Post by Whim on Oct 29, 2012 22:58:57 GMT -5
(My brain is refusing to phrase anything I want to say on the plot thread, so I'll get back to that in a bit.)
So, the hatching is coming up. I have the hatchlings generated; the colors, mutations, and a few personality traits for each are already set. But, there are two ways that the hatching itself could go.
The first is that, like most sites, I could decide which hatchling goes to which candidate prior to the hatching. No surprises, no changes, but everything gets revealed nice and smoothly, probably building steadily up to the drama like a typical story plot. Not much room for variety, but it works well, it goes smoothly, and everyone has fun.
The second is that prior to the hatching, every hatchling has a list of multiple candidates that they could Impress to (and similarly, each candidate has a list of hatchlings that might Impress them). Which of those possible Impressions would happen would, then, depend on what happened; how the candidates behaved, what the hatchlings did, and the even the hatching order. I think this would be a bit more realistic, since every dragon can't have only one potential Impession in all of Pern, but it's not, to my knowledge, what anyone does, and it'd result in a bit more running around, a bit more chaos, and probably some odder Impressions (such as, an obvious bronze rider candidate Impressed by a blue, because the blue got there first).
(This also, of course, comes with the risk of people making their characters act OOCly to manipulate what dragon they get, but everyone here seems to be good enough writers that I can trust everyone not to do that.)
To ensure that this worked I'd need to keep constant track of those lists of who could Impress what dragons and which dragons could Impress who so that no candidate or dragon ended up with all their potential Impressions already taken, but honestly I'd just spend that time cackling and feeling like a wonderful chessmaster, so I certainly wouldn't mind.
So, what does everyone think? Would you prefer the traditional, all Impressions pre-assigned version, or the more experimental one? Do you not care? Do you see potential problems that I've missed?
So, the hatching is coming up. I have the hatchlings generated; the colors, mutations, and a few personality traits for each are already set. But, there are two ways that the hatching itself could go.
The first is that, like most sites, I could decide which hatchling goes to which candidate prior to the hatching. No surprises, no changes, but everything gets revealed nice and smoothly, probably building steadily up to the drama like a typical story plot. Not much room for variety, but it works well, it goes smoothly, and everyone has fun.
The second is that prior to the hatching, every hatchling has a list of multiple candidates that they could Impress to (and similarly, each candidate has a list of hatchlings that might Impress them). Which of those possible Impressions would happen would, then, depend on what happened; how the candidates behaved, what the hatchlings did, and the even the hatching order. I think this would be a bit more realistic, since every dragon can't have only one potential Impession in all of Pern, but it's not, to my knowledge, what anyone does, and it'd result in a bit more running around, a bit more chaos, and probably some odder Impressions (such as, an obvious bronze rider candidate Impressed by a blue, because the blue got there first).
(This also, of course, comes with the risk of people making their characters act OOCly to manipulate what dragon they get, but everyone here seems to be good enough writers that I can trust everyone not to do that.)
To ensure that this worked I'd need to keep constant track of those lists of who could Impress what dragons and which dragons could Impress who so that no candidate or dragon ended up with all their potential Impressions already taken, but honestly I'd just spend that time cackling and feeling like a wonderful chessmaster, so I certainly wouldn't mind.
So, what does everyone think? Would you prefer the traditional, all Impressions pre-assigned version, or the more experimental one? Do you not care? Do you see potential problems that I've missed?