Spawning for Success

[SekoETC]

I remember Wasi Caget but from where?

[Vanya]

If you ask me, I always have a bunch of some "stereotyped characters" that I tend to let go into a world when I want to test it. They are totally expendable, but I play them for real (and I suffer them too!!) and from them I gather information and experience about how the world works about cultures, people´s behaviour, mechanics, and so. Then I release a main character more or less psychologically pre-built for the specific world. That means... What attitudes I want it to have and how rich he/she is. And then a bunch of "fillers" who are absolutely randomly created. Physical features in all cases are mostly related to the mood and humor sense of the day, but main characters should look specially weak and unimportant from the outside, and also blend and camouflage with the characteristics of the "fillers" at some point.

All the time, every character must interact and move its surroundings, trying to be "something" (good or bad) and transmit life to others, beyond the fact that main characters are deeper inside and more detailed than fillers or scouts.
If a character can´t transmit some life and interact with people around cause its own nature, the character will try to move on and change of scenary (that has no relation with the common travel or moving cause own motivations). I never make hermits; I like to give some richness to other players.

So... answering to the starting question, every spawning is a success, even if the character dies almost instantly or has any kind of trouble

I must admit, anyway, that many characters are a blank slate at the very first time, and I must see the general notes and guess the location before saying a word. In the very moment the character says something, all the shapes and colors are set.

AAANDD... If you ask about the name... Well, its mostly the first thing I have at reach or I see, or something directly related to it. The only exceptions are the the scouts.

ITS IMPORTANT FOR ME TO SAY, ANYWAY, that I don´t do any meta. No characters share information. Sending probes to the world is only to know how the game (this or any other game) works. The characters behave freely.

Example A: one of my first scout characters started like knowing most (if not all) things from the Wiki; something that is not forbidden as long as I know. As it gave some issue with another player, I corrected that in that player (more or less) and I made every other character totally ignorant of most things in the world, role-playing every discover and learning.

Example B: with another scout character I thought that onions were filling, and not just healing food. That character died of hunger because I tried to make it eat onions many times I was not understanding that onions don´t feed you up in Cantr. From that point, my characters sometimes taste fruits or so and actually learn XD

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Conclusion: every spawn can be a success. It all depends how you play it, but you MUST play them as live and more or less real guys. Personally, I care little to not at all if a character dies (including if a character, no matter how developed it was, dies cause the actions of another character in another place). What matters is to have fun and let all those fictional personas live and breathe, and bring some fun to the others to.

Thats how I see it and how I play it.

[Mafia Salad]

Good insights Vanya.

I do play the game with 2-4 deeper main characters and the rest are secondary. I tend to figure that out after they've been around a couple years though. I'm willing to experiment a lot more with my secondary characters. I try to avoid responsibility with them since I don't have the time to keep up with all my characters when RL gets busy, but I still want enough to play when RL is less busy. I'm intrigued by the idea of creating scout characters to see what a new game world is like, but I don't know if I could do it. I tend to be more invested in my first characters in a new game.

I remember Wasi Caget but from where?

PFE via Hannah Romain.

[SekoETC]

Wow, that was ages ago!

[Vanya]

I'm intrigued by the idea of creating scout characters to see what a new game world is like, but I don't know if I could do it. I tend to be more invested in my first characters in a new game.

Its like sending a bunch of probes to some planet to see if they crash against something, and you gather info from all the entire expedition. Of course you will fly them as they were really important, but in the bottom they are the most expendable of all. Always the same characters with the same personality.