Performer-y Stuff

[HR-Mickey]

Hi there.
I'll be your new pilot on Perfomer profession flight 247 (credentials supplied upon request!), and I wanted to take this opportunity to open the hatch for ideas, suggestions, and questions from all of you. Anything you have to offer - big, small, concise, incoherent, stream-of-thought - I'd be glad to hear it. I'm formulating a general plan of attack, and every little bit counts.

[desiree]

excellent!

I am excited at the prospect of dancing. I have done dancing in DR and sometimes its very difficult to 'dance' in a text based game. I hope there will be some way to 'perform' a dance without it looking like it does in DR. We use the act verb in DR but I feel it's distracting with the (quotes) around it plus it limits you a bit and doesn't let it flow...

act kneels down on the ground, bows her head and waits for the music to begin.

you see...
(Chiana kneels down on the ground, bows her head and waits for the music to begin)

kneel
You kneel
Chiana kneels

Is there anyway to actually kneel while doing the action instead of performing it separately? or when you stand back up instead of standing after the action? These are techincal questions but to make the dance look smooth and look like a dancer, you need to get rid of the darned (quotes) and make it flow much nicer. Ya know?

Also curious if we will be able to have music playing as we dance? It's difficult in DR because its hard to coordinate. You could have a drum beat start slowly then increase in intensity as the dancer's movements increase... does that make sense?

Akaara is my dancer and singer
_________________
~ The longer the night lasts, the more our dreams will be. ~

[desiree]

More dancing...

perhaps to become a better dancer you'd need to practice different forms of dancing.

Ballet
Tribal
Freestyle
Hip-Hop
Jazz

And have some simple dance scripts that grow as you gain skill then eventually you can add some of your own descriptions to the dances or create your own.

I would not want to limit a performer though by having to just study Ballet for example unless they want to persue that more than the rest. I'd probably dabble in a few and be really good at one form.

If you need an assistant to help... send me a PM. I'd be willing to be a test subject or guinea pig for ya :>
_________________
~ The longer the night lasts, the more our dreams will be. ~

[HR-Trevor]

BTW I'll leave the dancing etc stuff to Mickey, but for reference... ACT in Haelrahv does not have parenthesis around it.
_________________
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." -- Plato

-- Trevor Rage / Rich Mondy

[Brokyn]

Desiree, you beat me to posting all of that. At least you saved me the trouble, I guess.

I agree that it'd be neat if Performers could train themselves in certain forms of dancing, especially when those forms of dancing come with their own system-ized scripts (for those, like me, that cannot intricately describe movements, as dance would require).

For my own suggestion, though, I'd offer up a somewhat unique (I think it is, anyway) idea: instead of basing dancing abilities -- if you create different styles in which to learn -- completely on Skill, try incorporating some kind of "time spent" counter in conjuction with skill. The reason I would want this is so that you don't have people pumping points into Dance until they get uber amounts into it, only to go to some Dance Master and suddenly know everything there is to know about that particular style. There should be some actual time spent practicing the moves (read: working the internal script). Skill Points should not only lower the amount of time it would take to move up to the next "level" in that style, but also moderate how far the character can actually move in that style.

Does that make sense? I doubt this should be Performer-only, simply because almost everyone can or wants to dance at one point in their lives, but they should obviously have a bonus to it.. as well as a few extra bonus levels in each style. ....This is me stating the obvious, enjoy.

Oh, and one more thing. Can there possibly be race-specific dance styles? I'd really like to see an Alteri ceremonial dance.

--William

PS: I don't know who I sent it to originally, but they told me that they forwarded a proposal to reorganize the Spellsongs to Trevor. I've got it saved somewhere, but you could always pester Trevor to forward it to you, I guess.
_________________



Haelrahv Wiki!
++Brown Nosing Points

[HR-Mickey]

Zowie. I didn't expect this much feedback so soon. I'll touch on the stuff that immediately stood out to me, to start.

[desiree]

Is there no way to code it so that when kneel shows up, you automatically kneel? Or the same with stand, lie down etc. Could you code it so that it applies only when you're performing? If you're gonna lay on something then I understand why it cannot be done.

Music, I was talking about sequentially-timed messages and having a performance or practice area where we could pick out music or have the band play for us. It looks silly when you are supposed to be dancing and there is not even a drum or bard in the whole area

I think singing is pretty straight forward, isn't it?
Playing instruments, not something I'll probably do unless I have to.

Other performance ideas:
Mimes on street corners
Poetry... be able to write your own book
Put on a play... have areas where you could set a stage and have a play, maybe have a playwriter, scripts and rent costumes etc.

I have not yet had all my coffee so forgive me if I am lacking details at this point.

Desi
_________________
~ The longer the night lasts, the more our dreams will be. ~

[HR-Arden]

[HR-Hunter]

[HR-Trevor]

[Dragoonseal]

kneel act stands up.

By the way, I do like the idea though, a lot of helpful stuff you can do with it.
_________________
Dragoonseal

[HR-Mickey]

[HR-Mickey]

[desiree]

OH.. I finally see what you're getting at. It did not even occur to me. Hit me over the head to make me see.. LOL

Lightbulb goes on!

Is there way that you could incorperate it into a special performer only verb? Like perform then when you kneel, you actually kneel but not unless you're performing?

I hope that made sense.
_________________
~ The longer the night lasts, the more our dreams will be. ~

[truth]

One of the things that always seems to be the case in RPGs is that while you can play an ubersmart character without necessarily being that smart, or a strong fighter without being either strong or a fighter, if you want to play a performing sort of profession, you have to be that type of person. It puts a lot of strain on me to do a Bard in D&D or DR, because if you want to really develop your character's strengths you have to carry all that weight with your own abilities (rather than mechanics doing it for you).

Although I don't think it's entirely possible to get away from that, I think the song scrolls that showed up in DR were a good step. I think it would be good to see pre-written song scrolls-like things, and dance instructions (maybe the traditional footstep instructions, or some type of high-tech holographic imager demonstrating the movements so we can learn it), and, more generally, "performances" (meaning combination of dance and music/song), since it's usually so difficult to deal with music/song and act/movements simultaneously.

Also, in theater terms, we could have holographic masks that would change our appearances and voices.
There could be automated masks that would basically be like the scripted songscrolls, dancemanuals, and performancelog-type stuff that I described above, and these masks would read off the dialogue of a short play and act it out (the mask would change appearances/voices to represent different characters).