Quote from: "From the announcement pages, Savak"
I still get a kick out of writing, re-writing, and reading my old character histories, as well as reading those of others (the difference in perspective between myself and their player is sometimes astonishing). The only thing that saddens me is not having written mine up sooner, or kept some sort of character journal at the time, because I ALWAYS forget things. It took me eons to write up a couple of mine, in part because it's difficult to revisit an old long-lived character who is now gone.
This got me to wondering how many people keep character journals and how they go about it. For me I know that I keep a spiral bound notebook on my desk and keep notes and such on it. At the beginning I used to write down every characters sdesc and name on a page, and would draw a line through them when they died. It was always sad drawing that line through a character I liked. I rarelly do that anymore. I'm thinking of revising how I keep this scribbled set of disorganized notes.
How do you go about it? Do you?
I religiously keep logs, and when the character dies, I compile them from the different computers i play on, stick them into one folder named after that character, include any notes (i always keep them in notepad) and anything else related to the character like my initial writeup, and then I move on, letting them only pop into my memory naturally.
I move my handful of notepad notes away from the desktop and into my Armageddon folder, and relabel every 'Current Character' email as 'Former Characters'.
And that's it really. I did keep a detailed journal with one PC, but it soon became too much of a chore.
Concerning the thread from 'Ask the Staff':
I almost log every time I play. I'll save every log under dates and under the certain player I'm currently role-playing somewhere off in Word or Notepad.
Other than that, I don't record anything other than wares and such when I'm a merchant/agent whatever. I don't record much anything else because in Zalanthas, not too much actually is recorded.
If there was something that happened with any of my characters that could change history and most likely would be remembered by a great number of people, I'm sure I would naturally remember what it was that happened. I could also dig out that log and send it to the immortals. Other than that, a 'journal' is something that we have to do sometimes in school for reasons that I still don't understand, its a newspaper in french, or its something some people like to write in to record their lives (or lives of characters they play as) so they can reread their past whenever they want.
I don't keep journals.
Usually it's just quickly scratched and nearly illegible notes in a notebook, in the margins of the maps, and on whatever surface is nearby if I can't find my notebook. Most of my notes are something like:
Amos - the tall, muscular man. Oash. Buys alabaster.
Sgt. Bob - the manly man. Byn. Looking for anakore gloves.
Lord Venereal Fale - the persimmon-eyed man. Likes pie.
Except that my real notes aren't nearly that neat. Basically name, sdesc, organization, and any potentially interesting, useful, profitable or dangerous quirks that my character would be particularily apt to remember. At first I used to record where and when I met a person too, but then I got lazy. Sometimes, especially with a long lived character, populous clans will get a page of their own because then I have a listing of all the members of the clan I "know" plus space at the bottom for general info/rumors about that clan. Not really a journal, just memory joggers.
The one time I had a chracter that could read and write she did keep a journal. It was mainly written on the fly, but I didn't worry as much about spelling as much as the flavor of the writing, because as far as I know there are no double-damned dictionary distributers or grammarians in Zalanthas. It was fun. It gave me things to do durring Duty Log-Ins, times when I wasn't really excited to log in, but felt I had to because my character had to be seen and be available on a regular basis. It is kind of cool because you are leaving an artifact for future r/w PCs to find and puzzle over, and I know I would have found it cool to read some other diary, especially the diary of a long-dead PC. The world needs more books.
Angela Christine
I keep a log for that character - notes, people met, projects and submissions made by that character. Maps maybe, too, if they are the type.
As soon as they are dead, though, I delete it. Sometimes I regret loosing all that info, but in the end I always delete it.
I guess it is just the way I deal with loosing yet another beloved character.(YABC)
I keep short notes similar to AC's. The only problem is that, once my PC dies, I generally delete those notes. That way there's no temptation for my new character to 'figure out' that Amos is actually a mind-bending defiler prostitute.
I'll occasionally keep a log or two, usually of some massive RPT or whatever. But my logs are generally unreadable because I have a nasty habit of constantly checking my score, status, equipment, inventory... just a nervous habit I have. And I don't usually have the patience to go through and clean up the logs.
So I guess I need to figure out another method for recording my characters' history, eh?
I only keep tracks of things I want.
Do we still send in player histories for PC that were alive during this?
Yes, you can still, always, send character histories -- Sanvean has been putting these up for us.
Extended character -backgrounds- (for living characters) should be sent to MUD. But overall character histories (for dead/retired characters or characters who have been around & involved for a while already) involving things that have happened in-game should also be sent to Sanvean.
-Savak