100- Mailbag Read-aganza

James [Author] Hey everyone! One hundred posts! I would say it got here quickly but it sure hasn't. One of the hardest things about doing this project in a free-writing format is trying to build up the plot to a point or big event for the 'big numbers' in the way a lot of web media like webcomics do. While I initially debated trying to throw something big and new in here at ol' 100, I felt that the plot really isn't in a place where a big event would come up.
Joe: [OOC] So you blew your load with the gay super-villain eh?
James: [Author] He's not gay, just camp. There's a difference. Anyhow, I tried to think of something else to do for 100 and I decided to go with the other great fallback of serial authorship.
Soo: [OOC] Spontaneous love confessions?
Ian: [OOC] Stealing a joke from Penny Arcade?
Kyle: [OOC] I poorly thought-out plot arc about a miscarriage?
Joe: [OOC] Have Kyle make a round-about reference to CAD years after that meme ran its course to seem hipster-cool?
James: [Author] I was more thinking of a mailbag event. Now, I'm fairly sure I've never failed to reply to an email about the project and a lot of the emails I've gotten have been similar, so I'm just going to paraphrase it all. Go for it!
Soo: [OOC] Okay, this question comes from Godlonging. The honorable Mr. God wants to know why there isn't more combat in the series. It is an RPG group after all.
James: [Author] Well, to put it simply, I find writing combat to be a chore. Most of the combat scenes, when I look back on them, drag out well past their welcome and I usually start to run short on material to make fun of. I start every post without a plan for where its going and kind of let the 'characters do the talking' to progress the story. In combat there's less of that and I often find myself struggling to make my already-minimal word count requirements. In general I'm planning on keeping combat to encounters with single, large foes in order to keep the writing moving without too many turns slowing things down.
Dane:[GM] This one is going to involve me. A couple of people have asked if one of the characters is supposed to be the author and which one it is.
James: [Author] Originally, Dane was supposed to be kind of a stand-in for myself. However, over time, I wanted to give him more personality and I'm a pretty boring person, so I decided to stop bothering with it. The other characters were originally stand-ins for the members of my regular gaming group (in fact, all the player names are just the middle names of the group and they contributed to the early writing), but again as time went on everyone kind of became their own thing. It's easier and more fun to write exaggerated characters.
Ian: [OOC] This question has only come up once, but it's an interesting one: if each character had a theme song, what would it be? It doesn't have to have lyrics about them, but the vibe from the song is what matters.
James: [Author] As much as I hate to show my gaming roots, I feel like most of them would be video game music (probably because I like to use older game music as ambiance when DMing).I think it would work something like this:
Dane would be Kefka's Theme from FF6.
Kyle would be "Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand / Bailey would be the Indiana Jones theme
Soo would be the Twoson theme from Earthbound / Kali would be "Paralyzer" by Finger Eleven
Ian would be "The Egg and I" from Cowboy BeBop / Mari would be "Bloody Marie (aka Vs. The Skullgirl)" from Skullgirls
Joe would be "I Was A Maoist Intellectual" by Momus / GR-210 would be "I Can't Decide" by Scissor Sisters
Soo: [OOC] I think the Twoson theme is too nice. I have plenty of edginess!
James: [Author] I have the spring flu so I'm going to field one more question.
Kyle: [OOC] A couple of people have asked if the game we play is based on any specific game.
James: [Author] Ah an easy one: no. Basically I wanted to avoid basing the project on any real life game because I didn't want to have the storytelling be constrained by the mechanics of any one game. If I had to describe the game, it's really most like Shadowrun, a game I like a lot, but I borrow a lot of elements from other things like White Wolf games and Dresden Files. Basically I just yank ideas that would be fun to use in the story. I'm sure if I ran back and logged every rule in the game, there would be a lot of contradictory information.