Some general information regarding The Saga of the Stars: Arden's Blessing

This role-play was started on

Thursday, July 14, 2005

This role-play was finished on

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

    I had some fun with this one. While it wasn't particularly fresh or unpredictable, the characters were diverse and interesting. And while there were a few.... *cough* disagreements between myself and other members, I think it turned out pretty well. Oh, and Ricky? Motive for the villain.... think one up for next time.

    Thalzon was the second person to join Arden's Blessing. He wrote 18.51% of the story, doing so in forty-three posts. He now goes by the username Corey.

    The Saga of the Stars: Arden's Blessing is an important milestone for me as an RPer: it's the first serious adventure RP I've been in that has gone all the way. For this, I am very proud to be a part of it. 
    Arden's Blessing allowed me to take my primary character, Matthias Kinnear Lawrence, and take his story in a very different direction. Rather than be friendly and affable, he was secluded and pessimistic. Ultimately, it was still a father-son story, which I'm glad I was able to do. 
    AB, as I came to call the RP, had some surprises, in the form of Mala. How was I to know that the other RPers would want a love to blossom between Matthias and her? That branch caused Neri and I no end of frustration, but now that it's done, I can say it provided for some very good moments. 
    I love the cast of AB, so many characters added their own personalities and motivations to the story. Emily was a little slow to develop, but by the end of the RP, you couldn't see anyone else being the main character, just like the party slowly came to accept her as their leader. 
    And oh, that villain, Nova. That first fight with him remains my favorite fight of the RP and my favorite fight in an RP for a while. And it wasn't even one the heroes won. 
    Arden's Blessing indeed holds a special place in my RP career: its great cast, powerful villain, wonderful setting, and all together feeling of adventure makes it an instant classic. 
I'm so very glad to have been a part of it, and glad that I was allowed to go off on half of the tangents I did.

    Matthias was the twelfth person to join the RP. He wrote 14.28% of the story, doing so in forty-nine posts.

    There's always a chance you'll learn something when you take up the task of directing an RP, and I feel I've learned something every time I've done it. This time, I learned that, while it is more interesting to avoid the standard join-the-group-right-off-the-bat-for-no-apparent-good-reason approach, if it takes longer than two weeks for the group to form, you've got a potential problem. As it turned out, it took us nearly two months to get the entire group formed (I ended up "quick-jumping" everybody to the meeting spot), and, because of this, a lot of time that could have gone to the actual plot was lost. Because the RP was taking too long- it is becoming an established fact that RPs cannot take longer than six months without experiencing major problems- I actually had to cut out some events concerning Nova, which kinda lessened the effect he had as the final boss and as a villain in general, but thanks to input from everybody else, it still worked out very well. My favorite parts of the RP are definitely the battles we had with Nova- everybody had great ideas for making those battles better than I anticipated. In the end, I really enjoyed this RP, and I'm happy with how it turned out.

    Ricky started Arden's Blessing, and was thus the first person to join. He wrote 13.63% of the story, doing so in thirty posts.

    Hmm... What do I say on it? Again I tried creating a character on the spot, Mala, based off of a drawing I'd found on DeviantArt. I don't feel I unlocked what I could have, but I am happy with how Mala turned out in the end, even after the rough ride. *pokes Thalzon out a window* I feel the RP sorta fell short in terms of character development though, as there was a pretty good number of characters who seemed like they were just sorta along for the ride. The fact that some people dropped out of the RP probably didn't help this though. But all-in-all, it was still a good RP. Got to work alongside Matthias a lot, tried to make a divine intervention that wasn't too divine, and got to mess around in the end a bit. And uhh... Yeah. Not so great at commenting.

    NerikuroShino was the eleventh person to join the RP. He wrote 12.61% of the story, doing so in twenty-one posts. His username now has a space in it.

    catfriedrice was unavailable for comment. He was the eighth person to join Arden's Blessing, and wrote 6.37% of the story, doing so in twenty-two posts.

    One thing that stood out in this RP was the uniqueness. Instead of mana gradually disappearing, it was just the opposite. There was also a wide variety of characters, and a great deal of them had never seen combat at all before. Although it slowed down tremendously in the middle, it picked up again after some new direction was given.

    Elec was the third person to join Arden's Blessing. She wrote 5.91% of the story, doing so in forty-eight posts.

    Lagi was unavailable for comment. He was the tenth person to join the RP, and wrote 5.15% of the story, doing so in sixteen posts before disappearing.

    Arden's Blessing was the second successful RP I have participated in. That said, I enjoyed the plot, and the characters. In retrospect, I am fairly certain it was less problematic than it seemed at the time. My character was a reflection of myself as a musician, so I had fun RPing as him. I actually was scared to post for a while, lending to my low post count, but I enjoyed my "Lee-spotlight" posts as they (usually) added something interesting. I was a tad shaky with Lee because he was practically useless for combat in my mind, but somehow he managed to find his niche in the story at the end. I give kudos to Neri and Matthias for their little side plot. I hope that The Saga of the Stars continues, as most of them have been successful (except for Curse of Zhendor, but no one thinks about that one!) Congrats to Ricky AGAIN! WOOT!

    Cyril was the fifth person to join Arden's Blessing. He wrote 3.87% of the story, doing so in twenty-six posts.

    Arden's Blessing was definitely an interesting RP to be in, even though Damian didn't really mix with the other characters very well. It was worth being in though, and the Nova battles were amazing.

    Trilroy was the seventh person to join the RP. He wrote 3.68% of the story, doing so in twenty-four posts.

    Well... It was a good, if a little slow, ride. Not really much more to say about it. 
Or wait, one more thing: You know the old light-kicks-the-arse-of-darkness-gimmick? It's getting old. Seriously. Killing the bad guy is a necessary evil, I'd guess, but does it have to include holy light burning the rubbish out of him?! ... No offense.

    Maniacal Gruntling was the fourteenth person to join Arden's Blessing. He wrote 3.31% of the story, doing so in fifteen posts. He now goes by the shortened username MG.

    Wow, we're done. Already. [/sarcasm] Although I really shouldn't be talking, since Void of Illusions 2 went on even LONGER. And I was kicked out of it. Meh. Arden's Blessing was... enjoyable... with a non-Nick and a non-Shadow character. Yay,  me? Anyway, back on topic. I felt honored a bit to be accepted in this RP, and it has improved my skills quite a bit.....if any at all. Meh. So, yeah. Great RP. Fun, maybe. Cool, ask the public, and yeah, that's all I can come up with. kthxby.

    Nick was the thirteenth person to join the RP. He wrote 2.65% of the story, doing so in sixteen posts.

    Kayorei was unavailable for comment. She was the ninth person to join Arden's Blessing, and wrote 1.82% of the story, doing so in seven posts.

    I wasn't around the whole time, but I had a lot of fun participating in this RP. The cast of RPers was one of the best that I've seen, and the story was just as good. Hopefully the next Saga of the Stars will be as interesting as Arden's Blessing.

    Ace was the fifteenth, and last, person to join the RP. He wrote 1.33% of the story, doing so in five posts.

Name

    This RP seemed to take a long time to get going. Over eight pages were spent trying to get everyone together and then figuring out where the party was supposed to go from there. 
    Once it finally got started and they all officially set off on their quest to stop Nova, Arden's Blessing finally got interesting. A good number of characters had their own story, as well as specific enemies/rivals and sub-plots. Unfortunately, the convolution of those first eight pages made many of these sub-plots very confusing later on. Nova's character became strong thanks to the contribution/control of several other RPers, especially Thalzon. And that first battle with him was pretty cool. 
    The last few pages got pretty intense, even while things erupted backstage. All in all, a very strong ending for a somewhat stretched RP.

    Armageddan now goes by the username Trauma Advocate.

March 21,

 2006