From the newsletter: An interview with Phoenix member Deborah Leighton-Plom

 ‘Phoenix has the most creative, enthusiastic, friendly gamers that I’ve ever come across.’

‘One of our greatest pleasures remains role playing together.’

‘I’ve missed it terribly and am so looking forward to returning.’

One of the people who stood at the base of getting the Phoenix roleplaying site off the ground in 2010 was RPG veteran Deborah Leighton Plom. After an absence of six months she is now back on duty on the forums.

Deborah: ‘When Phoenix came into being I was six months pregnant, and working full time, so I didn’t take as big a role as I had always taken in AJJE, and since then I’ve had my son to run around after, so I’m still not as heavily involved as I would otherwise be.’

It immediately becomes clear that Deborah’s involvement with the Phoenix site has a history. That history started in 2006, when she began role-playing online. She was looking for a Firefly-based game, and found and joined the website AJJE Games. She spent nearly four years there learning the ‘trade’ from other players and enjoyed holding my varied roles, including webmaster, director of tech support, operations leader, and public relations officer. Apart from these tasks, she was also always an enthusiastic player, CO and GM.

A new website

However, her time at AJJE Games came to an abrupt end in 2010 when she, along with many other players, objected to several overbearing actions by the site management. A few months of online roleplaying silence followed, but after a few of the old UK players, among which Deborah, decided to have a meet up in August of that same year to play some real-life Firefly tabletop RPG, the group agreed that they should set up their own RPG-website. Thus, Phoenix was born and it houses a community that Deborah feels closely connected to: ‘Phoenix has the most creative, enthusiastic, friendly gamers that I’ve ever come across. The opportunities for simming in any genre you care to name are second to none, although the Firefly ‘verse is my lasting favorite. The integral structure of Phoenix is democratic, its processes are transparent, and it is responsive to members’ needs and wants. It really is the best simming site out there.’

For Deborah, the joining of AJJE Games also had some major impacts on her life. She and Ash Leighton-Plom met through the site: ‘Ash and I met online at AJJE Games in 2007, when he was GMing the Firefly sim ‘Prinz Eugen’ where I was playing the ship’s doctor Shane Howard, a character I still play now on the Jeri-cho. We got on famously, but lived 200 miles apart, so when my work took me to a conference quite near to where Ash lived, we decided to meet up. The rest, as they say, is history. We married in 2009 and had our son Alfred in 2011. One of our greatest pleasures remains role playing together.’

Of course, having a toddler running around the house takes up a lot of time and Deborah also works nearly full-time, meaning that her time to herself is limited. However, after an absence of six months she is determined to pick things up again on the site: ‘I wanted to prioritize some other creative writing for a while, and decided to take a sabbatical from Phoenix rather than do both things badly. However, I’ve missed it terribly and am so looking forward to returning.’ Rather than taking things one step at a time, she is adamant to take off where she left: ‘I’m going to throw myself back into all the role playing, and follow up over a week or two with the administrator roles I’m stepping back into.’

Catching up

Catching up on sims in which one hasn’t been active for some time, can be hard work, but Deborah doesn’t see that as a problem: ‘Currently I only have one sim that I’m GMing plus two other characters on other ships, so I’m hoping it won’t take too long to catch up. I certainly won’t find it hard to catch up, as I’m already excited at the idea of having to read all the back posts! I’m also a keen reader of other sims, and I’m looking forward to reading them too.’

Not only is she determined to take on all her roles at Phoenix again, but Deborah also has big plans for the future: ‘I have lots of plans to develop my characters. GMs permitting, I have plenty of notions for shaking up Cydonia when I’m back, and lots of enthusiasm to con-tinue helping to build the site and make it even better than it already is, for example in making the Cortex thread a key hub of information for all Firefly sims.’ (mb)

Mischa Brendel interviews Jason Andersen - Part Two

For roughly how long have you been playing with Phoenix and its predecessors?

Based on when I saved Brandon's file, I joined AJJE in late May or early June 2010. Not long after that came the Schism, and for many reasons, one of which was that Ash and Deb welcomed me unreservedly when I first joined, I followed them to Phoenix. Since then I've started a few Sims of my own, taken over GM duties, made all those characters I mentioned before, ran for office (and was thoroughly beaten, and rightly so), and have taken over the Phoenix wiki. I have also taken on the position as the Awards and Rewards Officer.

Not only do you play different characters in different sims, but you also have a few NPCs that you have created and control as the GM of a few sims. Could you tell a bit about these NPCs and how they came to be?

One of these NPCs is Jane V. Johnson on the Firefly sim Odyssey. Designed as a recurring antagonist for the Odyssey crew, Jane is a cold businesswoman whose ambition sometimes blinds her to danger. She is based off of the wonderful Jane Badler and the V character, 'Diana', she portrayed (both in the original series and the short-lived reboot).

As a player on the Odyssey myself, I've had the pleasure (although my character certainly wouldn't use that word) of running into Jane. I immediately got the impression that you've taken a lot of time to design this character and the company she represents. Is that true? Would you say that she took about as much time coming up with as other characters, or did it take you longer, or perhaps shorter?

Actually, Jane came to me rather quickly. I knew when I took over as GM for the Odyssey that I wanted to introduce some kind of pirate or bounty hunter type that would be a recurring nemesis for the Odyssey crew. This idea came out of my brainstorming how I was going to get one of the characters in that sim, Ayla, ‘home’ to find out that her stepfather was still alive and looking for her. I figured if I were Buddy, an important person in Ayla’s background story, the easiest way to find her would be to put a bounty on her. So that's how I came up with the concept of Jane, although I didn't know who she'd be then. One night I was watching the remake of V with Jane Badler in her role as Diana. As a kid, I remembered being intrigued by the original Diana (also played at that time by Jane Badler), and knew that she would be just cold and heartless enough to pull off what I wanted to do with the character. It was also my homage to Jane and the overall V series (Jane's middle initial, for instance, points directly to the series), and because I knew the new series was soon to be cancelled because the writers were just terrible. The company Jane Johnson works for is also a nod towards the series (and the other major actor in the original V, Marc Singer), and her ship (The Devils Double) is named after the musical album Badler released [You learn something new every day – Ed.]. The company itself took longer than Jane's character, since I was already using the Diana character as a template (although Diana was a seductress, she never actually fell in love with anyone, but I wanted Jane to have a bit of vulnerability as well, especially after the Captain sweet talked her a bit). I spent an evening researching bounty hunters and how one gets into the business. Since the company is relatively new to bounty hunting, I needed to know how a small company would organically grow into it. The idea that they were originally dealers of information made sense, as gathering information is probably the most important step of trying to collect a bounty (that is, information on where your target is located).

Another group of NPCs I’ve created is Edward Carter and the NPC senior staff on the Star Trek sim USS Repulse. All of these NPCs were pre-designed prior to Phoenix, because they were used in one-off Star Trek tabletop adventures I have run. I actually have a full set of senior staff that were used as pre-made playable characters, each with their own backgrounds and motivations, but I have limited playing roles that are already filled (such as the Tactical and Science officers). Each has their own personality and background.

An entire NPC-staff? Wow! You had already created these NPCs before you joined Phoenix. So before you joined you already had experience with RPG gaming, although tabletop and screen RPGs aren't of course exactly the same. Nevertheless, do you feel that your experience in table top RPGs helped you a lot with creating characters? Or was it different to create a character for computer than for a tabletop RPG?

I've also had previous experience with freeform simming. They really aren't that much different, especially if you've done ‘old’ table top RPing that actually requires imagination and creativity instead of pushing miniatures around a grid on the table. Some of my favorite RPGs have been Cthulu games, because it is almost ALL roleplaying - there is very little combat involved because in a Cthulu game, you have no chance to fight the monsters! So that experience has definitely helped me. I've had the pleasure to know a lot of really good role-players over the years, from tabletop RPGs to computer RPGs (I spent a few years following the development of Neverwinter Nights, and met a lot of great friends during that time). I've role-played with kings of the RPG industry (living so close to the Wizards of the Coast HQ helps - for those that don't know, WotC is the company that produces D&D ever since they bought TSR back in the 90s), and those experiences have all helped. I also took quite a few acting classes in high school, enough that I considered majoring in Drama in college and pursuing an acting career (the desire to actually make money and put food on my table made me decide on a different career path, though). So, to answer your question, I don't think that creating a character for a table top RPG is much different than for an online sim. Both characters will have motivations and aspirations, life lessons they've learned and mistakes they've learned from.

Both your playable characters as your NPCs are very detailed in regards of background story and personalities. Could you describe the difference in creating a playable character and an NPC?

For me they are one in the same, at least for NPCs that I know I'll be using a lot or that will be interacting with the party a lot. There will always be bit characters that are background, which may have only a line or two in the story. I don't detail them out unless they start becoming more prominent in their roles. The idea is to provide a believable backdrop, not detail everything completely. So many have little more than a name and the role they play, and perhaps a few lines about their personality or relationships. Most other details that may be needed can be made up on the spot, but usually it doesn't come up. As much as I'd like to do have full backgrounds on everyone, I just don't have the time! So I provide the illusion that the world is very deep in detail, when in reality if you peeked behind the wrong curtain you'd find an incredibly blank slate.

How did you come up with each character? Are they for example something you’ve worked on for quite some time, building them bit by bit, or did they simply come to you at one point, or is it something else entirely?

Some of them I've worked on over time - the entire crew of the USS Repulse, for instance, I worked on over a long time. Most of the others just kind of came to me. I usually start with at least a basic character concept, then I find a picture to help me get a visual image of them. Sometimes I don't fully flesh out their backgrounds, only giving it a slight structure so I can fill in details as I go. Some of them, such as Carolyn or Elizabeth, inspire me so much that I do create very detailed backgrounds for them. Most of the time the characters form in my head as I'm researching their backgrounds. I think about small details such as where they went to school, what kinds of friends they had, how did they grow up. I can spend a lot of time researching backgrounds for characters if I let myself. Doing so makes the character more believable, and I can portray the character in a much more consistent manner the more I know about them.

You mention pictures to go with characters. You say that finding a picture might help you get a visual image of the characters. So when you set out to design a character, you only start out with personality and not with a rough idea of how the character will look like?

I generally have a rough idea of what they look like when I start my search. That's what makes finding the picture easier. Long hair or short hair, handsome or ugly, tall or short. As I'm creating their backgrounds, the come into my head and I begin to formulate a sense of who they are, and what their appearance is.

Has it ever been the other way around with a character for you? That you started out with the idea of how a character should look and then build the rest from there?

I'm sure there has been some time in the past that has happened, but not with any of my current characters. Fiona Sang may be the closest, I knew she would be Chinese, but I also wanted to capture the western flare of the Firefly universe. You'd be surprised how few images there are of Chinese actresses in Old Western garb. So I had the image before fleshing out her background, although I already knew the niche she was going to fill in the Cydonia sim. Maybe the closest to having the image first was Ensign Roux, one of my NPCs on the Repulse. I think I found her picture when looking for some of the other Repulse characters, and it was such an intriguing, alluring image I had to make her into a character. At least, that's what I think happened; it's been a long time. It's also possible I simply had searched for "French Model" and her image came up. That's how it tends to work.

Where do you find inspiration for your characters? For example, are they based on existing persons, or are they completely original?

I take inspiration from a lot of sources, such as TV (V, Castle), movies (Hamlet, Galaxy Quest), and video games (Alan Wake). However, much of the time as I develop a character I get a certain sense of what I want them to look like in my head, and then I go out and find pictures to match. Sometimes those pictures can really help define more details about the person - especially if I am using an actor or actress that has done a lot of TV or film work that I can use stills to define their history. That's how Carolyn's detailed background came about, from me searching around the web for pictures of Kate Beckinsale  [Background research? Is that what they’re calling it these days? – Ed.]. However, I never tie myself to that, and in fact most of the time I already have a rough idea of what I'm looking for when searching for pictures. But occasionally a picture is so good I'll want to use it, and so I'll add or modify a bit of something to make the history fit the picture. Even so, I feel all of the characters I have are completely original. Some who share similar names to their inspiration (Richard Keep) may look alike, and at times even act similarly, but I could just as easily have separated the two completely to begin with (i.e. not used the same name or image) and I don't think anyone would necessarily know just from the characters behavior who I took inspiration from. In fact, most of my characters aren't inspired by anyone, but I simply find the images to represent them after they are fully fleshed out (Mei-Ling, for instance, was this way, although I am really happy with using Zhang Ziyi for her portrait, she is just gorgeous).

Again I get the impression that you spend a lot of time coming up with characters and 'tuning' them. Have you ever come up to a point where you said: 'no, this isn't right' for a character? Have you ever had to throw away some of the things you'd come up with and rethink those traits for your characters?

Oh, I'm sure there has been, although I can't think of any examples off the top of my head. I usually tweak the backgrounds as I'm writing them, so instead of a major overhaul of a character, it usually winds up being a bunch of small changes along the way. One small example came with a recent character submittal for a sim, where I had created an event around an aspect of the sim that didn't mesh as well with the world. The GM/SO let me know, and I had to tweak the encounter so it made sense for the behavior of the inhabitants of that sim. This happened as well for the After the Turn sim - Sarah hadn't originally been abducted by a demon, but working with the GM/SO it made sense for the sim (and to fit her into a more modern world). That's generally the nature of the changes. Since I try to make the characters develop organically, it is difficult for me to say ‘no, that's not right’, because I'll usually not get into that rut to start with - trying to shoehorn in something that doesn't fit.

And this concludes our interview. Thank you Jason for letting us get to know a little bit more about how all these wonderful characters of yours have come into existence.

Phoenix's Diamond Geezer: An interview with Kevin "Zuzutoo" Diamond

I’m here with one of Phoenix’s founder members. From a Skyplex orbiting Greenleaf to the waters of the Gulf, Kevin Diamond, or Zuzutoo as he’s known, has made his presence felt on a number of our sims.

So, Kevin, how did you get into RPing in the first place?

Wow, Founding Member, I feel rather important with that title. Unlike a lot of people, I did not have much RP experience prior to joining up with all of you in the old country (do we name names here?). I had played a couple of MMORPs but that's about it. I was playing City Of Heroes for several years and found I liked writing up the origin stories for my characters on there. Add to that a tremendous love/obsession with Firefly and I went hunting for an online Firefly game. I tried one that nobody ever seemed to post on that used canon characters and gave up and tried out the old country. And that is where I fell in with the bunch of you all. I made my way up the leadership hierarchy under the Plom administration and became one of the Sim leaders on several different genres there. The support and bonds between players from a year of playing there is what really got me to join the rebellion and migrate over to Phoenix. When it comes down to it, the quality of our playing is from the personalities of the people involved, and you, my friends, are more important than having a shiny badge and a fancy title.

So, Firefly. Who is your favourite character?

Isn't that the worst question you can ask a Firefly fan? Firefly impresses me because it is one of very few shows that has a terrific ensemble cast. Every character intrigues me, entertains me and makes me concerned about what is happening to them. I can't claim one is my favorite without short-changing my love for the rest of them. I do have a deep affection for Kaylee. I am always drawn to characters that portray innocence. River is close on the heels of that attribute too, but Kaylee, mercifully, never gets to be a trained killing machine. I've never bothered to go too deep into it, but I'm pretty sure the whole cast makes up an in depth psychological study of the human mind in all its facets. 

Kaylee as a killing machine would be a true nightmare to behold that’s for sure.

Since we’re on the subject of women, I notice that you play a lot of female characters in Phoenix. What advice can you give male players who wish to play female characters?

Geez, I've been wondering about that little issue of my own for a while now. I like strong female characters, be they in books, comics, movies and certainly RP. I think I only have three male characters and two of them aren't human. I think I find the female personality more fun to play. When it comes down to it the people I have loved most in life have been female. So I tend to make them into my characters. Poppy Brandes on Atlantis is a complete embodiment of my wife, minus the avatars of Georgia Moffett.
I'm not sure if there is a 'way' to play a female. I just tend to make them less inclined to shoot first. I think of how the women I know in life would react to a situation. How would they talk? What would they think of the people around them? I am very intrigued how Princess Noshin on Fighter Ops is going to react to where that plot line is going. She has a tendency to get very punishing and vindictive on people or in this case nations that cross her. I also like characters that are out of their element, and most Sci-Fi is in very masculine environments. The difference on how they perceive the situation makes them interesting characters to write for.

Moving on to Sci-Fi; what is your favourite piece of sci-fi work that most people would not have heard of?

Hmm.... so Firefly is out with this crowd then. Heh. No honestly most of my likes are fairly mainstream, although I do have a distinct love for 1970's sci-fi. Somehow their aesthetic of the future still is more visually striking than anything we seem to come up with today. Modern costuming seems content with black leather to mean all things action and sci-fi. I have been having a focused love affair with Gerry Anderson's UFO series lately. While cheesy beyond belief, it is impressive what they did for so little with such primitive special effects, but still pushed boundaries on social and political commentary. Plus silver miniskirts and purple hair cannot be improved on. Go swanky 60's & 70's!
Of the slightly more modern era, I love Chris Carter's Space Above & Beyond. While more of a military show, it was a refreshing ride through sci-fi dogfight style shows. I would like for a whole new era of sci-fi shows to start showing up that are not meant to be Lost or 24. On a personal and professional level, Edgar Rice Burrough's sci-fi series need to get more attention, and I'm talking Amtor not Barsoom.
Also Sanctuary is a fabulous show that more people need to watch. No really it’s on Friday nights. Watch it.

Interesting choices. If you could travel to any sci-fi setting, which one would it be? No, you can’t say the ‘Verse.

I'm not really dating myself, because this stuff was old when I first watched it on video, but the George Pal "The Time Machine" has a wildly intriguing ending to me. The rebirth and re-emergence of a fairly innocent society into a world ready for them to grow up is very appealing. Despite H.G. Well's rather grim view point towards human progress, I think the Pal version gives a great sense of optimism and hope for mankind. So yeah, I'd love to exist in that setting. I envy the age of exploration when there was a new world to explore, colonize and experiment in new forms of social freedom. Ok, that's a bit too rosy of a review of the past, but I do like the enthusiasm of mankind for doing something new, persevering through challenges and achieving what was thought to be impossible.
If that's too esoteric of an answer... then Star Trek.

OK, let’s move back on to Phoenix. What do you feel has been the best RPing moment you’ve participated in?

My favorite moments have been nearly all my posts involving the illustrious Elli Hol'liz on the hopefully soon to re-launch Accipiter. Particularly fun are the ones where she is playing off Aidan Fal's Leolacir or dratliff's Shadra. In the words of Ash, "This one is damaged." Elli is terrible fun to play, because I really have no idea what she is going to do next. She is the impulsive Id of my RP characters. That and she is rather complicated from the abuse and horrific life she has been put through. I hope folks re-launch Accipiter soon, I truly miss playing her.
I also miss the love/hate relationship between Poppy Brandes and Mike Palmer's Captain Lindemann on the Atlantis. I'm sad it never got to the embarrassing screaming match that she was headed towards with him.

Of course, you’ve created Greenleaf Skyplex. Where did the idea for this sim come from?

Greenleaf fell together very easily for me since I had a fairly well developed back story about it when I created the Scarlett Newman Wilson character to be the Dockmaster on Aker's Bluff. I always like to have my characters have non-traditional points of view and backgrounds from which to frame the Verse (or any other sim). Greenleaf was supposed to be a Skyplex with some of the dazzling technology of the future, but located on the Rim where there isn't a lot of money. It's not a military base, so it should keep money as the primary motivation for what happens there. Mix to that the hustle of the shopping scenes seen in Firefly, a 1980s Mall-rat attitude and an 1880s western outpost and you get Greenleaf.
Every space station needs to have a purpose to exist in space, this one has commerce. The Rim planets are struggling and require extensive goods from the inner planets to maintain themselves. I built the concept of a Blue Sun Mega Hauler with the creation of the un-launched Blue Horizon sim and my character Poppy Brandes as large company ships running from the Core to the Rim loaded with lots of essentials for survival of the colonies. They had to leave from and stop somewhere. So I made Greenleaf a terminus for that quadrant of the Verse. Nobody would hire the small freighters such as Serenity to take 3 Million tons of grain from Bernadette to Shadow. Not to mention she couldn't hold it. So the bigger hauler, like a tanker, takes the goods to the distribution point and the smaller ships take it from there to a thousand destinations. Cash is exchanged and goods are brought back to sell in the Core. A smaller ship such as those in our fleets could work out of Greenleaf indefinitely if they wanted legitimate jobs.
Add to this economic engine the tension between the orderliness of the Alliance, the chaos of the RIM, a community of shop owners and lucrative gambling and smuggling businesses and you have a great backdrop for storytelling. Anything you want can happen there. There is room for tales of innocence and kindness, there is room for depravity and darkness. It all depends on you folks... and staying above deck five.

Tell me some more about the non-traditional backgrounds of your characters.

The background of my characters is just as intriguing as the sim for me. I like characters that pose a problem with the commonly perceived way people look at a sim. It’s almost a granted that if there is a way that most people play a character I will choose the opposite, or at least something totally off.
Poppy Brandes on Atlantis is completely in favor of the Alliance. She served in U war, but not as a combatant, but as a researcher in foodstuffs. She is a long time employee of Blue Sun and thinks highly of how the company helps people all over the Verse. She is not overly political and is just a girl with a job that wants to see the Verse. She views Browncoats as terrorist thugs, and sees the Alliance as the Good Guys fighting for decency and civilization.  Joss Whedon saw the Firefly Universe the way he wanted to see it, and said that it could be possible that all the events of the Verse is seen through the misinformed perspective of individuals on the fringe of society. Poppy is one of the people he didn't write stories about.
Ta'ask on USS Repulse is a dinosaur. He does not act or think as regular people. He thinks in terms of Hunter, Prey and Clans. He is a deliberate outsider that plays against what most people see as human norms. He also has to suppress urges to eat most of the bridge crew.
Princess Noshin bin Sultan Al Qasimi on Fighter Ops is a Muslim woman from the upper class that has been blended into a British fighter squadron as an exchange officer. She deals with issues of trying not to conform to western lifestyles, being an independent woman from a conservative paternal society and of course fighting fellow Muslims in a conflict alongside western outsiders.
Elli Hol'liz on Star Wars: Accipter is a former slave turned actress that has no care for Jedi or Sith. The affairs of Galactic Politics and to a degree good and evil are irrelevant to her. Just because she is Force Sensitive doesn’t mean she is in any hurry to associate herself with the Jedi. Her motives are quite selfish but not necessarily evil. She is an outsider pulled into the conflict of other people and trying to escape or at least survive.
Myfanwy Villar on Beyond the Veil of Truth, is an orphaned teenager with remarkable but odd abilities that has found her way into the care of Paranormal research Institute. She has no practical training or skills for combating the weird and unknown. She answers phones and spends her time on the internet. But her hidden abilities are useful enough that she is being trained or at least taken along as a field agent.
As I said, they are mostly all oddballs. And I like it that way.

When not on Phoenix, what do you like doing?

Geez, that's hard to qualify. In my offline time, I greatly enjoy drawing, film making, traveling and spending time with my wife and daughter. I met Poppy, my wife, the last day of Jr. High and she has been my best friend pretty much since then. Our daughter (13) is blossoming into an avid con goer and is a delightful little geek. Not so little in that she is rapidly approaching six feet tall. Almost all of our extended family live in town, so we do a lot with them. We watch a frightening number of movies, albeit my wife and I have wildly different taste in films. I enjoy costume design and make several each year for my daughter and myself for cons and Halloween. I love building props.
I work with High School students in my local parish and tend to do a lot of things they like to do. I have teach weekly classes, and have to plan social events every month. And we are long standing Disney Season Pass holders and are at Disneyland about every two weeks during the winter months (summer is too crowded).
I have never been a huge gamer, we don't even own a console. I tend to play games on my computer. I'm back on the City of Heroes MMORPG again now that it is free, but I find I don't have as much time for it as I used to. Good thing its free now.
Oh yeah, I have jobs too.

Tell me about your prop building. Sounds interesting.

Given time and available cash I can make just about anything. I tend to work on the lower side of expenses. I've built crossbows, armor, Ghostbusters proton packs, 13 ft. foam dinosaurs and a whole mess of other things. I work heavily with woods, foams and resins. I really want to build a vacuum form rig, but don't have the time or space at the moment. Back in the day, I used to work in theater and did this for a living, now it’s mostly for fun or when our props guy gets lazy and I have to show how easy it is to make something. Needless to say, our garage has some bizarre stuff in it. I work with my father building sea kayaks from wood strips/foam and fiberglass. We just finished the sixth one. As for my wish lists, I've been wanting to build a hovercraft for my daughter for years, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Our house always has some project or another taking up way too much space.

So, speaking of projects – what are your plans for the future at Phoenix?

Good question. With all the transitions and complications of the past year, I am looking forward to things calming down and getting into some solid RP on the many sims I'm part of. There is a lot to do with member retention and recruitment, but I'd just like some time to enjoy really building the stories we have going. I am very glad to have Accipter re-launched. The Academy is looking to get very bloody in the coming weeks now that we have passed through the introductory chapter. I am looking forward to Princess Noshin going to war on Fighter Ops and I want to see what horrors await on Beyond the Veil of Truth. I worry about having enough time for all the sims I am involved in, but there is no one I would willingly quit right now. I am enjoying the curious dichotomy of playing the uber-virginal Princess Noshin and the ultra-flirtatious Elli. Its rather fun to have characters running the whole gambit of personalities. My greatest fear is them blending together and having one voice. I can't let that happen.
I do think I have a lot of work to do in getting new members integrated into games. The ones we do get that have stuck around are fabulous, but I still think the pacing we set is a bit odd for many people to overcome. Phoenix is a work in progress and I look forward to helping shape it into a better community for everyone that stops by. (Evil spambots not included).

Mischa Brendel interviews Jason Andersen - Part One

[I would like to welcome Mischa Brendel to this blog with this interview of Jason Andersen. Due to length, it has been split into two parts – Ed.]

Jason Andersen is one of the most active members of Phoenix. He is the Award & Rewards Officer and he also  Administration Officer of the Phoenix Wiki page. But first and foremost he is a role-player. He plays both several characters in different sims and GMs several others. This is an interview with this active member of our community, in which he elaborates on the characters he has created for several sims as well as his GM skills.

You are one of the most active players around on the Phoenix forums. How many characters do you play?

I have twenty or more – I’ve sort of lost count – characters that I play directly, and a handful of NPCs for the games I GM.

Good grief! Over twenty characters! How do you manage to keep up with it? How much time do you spend on playing those characters?

Keeping up with the characters isn't that tough once they are actually made. Because I spend time working on backstory, they become very vivid in my mind. It makes it fairly easy to switch to their personalities when it comes time to role-play them. Having done a lot of table top RPing since I was a kid has really helped to hone these skills. I usually spend a little over an hour each day posting for the characters I have, and GMing the sims I am GM for. That doesn't include weekends - I usually don't get online on weekends because of personal commitments. The pacing of the forums is slow enough that I usually only have to post for one or two characters per day, so my posting rotates based on what is happening in each sim and how active it is.

In fact, most of the time I spend on the forums is on GMing duties, rather than as a player. I knew early on when I first created my character Brandon Miles and was waiting days between interactions that I was going to need a lot of characters to keep me checking back on the boards every day. Developing characters takes a lot more time, and I usually have to carve out time outside of my normal forum reading to do that, which is why some Sim owners have been kept waiting on me for weeks at a time. (Gomen! [That’s Japanese for “Sorry” – Ed.])

So let’s stick to just the characters you have created for active sims at the moment. Could you tell us a bit about each of those?

Okay. Let’s start with Brandon Miles on the Firefly sim Atlantis. Brandon is my oldest character and was first introduced in Deb's Akers Bluff sim back on AJJE. After Phoenix split off from AJJE and Akers Bluff was retired, he joined the crew of the Atlantis. Brandon is an engineer and a good-natured guy. He comes from a farming background, has lived a relatively simple life and takes pleasure in simple things. He wears his heart on his sleeve. Although he fought in the War, he doesn't enjoy fighting, and would rather spend time tinkering with some broken device than shooting a gun. He has become enamored with Atlantis's gunner, Morgan O'Doyle, and they have just recently taken their relationship beyond one of furtive glances and flirtation.

So Brandon Miles is the first character that you've created. Does he therefore hold some special meaning? Is he different from your other characters?

He has special meaning in that he was the first character I ever made for Firefly simming. He's probably also the least fleshed out, as at that time I was eager to just start playing. All of my characters are different from one another, so that isn't what makes Brandon special. What makes Brandon really unique among all of my characters is that he is probably the closest to my own personality. If I had to pick one of them to represent "me", Brandon would be it. Although we look nothing alike. I'm much more handsome. :)

The next character is Carolyn Annesly on the Firefly sim Umbra. Carolyn is the character I've spent the most time on developing. She is Brandon's polar opposite, designed specifically to be a ruthless pirate. She had a hard childhood and that has made her cold. She is bent on revenge for the theft of the last ship she was on, the first place she truly felt at home. Deadly and beautiful, she'll smile and flirt with you one minute just before she puts a knife in your back the next.

You say that Carolyn is the polar opposite of Brandon. This sounds rather like an RPG game on the computer: on the second play-through, players often take their character in the complete opposite way of their first play-through. Is this how you came up with Carolyn as well? Did you want to create a character which would be Brandon's polar opposite, or is it a coincidence that she came out that way?

Interesting, I never thought of it that way. It could be I did that subconsciously, but I didn't set out to do that when I created her. I think it had more to do with that I had already created a badass girl to join the Umbra (Mei-Ling), but she was too kind hearted to fit well amongst the ruthless crew. So I needed to create someone who truly was ruthless, and only had (mostly) selfish intent. Some of that goodness still crept in, like how she is seeking revenge for the murders of the crew of her last ship. She would never openly admit that she cared about them, though. She's too good at lying (even to herself) for that.

Then there is Mathek from the sim The Triple First, which is set in the universe of Doctor Who. I knew I wanted to create a special and memorable companion for a Time Lord, and thus Mathek came to be. Mathek is a human from the distant future, brought to Romana's TARDIS for some unknown reason (well, unknown to him, anyway). Because he is from the future, he actually has some knowledge of how the TARDIS works - or at least parts of it - and I imagine if he needed to, at some point, he'd actually be able to pilot it. He's a curious scientist type, a bit slow on social interactions. A veritable nerd with his very own sonic device.

He sounds a bit like another engineer, although opposite to Brandon you say he is a bit slow on social interactions.

Heh, well maybe he is a bit like Brandon. Both are intelligent, that's for certain. But I imagine Brandon as more of a Steve Jobs kind of nerdy - he has charisma that people naturally want to gravitate towards, and Mathek is more of a Bill Gates kind of nerdy. Super smart, but super nerdy too. Brandon is more of a tech/hardware kind of guy, good at tinkering with natural ability, while Mathek is a scientist with book smarts.

The biggest difference of course is that this character is set in the Doctor Who universe, whereas the other two were both set in the Firefly universe. Is it very different playing characters in different universes?

I don't find it that different, actually. People are people, and react in similar ways no matter the setting. They have the same motivations - money, love, friendship, revenge - as anyone in any other universe. There may be slight differences based on setting - Star Wars characters, for instance, are influenced greatly by the Force, even if they can't use it themselves - but most of the time it comes down to asking what I would do in a particular situation, with the circumstances the character is in and what they've experienced before. Determining that kind of behavior is setting independent.

Then there is Cody Zenteno from Beyond the Veil of Truth, a sim created by Aidan Fal and probably easiest summed up as The X Files. We play as agents investigating the odd – paranormal activity, creatures of legend, monsters, aliens, those sorts of things.

There is Josh Cooley in the sim Fighter Ops. He is a US Air Force officer. Josh is actually a flavor character from another character I designed for a Stargate RPG (I'm keeping that character in reserve if we ever have a SG sim set during the Goa'uld time period). He's an Aeronautical Engineer & USAF pilot who enjoys playing water polo in his spare time. Friendly and outgoing, always willing to lend a hand to a friend and doesn't take kindly to bullying.

A flavor character from another character?

A good many years back I played in a tabletop Stargate RPG and created an USAF officer named Robert Goldsmith. In developing his background, I had him attending the USAF Academy where he met and became friends with Josh Cooley. From Robert's background, I know a few things about Josh already - he attended the USAFA, of course, and majored in Aeronautical Engineering. He was captain of the water polo team, and introduced Robert to the game (Robert ended up joining the team, and brought another friend onto the team as well, whom Josh also became friends with). I know that Josh is still friends with Robert, and that Josh is stationed at Tyndall AF base in Florida (where Josh and Robert both attended flight training school). Beyond that, I'll need to fill in the gaps. But any good character background is going to include these ‘minor’ or ‘flavor’ characters that they have as allies, enemies, or whatever. Sometimes they remain in the background, but other times, like this one, they come forward and become full characters in their own right.

And finally there is Aidan Dunhill (Sierra Charlie Four) - a cool, suave young British detective. Aidan is friendly with coworkers and friends, and smiles in his off-hours, but when it comes to doing his job he becomes focused and serious.

Not only do you play many characters, but also most of them are in different sims? Isn't that complicated? Don't you ever mix things up, both regarding storylines as characters?

Most of the sims are sufficiently different - or my characters in similar sims are different enough - that I don't do that. Early on I did confuse the Atlantis and Elemental sims at one point when talking with Ash about something. I also do a lot of back reading again and again to keep the story fresh in my head, that way my responses are based on a scene that may have been happening for 5 minutes, rather than 5 weeks.

When I look back to your character list, I get the impression that you've taken quite some effort to come up with their backgrounds. Is that right? How important is a character background to you? Does it need to be completely finished by you before you start playing with these characters, or do you make (some of) it up while you play?

I like to think I put in a lot of effort to make believable characters. I hope that shows in my roleplaying. It also helps keep responses consistent. It would be odd for me to have Brandon act as if he knew nothing about farming in one post and then have him growing up on a farm a few months later. But just because I flesh out their backgrounds significantly before I start playing, it's never a block - I started playing Brandon before I sent the background to Deb. I knew in general what I wanted, but I hadn't put it to paper yet. And then there are always small moments that you make up in the course of actually playing the character. Brandon related a story of his childhood just recently where he would lay on his roof and watch the cargo ships come and go at the nearby port. His sisters would be catching fireflies in the yard, and sometimes his father would join him on the roof and watch. Brandon would wonder if perhaps his father hadn't dreamed of flying through the Black at some point, but something in his life had made him become a farmer instead - perhaps the idea of settling down with Brandon's mother. Anyway, these are the kind of details that just evolve naturally through the course of play, not something you detail out beforehand. Another example would be that I know Brandon had friends in the war that were killed in action. I don't know exactly how that happened, but Brandon knows and carries it with him. Maybe one day he'll relate the story so that you and I will learn more about it.

[To be continued – Ed.]

Interview with Silent Hunter

Phoenix's first elected GC Ash Leighton Plom interviews the redoubtable Silent Hunter

It's my pleasure to be here with the administrator of this very blog, the one and only Silent Hunter. You know him from his writings, his characters, and his finely realised sim concepts. But what about the man behind the alias? This blog post tells you more!

Q: Let's start with a few ice-breakers. Circle or square?

A: Circles. They're easier to hold.

Q: Fairy lights; white, or multi-coloured?

A: Multi-coloured, of course. Ideally flashing on variable patterns.

Q: And finally, what is the airspeed velocity of a laden swallow?

A: African or European?

Q: Very nice. Now time for the serious stuff. You're probably currently best known as a prolific sim creator, running sims set in widely diverse genres. What gives you your inspiration when creating sim concepts?

A: A lot of things really. I'm an avid consumer of fiction, particularly cop shows and techno-thrillers. Some things I read in the news also give me ideas. For example, Sierra Charlie Four owes a fair bit of inspiration to the now-ended ITV1 cop drama The Bill.

Q: To what extent does RL inform your sim creations?

A: It depends on the sim. I try to use RL geography and history where possible. In my more contemporary sims, namely the British policing sim Sierra Charlie Four and my planned naval/aviation sim Carrier, I pay a good amount of attention to developments in those respective worlds. There's a lot of procedural stuff that's important for the realism of Sierra Charlie Four, as well as the impact of spending cuts and an increasingly globalised world. There are some developments in the latter that will be of great importance to the story; China's carriers, Russia's stealth aircraft, Iranian ballistic missiles…

My "historical" sims stick as closely to the historical background as I can, although I admit I do make mistakes. At the end of the day, one should not let the facts get in the way of a good story. ;-)
The Triple First is far looser; Doctor Who is far more a fantasy show than some of my more original concepts. Kvant, my Firefly sim, will owe some stuff to RL military organisation.

Q: You're also known for playing a large number of characters. Tell us a little about the genesis of some of these favourites.

A: OK, I'll pick three – Sue Ling, Romana VI and Samuel Arkwright.

With many of my characters, I tend to take an actor and create a character around them. Sue Ling is an example of that. Created to fill the rather undermanned Fire Team on Atlantis, she was inspired by Renee Felice Smith, who plays Nell Jones on NCIS: Los Angeles. I found the character so quirky that it inspired me to create another character. The name came from another female gunslinger, Soolin from the cult British science-fiction series Blake's 7. The concept of the character itself – rich girl runs away to become a merc – was inspired by Domino Harvey, a female bounty hunter who was the subject of the film Domino (which I haven't actually seen). I wanted a character who was still wide-eyed and innocent, to be gradually broken down by the business.

Romana VI, from The Triple First, is somewhat different. Romana is my favourite companion in Doctor Who and as a Time Lord, she seemed an obvious character to use in a sim. Conscious of the "rules" about canon characters; I bent them by creating a new incarnation. In a way, Romana is intended to be the "opposite" of the Eleventh Doctor. Matt Smith's Doctor has been described as "an old man in a young man's body" and I decided to reverse that. The Valley Girl persona was taking a classic fictional stereotype and turning it on its head a little – she may appear dumb but it's a front. I actually had intense difficulty choosing an actor for her.

Samuel Arkwright, who will be appearing in Kvant, is actually a fairly long standing character of mine; he first turned up as a Royal Marines officer several years ago in another work. He's evolved since then and is now a hardened veteran of the U-War, with a few ships after that. He was my first character at our old home. I made him a caring man, who knows the value of loyalty, but also decency; he attempted to instigate a mutiny on his old ship when his CO murdered a Dockmaster. His wife died in the war, so he knows its cost. He's now settled for "stability" in his old age; he's gained a company command in The Eagles of Warsaw. His actor, Serge Soric, makes fairly frequent appearances in British cop shows; using a Slavic actor was part of my vision of a future where names are longer limited to one ethnicity.

Q: How do you keep your various characters distinct and individual? How much interplay is there between your characters and your actual self?
I use pretty broad brushes to begin with and then work from there. A good memory helps to keep them distinct.
There's actually fairly little interplay between them and my RL self. I can't shoot straight if my life depended on it. That said, I may appear as a politician in the near future.

Q: Which brings us neatly to another facet of the legend that is Silent Hunter! Some have called your political career in the old country fractious, while others would say it was characterised by compassionate activism for members against tyranny. What motivates you politically, and how do you decide when and how to act? Where do you draw the lines?

A: Well, I'm active-ish in RL politics; being a member of the Labour Party. I'm motivated by a desire to see justice done. I don't really have a set of fixed criteria about when to act and when not to act; it's kind of personal feeling. However, I have a fairly strict moral code and there are certain behaviours that I will not do. I generally try to avoid deliberate violations of site rules. If I can't win a political struggle on a site fairly and the struggle is impacting RL (as happened in the old country), it's probably best for me to go.

Q: Speaking for myself, I believe your contributions will always be welcome in Phoenix RP. Thank you for your time and for your answers!

And a happy New Year from me to all our readers.

- Ashley Leighton Plom

Interview with Robert Longtin

Q: I’m here with Robert Longtin, our recently elected Election Coordinator and creator of one of our new sims, The Witcher.

So, Robert, tell me a little about yourself.

A: Well I'm from Hamburg, New York. I'm in college for Mathematics Education, but I already have a BA in Mathematics. And I'm very fond of gaming in all its forms: tabletop/LARP, online post-and-reply, and video gaming.

Q: So, who or what is The Witcher?

A: The Witcher refers to both a single character and a group of people. Witchers are alchemically mutated human men (as it currently stands there has never been a female Witcher, at least none that I can find apart from Ciri who only went through the training, not the treatments). Witchers train in the arts of both physical and magical combat to defeat monsters. They have vast resources in both knowledge and training specifically for this task, and there are few others that can or generally do slay monsters. Geralt of Rivia is The Witcher, the main character from the books and the games and is a member of a small group of Witchers hidden in Kaer Morhen, a secret keep far from the rest of civilization.

Q: Which books and games would these be? Would I have heard of them?

A: If you haven't heard of the The Witcher, then you wouldn't have heard of the computer game which carries the same name. The books on the other hand, at least the ones translated to English, are called The Last Wish and Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski. Both books follow the story of Geralt of Rivia, but Blood of Elves is the first in a Saga which has already been released in Poland, but the next book is supposed to be released in English next year. The Last Wish is the first book as far as timeline is concerned. The next book is not Blood of Elves but rather Sword of Destiny which has not been released in English as far as I know, but having read The Last Wish followed by Blood of Elves I wouldn't say anything was missing, apart from the rest of the Saga of course, which I am looking forward to. The Sequel to the computer game, The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings is set to release in this coming May and I would recommend checking out the E3 Trailer Online, this game is going to be big, far bigger than the last one. It picks up where the story of the last game left off, but from what I can tell you won't need to be well versed in The Witcher to get into the new game since the story in the new game involves a plot twist that has not yet been introduced via The Witcher to the English-speaking world. I'll be pre-ordering it soon.

Q: So, please tell me a little about the universe of these games.

A: Well to start I suppose I've told you enough about The Witcher, so I'll tell you a little bit about the history. The realm in which the stories take place is generally referred to as the Northern Kingdoms which is between a third and a fourth of what was once the Empire of Nilfgaard. What was once a massive Elven Empire, Nilfgaard was conquered by humans coming from across the sea many years ago. Intolerant of the humans who took their lands, most Elves retreated to remote areas and avoid contact with the humans, while some few Elves embrace the humans along with the Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halflings.

The world as it seems is run by humans, with the exception that mages and sorceresses who play a major role in politics have mixed human and elven blood. However not too long ago, the Elves reappeared and reclaimed land in the south from the humans, mercilessly slaughtering humans whether knight or peasant. Though a tense stalemate, the rest of the Northern Kingdoms remains relatively untouched apart from a rogue group of non-human bandits who call themselves The Scoia'tael, or "The Squirrels". That pretty much sums up the events to date as far as The Witcher is concerned.

For some time the Northern Kingdoms suffered monsters, vicious beasts both magical and non-magical that terrorized the lands both within and beyond castle walls. This is where Witchers found their calling - slaying the beast and collecting the reward. They often travel between cities, visiting anyone who has work and accepting the offers that were attractive enough.

Q: Sounds interesting. So what’s this particular sim about?

A: This Sim takes place before the resurgence of Elves in the Northern Kingdoms. I can't reveal too much, but essentially the major plot element is that a local Lord is assembling a group of mercenaries, Alchemists, Mages/Sorceresses, and Witchers to eradicate the nearby monsters for expansion and safety. Were it just a group of mercenaries, or just one Witcher or just one Mage or Sorceress, it would make sense, but a large force such as this draws a little more suspicion and rumors are circulating... Suspicions about what kinds of monsters are out there, whispers of upcoming War, tavern discussions that the King suspects a threat within his own court circulate, or hushed conversation that the King has gone mad; everybody has their own spin on what is going on now that signs are posted all over requesting the aid of warriors and spellcasters alike. The King has the intent of finding Elves after hearing a few rumors about people seeing Elves in the nearby vicinity. Whether or not those rumors are true has yet to be seen...

This story will largely take place outside the walls of Brugge, a city in the Southern edge of the Northern Kingdoms. The story being told here predates the stories of Geralt of Rivia by at least a century if not longer - I was intentionally vague on the date because I want to emphasize that none of what happens in this Sim is directly related to the games nor the books, as we will be exploring a time when Monsters really were Monstrous, as opposed to the time of Geralt of Rivia when monsters have started trying to fit into society, i.e. the Troll living under the bridge charges his tolls so he can afford to repair his bridge while making an honest living so he can afford to buy food instead of eating passersby and the horses they rode in on. This is a time when Mercenaries and Witchers could find work anywhere and might not feel the need to travel to find new work.

Q: Many don't know very much about the world of The Witcher, what might you compare The Witcher to that would be more familiar to Fantasy readers and gamers?

A: Well I would say The Witcher is very similar to Middle Earth in many ways. Actually you can draw a great many similarities between Geralt of Rivia, the main character from The Witcher, and Aragorn's alternate identity Strider from Lord of the Rings. The Witcher has all manner of mythical creatures and races, most of which also appear in Lord of the Rings. You have Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings. Then you have similar character elements, such as spell casting, mages, and sorceresses, mercenaries and warriors, commonfolk, nobles, priests, and so on. And then you also have wild beasts and creatures of evil that attack travelers and are hunted by mercenaries.

Technology is also very similar, bows and arrows, siege weapons, castles with walls, and wooden boats with sails. In Lord of the Rings there was a brief appearance of alchemical weapons in The Two Towers during the siege of Helm's Deep when a bomb was used to destroy the wall. Alchemical concoctions, both potions and small handheld bombs are present in The Witcher, though are rarely used by untrained people or alchemists who are often dismissed as mad scientists. The people and nations also have prejudices, injustices, social classes, and wars; common themes for many Fantasy stories and games."

Q: So what will players be doing?

A: The players will be playing characters in this group of monster slayers, going out and looking for trouble and taking on the beasts. They will be commissioned by the King to do so, so there will be some interactions with Royalty and the city of Brugge itself, but they can expect to be investigating monster appearances and problems in the outskirts, trying to locate monsters to defeat. The story will unfold from there, but that's the starting premise.

Q: So how do people join? Will they need to have read the books or played the games?

A: Players will need no experience with The Witcher to join. In fact knowledge of Fantasy settings in general is truly all that's necessary. Players that are interested in any non-Witcher class can for the most part rely on their own knowledge of Fantasy games to decide the aspects of their character both during design and gameplay. Players interested in playing spellcasters will be contacted by me personally to get them up to speed on where magical energy is drawn from and how that restricts spellcasters (and by restriction I mean preventing them from being Gods among mortals, apart from that the sky is the limit), and anyone interested in playing a Witcher, whether they have read our discussion here or if they have read the Witcher blog will already know as much as they need after receiving the information on spellcasters (though a Witcher doesn't necessarily need to be a spellcaster, there is one in the game who suffered a hand injury preventing him from casting spells). All other information that a player might want (and not necessarily need) is linked to on the Witcher blog I created.

Q: A dedicated blog. Excellent. Who knows, I may join. Thank you very much and I wish your game every success.