Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
(annepurkey@students.gcccd.net) on Monday, November 10, 2003 at 17:47:00
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charname: Hope
race: Human
gender: Female
bdate: 2-12-82
group: The Watcher's Council
position: Exception
descript: Hope is 21 and 5'8. She sports a scar on her cheek from a fight with a vampire gang. She has long dark brown hair and hazel eyes, and a straight forward desposition. She is slim and dresses in greys and blacks, and always has a sidepack that she lets no one investigate.
history: Hope is a cousin of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, and has been living in England being a secreatary of sorts for the Watcher's Council. She has recently applied to be a Watcher but left the Council after witnessing a brutal encounter between her and a Potential and her Watcher, and a ruthless vampire gang. Cut free of her ties to the Council, she has packed her bags and her weapons and is looking to stake the ranks of the Undead.
items: Stakes-she has several
Deowan Blade- A blade given to her by her uncle, its blade has been silvered to effect vampires. It has an antique hilt and the blade is five inches long. She wears it in a boot sheath.
Wrist Skewers- Three Wooden skewers 5/8' and a foot in length fashioned into a glove that she wears on her right hand.
Composite crossbow-her favored distance weapon, it shoots regular crossbow bolts and her specialized bolts tipped with holy water.
Handheld Crossbow- less powerful, smaller version of the above crossbow.
Fencing Blade-trained at it at the Council, it is an extension of herself. She wears it strapped to its sheath across her waist.
powers: She is a human girl born to Franklin and Lydia Pierce, Wesley's brother and sister in law. She has no powers other than her knowledge and fighting training.
player: I am an RPG regular at BuffyWorld, I play Dungeons and Dragons, and am an avid Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan and AtS fan. I am currently attending college and live at home with my parents.
age: over13
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Character Proposal: Hope Pierce (Rejected)
Ok, it looks like we'd be needing some extensive revision to get this character up and running, but at least there's nothing that's setting off alarm bells. Mainly it's a lack of detail that's the issue - and an apparent lack of familiarity with the game Anne is trying to come into. (LABN is not set in the current year. Year 2006 minus birth year of 1982 is 24 years old, not 21...)
My main concern is the almost complete lack of backstory here. There's an awful lot about her weapons and how good she is with them, but very little about HER. What's the character like? What are Hope's aspirations? What are her goals? What drives her on? Why exactly has she chosen LA as a place in which to hunt vampires? The circumstances of the "brutal encounter" are very vague to say the least. What about her family? What do they think of her vampire hunting plans? Which faction of the Watchers' Council is Hope involved with - for a new character wanting to come in affiliated with such a major organisation, I would hope that Anne has been keeping up with the Watchers' Council storyline... What is her take on Ambrose Delancre? Does she know any of the Watcher-associated characters already in LA?
There are a lot of unanswered questions in this submission, but with a more detailed background I'd be very willing to look this character over again. Try to flesh it out a bit, Anne, and see how you go. :)
Character Proposal: Hope Pierce (Rejected)
I'm saying no, I feel that there are already quite a large number of Watcher affiliates in our small portion of LA already - anymore and it will seem like a positive invasion! Also I find the 'cousin of Wesley' line a bit corny, had this mentioned at all the rise of Ambrose and the panic within the Watcher's Council at this moment I might have said yes - as an indicator that this person had actually done their home work. As it stands I just find this a dilution of Jessica Travers character.
Plus one thing, how come she is so good at using all those weapons when she's just a secretary? Even Westley was a complete inept until he went rogue (*sighs* leather pants, motorcycle hehe).
Sorry but I would need a complete overhaul of this proposal to say yes, we're fairly busting as it is. Even if our favourite huntsmaster has lately kicked the bucket. :cry:
Character Proposal: Hope Pierce (Rejected)
At this time i reject this character, for lack of detail and background, and the only major item in the character proposal is that she comes from a family of watcher's, wesley's cousin, carry's weapon's. There is not much background history at all, what the charcter likes, her views, some of her major experiences, etc. And i agree with lou in saying there are quite a few watcher affiliates thus if we were to except another he/she should have a darn good charcter profile, and this just isn't it....
BTW, i was thinking, that usually when we look at a charcter profile the person may not actually be totally writing to their heart's content...i'm not talking about the proposal in question but most of the proposals...thus we may not know the real potential of the player. I know it might seem to be a bit too much work, but can't we ask a player to hand it like a first post with their profile? Like an introduction to their characters...like any player would do anywayz when they come new to the board? That way we can decide with a broader perspective and if the player gets in, he/she can post that post on as their first post....
I'm not suggesting all potential's have to do it, but it could be a choice open to them. Like an extra criteria
Character Proposal: Hope Pierce (Rejected)
I'm gonna have to say more revision too...It's got potential I'll give it that. If, like you said, she included something about the current status of the Watcher's Council it would be much better. A rogue Watcher just as Ambrose is building his army would make for an interesting story line (does she know of his army? if so, would he try and hunt her down to stop her spreading the word? attempt to indoctrinate her? etc).
If she dropped the whole cousin of Wesley thing the character would be still be just fine. And yeah, the fact a secretary can use weapon's like that needs some looking into :P
Character Proposal: Hope Pierce (Rejected)
Great idea Saadia, I like the notion of having a player submit and introductory post with their character proposal. I think quite often we have loooong proposals because people think that will get their character in automatically - whereas in reality, a shorter profile would be just as good (and that way a player needn't reveal everything about their character upfront.)
The first post would show us just how well they can write, and get us over that 'I'm too afraid to post my first incase you all hate it' problem that we always seem to get with newbies (no offence but we are here to write and have fun, it's not meant to be stressful). It would also give us the opportunity to slyly check out things like player's grasp of english, stylistics, etc. (though perhaps we should set a word limit just to make sure we don't end up with 20-page submissions)
I think this is a good idea that should be looked into further.
Character Proposal: Hope Pierce (Rejected)
I agree, Saadia's idea is a good one. I actually wound up doing something like that with Ela's character proposal on Fantastic Legends, 'cause there was just so much history that it was easier to write bits of it in game-post format.
Perhaps rather than a dry dissertation of elements of Hope's past, Anna could do a game-post style write up of key events. I wouldn't suggest that sort of thing be made a requirement, but it could add flavour to a proposal, certainly.
It does seem to me that the more a person has thought about their character and where their character is coming from, the more idea they have about that character's past, and the more likely it is we'll see that in the initial proposal. Remember back to Sid's proposal for Sam, or Sherl's for Parasol? They were in the 'dry' exposition form (though both Sid and Sherl have exceptional wordcrafting ability which made it anything but dry), but they still made compelling reading because they included so much richness of background.
What I'm getting at here is that if someone doesn't have a lot of detail in their proposal, it is a general indication that they haven't spent a great deal of time developing that character in their head. Which means that if they do get in, they'd better either be very good at coming up with consistent, meaningful plots on the fly, or they'd better spend some time starting to think about their character's background.
Now, I'm not saying that every character proposal has to be an epic saga, but there does need to be a good indication that there's some well-thought-out background to the character. I find that even with no future plot in mind, so long as you have a solid background the rest flows. Tash, for instance - I wrote a fairly detailed history for Tash, but beyond her search for Matthias I had no plans for her future. Even the thing about the precise nature of her birth-minute was not for any specific purpose at the time, merely something I left myself as a hook if I thought of anything later (and thus was born Ohenewaa). And even Matthias... when I wrote about him in Tash's background, I had not the faintest idea who or what he was - the fae thing just came along later. Again, I wrote enough from Tash's point of view for her background that her future shaped itself.
That's the reason I'm so keen to see detailed backgrounds in a character proposal. Without a solid foundation on which to build a character, the future of that character rests on shaky ground. Sometimes it'll stand, but with a firm sense of history it becomes one hell of a lot easier to keep it going.
Sorry, I've strayed away from the original intention of this post, but I got a fit of the rambles. I'll get off my soapbox now... :)