iMod!: a general rundown & synopsis
Days of Wrath
October 2005 -> January 2006. Ran approximately 4 months on livejournal.
HP AU: "What if Voldemort had chosen Neville, and what if the Death Eaters never gave up?" Set in 1981, the in-between of Marauder- and Trio-era. Being my first shot at modding, I ran it with two high school friends, and it was pretty lolariously filled with Norwegians. We had some great moments along the way, and mainly I remember it for the great LOLZ which were had: Elphias/Moody unwilling mistletoe snogging, Snape and Lily, Caradoc Dearborn's troll-wife, Remus plus wand innuendo, the Lestranges and their mother's potency potions. Activity simply fizzled out after a while, but it was laidback goodtiems while it lasted. Notably for having Loren randomly join as our Snape, and our online social circles would overlap awesomely two years later. WHOULDA THUNKIT?
+: Our traditional way to get into your character was to encourage an "ask me anything" meme when you intro'd them to the OOC. I don't know if this could be reproduced in original games, due to unfamiliarity with new characters, but it led to a ridiculous amount of hilarity and interesting facts in DoW, so I'm glad we had this exercise.
Era Zero
November 2006 -> March 2007. Ran 5 months on greatestjournal.
1940s Hogwarts-centric Riddle-era and as canon-compliant as possible. The erazer of fun! Modded with Cassie, and so much lolz and amazing worldbuilding came out of this. To this day, I'm still so proud of this baby; Cass and I poured so much news and research into it to get the setting as right as possible. We rooted out and posted actual newspaper articles from the 1940s, but unfortunately all those have been lost since GJ's image hosting crashed. I was stunned by the intimidating brilliance of the characterisations, like Isabel's terrifyingly amazing Grindelwald. This game marks the first time I was exposed to Jane's total win, and cemented my love of seeing Trio-era grandparents and Marauder-era parents running around as teens: Malcolm Shacklebolt, Olive Hornby, Prior Parkinson, Druella and Leonius Rosier, Tristan Nott, Septimus Weasley, Pippa and Harfang Longbottom, and the list goes on.
The game was surprisingly big. We weren't expecting that much interest, but then the holds came streaming in and so many new characters were introduced each day, it became dizzying and hard for other players to cope with — we actually had to shut down applications for a month, because they were just coming in too damned quickly. Max tally was ~30 players, 60+ characters (which makes sense, as we only allowed people to apply for one per month).
We weren't the first Riddle-era, but I like to think we were the biggest and best. Moody's boots taste like justice, "that's broadmoor love!", Harfang's pranks, Olive's hair dyed green, "damn the lamb, save dick!" … Eventually, interest dwindled as Cassie and I got too stressed out by the modding, so we decided to call it a day and end.
+: Regular game chats; news reports; ez_pimpz community existing solely for OOC silliness, memes, chardev exercises, and for giving kudos to players.
-: I arranged that cast list really, really badly. I know this. :(
Alastor Moody: "I WOULD NEVER SAY THAT. FIVE MILLION POINTS FROM YOUR SOUL."
Road to Nowhere
July 2007 -> December 2007. Ran 6 months on greatestjournal.
Slightly future-verse Supernatural-based RPG, canon-compliant up until the S2 finale. Spawned from a Dean/Jo PSL with Britt, which then spiralled into a game, and a successful one at that. As a group, we actually created so much canon on our own that I started forgetting what had happened in the show, and what had happened in our game — we had solid characterisations all around, and addictively awesome ideas to play around with: werewolves, vampires, demons, doppelgangers, possessions and hostage situations. It was a seedy, gritty environment which you don't get to see around too often.
The game marked my reunion with Jane, the writing of one of my longest and favouritest logs in the history of ever, and my first experience with a game wiki (and just look how pretty it is!). RtN has also led to the prolific Bad Company PSL at Aude, which I'm not really an active part in. We reached 30+ chars, and were then killed by GJ's exodus and dwindling interest on my part. Some minor drama, but at least it gave me experience in booting a player from a game. RtN also marks the most logging I've ever done for one character.
+: Wiki; journal media projects; discussing episodes in chat; some of us even registered email addresses and phone numbers for characters. Madness.
-: Original characters simply did not have as much to do, in comparison to the big name canons. This is something I really regret, and really wish we could have achieved more for them. To work with the Supernatural setting, a serious amount of tweaking is necessary to find a way for everyone to interact properly and for the canons to not steal the spotlight, I think.
Andras: "Tempus fugit."
Dean Winchester: "… Dude, did you just call me a gay tempest?"
Fairly Tales
THOUGHTS COMING SOON.
