman who took control over her destiny and as a result over the whole world by using the power everyone wanted to make use of. I enjoyed the „prequel“ posters I did with her in The Reckoning greatly, as I could explore her human side a bit more and show her descend into madness.


Sinrebirth already asked about Kira Romar from 128ABY. You concluded her story in 133ABY - The Dark Odyssey, but recently returned for 138 ABY briefly and then for The Fall of Elyseum as an alternate version of her. You also play her cousin Sera Romar in Episode X. What connects you to her? Do you think there is more in Kira of Claire (SirakRomar‘s real name) than in other characters?

I guess she is. I think she is my alter-ego in a way, which is why I am very protective over her. I felt the 138 ABY run was too damned dark and I longed for the original Kira. So I recreated her AU version in Elyseum and planned to have her die heroically there, basically showing her Jedi side once more. I guess I now retire her for good.


Tell us about your five most memorable character moments as a player. You were in so many games, what were the ones who stocked with you?


Five? That is hard.

Kira Romar vs. Eydan Skorne in 128 ABY - The Sith-Imperial War. For me still the best lightsaber duel I had ever the joy of participating in. You were so amazingly evil in that one, Fin.

Kira Romar dying and being resurrected by Sarge221 in 133 ABY - The Dark Odyssey had me crying. Twice. So intense.

Everything in The Sins of the Saints, really impossible to choose. Every post with Laura Blohm had this intensity and her character developed from this girl in a student flat to this avenging angel to God himself. The interactions with @Mitth_Fisto‘s Finkman were wonderful, the evil Carl of @LordTroepfchen, the incredible murder of Laura by Thomas Pfeiffer. Too many good scenes. Simply too many.

Ayshe, The President and Sebastian in The Crossing to name one of the more recent games. This finale between the two was simply amazing to write. Two people discussing the benefits and restraints of knowing.

Christian Borg and Elina/Enigma playing the game of seduction and romance in in all my dreams i DROWN was probably the most intense combined posts I ever had.

As you see you were involved as GM or player in all my best scenes. So consider this my way of saying I love playing with you, Fins.

Honorable mention:

The battle with Shere‘Kahn‘s father in ManCubs, just when things seemed to slow down @WingedJedi threw this plotbunny at me.

The shout in 128 ABY as described in the original interview above.

Annie and Christian kiss in DROWN.

Mara Jade being present when Palpatine returned and kneeling before him in As Father As Son. @BobaMatt and @LordTroepfchen nailed that scene.

Luke and Maul versus Obi-WAN Kenobi in Twilight of the Force.

Laura Changte and Anna Talbott talking about killing in The Reckoning.

 

Okay sis, here we go!

Who is your favorite GM?


How do you think about player-caps?


You almost religiously avoid sandbox games and almost only play in games with defined storylines, let us dub them story-teller games. Why is that?


You have mentioned your long relationship with DarkLordoftheFins and LordTroepfchen, how involved are you in the planning of their games nowadays?


What kind of game do you miss in the RPF?

 

Who is your favorite GM?

@Lawbreaker


How do you think about player-caps?

They are sometimes necessary and sometimes they are not. Large ensembles have their own vibe and intimate little groups have a different dynamic. I like the small ones. I have two of those running right now with The Dark Sun and The Darkening. Both got four players and for both games I consider this to be a perfect number. I had problems in the past GMing bigger games and I am still frightened by the number of sign-ups for The Seeking, but for that games the multitude of perspectives works extremely well. The game has left the more intimate journey of former games in that universe and this time tells the story from many views. It is very enjoyable, especially when the characters finally meet up.



You almost religiously avoid sandbox games and almost only play in games with defined storylines, let us dub them story-teller games. Why is that?

That is what I am looking for in games. A good story, done by someone who has an idea what kind of story he wants to tell (and yes, someone I trust he can tell it). I never liked being responsible for my storyline alone. I like the chemistry with my GM in telling a story though my character.



You have mentioned your long relationship with DarkLordoftheFins and LordTroepfchen, how involved are you in the planning of their games nowadays?

Not much. Fins is fanatically secretive and has not GMed that much in the last ten years. I think he brews up a game called The Truth about Animals for years now, but I know next to nothing about it, except it is a „typical Fin game“. No idea if he plans to even launch it one day. It is kinda funny, as I know he helped a lot of people with refining games and plots over the years, but he himself brews his soup alone in his private kitchen.

LordT is a bit more open. We had discussions about stuff on WhatsApp, but no major things. I do not have the feeling he needs my help to design an awesome game. I think the most influential thing I did was encourage him to do Star Wars again. I feel his sense for scenery and cinematics was a natural fit for it.


What kind of game do you miss in the RPF?

I would love to have a good action game. Bourne style. A real contemporary spy game would be awesome, too. Also I think that a little bit more Horror would be nice, but that is hard to do, so I understand why people shy away from it. We got our epic Star Wars games back now, but those I understand are important, but they are not so my thing. I wondered lately if an anthology game would be nice.

 

God! ManCubs! I haven't thought of that RP in ages. Incredible.

 

Last one before the next one goes up any second . . . What do you consider the worst aspect of GMing and the forums themselves? Tell us about what you think the shadow side of all of this is and how you think these forums (which I know are close to your heart) can improve.

 

Basically I got nothing but thanks for my players! Consider me too grateful to voice serious critique right now.

Sinre Edit.

 

Final Interview of Season 1 of Vox Popoli II: Bravo

This interview has been done last week, before we received the sad news of Sith-I-5 passing, so please take this into consideration. Here were are with our very own long-time GM BRAVO.


Bravo, you have been around for a long time in the RPF. Let us start with ancient history then. How did you find this place? How did you end up here posting?

How I came to find TFN---oh geez---I honestly don't remember! I do remember---though---it was the beginning of my junior year in high school. I found the RPF through a fellow member who was part of the Rocky Mountain Fan Force (like me) and forwarded me here.

Do you still remember your early games?

Oh yes! My first game ever was War of the Galaxies in 2001. Oh my, I remember playing that game for 8 or 9 hours on the weekends as a outcast teenager! But the game where I started to really enjoy the RPF was The new DARK TIMES (35 years after ANH) in 2002! I met @greyjedi125 there and we've had an amazing 18 years of friendship.

After those two first games, I started with the Jedi Outcasts RP Thread (v2.0) in 2003 or 2004 and later games related to them (New Jedi Outcasts RP, New Jedi Outcasts RP...V 2.0, etc.). While I met other amazing RPers like @Mitth_Fisto and many, many others, the Jedi Outcasts has always held a special place in my heart ( @Laine_Snowtrekker, @Earwen_Lightrider, @Skye_Lightrider, @PulsarSkate, @SECRETSISTER, @Lank_Pavail ...the list goes on) . Amazing memories and awesome people. I think the Jedi Outcasts really set in motion a great foundation of knowledge & experience and transition into your next question.

You are best known around here for your three long-running games Intervention, the sequel Intervention: Echoes of Eternity and the currently running Paradoxical Echoes. Let us start with the very first Intervention. How did the game came into existence?

I am very honored people pay attention to that longevity! Well, the first Intervention came about just after my fire service was ended due to injury. It was the summer of 2009. I was trying to figure out life, let alone everything else in life, at that moment. To say the least, I sat on my savings that whole summer & tried to figure things I wanted to do, things I liked, outside of the fire department. Well, I decided to come back to the RPF (I had been off-and-on and mostly off the last 2 years, since 2007). With the Jedi Outcasts had run it's course after years & years, there was nothing in the RPF at the time that jumped out to me. Biggest thing, we didn't have any starfighter games. So I started there, because I was and still am a huge fan of the Ace Combat games on the PS2.

Then I called @greyjedi125 in the parking lot of a Game Stop. And he became my AGM. I tried to combine a feel of classic ANH dogfights, WW2, mercenaries, and topped it all off with a bit of mystery & exploration. We actually almost closed the game after 10 pages---and then it took off like crazy nuts! There's a lot of history as to why that happened the way it did (almost closing) and even looking back on it now, it's still amazing.

Tell us a bit about what the games are about? I understand they all three play in the same universe and share the same backstory?


Yes, all three games are in the same universe. Although Paradoxical didn't start that way, it morphed into that and became a prequel game to Intervention & Intervention: Echoes. Paradoxical has allowed us to explain the story and backstory better for the first 2 games, especially when it comes to the Kingdom of Jod.

The story revolves around a group of mercenaries (The Mercs); at first, they're just mercenaries fighting to earn a living. A mix of themes & ideas from Han Solo, Dash Rendar, Yuuzhan Vong, Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, Firefly, Star Trek Voyager, and Babylon 5 overshadow the story and directly relate to it. As the games go on, we see the Mercs' leader (Captain Rick Taller) has it out for the Empire after the Clone Wars and pretty much they like taking out Imperials. In with this, we find that The Mercs are part of a Aces' Club, a place where mercenary starfighter pilots find work. While this theme was never flushed out properly in the first game on my part, the idea was for the Aces' Club to be a underground recruitment center for the Kingdom of Jod's Starfighter Corps to find the best of the best pilots. While I regret not flushing that out more back in 2009-2010, I'm having that opportunity now with Paradoxical Echoes. We were introduced to the Jod on a very brief level and how the Mercs were center to their Prophecy of the Living Force and this information really transitioned the game from a shoot-em-up Imperial vs Rebel game to the modern reference that is the 3 Intervention games (4 games if you include the Temp Boards). The game ends with, unfortunately, not with the full scope of the story flushed out due to DRL on my end towards the end of the game in 2013. It was a messy, non-cohesive ending to a game that had a lot of promise and joy. We were able to fix some of that in the second game, which I'll answer in your later question.

The games lasted for a long, long time. Intervention was launched in 2009. What were the greatest challenges in running games for such a long time?

Cohesive story. Players change story because of the very nature of having a role play. Their actions influence the GM's reaction and henceforth in return from the GM. Keeping all the story notes together on my end (the "grand outline" as I like to say) and remember what was what if I didn't write it down or keep it saved on the computer---that was hard. You have to be flexible as a Game Master; you can't say this is my story and it will go this way. You just can't, it makes you look like a self-serving blowhard. As GM, you let the players change the story---for the good or bad---and as long as you keep a general outline and direction, I think, you're good to go. But you'd be a fool to think the game you started with in your head as a GM will be the game you end with or continue with 11 years later.

Paradoxical Echoes has allowed us to "fix" a lot of the problems we had canon speaking and story speaking with Intervention & Echoes. If you peel back the layers of those two games, you'll see a lot of issues. But, like I said, that's a product of running a long game with players changing the goal posts for the GM. The "grand outline" was intact, it was all the fun crazy directions we took that was the issue. Sometimes canon gets mixed up or just outright forgotten and you go back a year or two and you say, "Oh crap, I messed that up." But at the end of the day, it's the players' feeling towards the game environment you made as a GM, not the perfect feel & look of it all.

Tell us about the progression from Intervention to the sequel Echoes of Eternity?

It's the transition into a bigger world, much like A New Hope was to the Empire Strikes Back. ANH is that one off adventure that makes you feel good. ESB brings the background detail as to why and how for the ANH, while launching off in expanding the story from the original as well. Echoes in Eternity did that same thing. Like ESB, Echoes was darker and grounded in the day-to-day choices & consequences of characters & events, much like ESB was.

In the second follow-up game---which was one of my most exciting RPF experiences ever --- we see The Mercs getting involved with the Kingdom of Jod, The Council, and The Whites and how this mythical space kingdom is trying to save the galaxy from a extragalactic threat. The first 14 pages speak for themselves---we were having to PM each other (or text at some points) to let each other know we were posting, so we wouldn't miss a tag or write over someone else's post in progress. It was amazing fun. We introduced the Empire on a deeper level with the concepts late out in the first game and we made it personal on a level for both player & character I've rarely seen before or after. The story was amazing, the players knocked that game out of the ballpark! Amazing players, each and every one of them!

Unfortunately, we ended the second game earlier than planned in 2015/2016 due to DRL problems I was suffering through since 2013 (mentioned earlier). It's still one of my biggest regrets, both as a person and as a Game Master. I don't think I've ever truly recovered from that decision.

Tell us about the most recent game, Paradoxical Echoes? Let’s start with the elephant in the room? Why this title? What does it mean?

It's a paradox. What you see isn't what it is real. How the game was designed was a surface level Imperials-turned-Rebels and we would dive into the day-to-day experiences and choices of that as the game would have prolonged the ultimate outcome. But within all that, there was a lot of gray area and it was that gray area that made you question the motivates of both the "good guys" (Rebels) and if they really were good or even right compared to the Empire.

So it would have presented this problem for the character to overcome: is "freedom" & "liberty" worth lowering your own moral standards to the same people your fighting? I think Rogue One displayed this perfectly with how you see the end result of fighting fire with fire in Saw Gerrera: he essentially became the one thing he promised to destroy.

When the game morphed into a prequel to Intervention & Echoes, I took that same theme and added it in the Kingdom of Jod. Now the players are in this game where we're slowly (ever so slowly...thanks DRL ) marching towards the Unknown Regions. And now that the seeds of doubt between the Rebels and Empire were laid with the The Battle for Lepsawn 1-9, these loyal Imperials (the best of the best) will be having to wrestle with their own convictions and demons as they battle a new threat for the "sake of the Empire". Will they hold up? Will the Jod be who they say to be? And best yet, what sacrifices in line with Saw Gerrera are the players willing to make to keep or get rid of their Imperial identity?

What are the similarities and differences to the first two games?

I think the first game was your shoot-'em-up Top Gun and The Expendables feel. Your second game was more a Babylon 5 & Firefly feel. The first game was your bang, blast ANH, while the second game was your steady, studied ESB masterpiece.

Over the years you must have seen many players come and go. Anyone you especially miss nowadays?

The original Intervention game had 51 players total. I don't know average player numbers with games in the RPF, but when I counted all that up, it floored me. Our second game had 17 (I think) and our newest game is hovering around 7 to 8, give or take the month. Every player is a person, a unique person. I think each person brings a special something to a game, even if its brief. It's what makes role play a role play.

With all that said, we've been very blessed to keep a core group of players around since 2012/2013 until now, with only one player moving on due to DRL. Unabashedly, those players are @greyjedi125, @Mitth_Fisto, @Sith-I-5, and @Bardan_Jusik. In the second game, @galactic-vagabond422 came around and has stuck around with our motley crew ever since. Aside from the 5 people I mentioned above, people come & go. DRL happens. They brought something amazing and left.

HOWEVER, 3 players have stuck out: @Baskerville, @Darth_Cadaverous, and @DREAMSTAR. The first two helped relaunch a struggling Intervention game back in October 2009 that launched us to 146 pages total later (and they were great to role play with), while DREAMSTAR in 2011 had an amazing storyline and was a great joy to RP with before DRL sidelined him suddenly and no one ever heard from him again. While all 3 of those players are long gone from the boards, they left an impression on me as a GM that words cannot do justice.

You are probably best known for the amount of work you put into your games when it comes to the source material. You even run wikis on the games with a lot of background information. Why did you start this and how do you feel the game benefits from it?

You can blame @Sith-I-5. He was the one that challenged me on the realistic workings of the Kingdom of Jod and it went from there. Per my wife, I went overboard.

I think it goes back to your earlier question about challenges with a long game. Having a wiki allows me as a GM to keep track of major devices within the plot itself, to help keep it cohesive. It was something I wish I had during the first 2 games; it would have saved me many headaches, especially with the second game's greater-then-expected expansion in story.

Also something that @TheSilentInfulence told me is that it shows passion and dedication to both the game and it's players. At the end of the day, I want the players to know the universe they're playing in, especially if it's one like the Kingdom of Jod where there's no pre-existing blueprint with 6 trilogy movies (I don't count the Disney trilogy, which is a whole different conversation). For the players to know I'm not a self-interested blowhard Game Master looking out for my own enjoyment means everything to me: in my opinion (and others among the Intervention family of players), we were snubbed for RPF rewards in 2011 and 2012 because of social circles & politics, despite our game being rocking on all cylinders during those 2 years. Our 2010 rewards were our only mention. Ever. So with that chip on my shoulder as a GM, I've always viewed our games as the outcast kid on the playground with the other popular kids. And because of that, I invest heavily in the people that are in our games, because in our little community of Intervention stigma, that's what has mattered since 2011. And I truly care that, if not mentioned in rewards, then our players can feel that joy, love, and belonging of community in our games. And a wiki goes a big way to say I care about you all.

How do you balance working on actual game posts and working on the wiki and background information?

Ideally, 2 days wiki to 3 days game posts (in a busy wiki update week for me). And once everything is "caught up", it's 1 day of wiki to 13 days of game posts. In reality, I typically burn the candle at both ends unfortunately; I bought Jedi Fallen Order & Star Wars Battlefront II on May 4th with sweet sales that day and haven't touched them since the end of May and I was looking forward to buying Battlefront II ever since it came out (hopefully that helps to illustrate how busy the wiki & posting in game keeps me). Finally saved up the money and now I don't even play it.

I just ended a 2 week deep dive into wiki updates where----between DRL issues, family, kids, marriage, professional working life, and the actual posting in the game---I think I posted once in the game. I felt horrible and @Sith-I-5 was a trooper as my AGM. What was supposed to take 2 days on the wiki took 2 weeks. Having 2 young children shrinks your 24 hour day into 2 hours apparently once I can get to my computer to just turn it on and sit down to relax at night.

So, in reality, it's a uneven binge of activities to try to stay ahead of the wiki monster I created.

What is your approach to GMing? Are you planning the plot in advance or are you developing it on the go? Are you aiming at a specific outcome?


I'm a planner, at least with a general outline that hedges in the sandbox and then let the RPers fill in the sandbox in the middle with their castles. Then it's my job to adjust to their castles to get to the ending I want and in that, yes, I have a fixed ending. But the direction there may look very differently from what I had planned originally.

My style has it's pros and cons and you really have to be good at developing the universe & environment for the players to make it work properly.

You have not joined any games as a player as far as I could tell. Was that a conscious decision? Any games you would have liked to join?

Oh I would love to join a game as a player! But the demands of running a long series of games since 2009 have prevented me from doing so and in that vein of thought, yes, it was a decision I had to make. I had to choose between being a Game Master loyal to my players & game or being loyal to my own self interests and being a poser GM for the title. While I know there's amazing people at the boards here who can do both, I know for me personally, I can't. Its either one or the other.

Once the wiki is settled (it's close, yes!!!) and I can settle into a routine with Paradoxical, I would love to be a player. Without the demands of GMing and doing the wiki, I would 100% love being a player in someone else's game. I just need to make sure, before I do, I can leave Paradoxical to be as hands-off for me personally as a GM before I do that. Because, once again, I got that chip on my shoulder from 2011 & 2012 and I'm very loyal to the players in our Intervention franchise games: I want to give them my all first, before I go out to selfishly enjoy my own interests. For better or worse, I've waited 11 years since starting the Intervention universe, I can wait a few more if need be (but hopefully that will be months and not years, maybe, we'll see ).

A final question. Just reveal what you feel comfortable with please. Tell us a bit about the man behind Bravo? Who are you and what do you do when you are not playing games on the boards?

Well, I'm a medically retired firefighter. Although I don't get a pension from my injury 11 years ago, so after the fire department, I still had to find full time work to make ends meet. I've jumped around a few careers after firefighting from non-profit religious organizations to other careers. I even tried going to college, but found I don't like college debt even after a 3.9 GPA and National Honor Roll Society, so I dropped out to avoid college debt. Years after all that and now in my mid-thirties, I'm married with a beautiful wife, two kids, and two idiot Great Danes. I have a career now that I enjoy, but look forward to semi-retiring early in a few years to enjoy other pursuits in life and spend more time with my wife & kids.

While not playing games on the boards, I'm active with The Valiant Few, a multimedia hobby group. I'm one of their Elected Officers and in specific their Communications & Marketing Officer (but also sometime film editor, like now), under the character name of Giovanni Salzano the Traveling Mercenary. The second part of our 2019 movie is due out soon, as I'm in the last parts of post with editing. The first part of the movie can be found here: Season 2 (Queen of Sorrows). It's a great watch, despite our audio problems with wind. And the second part of the movie had the main fight scene with a drone in it capturing shots as we had a live sword fight, so when that is released here soon after post edit is completed, it'll be sweet to watch!

 

Very interesting to get some insight into the long running game series! Thanks @Bravo and @SirakRomar

First Question: One question came up while reading. What exactly do you think went wrong with the Awards there? It seems to have bothered your group a lot (which I was unaware of).

Second question: Do you plan for a sequel at any point? A Intervention III?

 

Host Announcment

Wow, this feels dramatic. Right?

Summer Break!

Vox Popomi has concluded it's first round, call it a Season. I plan to do three Specials next with the winners of Best Roleplayer, Best GM and the winner of the Summer Game Design Contest. Assuming those are three different people and willing to do interviews.

Then we will return latest in fall with the second Season which will be very player-centric as the first was more about GMs.

Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did and thanks everybody for participating and asking questions!

Special thanks to the Mods @Corellian_Outrider and @Sinrebirth for their support. Happened behind closed doors, but this thread would probably not have gotten anywhere without their input and support!

Game on RPF!

The Host / Claire / SirakRomar

 

[Shrugs] I just think it was a different demographic of players then to now. While maybe a lot of the same faces, I think---at least I can say this about myself---we've changed as RPers over time with age, experiences, etc. So the same may not be true now, as then, if Intervention was played now. I know @Sith-I-5 (God rest his soul) had the same feelings that I did at the time, which there were clicks of RPers that favored certain games in awards and we simply got out-voted every time.

And while Intervention was big, it prevented me, at least, from joining other games in meaningful ways. And I think you get labeled as "that person" (either consciously or sub-consciously) by others when you don't socialize with other games. And your put on the back burner for awards. It's just a natural human trait. But it bothered Sith a lot, because him & I worked our arses off and for a game our size, a story that long, and the amount of players we had over the years for just the first game alone...well, it just felt like we got labeled, mainly because we didn't socialize with other games. It wasn't a conscious effort on my part to avoid the clicks or other games, it was rather between work, college, and GMing Intervention at the time, I simply did not have the time to socialize. And it is what it is. You can't change the past.

I'm stuck now in a similar time crunch between wife, kids, and work now. So I can choose to either spread myself over 10 games and become the social bunny or just focus all my energies on one game and give it one hell of a shot and see what happens. I think Paradoxical Echoes is finally on the up-tick with the wiki finally over 90% done and at a place where the game can just be played like crazy, especially for the Game Master to just be stupidly involved every single day now. So we'll see over the next few months or year if my personal theory holds true and, if Paradoxical does become successful to a point where we're a thing around here and a serious mention for any awards, if my lack of socializing with other games hurts awards voting or not. Time will tell.

As for your second question, we have two other games planned. The next game will be utilizing the full width & depth of the wiki, since it'll be placed AU in one of the satellite galaxies. The final game will be AU post-ROTJ, striking a Expanded Universe tone in story, but which will reach back to the first two games with story building to get us to the third game.

 

So very, very true on the socializing aspect. Not to harp on it, but it’s an unfortunate aspect of an online community. There are games I know are well ran, well played, and tell excellent stories, but because I’m not involved, I miss all of it. We’re all one community with different groups, but I hope in the new wave of the RPF, with most of us with families and older, we can try to get out of the minor group mentality and act as a family.

Sithy and Kat were the main reasons I started the celebrating contributors program because we all miss stuff in the games we’re not in, but we should be able to appreciate and celebrate each other’s works.

Thanks Jason. Excellent insight and interview.

 

This is good stuff, and I can relate to it a lot. I used to be one of the more active members of the RPF back in the day, but now that real life has turned me in to a player who doesn’t participate in everything, it’s definitely a transition that takes some getting used to. Like I’m not one of the popular kids anymore. And thank goodness that’s happened to me at an older age, because younger Reynar probably would’ve been irate at the fact that his name was never mentioned in the RPF Awards. But nowadays, that need for validation is long gone. I’ve accepted my little corner of the forum, and I love it here. And I think it’s easy for people to get discouraged at a lack of recognition, especially if they’re just starting out, so I think it’s important to remember and to remind people to stay true to themselves regardless if people recognize what you know is true about yourself or not. That your tastes aren’t always going to agree with everyone else’s. To not fall prey to the desire for an award winning game and create something you yourself aren’t passionate about or proud of. It’s easy to get frustrated when people don’t join a game you poured your heart into, and it’s hard to accept when folks aren’t interested in something you’re passionate about. But, to quote the film Rocky Balboa, the only kind of respect in this world that matters is self respect. You have to stay true to yourself, recognition be damned. And your words are a good reminder of that, @Bravo.

 

I find your confidence amazing. I really do not feel like I should be anywhere near a Best GM award, really. When I won in 2010 I felt that was only because the guy everyone really wanted to vote for was not eligible and happened to be my Co-GM. I always feel like I am still learning how to be an effective GM. Not as if I am a Master of the Art.

 

No one is a master and we’re all still learning. Embrace that!

 

Agreed with all of the above.

Certainly I can relate to the feeling of being "tagged" to belong to a certain group. Having been member of "The Germans" for over a decade now, I know what you are talking about @Bravo.

 

Got a bit lost, but let me say you did a marvelous job with this one! Amazing interviews and very much to learn about our esteemed GMs around here!

 

@SirakRomar, you look so red!



Highly approved gesture! Good idea @TheMods.

 

Is it embarrassing I did not see it?

Thanks @Corellian_Outrider and @Sinrebirth!

Work on our Award Specials has begun!

 

Award Special
Winner of the Summer 2020 Award for Best Roleplayer
galactic-vagabond422

Ladies, Gentlemen, the interview!

Congratulations first! You won the Best Roleplayer Award 2020 in these years Summer 2020 RPF Awards. How do you feel about that?

Thank you, it feels nice, getting recognized for the work I do and the creative energy that I put out into the world. I largely do this out of love and a need to keep my writing sharp but, having people I know (In a digital sense) stand up and say that I am, for this season, the best, it is amazing. It shows that I can write things people enjoy and feel emotions. While yes this is all happy pretendy fun times and we do this out of love and desire but, as a creative you want to know what you do is having an effect. That when people look at it they feel something. In a lot of nomination posts for the awards I was touched by how many people pointed out the emotions that were drawn out. I may not be the most gifted technical writer, but I try to be emotionally real to my characters. And seeing people point that out, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. I'd like to take a moment thank all the people that nominated me, and that voted for me. Thanks you really made my summer.


There are many, many players around these boards, all doing great work. Did you think you would be chosen?

Would I be nominated, sure, I'd been nominated before, but, with all the fantastic players coming back and the level of production increasing, I thought I'd be, not overlooked but out shined. Out shined by some veterans making a comeback or someone from a game I wasn't in posting fantastic stuff that I never saw. (I have enough on my hands keeping up with my own games, much less every game going on now, sorry.) That thought was in the back of my mind, that I still feel so new here despite having come back 6 years ago. There's so much history I missed so many people that I just missed or never came in contact with. I kept my expectations low, even when those close to me where saying I should win


In how many games are you right now? Do you actually still know?

Off the top of my head I couldn't number them...but after a bit of searching 11 active games, not counting the other games I play on other message boards which brings the number up to 13 and add 1 more for the game I run on said other boards. (The TFN is my first love but I found some interesting games elsewhere)


How does one manage to write so many different characters? It is a feat worthy of an award itself and then all those I have seen were incredibly rounded. You must have a lot of voices in your head!

I actually did win a Most/special award in the Fall 2019 called the 'Split' for how many characters I play. I manage it by finding their voice, sometimes it's characters I came up with years ago that finally have a place, or they just come to me like a bolt out of the blue. I'll admit that sometimes they are board archetypes, the young cyberpunk slicer girl being a common go to for me. Once the archetype is set or the broad strokes are set, I throw them into the game and see what happens. I'm a rather reactive type of player, the GM throws a situation at me, and I figure out how my character would get out. I sometimes have to stop myself and say "No this character wouldn't do that." Honestly it's all about knowing the core of the character, Jane in the Crossingverse is a survivor, she knows when it is time to make a change, Michael in Crown is just trying to find his sister. Once you know the core of the character you just look to that and you go from there. I'll say that I'm not always perfect at this, sometimes taking the easy way of just choosing what seems to be the best chance of my character surviving. However when I'm on it's like I can become them, or know their thoughts. It does mean that sometimes other voices get more time than others, and keeping all the muses singing is a struggle but eventually they come back. Or I drag them out kicking and screaming. Deadlines need to be met.

You have played in several games, any idea which role might have been the one that landed you the awards?

Well, Blueline and Casey in Marvel Heroes springs to mind, though a post from Things We Lost In The Fire did get nominated for Best Single Post so maybe that. As stated I'm in a lot of games, but I would say that Marvel Heroes is likely the one that pushed me over the top. (Though that could be biased based on the fact that Blueline and Casey are some of the oldest characters I have) Though I have no clue on that, a lot of the nominations from others on the boards were more for my body of work rather than just one game I was in.


So what is your secret to Roleplaying?

Tea and music, I find that the pairing of hot tea with honey and whatever music is on my youtube mix helps put me in the mindset to write. Not that I always need tea to help me write but music is a must. I find silence grating after a while. As for getting the ideas or, scenes, I often think about them when I'm not doing much, like going to bed, or walking around work. It gives me the time to plan out what I'm going to write or at the very least the outline of it.


How do you develop characters? How do you design them?

As I said I'll start with archetypes, simple broad strokes just to get an idea going. Write a backstory with a few twists and turns that would mould the character, ask myself the six questions (Who What Where When Why and How) about the character and try to carve and shape the character into something more than the archetype. Like a sculptor, the Archetype is the medium (Clay, stone, metal) and the questions I ask help me shape that medium into a work of art. (That is likely far too arty a simile for what I do.)


How invested are you emotionally in your characters?

It varies sometimes, some characters I get super into others just trail off. Though that could just be from fatigue of trying to keep so many characters in my head at one time. Though when I am into the character I am in. I will feel what they feel, I tap into how it would feel to be in these situations and find the emotional core of the character. You can't really do that if you don't put a bit of yourself into it, put your heart into the character.


Well, what are you favorite three roles? Current or past? Why?

Blueline and Casey (Marvel Heroes) (This is one since they are a package deal): They were some of the first long term characters I came up with when I started taking writing seriously. Blue was my juvenile attempt at making a dark and edge backstory. Casey much the same but there was something there that I just like. The way I describe the relationship is Casey is a tiger, a beautiful exotic animal, and Blue is the Zoo keeper, trying to keep her safe from the world, and the world safe from her. He also tries to do this while trying to keep the city safe. The interplay between protecting the city, and protecting her is an interesting quagmire to try and navigate. It has so many ways it can go wrong, so many ways it can end in tears that you're never quite sure if they will survive each other. And the emotional core of them really hits me sometimes. Blue always giving of himself and never asking anything in return, and Casey always feeling guilty but, knowing that she can trust him, trust him not to die, or to hurt her. When I first started Blue was very much the main character with Casey being the sidekick, though I would like to think that now a days they're on equal footing.

Jane (Crossingverse): Jane is another character I've been waiting to play for a while. I developed her right out of high school with my brother. I never really had the drive to write something for her outside of RPing but she was always there lurking. When the chance to play her in a game here came up I jumped. Looking back through the Crossingverse I have always been the first player to have a sheet up. That is how much I love this character. It's fun sometimes to play a person that has an interesting relationship with killing and yet has become one of the heroes of the piece. And I have to shout out her partner Kawin. Ever since the Nuke in New York the pair have been in each other's orbits. They have such a fascinating chemistry, going from hunted and hunter, to allies of convenience, and then to out right comrades in the span of a few years is just amazing to see that relationship change. And sometimes it's fun to play a morally ambiguous character, someone that you're not quite sure how they will react, or what they will do.

Iris Copin (Elite League Limmie): Iris is the culmination of everything that makes ELL great. (Not taking anything away from Fall of Elysium or Episode X but I still feel like ELL deserves to win Best Star Wars game one year.) Iris was the 4 year old daughter of my first character in that game. And then about 4 real life years later, I was able to bring her into the game as my POV character. In no other game could I have done that, have a natural in-universe progression that doesn't involve a time jump. While we didn't watch every step of her growth it still felt amazing the first time I got to post as her, the culmination of everything that makes ELL great. You can start a seed of something, and see it come to fruition, if you are patient, and have a plan you can see it through. Now Iris is not the only legacy character (The Vigos spring to mind) but she is my legacy character and I love her dearly. (The fact that the limmie gods granted her a Cup win is just icing on the cake. No one likes to see a great player go their whole careers without winning a title.)


What do you think of the the Awards? Anything you would like to see being done differently?

The awards are nice, good to see people get recognized for the work they do. And I don't think there's any changes that could be made. I have a personal gripe with a Sith Fanclub game winning 4 out of 5 Best Game Awards in the past 5 years and nearly making it a clean sweep of the other Best Awards as well. But the rules couldn't have really have stopped it from happening since they were technically different games. I have a feeling that the only reason I won, and that the Awards were so exciting for me was that the ballot box wasn't stuffed with Sith Fanclub people voting for their fellow club mates for points in the club. (Not that they were required to vote for people linked to the Sith game. However a lot of the people only play in that game so the end result was the Sith game and players getting a lot of votes. I felt that it drowned out the other games going on at the time, made it look like the Sith game was the only one that was any good.) Again there is not really anything that can be done to combat that other than just having so many good games that one fanclub game can't run the table.


What kind of game attracts you? What does a GM need to recruit the RPFs Top-Roleplayer?

An interesting premise helps, something I haven't seen before, though that doesn't instantly disqualify it. A game that has a lot of opportunity for creativity and fun, that often wins out over interesting premises. If I think I can have fun playing a game I will join. My idea of fun are often swashbuckling adventures, and more personal centered stories. I find I often like games where the players are all working together not scattered to the four winds each doing their own things. In games where the characters are scattered I enjoy more character driven games, games where the focus is on the character and their actions. I find myself sometimes getting frustrated when it feels like my character is being pushed towards certain actions because of things outside of their control. Other than that, if I trust the GM or have seen them playing in other games I'll often give them a chance.


Any game you wanna see happening so you can play in it?

I would love to see AARC (Airspeeder Racing Circuit) make a comeback because I had fun with my character there. I would also love to see a Western Medieval Fantasy game (like War of Kings) show up some time. I say these ones because I got to play in them for what feels like only a bit and then they were gone. Great fun premises that I only got to experience a little part of.


So is there any role you would like to expand or reprise? Any character you feel like you would like to return to in the future?

A lot actually Veloxa Mcear from AARC, Rebecca Dragon from War of Kings and Wotann Valannora but one I think I would be personally interested in is Uncle Owen from the Crossingverse. He was not completely LordTroepfchen's creation. He was always there in Jane's story as a sort of mentor to her and second family. I think it would be fun to play in his prime, the monster the broken down old man used to be. A loyal soldier that did a lot of bad things for his government, that maybe questioned his actions but had made an oath to follow orders. It would be fun to play.


Any advise to players how to become even better at roleplaying?

When you come up with characters it's fine to have an archetype in mind, but try and have things that make them more than that. Expand beyond what they started out as. Also don't be afraid to sometimes step outside what you normally write. Even if it fails or doesn't click with you, you might learn something.


What do you think we as a community could do to make the RPF a better place?

I think a thing that might help is being more patient with newer players, seeing their mistakes and gently trying to correct them. Not that I see this often mind you but, it's something that can cause players to just drop out, and never return.


You are one of our more mysterious players, also you are in so many games. Care to share a little about you? (Only what you are comfortable with, of course).

There's really not much, I'm an IT technician at a local university that plays D&D as well as Fantasy Flight Star Wars Table Top RPGs (Though the whole global situation makes playing in person difficult and sometimes the digital tools used to bring people together don't alway work too well.) I have a bad habit of doing far too much of my writing at work. A recent love affair with professional wrestling. (as evidenced by the fact I'm trying and clearly failing to run a wrestling game.) And a loving family that I see often. The family joke is that I had to sign a treaty when I moved out that I would visit every week, (Not too much of a burden since my folks only live about 20mins away) and they would provide me with a free meal and all their leftovers. My life is going through some major changes (Beyond the current state of the world) and it is both fun and terrifying. The time I have to write has decreased, but I still try my best to keep games updated at a good rate. Other than that there's not really much more to say.


Thank you and that opens the floor for you guys to ask any questions you like. I am gonna make this period shorter this time around. Four days you got! Then we hopefully have @LordTroepfchen in the seat.