Songs Doug Should Never *EVER* Play

[Bob Schroeck]

We've had this situation come up in play, and the solution that was eventually agreed upon was based on the long-standing principle that once a song's over, it's over -- basically, as soon as he stops hearing the song, that trips its "not again until midnight" timer. It was ruled that even if the interruption is momentary -- defined as about a second -- the song is "over". Coming back into it immediately afterward would not continue whatever effect he was gaining from the song. Add to that the fact that the metagift responds quickly but not instantaneoulsy to songs, and basically, once deafness begins, that's it. That's the last he can use that song that day.

> Thanks for the welcome; I lurked for a while on the old boards,
> but never actually posted anything.

I've noticed that this board seems far more conducive to impulsive participation. The single-page format of the old one discouraged me from posting things more than it encouraged me.

> I do a fair amount of writing
> and game work (though no game writing), so DW is a
> particularly interesting series from that perspective.

It's been an interesting balance of the dramatic vs. gaming mindsets, as evidenced by the work I'm doing on the new chapter. It's no spoiler to tell you that there's a combat in the beginning. Well, in order to best balance drama and gaming sensibilities, I had to make a choice in how I was going to handle the fight, and that choice was "V&V-style" (as opposed to "Fuzion-style", aka "Champions-style", or original BGC cinematic). Believe it or not, V&V rules favored the Knight Sabers far more than my other options, and that worked for the story as a whole. Of course, other sensibilities can flavor that. I had a long discussion last night with my wife over the behavior of her character Shadowwalker in the upcoming chapter. Although I'm refusing to change how her part of the big combat ends, she's argued quite compellingly for rewriting the entire beginning of her part.

For another view of the gaming mindset as imposed on fiction, I wish I could show you the Champions crossover story chapter which was posted just before DW2 chapter 1 was released in 1998 -- but I can't find it on the Web and it's not in the hard disk side of my fic archives. I've mentioned this story before -- I was already writing DW at that point and it struck me as the exactly wrong way to do a superhero rpg character insert in the BGC world...

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.