Meet the Stardancer Crew

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Hey, peeps! Today my mom is celebrating 26 years being cancer free! Way to go, Mom! Also, for the celebration, Hubby and I managed to make our way down to visit her for the first time in 15 months; literally the longest I've ever been away from my mom and sister my whole life. But we're here now, and we're celebrating!

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Edited by LycoRogue

Because of me visiting family, I didn't really have any time today to write up this blog post. Luckily(?), I fell behind last week, and so last week's missed post is now this week's. Win?

So, what exactly happened to delay my post a week? Well, for starters, my laptop is old (for laptop standards) and has been maddingly sluggish as of late. It kept me FOREVER to get just about anything accomplished last Tuesday, and eventually I needed to wave the white flag and get errands done instead (also, I needed to put the laptop away before chucking it across the room). I figured, "no worries. I'll work on it during work downtime." Valid plan, to some extent. Most of this blog was indeed written at work, but I didn't have the downtime I thought I would, so it was very much a week of slowly chipping away at this blog. Especially since I just kept getting too burnt out post-work - or I had other plans - so I barely even touched my laptop, let alone my blog, outside of work. Ironically.

But, I'm here now, so who's ready to meet the latest spacefaring crew?

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The 21st was Game 0 of the new Scum and Villainy campaign that I'm going to be running. It kept a few hours, and perhaps not-so-few "have we made a decision?" prompts from me, but we've got the base crew!

Let me introduce, the crew of the Stardancer!

Credit to the Scum and Villainy art team:
Brett Barkley, Tomasso Renieri, Juan Ocha, Michaela DeSacco, and Tazio Bettin

The crew doesn't have an official name yet, and they didn't pick out the ship name of Stardancer, but still, yay!

Let me explain, the SaV rulebook provides three different ship options for the crew to pilot. As I tried to explain to the players last Monday night, that doesn't mean there's a fleet of "Stardancer" ships zipping around the sector a la Firefly ships in the TV show Firefly and movie Serenity (the ship is Firefly-class and the individual ship name is Serenity). It means that the class this ship is - CF-350 Series Scarab-class Freighter, by the way - looks like the above image, and this particular type of ship is good for less-than-legal things, such as smuggling, blockade running, and illicit sales. Once the crew decided they wanted a Scarab, they happened to find one that was already dubbed "Stardancer." Just like the other options were a ship named "Cerberus," which is good for bounty hunters and/or extraction specialists, and a ship named "Firedrake," which is a ship within the class of choice for the rebels and generic Hegemonic criminals. In other words, these pre-owned ships were what was available at the time, and this crew chose the "Stardancer."

Normally, one of the parts of crew-building includes answering the question, "How did you get your ship?" Was it something the crew legit paid for? Was it something one of them inherited? Did it use to be a ship for legitimate business, but the pilot/owner decided criminal activities were more profitable? Was it commandeered from someone? Was it abandoned and the crew just salvaged it? Were they the only surviving mutineers? Was it a gift from someone rich and/or powerful? The answer to this question of how the crew got their ship in the first place could potentially be quite the fun plot-point later down the line. Much like the reveal of how Han Solo came about owning the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars.

Which brings me full-circle back to the name. Han didn't name his ship the Millennium Falcon. It already had that name, and he just never renamed it. Why would he? It already had quite the legend attached to it, and it was a sense of pride that he piloted THE Millennium Falcon. Similarly, after Barbossa mutinied for control of the Black Pearl in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, he didn't rename the Pearl. It was important to him that he was the captain of the Black Pearl specifically.

So, that's what happened with this crew. Somehow, someway, they ended up with this Scarab-class freighter already named "Stardancer." They haven't decided if they wish to rename it, but "Stardancer" is on the ship sheet, so that's what it's called for now. (Although, Hubby has joked about what the crew and ship names should be; more on that below). I also don't know how the crew came about owning this ship because they weren't quite sure themselves. We'll see if they come up with something by the time we start our first game on the 5th. Otherwise, I might have to come up with something myself for a nice plot-point down the road.

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Edited by LycoRogue

Anyway, after picking their ship, the crew was able to customize it a bit. One of the lines on the ship sheet actually includes the prompt: "Colors/Look". Granted, the crew hasn't thought too much about what the exterior of the ship looks like yet, but I'll be sure to have fun in GIMP a bit as the crew lets me know more about what they want their ship to look like.

Okay, this is all well and good, but what about the crew themselves?

Last update, I introduced you to tI'kæl (boy, her name isn't going to be annoying to write all the time with those special characters in it....). Rozsavaria and I got a bit more in-depth with her character Monday night. Previously, I let you fine folks know that tI'kæl is Memish, which means she's an aquatic alien from the ocean planet Mem. She has dark purple - almost black in some parts - scales covering her body and long tentacles for hair. She keeps her tentacles loosely braided, and she ritualistically carves her scales and embeds bioluminescent seaweed into the wounds as a way of religiously tattooing herself. The seaweed she uses happens to glow yellow, which matches the Ur artifact she wears: a choker made of golden star shapes linked together and capable of keeping someone alive while unprotected in the vacuum of space for up to an hour per full-charge.

Speaking of, Roz and I briefly talked about what kind of ritual tI'kæl would have to do in order to recharge her artifact. As of right now, we have that it has to bask in star light, so tI'kæl has to walk around in unobscured sunlight (so, not underwater or during cloudy days), or it has to be in a window of the ship so it can absorb the star light while they are flying through space. I feel like it's not quite specific enough of a ritual though, so we're still brainstorming between now and the 5th. Maybe if it has to be UNINTERRUPTED bathing in star light for a week? Maybe it's okay that it's a fairly simple "ritual" since she'd be without it for an in-game week anyway? Meh, we'll sort it out.

TI'kæl is also a princess of Mem with priestess-like duties to uphold. I wasn't able to get Roz to elaborate on what either of those elements of tI'kæl's backstory means though. Is she the daughter of her tribe's chief? Is her father a king of an actual kingdom (I did make a lot of Ariel from The Little Mermaid jokes that night)? Is the entire Memish population of the whole planet united under one patriarch, and tI'kæl is the princess of the entirety of Mem a la Princess Leia and Alderaan? Does her people have a sort of parliament that does the actual governing, and she's a royal figurehead? Is that why she's more focused on her high priestess duties? Does her people consider religious figures political leaders? Is she a "princess" because she's a High Priestess? What are the ramifications for her people that she has left Mem?

I guess we'll have to iron those details out a bit more as we play.

Likewise, Roz and I will also have to figure out more details with regards to her NPC friend and NPC rival. She had picked "Laxx, a xeno" as her friend, but we're not sure if "a xeno" means they're also Memish, or if they're a different alien species, and, if they're a different species, what are they? We also need to figure out if they have a gender. Alternatively, tI'kæl's rival is "Rye, an unrequited love." How far is this love unrequited? Is Rye still friendly with tI'kæl, but is also almost antagonistic to try to keep some emotional distance? Does Rye straight up hate tI'kæl? Does Rye want to befriend tI'kæl, but she's the one causing the tension as a means to try to get over them? Is Rye Human? Memish? Another type of xeno?

Circling back to me teasing Roz that tI'kæl is basically Ariel, Roz determined that tI'kæl is just curious by nature and desires to experience as much of the galaxy as she can. An underwater princess that wants out of the oceans of her home so she can be with humans and experience all the wonders they do? I mean, come on, that's a little bit like Ariel, right? Maybe then Rye is her pre-Kiss-The-Girl-singalong Eric? We even joked around the table that tI'kæl would use the futuristic sci-fi tech, but not as they are intended (at least, not unless corrected) because she doesn't know any better. For instance, when I gave the players a character questionnaire, one of the questions was "when was the last time you've used a blaster? Why?" TI'kæl's answer was "this morning at breakfast. Blasters are quite good at cracking nuts; just enough weight to them but still easy to hold and swing."

Anyway, getting back into the meme roots of her character, while building tI'kæl's RIP racer persona and machine, Roz went full Sonic the Hedgehog memes. Her machine is called Da Wey (so she can ask people if they'd like her to show them Da Wey, or if they already know Da Wey), and is shaped like the Egg Mobile from Sonic.

Various Dr. Robotnik/Eggman and Egg Mobile sprites ripped from the games

Roz was thinking Da Wey would be the spherical one in the bottom of the above image, mostly because it's the most iconic out of these options. However, I think either of the top two, especially the one from Sonic 2006 in the top-left, would be closer to what a RIP Machine would actually look like given the stats she chose. Which, of course, was nothing but acceleration because "gotta go fast."

To finish off the meme, tI'kæl's racing name is Sanic.

Switching gears over to Hubby, I'd like to introduce you to the Human Speaker Quinton Shrike. Speakers are basically respectable persons that are on the take. They're your classic corrupted politician or dirty cop or white-collar con-man. In Hubby's case, Quinton is a spoiled rich kid with an expensive habit and the knowhow to either not get caught or talk his way out of trouble.

Hubby hasn't figured out what Quinton looks like quite yet, but he's an apprentice with one of the more powerful guilds: The Starsmiths. Starsmiths are in charge of building starcraft, legalizing/registering them, and maintaining the hyperspace lanes between planets and between jump gates (which connect star systems). As a badged member of the Starsmiths, Quinton has a lot more pull and leeway with regards to the Stardancer's build. Quinton is legally licensed, which means he can therefore make "legal" improvements to the ship, talk his way out of most minor violations/infractions, as well as know enough of the dark market for ship parts to know how best to go undetected by the galactic law.

Quinton's family owns a small nightclub called "Raven's Nest" on the moon Warren, which is also an ecumenopolis: a single city that covers the entire surface of the moon. Warren is also where the governor of the sector lives, so it's a major political hub. In other words, maybe not the best place for a crew of outlaws, and yet Quinton helps ease his stress (an important game mechanic) by going home to assist with the nightclub. THAT'S gonna be interesting.

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(yes, I'm lame and reused this image
in the same blog post)

Hubby's rival is Manda, a Guild member. We talked about them - her? I can't recall if we landed on Manda being a her... - being a fellow Starsmiths Guild member, but Hubby landed on Manda being part of the biggest faction in the sector: the Guild of Engineers. However, Manda WANTED to be a member of the Starsmiths, which is where the rivalry started. There was only one position available with the Research and Development (design) department of the Starsmiths Guild, and Quinton won out over Manda. Instead of taking a different position within the Starsmiths and working their way into the R&D division, Manda decided they would rather pout and join a more prestigious guild instead, in an attempt to lord it over Quinton. He doesn't care, though, which just irritates Manda further.

As for Quinton's friend, Hubby couldn't resist. One of the streamers he watches for nopixel is Buddha. He has been playing GTA Online for years, and has been involved with nopixel for multiple server generations. His character Lang Buddha is a powerful criminal mastermind within the game's fake city of Los Santos. Lang is rich, is one of the only (if not THE only) characters to own his own penthouse, is a major crime boss in the city with his gang the CLeanbois, is influential enough in-game that the server developers custom designed CLean Manor - a mansion for Lang and the CLeanbois that they bought for $3-million in-game currency - and Lang owns multiple businesses both legal and illegal in nature throughout the city. One of his more legal ventures is the Rooster's Rest, an authentic Asian tea and ramen restaurant and social hall. Hubby had joked for a while about bringing in nopixel characters as inside-joke cameos for our SaV game, and during our Game 0 he pulled the trigger.

One of the options for a Speaker's ally is "Arryn, a Noble". Hubby scratched out Arryn's name and wrote in Lang instead. So now I guess we have to rebuild Lang Buddha as a space noble. That will be interesting. Hubby already has the connecting story that Quinton's family had been faithful stewards of Lang's family for years (generations?). This led to Lang becoming particularly close friends with Quinton and his immediate family. Lang even funded the Raven's Nest as a part-investment, part-gift for the Shrikes.

Now, I had mentioned above that Quinton is a rich boy with an expensive habit that he used less-then-legal means to fund. What is that habit, you might be asking? Well, it's RIP racing. He's become addicted to it, but it's not a cheap habit to have. On top of that, Quinton has become fairly good at the underground races, and wants to move up into the official RIP League. He can't without a team, though. Quinton had been watching Sanic race for quite some time, and respected her skills, so he asked her if she wanted to form a team with him. When tI'kæl agreed, they realized they did not have the funds needed to start up the team. That's when they went to search for sponsors, upon failing at that, Quinton suggested they become a criminal crew to get the crits they needed to get themselves started in the League.

Much like Sanic, Quinton went with acceleration as his main RIP Machine stat. He dubbed himself "Poet" for his racer name, and christened his Machine "The Dark Soliloquy." I haven't taken the time to doctor any of these images to better fit Hubby's description, but the basic shape of The Dark Soliloquy is that of the Batwing.

Batwing designs from the Batman franchise

Hubby's design has The Dark Soliloquy's cockpit area painted a deep, royal purple, with the wings and thrusters of the Machine a rich, hunter green. Also, the thrusters are specially designed (probably by Quinton himself) to produce black flames. The main reason Hubby picked out the Batwing as his inspiration for his Machine is because of those sharp wings. The Dark Soliloquy's wings are actually hammered to be razor sharp, to help cut through both air friction and the competition if they get too close! Finally, instead of the "bat ears" at the end of the cockpit, the tip is a sharp, sword-like point.

I'll have to have some fun in GIMP to re-design the Batwing into Dark Soliloquy, and then show you guys closer to what Hubby had in mind.

Now, as I mentioned, Quinton and tI'kæl started their partnership by attempting to find a sponsor (or sponsors) for a team. This is how the duo met Quarthix's character.

Time to meet the crew's Muscle: Demarcus. (Sadly, I can't quite read Quarthix's handwriting, so I can't read what the last name is. I'll get confirmation and update later).

Demarcus is more than just the standard Muscle, he's kind of a Jack-of-all-Trades, but REALLY likes brawling with people, which is why he's "mostly" the Muscle. Quarthix hasn't really figured out how or why Demarcus became the "mob doctor" for the Borniko Syndicate, but that was his main station within the faction when Quinton and tI'kæl came to them to see if they'd be willing to sponsor an up-and-coming new RIP racing team. They didn't really want to sponsor the team, but they were intrigued by the duo enough to offer a few favors. One such favor was offering Demarcus as a new crew member for the duo. Demarcus had been getting a bit antsy within the Syndicate, and he would be able to better show Quinton and tI'kæl criminal means to fund their team. Feeling a touch obligated, but also intrigued by the new "job opportunity", Demarcus gladly threw his lot in with the two RIP racers.

Demarcus started "training" Quinton and tI'kæl by introducing them to one of the Syndicate's main info brokers.

Quick time-out on Demarcus so I can tangent about the info broker for a minute. When building up their crew and customizing the ship sheet, the players got to pick a "trusted contact" that they all have access to and equal standing with. The options for the Stardancer ships were a dockmaster, a keen-eared barkeep, a tugboat captain, a diplomat, and a reclusive info broker. Tugboat captain was instantly dropped from contention, and the group reasoned that Quinton was basically their diplomat already. There was some debate between dockmaster, barkeep, and info broker, but it didn't take long for the group to decide on Citani, a reclusive info broker.

I was already planning on bringing Maggie the Info Broker into SaV. There would be no point in doing so, though, if the group already has an info broker as a contact. Poor Maggie would be redundant, just as she would be if I ever did manage to make it onto the nopixel private server. So, instead, I saw their choice as a golden opportunity. Maggie was going to be fairly hidden and reclusive anyway, so.... much like Hubby scratched out Arryn's name to put in Lang's, I scratched off Citani and put in Maggie's name. Roz had already memorized that the character's name was canonically Citani, so when I corrected her that the friendly info broker was actually named Maggie she seemed disappointed. I guess "Maggie" isn't Sci-Fi enough for her? So, while I was helping Hubby and Quarthix finish up their characters, Roz researched names that use "Maggie" as a nickname, and came across the old Norse name Magnilda. It means "strong fighter" or "battle maiden", depending on the source. Neither meaning quite matches the personality I gave Maggie, but I still liked the way the name sounded, so I figured I could make it work. She'll be like the fantasy or sci-fi barkeep that seems humble, but when push comes to shove, she's a scary force to contend with when she's trying to defend someone.

Think something like the depiction of Mrs. Bluveridge in Muppet Treasure Island when her inn and the boys are being attacked by pirates.

Circling back to Demarcus, while building up the crew and choosing a contact, the next step is to choose a faction that hates that contact - causing the crew to drop in standing with them - then choose a faction that is also friends with the contact, increasing the crew's standing with that faction. Since Maggie is an info broker, it was easy to decide that the Hegemony's military faction The 51st Legion wouldn't be a fan of hers. So Maggie is a recluse mostly because she's on the lam from the Legion. On the flipside, Quarthix thought it would make sense if the Borniko Syndicate were the ones that introduced the crew to Maggie. And so, that is why Demarcus specifically introduced Quinton and tI'kæl to Maggie.

As for Demarcus' personal friend and rival, much like Roz with tI'kæl, Quarthix isn't quite sure any of the history between Demarcus and the two characters Quarthix picked, but we'll figure it out via roleplay. In the meantime, we know that Demarcus is friends with Shod, a weapons dealer, and rivals with Chon-zek, a bounty hunter. We don't have descriptions of these characters, their genders, or if they are both human. It's kind of bare-bones, but it's a start, and we can flesh these two characters out while also fleshing out the two that Roz picked for tI'kæl.

Quarthix also set up Demarcus' heritage as a "wanderer": spacefarers that don't have one true planet as their home. Demarcus himself could have been born on a spaceship, or on a space station, or on a planet his parents were visiting, only to leave again soon after. Quarthix described Demarcus specifically as a "space hobo." However, Demarcus is fairly nicely dressed for a hobo. We're not sure if he's always dressed like this, or if it's a result of the Syndicate taking him under their wing, of if Quinton convinced Demarcus to dress sharper (especially since Demarcus loves hitting up the Raven's Nest whenever Quinton goes home), but Demarcus dresses in a leather vest with coattails and a "fancy" hat. Quarthix literally didn't think of any other description for Demarcus, but he knows this brawler and part-time doctor cares about his looks.

Now, Demarcus' reason for loving to hit up the Raven's Nest is because he loves to indulge in drugs. All drugs; any kind of drug. He doesn't care what it is or what it does or if he's tried it before. If it's a drug the locals are partaking, he wants in. So, while Quinton is helping his family run the nightclub, Demarcus is in the darkened corner trying out the latest batch of... whatever he can get his hands on. Considering tI'kæl's goal to "try everything," she's probably in the booth right beside Demarcus trying out the drugs with him.

Since Demarcus is now a member of the crew, he was convinced to also be a member of the RIP team, which they named Chaos Theory. Demarcus has tried RIP racing before. He's not as good as the other two, and isn't nearly as engrossed in the sport, but he likes the adrenaline rush and the potential to kill off the competition. Since destruction is more fun to him than actually winning, Demarcus went with a hulking Machine; nearly all weight. He actually repurposed an old ambulance to be his racing tank in the RIP races.

Design showcased on Eurobricks forum
Posted by Fabz on June 24, 2013

This is surprisingly close to what I was picturing when Quarthix talked about his RIP Machine designed to look like a blocky and tank-like ambulance. I'll have to show these pictures to him to see how close it matched his mental image. I'll also have to see if he was picturing different colors or decals on the outside. More fun in GIMP! Guess I might as well make it a hat-trick and figure out custom designs Roz wants on Da Wey. It would be fun to customize these base designs into something more original. It's not writing, but it's still a way to spark my creativity, so I'll take it.

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Anyway, Demarcus leaned heavily into the design of his Machine, naming it the Slambulance. I mean, if most of what he's doing is slamming into the Machines around him and sending them to the hospital (Hopefully. The grave is also an option....), at least he's giving his competition fair warning.

Not wanting to be one-upped by Roz in the meme department, Hubby convinced Quarthix to use the racer name Space Jam.

Doctored album cover for the Space Jam soundtrack

Honestly, Demarcus is only there to help his teammates in the race and smash as many other racers as he can, and I'm all for this. These races are going to get interesting.

Another potentially interesting element of this game are the statuses the Stardancer crew have with the factions of SaV. I already discussed how they have favor with the Borniko Syndicate because of Demarcus' connection with them and the tie back to Maggie the info broker. I also mentioned how the crew's friendliness with Maggie caused them to be in poor standing with the 51st Legion. Well, while customizing the Stardancer during character creation, there are three times the factions are either directly or indirectly involved. The third time is because of the contact the players choose: "one faction is also friends with this contact; one is enemies with them."

The first is the general body upgrades. After choosing the 2 initial upgrades the crew wants to start with, they got to choose a faction that helped them with these upgrades. The group picked out two generally illegal upgrades, so they had Borniko help them out. Maybe the Stardancer was another way the Syndicate "invested" in the trio. Either way, after choosing the faction, the group chooses one of three options:

1. Pay the faction half of the crew's starting funds for the upgrades.
2. Owe the faction a favor and gain one status with them.
3. Stiff the suckers and lose a status with that faction.

The group went with option #2, and so they are now just waiting for the Borniko Syndicate to come a'knocking. Which of course means I have to come up with a job the Syndicate will ask the crew to do for them. It also means the group is already in pretty good standing with the Borniko with a +2 for the status with this faction. Makes sense if Demarcus is a kinda-sorta member of the Borniko.

The second, and, in this case, final time the group needs to make decisions with regards to factions, is with the other two upgrade options. Now it doesn't need to be the ship itself, but auxiliary items. After picking the two upgrades, the group collectively figures out which of those upgrades was a "gift" from a faction, and which one caused tension with a faction. They decided on a medical bay, added on by the Starsmiths Guild, thanks to Quinton. He's a member of this guild, and he was able to talk his way around having the illegal-unless-licensed particle cannons, as well as the completely-illegal cloaking device. In the end, the Guild helped as a favor to Quinton, adding a point in their status. On the flipside, Quinton managed to convince the Guild of Engineers to let his crew do the field testing of the latest land transports (the land transports being the other upgrade). This meant these transports were no longer available for the Echo Wave Riders, a gang of extreme racers and daredevils always itching to try out the latest transportation tech. They were hyped to get the land transports, until Quinton unintentionally (or MAYBE intentionally) sniped them of the opportunity. They now have an eye on our small little crew, and possibly a way to steal the transports. Regardless, there's some serious beef between these guys.

So, our final results are, 0 or neutral status with most of the game's canon factions. The crew has a +1 status with the Starsmiths, and a +2 with the Borniko Syndicate. On the flipside, the crew has already managed to piss off the 51st Legion, with a -1 status. And they have seriously insulted the Echo Wave Riders, dropping their view of the Stardancer crew to -2!

Speaking of the crew as a whole, Hubby may have actually thought of a potential name for the crew and for the ship (as I mentioned towards the top of this post). For obvious reasons, each player is asked to come up with a criminal alias for their character. Not really being subtle about who they are, tI'kæl picked "Space Princess." Quinton picked "Lord." After some back-and-forth between Doctor and Captain, Quarthix decided that Demarcus would go with "Captain." Mainly so he can say he's "Captain" Demarcus, even if he doesn't actually captain any spacecraft.

I tried to help Hubby come up with a potential gang name, and joked that they could be "The Elites" since they have a "Princess", "Lord", and "Captain" in their crew. Hubby followed up with the suggestion that their ship should then be rebranded as "Privilege." To which, I questioned if they repainted the ship to be entirely white.

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This is a terrible joke,
and I apologize.

Hubby sent the "ideas" for the crew name, ship name, and... ship color, apparently... to Quarthix, who loves the idea. I also sent the options to Roz, who simply responded with "Oh my" so.... she's the deciding vote and hasn't settled yet?

As of right now, this is still simply "the crew" of the Stardancer. Come July 5th, however, they may be The Elites of the white Privilege.

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Oh man, that was a LOT of game lore I just dumped on you guys, huh? I also found my old GE handheld micro-cassette voice recorder from... at least college, but I think as far back as high school, honestly. So I've had this dang thing for something within the neighborhood of two decades!!! Anyway, I found it, it still works, AND I can still buy micro-cassette tapes! I know! In The Year Of Our Lord, 2021, I can still find analog options like actual cassette tapes! Boy, did my mom win out when she got me this thing for a gift, didn't she?

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Point being, I'm going to attempt to record our game sessions. A 90min tape recording at half-speed should be more than enough time, especially since it auto-turns off if there's more than 3 seconds of dead air. Right? Starting the game at 7pm, that carries us to 10pm. Add in bathroom breaks, and... yeah... that should be enough time. Worse comes to worst, I can just turn the tape over and keep going.

Either way, I'm then planning on going back over the recording and kinda-sorta transcribe it. I'll sum up the action bits and any exposition, and then transcribe the actual in-character dialogue. We'll see how long it takes for me to go, "screw this; I don't have time for this!" I do like having a permanent thing to go back to to refresh my memory though. I loved it when I played the D&D campaign as Jolene and the whole game was written out as a real-time play-by-post. I still periodically go back and read through it if I have forgotten a detail from that game. Same with the actual play-by-post X-Men roleplay X-Future that Hubby ran. I also really enjoy the fact that I can re-live Oxventure sessions both through the YouTube uploads and their podcast. Same for the Blades in the Dark campaign the Oxventurers post on YouTube. There's multiple Twitch and YouTube channels dedicated to RP campaigns; most notably Critical Role. There are clips, or full streams - if you go to the player themself - of nopixel gameplay.

I just adore this ability to go back, and I'm sad that my roleplay with characters like Kriv, or Emerald Gaze, or Airis, or Mara are just left to fading memories. I tried to remedy that by writing session summaries for both the D&D campaign I played Kriv, as well as last year's attempt at Blades in the Dark. My memory is only so good, though, and if I happened to be busy the day after a session, the details started getting SUPER fuzzy, and the journaling attempts failed.

This time, though! As long as I either a) get more tapes in time to rotate through them, or b) transcribe a tape within a fortnight (we're playing SaV every odd-week Monday), I'll be able to keep track of everything! Might even invest in a digital voice recorder so I can just straight up keep the recordings after each session.

Which means I'll have access to a LOT more lore and general story to relay over to you fine folks. It's a bit much for my blog posts, especially if I ever get to the point of swinging this thing back to a writing blog. I'm seriously thinking about just creating a fan wiki for everything. The problem is that I can't just call the campaign "Scum and Villainy" because it would be about this specific campaign; not the game itself. Which means coming up with a unique name to distinguish our playgroup from the games themselves. Much like how OutsideXbox and Outside Xtra have their D&D campaign specifically listed as Oxventure, or nopixel for that specific server's version of the GTA online game. I'd also want to title it more based on the galaxy we collectively build, that way if the Stardancer's crew switches out with new characters, or the crew pick a new ship to fly, it can all still be contained on the wiki.

And you guys know how good I am at names/titles.

So this might be something to pitch to the group, or wait for something to organically form.

Alternatively, I remembered that a bunch of YouTubers I follow - specifically Overly Sarcastic Productions and Hello Future Me - have mentioned the program WorldAnvil. It's mostly a writing assistant program, helping organize storybuilding elements and the like. However, these YouTubers also promoted the fact that World Anvil is great for roleplayers as well, because it's great at organizing player characters (PCs), non-player characters (NPCs), locations, events, etc. You can also share the link after essentially creating the equivalent of a fan wiki. Excited that I wouldn't necessarily have to come up with a title for this thing (since you can change up the titles on World Anvil), I went to work on writing something up. Except.... you can't put in all the PC information yourself. The players would each have to sign up for at least the free version of World Anvil in order to add in their character information themselves.

Switching gears, I cancelled the campaign mode and decided to use World Anvil as if this game were a story series I'm plotting. Managed to put in the characters' information that way! Whoo! I spent some time on Sunday getting started on the articles to see how it looks and if I want to keep investing in this "pseudo-wiki" attempt. This is such bare-bones, and I'll have to play around to see the easiest way for others to navigate this page, but here's my starting "world build" page for SaV.

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Whew! This... this was a long one. Guess it makes sense it kept me a week to slowly chip away at it, huh? Anyway, I'll let you fine folks go. I hope to get back on time next Tuesday, but I might be so excited by Monday's first ever SaV official game that I may be a toooouch late with my update while I try to organize how much of the story I want to relay over to you sweet peeps.

In the meantime, one final Happy Pride Month to my LGBTQIA+ readers.

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Building Us Some Aliens (and Their Tech)

Oh yay, I'm back in the habit of completely losing track of my weeks. That's... fun. Maybe life is becoming "normal" enough that I should put in the effort to audit my time again. That seemed to have helped me a bit prior to the world shutting down. I need to find my binder and print off the next couple of months. Guess I know what I'll be focusing on tomorrow.

In the meantime, what DID I do this past week?

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Well, to start, Sunday I covered for my manager so she could drive out to see her newborn grandson. So a big congratulations to her, her daughter and son-in-law, and the new babe born Saturday night.

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A lot of the rest of the work week was spent working on price tags in some shape or form. Through store owner shenanigans, the sale tags weren't ready until Wednesday, but the sale started Thursday, so instead of a casual day or two to scan the store, print the tags, and prep them before putting them up on Wednesday, me and the newbie had to rush around the store doing everything that day. Thankfully, we didn't really have many customers interrupting us, but still.

On top of that, there's a particular product where I'm specifically in charge of creating the pricing printouts. It's normally just a tedious job because there's about 50 different product that are then slotted into 12 different pricing packages each, so it's a LOT of data entry. A fairly simple job, though. Just... tedious. This time, however, part of the packages had price increases because the freight cost of getting the product went up. Problem is, no one actually told me what the surcharge was for the freight, so I had to find a way to figure that out first. Also, there's usually only about 20 or 30 pieces of product that go on sale at any given time, and most of the sales are the same, so I just need to copy and paste some of the pricing into the new sales header. Still tedious, but not nearly as time consuming. Now I had all 50-some products with all 12 packages each that needed price increases. My eyes started going a bit googly, and I started including typos. I must have re-sent/re-printed these price cards about 3x because I just kept catching math errors. Third time's the charm, though, because I THINK I caught them all now?

Well, after I was done with the everyday price increases, I had to work on the sales cards themselves. Again, with the actual sales items, it was only about 20 or so pieces, so it wasn't AS overwhelming. Except one of the stores kept having issues with the new everyday pricing I sent them. They kept telling me they were missing price cards for some of their product, and I... just couldn't find them???? I have no clue how they printed out the price cards in the first place, because they just weren't on the main shared server all the other pricing was stored in. So I had to create new price cards while rushing to try to get the sale cards done in time for the sale.

It was mild chaos.

And then I went to put up the sale cards late Saturday... only to notice the disclaimer on the bottom of the cards said "June 23 through July 12". The disclaimers aren't readable in the program I use to update the price cards.

The price increases took effect this Saturday, so the new everyday pricing had to be up, but I must have gotten confused with everything, and thought the Fourth of July sale also started on Saturday. I mean, our Memorial Day sale on these same products was about a month long, so why wouldn't this sale?

With a heavy sigh, I started pulling all the sale cards back down. At least now they're all set for the 23rd, and that's one less thing to do this week. Right?

Work has been a bit exhausting, so post-work has been as much recoup time as I could muster.

Honestly, this is the hazy part of the week for me. I know that at least some of the days Rozsavaria and I met up for our new walk routine. I think she stuck around a few days to chat about Scum and Villainy and her character, so... there's that.

In fact, she stayed at my place for about 5hrs post-walk yesterday so she could work on her character build, as well as generic hang-out time where we watched YouTube videos and just chatted. (Dear lord, I only JUST NOW realized how late she hung out and how long she and Hubby worked on their characters... well... technically Hubby spent most of that time watching nopixel and Roz's husband's stream on Twitch, but still....)

I think last night was the most writing-adjacent work I did this past week. I needed to explain my vision of how the game universe would play out. Then Roz, Hubby, and I talked about whatever tweaks we felt should be done to make sure things were balanced.

The majority of my creativity was actually focused on Roz's character and helping her build tI'kæl. She thought it would make her name look more alien if written as if it were the pronunciation guide in a dictionary. So the pronunciation is:

• /t/ as in top, better, cat
• /ɪ/ as in it, big, finishes
• /k/ as in can, speaker, stick
• /æ/ as in apple, can, hat
• /l/ as in let, follow, still

In other words, it's a slight slant-rhyme with the word "decal".

Anyway, as I mentioned, Roz wants to run an alien character - or a Xeno - for our SaV campaign. Unlike RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, SaV only gives the vaguest instructions on how to run a non-human character. It's mostly, "have fun figuring it out yourself, but here's some basic guidelines on how to keep it balanced."

Roz made things slightly easier by going with an alien race the rulebook used as an example on how to build a Xeno character, in part because the race is called "Memish" and she thought it looked a lot like "Memeish" and got a chuckle out of that. Also, the race is from an aquatic planet, so, instead of hair, the mostly humanoid Memish have tentacles. We joked that they almost look like humanized Knuckles the Echidna from the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Add in that SaV has its own version of The Force from Star Wars, called The Way.

Okay, so maybe he doesn't look THAT much like Knuckles,
but same energy, I think.

Anyway, leaning in to "memeish" aliens that kinda look like Knuckles, and can use The Way... well... of course she's loosely basing tI'kael off of Ugandan Knuckles.

Old meme is old

Thankfully, she's going a BIT more serious with her character, but Ugandan Knuckles here was her inspiration. You never know from where inspiration shall strike.

Anyway, we needed to flesh out the Memish alien race a bit more to better know what her character is capable of. I gave her a heads up that I was planning on figuring out how her bonuses due to her physiology could also be hinderances in certain situations, because I think making traits both bonuses and flaws depending on the situation makes them feel more real. For instance, due to the dark purple skin tone Roz picked for tI'kael, we assumed she is from deep, deep, deep in the oceans of Mem, and therefore has excellent dark vision, given that light would be scarce where she grew up. I warned her that this would also mean extreme light sensitivity and she'd have to have special eye coverings. 

Roz also chose to be a Mystic, which is basically a Space Wizard (aka Jedi????) who can tap into The Way a bit more easily than the average person. Part of a Mystic's build is that they carry an Ur artifact with them. These artifacts are ancient technologies that virtually no one knows how to use except through experimentation. They are also so old that the technology itself has become corrupted, and so the artifacts glitch and cause problems for their owners, usually mutating them in some undesirable way. Think of the movie Laputa: Castle in the Sky and both the floating city of Laputa itself, as well as the robot sentinels on it. Or, think of the game The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and the ancient technology left behind when the Hylians first ascended to Skyloft.

Anyway, when introducing a new artifact to the game-universe of SaV, the book asks five questions:

1. What does the artifact look like?
2. What does it do? What's the effect of using the artifact?
3. What are the requirements? The conditions for activating the artifact?
4. What are the glitches? The side effect(s) of using the artifact?
5. How common is it?

We had to figure out what tI'kael's artifact would be. Roz had already made a mock-up of what her character would look like using one of the Doll Divine dress-up games.

Rozsavaria's design of tI'kael
Generated via Space Princess game by Inkscribble

I personally love that Roz had tI'kael loosely braiding her tentacles. The yellow tribal tattoos are actually the Memish's ritualistic carving of their hardened scales that they then embed with bioluminescence.

Anyway, Roz pointed out all of the star-shaped jewelry she gave her character, and wondered if any of them could be her artifact. Since Roz liked the idea of her artifact somehow working as a safeguard against the vacuum of space, I instantly zeroed in on the choker. It would help her breathe without atmosphere and keep her body temperature even. It was a bit tricky to try to find a way to balance that via the answers to the other questions, but, after Hubby and Roz talked it through with me, I think we came up with a fair piece of equipment for her.

1. What does the artifact look like? A golden choker made up of star-shaped segments.
2. What does it do? What's the effect of using the artifact? It allows the wearer to survive in the vacuum of space for up to an hour when fully charged. Any time activated will drain this charge, and once depleted, it must be fully charged again before it can properly activate.
3. What are the requirements? The conditions for activating the artifact? The item must be worn around the throat. Once the choker is set aside to recharge, the choker will not activate until it is fully charged again. This will take a week, regardless of how much remaining charge was on the choker prior to charging. (I might come up with a ritual that needs to be done to recharge it, but I'll have to talk this through more with Roz)
4. What are the glitches? The side effect(s) of using the artifact? The necklace slowly changes the physiology of the wearer, altering their lungs in order to better survive in space. Prolonged use will make breathing any sort of atmosphere suffocating. (We'll have to figure out how many uses will make breathing on terra firma impossible)
5. How common is it? Unique (I was thinking it's an artifact of a space program, similar to NASA's space suits, so it was already fairly rare when it was created, and became more-so as other necklaces were lost to time, but it's not necessarily a one-of-a-kind item. TI'kael just happens to be the only one with an active choker right now.)

We think this artifact build is fairly balanced. What do you guys think?

Honestly, it was a lot of hard work - and brainstorming, and time - to try to figure out Roz's Xeno character, but I also had a lot of fun. It was cool to think of the possibilities, and I'm still thinking of ways to either make life more complicated for tI'kael or a bit easier for her, based on the fact that she's not human.

We'll see if I get to do this again for Quarthix's character when he joins us for the official character creation session on the 21st. In the meantime, I'll have to focus on making those other RIP racers, now that I've got a bit of a starter sounding board going on what alien life might look like.

Along those lines, I've caught up to where I last left off with Voltron: Legendary Defender, so I have some more inspiration from that show on what aliens might look like. I'm definitely bringing in some alien species cameos, I think.

WOW! For someone who couldn't remember what they did this week, this blog post still managed to get a bit long, huh? I'm so excitedly anxious to get this game started on July 5th. I just hope all of my prep-work before starting helps carry me through enough sessions to make the effort worth it. I'd hate for this campaign to die off just like all the others. Roz seems excited though, as is Hubby, and both SaV and Gravity RIP play well with just two players and a GM. So even if Quarthix becomes bored or gets too busy, we should still be able to make this campaign work.

The next 6 days before our official 7pm Game 0 (character creation and discussion of the game mechanics) is going to be exciting and busy and take forever to get here while also zipping by like nothing. I'm so stoked!

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Until next week, peeps! I can't wait to let you know how Game 0 went, and all about Hubby's and Quarthix's characters. EEEEEE! So exited!

What is Prep Work Anyway?

Holy smokes, this week breezed by! What did I even do this week? *checks notes*

Oh! Nothing! Cool. Cool.

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So, Wednesday was the start of a pretty social week, which means all roleplay prep-work and writing kind of took a back seat. That's always a good idea when one wants to start up a campaign in a couple of weeks, right?

Well, to be fair, I was still kinda-sorta working on the prep-work. See, Rozsavaria is going to be one of the players for Scum and Villainy, and on Wednesday, she unofficially created her character. In other words, she came over to flip through the rulebook to figure out how she wants to build her character. We won't do actual character building until the 21st (in theory; the date isn't officially locked in yet), but she likes to prep as well so she doesn't take hours to character build the day-of. It also gives her time to play with her build and tweak things before actually starting play.

Along with reading through the book on Wednesday, Roz also borrowed it to photocopy some pages, which meant I didn't have it for my day off on Thursday. That's fine, Hubby didn't have work either, so we had a long-needed re-coup day anyway. Then, Friday, I was still training the newbie, so no RP work going on while on the job. I probably could have worked on it a bit more Friday night since Roz had returned the book, but chaos was about to go down on nopixel.

One of nopixel's players is a streamer known as Burn. He had become good acquaintances with Sykkuno's character Yuno Sykk, and saw how popular the character was. As a gag, Burn created a second character modeled off of Yuno, and named him NoYu Sukk. He then spent the better part of last week running around the nopixel server with this Yuno parody, purposefully trying to ruin Yuno's reputation. He and Sykkuno played up this "evil twin" gag for four or five days. Canonically, no one is quite sure what NoYu was, because Yuno kept switching up what to call him, between "evil twin" or "evil clone" or "identical cousin."

Sykkuno put no effort into creating his character, resulting in him constantly referring to himself as ugly. Because of this, he typically wears a motorcycle helmet, making it harder to differentiate between Yuno and NoYu when both are masked.

Anyway, after a few days, Burn was getting tired of the joke and wanted to get back onto his main character, so he let Sykkuno know he wanted to kill off his character. I believe in-character NoYu told Yuno that he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, and soon. Well, Sykkuno's birthday was June 4th, which happened to be a Friday, so Yuno came up with a plan to hold a major birthday party for himself, which would also serve as NoYu's grand finale. His plan was to host the party in the lobby of The Vault; the most secure bank in-game. He'd convince the party goers to all dress like him, that way NoYu could blend into the crowd. Then, since Yuno is a master bank hacker, and NoYu is the Bizzaro version of him, they'd have NoYu fail a hack attempt. The hack attempt - regardless if it succeeds - will signal the cops. NoYu would then start shooting at the cops, forcing them to breach into the bank, where they won't be able to tell which "Yuno" is shooting, and be forced to start up a major fire-fight within the bank.

The first part of the plan went off without a hitch. In fact, it may have gone better than any would have expected. Yuno had Twatted (the in-game version of Twitter) out the time and location for his birthday party, as well as instructions on how to dress up like him. These Twats started about 24hrs before the party, and there was also a lot of word-of-mouth. It seemed like at least half the server knew about the party by the time it went down. As evidenced by what seemed to be at least 60 characters showing up as Yuno to wish him a happy birthday.

Just a small portion of the many Yunos invading the Vault for the birthday party.

Instead of having NoYu fail a hack, they had switched gears a bit. The first thing you need to do to break into the Vault is to set off thermite to blow open the barred door to the main offices of the bank. Yuno set off a thermite claiming it's his birthday candles. This was also his "special invitation for the cops" that he had told his cop friends to keep an eye out for. Unfortunately, despite the 24hr planning, and Yuno calling up his friends and telling them he'd really like their roommates/cousins/twins/etc (aka in-character telling the players to switch to their cop characters instead of showing up to the party as their main criminal characters), only one cop responded to the Vault hack. He was promptly set on fire by NoYu and then kidnapped and trampled by the other guests before the cop managed to get some backup trickling in and could be brought to the hospital. The big bummer there, though, was that this was one of the players that specifically switched to his cop character for Sykkuno, but didn't get to really enjoy it because he was ambushed so early. His character was revived soon enough, but, for immersion reasons, he couldn't respond to the same crime he was already taken out of. He ended up being one of the few cops responding to other crime going on, more-or-less missing the whole ordeal. Poor guy.

Anyway, it kept a little while, but eventually there were about seven or eight cop cars out front and the "true party" could begin. NoYu started shooting up the guests to force the cops to breach for the shooter(s). Everyone scattered. There was chaos. But not as many cop casualties as Yuno was going for, and NoYu slipped away unscathed. Eventually, NoYu managed to get himself caught and brought to the police station, where he tried to blow himself up to no avail. Some time later, the cops were able to bring Yuno in to identify NoYu. He did, stating that NoYu was his evil clone that had slipped into his totally innocent birthday party and started shooting everyone. Yuno had also blown himself up at a gas station a little time before that, coincidentally right about the time NoYu - through a game glitch - managed to pull out his phone while in lock-up, so Yuno claimed NoYu called a hit on him, and NoYu admitted to it.

The cops pretended to be disgusted by the whole thing, and one of the cops started a fist-fight with NoYu. She was getting her butt handed to her, which gave her an excuse to defend herself with a knife, taking NoYu down via stab wounds. He could still be revived with an EMT or hospital care, and Burn was trying SOOOO HAAAAARD to get the character killed, so he had NoYu try to instigate the cops further. Instead, through another glitch, one of Yuno's friends that was also there for the identification - Hunter "Wingman" Skye - broke into the line-up room and shot the downed NoYu in the head before sprinting away from the cops. Burn was like "that was a bullet through the head! There's no coming back from that, right? Wingman, you are the best!" (Technically, if he didn't want to kill off the character they COULD find an in-game reason for him to have survived the headshot, but this was Burn's out.)

Wingman ended up getting caught and given jail time for the murder of a suspect in custody, but it just meant he had to RP in the prison for about 40minutes or something. In the meantime, NoYu's body was processed, declared dead (because the player let the other players know he wanted the character dead), and Yuno was called in as next-of-kin to identify the body. There was this touching moment where Burn typed up notes to "fall out of NoYu's pockets" as Yuno interacted with the body. They were both sweet and insulting in the best of ways. Burn then typed up that Yuno found an MP3 player with his name on it, so Yuno claimed he pressed play, and Burn voiced a "recording" NoYu had left Yuno. Go check out this awesome roleplay. 

(Warning: Contains foul language)

The female that is with Yuno is called 4T, just, FYI.

So... yeah. That was my Friday night. Snuggled up next to the hubby and watching about four or five hours of chaos unfold. Like I said, the nopixel server is way more entertaining and engrossing than any show out there right now, especially since you have so many streamers to cut to for their perspective of what's going on. Also, if there's a storytelling lull with the streamer you're following, just switch to another to keep the action going.

Saturday was a slow work day. I was with my manager, so no training needed. The new sale tags weren't ready yet for me to start, so that's one fewer things on my plate. I had the SaV book. Do you think I spent the downtime doing more prep-work for the campaign?

Nope!

I just couldn't focus on reading or writing that day, so instead I was back on picrew.me. Who's ready to see more OC pics?

Created using Character Maker

Honestly, I'm not a fan of Willow's hair at all, but it was as close as I could get to something she'd actually wear as a hairstyle. Plus, I was able to get the blue streaks in, however awkwardly. So.... meh? I also didn't notice at the time that I gave all three X-Future girls the same bang set. The hair options and clothing options were a bit limited, but, for the most part, it worked. Shawn looks sooooo young though. Oh well.

After work, Roz and I went for a walk, then it was anime night with Goob and Hubby. Wolfhearted also made an appearance, glad that Hubby and I are now officially fully vaccinated (past the 2-week mark after our final shot). We gave each other hugs. It was great.

During our micro-party, we watched the anime SK8 the Infinity on FUNimation. It's a short - 12 episodes - anime about racers in an underground extreme skateboard league. The animation is GORGEOUS and the story is fun. I've been gushing about it almost daily to ChibiSunnie, who only encourages this endless fangirling by sending me stuff she's seen on her Tumblr and Twitter feeds. A lot of the people in the same Sports Anime fandoms she's in have migrated to SK8, so she's been seeing fanart and other such content for a couple of months now. And she's passing most of it over to me.

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Anyway, if you're on my Facebook or Tumblr pages, you already know this story. For everyone else, though. As Hubby, Goob, and I are watching SK8, we're introduced to the character Tadashi Kikuchi. The more we heard this character talk, especially since it was the day after Yuno's birthday party, the more Hubby and I commented that the guy sounds so much like NoYu. The voice just sounded so familiar, and it bugged me that I couldn't pinpoint it. So I looked up the credits, and someone named Brandon Johnson is Tadashi's voice actor. The actor only has the one credit though; this is his first major voice acting role. So how do we recognize it? Hubby just kept pointing out that the character sounds like NoYu, the VA only had this one credited role, and there wasn't a headshot, which is typically another sign that they're relatively new to the business. So I asked Hubby if he happened to know Burn's real name.

He didn't, but did point out that Burn's main nopixel character is Sasuke Johnson, so.... did Burn give his character his actual last name???? I tried looking up Burn's real name, much like how Hubby and I were able to find Sykkuno's, Valkyrae's, and Disguised Toast's. For a lot of streamers, even when they use a streaming/gaming handle, they still have their real names as public knowledge. I didn't find a wikipedia page revealing his name, like I could for the three I just listed. So I went to Burn's Twitter to see if he had his real name posted there somewhere. The answer to that is a big old 'nope', but he does have himself listed as a streamer AND voice actor! So I scrolled down a bit, and right at the top of his page was this pinned Tweet:

You can find the actual Tweet here

My mind was mildly blown by how tiny the world was for a moment there. We started watching SK8 because Goob really enjoyed it and thought we would too. He knows nothing about nopixel aside from what Hubby's been gushing about lately, and even then, Hubby didn't start following Burn until this past week's NoYu shenanigans. We don't follow Burn's socials, so we clearly had no clue he was somehow connected to this anime. We didn't watch SK8 because we knew it was Burn's first major role. Nor did we start watching nopixel or Burn because we enjoyed his performance. It was pure coincidence that we stumbled upon this connection, and I just find that so cool. Especially because, with him being a streamer first and foremost, his audience can spend WAY more time with him, so to speak, than most voice actor fans could. He seems so much more "everyman" than most VAs that you only can interact with via convention panels, meet-and-greets, and watching/reading interviews.

So, yeah, bravo to Burn! That's quite an exciting step into his career as a voice actor, and I did really enjoy his performance. Also, the character Sasuke - which he plays as if it were Sasuke Uchiha from Naruto - makes more sense now considering it showcases how much he enjoys anime, as well as a possible way for him to build up his voice acting highlight reel.

Sunday was another training day.... kinda-sorta. I was working with the newbie again, it was a painfully slow day, and I'm sure there's loads of things to still train her. However, we both were a bit mentally burnt out for various reasons, and the sale tags still weren't ready, so I couldn't really teach her how to do the new tags yet. We chatted for a little while, and I went over some small things; answered her questions. But for the most part, we just each did our own things. I couldn't focus, though, so still no work on the SaV campaign. I thought I could maybe re-focus better at home, but that didn't work out either.

Roz and I took another walk; something we're trying to make a routine out of now that the weather is nice(r) and it's safe to hang out again. I think we overdid it in the heat, though, because once we said our goodbyes - and Roz again borrowed the SaV book to photocopy pages - I was dead. I ended up nursing stomach issues while catching up with Animal Crossing: New Horizons instead of attempting any sort of writing. I didn't have the book again anyway.

Yesterday I finally had some focus. It was a bit fleeting, but it was there. I was also at work with my manager again, with little for me to do since the tags STILL weren't ready to put up. So I figured I'd keep going with campaign prep. Roz had the SaV book, so I couldn't finish reading that or work on my cheat sheet for the factions. I DID have access to the PDF of the Gravity RIP rulebook though, so I started reading through that again.

Each RIP race includes 20 racers. If all four or five (one's still on the fence) SaV players decide to participate in the RIP races, that leaves 15 or 16 slots to fill with non-player characters (NPCs). Normally, they're just nameless NPCs aside from the "rivals": NPCs significant to the overall story of the game. Rivals could be literal rivals for the player characters (PCs), they could be allies, or they could be targets the PCs are focused on for that particular race's objective. I want to make my life easier during play itself though, so I'm making it harder in the prep-work by actually coming up with racers. I'll then reveal them as needed, but at least they're already made up and I won't have to pause the game so I could scramble to come up with something. I can also easily switch out my pre-made characters with whichever characters the PCs meet during the main SaV roleplay. I already have some of the notable faction NPCs set up as racers or main gamblers on the RIP races. I could build off of that.

The thing that's super holding me up, however, is.... naming. Of COURSE it's naming.

I don't Sci-fi enough to really know where to go with these names to make them seem futuristic and/or alien. I have enough of an ear for it to know if a name I come up with sounds like it would fit, but it's such a long road to get there. On top of that, each racer has their own custom rig - their Machine - that they race in, so I get to design those as well. Thankfully, they don't need a lot of description, just a broad stroke describing if the Machine is more bulk and weight, or lighter and more aerodynamic. Then, of course, some distinguishing feature to signal that this Machine is this specific racer's rig. Although, if we do our character creation session on the 21st, like I'm planning, I'll be visiting my mom and sister for the first time in, like, 16 months the Monday after (which is the main reason I don't want to start actually playing until July). If we start officially playing on Monday, July 5th, that still gives me almost two full weeks to look at how the players built their RIP Machines and design the NPC ones accordingly.

I've also been trying to get myself in the right mindset with a playlist. While searching for "space opera" songs to get me - and my players - into the right mood to play SaV, I stumbled upon this amazing video. I've been kind of obsessing over it for nearly 2 weeks now, I just neglected to share it last week since my post was already kinda long. This is also a long post, but... meh.

The song is amazing, and really talks about hope in such a cool way. I live for the 80s music aesthetic. Likewise, I adore the classic anime art styling. The actual STORY of the video is compelling. The main character - dubbed Strive by the production team - is adorable and engaging to watch. Plus, seeing the interpretation of the costumes the band TWRP (pronounced 'twerp') wears on-stage is fantastic.

Along with loving the video for all of the above, I also like watching it to get ideas for character and space ship designs. Fun factoid, Strive was designed off of a bird - hence the fluffy, feather-like hair, pointed face, and wing-like ears - and his spaceship reflects that bird aesthetic.

I also started re-watching the Netflix/Dreamworks revival of Voltron. I had gotten as far as season 3 (out of 8) a few years back, but it's been so long, I figured I'd start over to refresh my memory. Ended up a good plan, because I can also study the character and ship designs in that show to help me with preparing for SaV/Gravity RIP.

There's still so much I have to sort out. I'm a bit overwhelmed, but also so excited to do this. I'm even figuring out how to bring Maggie the Info Broker into SaV. I mean, one of the "factions" already set up in the SaV book is "the galaxy's most renowned info broker and hacker" so, much like if I ever got the chance to bring her into nopixel, Maggie is just AN info broker, not THE info broker, but still. Could be fun to try to flesh her out and at least get a chance to play her. Plus, the likelihood the PCs will INSTANTLY get in touch with THE info broker is pretty slim, so having a more humble option to work with at first should be good.

I just need to get my head to focus again so I can finish reading and prepping. Two weeks to go. Let's do this!

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