Ask Us Anything!

[alt_moderator]

The cast thread is filling up rapidly, and while we don't have to fuss about comment collapse, it is getting difficult to navigate...

So here's a new post, where we're asking YOU to ask US: WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KNOW?

Comments

[stormyhearted]

What is your favorite thing created for Alternity? (Place, spell, item, whatever.)

[lapin_agile]

Himalayan HotWot. Salve for treating frostbite.

[gwendolyngrace]

HotWot!

[reenie]

-Sunrise Cordial (I think I came up with that one, /humblebrag)
-AK, the game
-Various slang from the kids: nift, wiz-nift, snitch
-Pseudonymity (though the concept is totally creepy, I realise, it just seems like one of the immediate ways Polyjuice would be put to use in a dystopia, you know?)
-"Hey, Hey Merlin"
-Pure Hunger

[jenett]

Pure Hunger was so very awesome, and I loved how you ran with it in various ways.

(I think Naomi came up with 'maybe Dominic drugs them' and then you came up with how, and Daphne's "Oh, all the best people put mind-compelling drugs in their party foods.")

[jenett]

The thing I'm most proud of is the wards. (Even while being pretty sure that I have utterly irritated every other player about them somewhere in there.)

They probably deserve a post of their own sometime (and there's a lot more in the wiki) but in two of the three ward layers (the 83 wards and the Octoboroi), we had references to things with them way before we figured out how they worked.

I reverse engineered the stucture of the Octoboroi sometime after we mentioned the emerald stone, and before we mentioned any of the others, in detail. (My email says early September, Y6)

And I had an utter brainwave about how to account for the various effects of the 83 wards (that included the dragons, the locational magic weirdnesses, the notice-me-not, the fact they dropped at the solstices briefly, and the fact that Dover was the sole point of contact with the outer world) and everyone else let me run with it, for which I am very grateful.

(I brought it to the player list in April this year, to give you an idea how recent it was, though I'd been poking at the idea for a month or so at that point.)

[pegkerr]

You should see Jenett's awesome maps!

(And you will, when the wiki is opened).

I had the idea that the wards dropped at Solstice, by the way.

And then we had the consequence of the dark ritual, that they wouldn't drop anymore.

[gwendolyngrace]

It is certainly true that without Jen, the extent of our Wardlore would probably have pretty much been, "...And wards!" /Jazzhands

[queenbookwench.livejournal.com]

I think the YPL/CCF organisation helped us tell a lot of interesting stories.

And, I'm a little biased, but I really liked Tea-Time of the Strange.

[queenbookwench.livejournal.com]

My favorite places were probably Moddey Dhoo and Laszlo's; both of them involved an entire world of world-building around the sanctuary, the Hogwarts book, and the muggleborn baby rescues for Moddey, and Remus & Tonks' cover identity as the Ponds family for Laszlo's.

[pegkerr]

YPL/CCF was a little frustrating for me, because Neville wasn't in it (due to the fact that he had to avoid the boggart for fear of giving away the Order). So I couldn't participate in a lot of that action as the game went on.

[lucky_guess]

That was SO BRILLIANT. Especially as it sprung out of a moment of bullying, and the girls just double downed on it. "Yeah, we're strange. We're so strange we made a CLUB and have AWESOME TEA."

[naomikritzer]

I also really loved the Pure Hunger books.

[lucky_guess]

And the image of like half the school crowded into a classroom, waiting with baited breath for the next thing to happen, bound by the unshakable Kid Code... and Daphne putting on one hell of a performance. *sighs*

[elisem]

TOW ROW ROW always cracks me right up. The song was a fine bit of characterization (it's just the sort of thing Umbridge would like them to sing), but the way the characters started using it was great.

The REAL TRUTH of the kitten plates in all their creepy-backstory glory, and then the un-plating of the kittens and their adoption by everybody. (I am also personally very fond of Megan's fierce bitey cat Fang, and was tremendously touched when Ernie and Fang were sitting together in the graveyard.)

The way Alternity used compulsions is fascinating, with Sunrise Cordial, the charmed pins, funeral flowers, festival refreshments, and so forth, but that's probably a whole topic of its own.

[reenie]

Including Rigel, who is one walking, talking compulsion.

[gwendolyngrace]

I'm not the most "inventive" person. I would drive other players crazy with requests for help coming up with clever Things (spells, items, etc.) and struggle to capture the right feeling for what I was looking for.

But one aspect I'm glad I introduced was Sirius's Apparation sickness. (Though I suppose that's implied by the Knight Bus, but I think there's a stronger implication that people who take the bus *can't* Apparate, rather than *don't*.)

But that and other allergic reactions to things (poor Justin and his Pepper-Up allergy!). I'm a big fan of introducing limitations and the idea that otherwise perfectly normal wizards actually do have sensitivities to conveniences that everyone else thinks nothing of using. Peg applied the same principle to Bill, who can't stand the disorientation / pressure change that goes with traveling by Floo.

[jenett]

I have headcanon that might amuse here: that the Floos are geomantic magic, and Apparition is celestial magic, and you may react strongly to one or the other as a result.

(Siz does not do as badly flooing as Bill, given what Peg's said, but she mentions at one point that she sneezes her head off for 15 minutes when she floos, and she vastly prefers apparition.)

[naomikritzer]

One of the fantastic things about Sirius's Apparation sickness: it explained the (canon) motorbike.

(My teenager comments: "I always thought that was just because motorbikes are COOL." And, well, obviously. But it's neat that in Alternity, it's not just the cool factor.)

[synecdochic]

I had so much fun coming up with all of Tosha's various books, and his bottomless book-trunk was something I came up with to explain how he managed to lug all that stuff around with him for 15 years or so outside the country, collecting as he went, but the minute I came up with it everyone was like OH MY GOD, I WANT ONE.

Generally speaking, any one of a million tiny details the game had about what it would be like living in a wizarding society -- all the tiny references to spells, items, traditions, etc, that were such a logical extension of "Hey! We have magic!" I'm drawing a blank now, of course, but I love that kind of worldbuilding-by-tiny-detail.

EDIT: Oh, and my favorite thing that I came up with out-of-game (that I have to figure out a way to share somehow, the email was epic) was the giant essay of How The Tech World Changed Without The UK, and How Forensic DNA Testing Will & Won't Help Reunite Families. I am kind of a giant alternate history nerd.

[keshwyn]

Please do share, the sysadmin over here wants to see your alternate world, oh yes!

[gwendolyngrace]

Okay, I thought of an answer, though it's not the answer you're expecting.

Back when everyone was taking their OWLs in 5th year, I was creating a spreadsheet with everyone's results and so on.

What I didn't tell them was that I wrote the OWL results letters and I individualized them for each PC (which was at that point MOST of the 5th-year class), as well as did up "teacher" versions of the letters informing them who would be eligible to continue in their lessons the next year.

On a day after these were ready to go, I sent them out to each player's individual email accounts, the letters they would have received, with a little note saying "Owl post for you" or something like that.

I think everyone was pretty surprised.

It wasn't an invention - though I did write up the format and the form letters - but I was really, really happy with my little gift to my fellow players.

[elisem]

Those were SO COOL, and a delightful surprise to find.

[jenett]

Oh! I can't believe I forgot this.

One of our traditions was an email list thread each Christmas with what our characters gave to each other. It got harder toward the end (especially for the people with lots of characters who'd been playing the entire time: this type of creativity is weirdly hard) but they were so much fun, and figuring out the year's faddish gift, also fun.

Rene did a really awesome run of fascinating ones one year (my favourite is Raz giving both Harry and Draco The Duel: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pick-up Wizards with the note "(see Neil Strauss' The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pick-up Artists for comparison). Because he only wishes it had existed when HE was fourteen.")

And D did a large number of really awesome ones, but my favourite remains the one to Umbridge, which read:

"Awful, tooth-grindingly sentimental porcelain figurine of a kitten from one of those "expensive knick-knacks for the truly tasteless" collections, lovingly painted in the most subtly hideous but surface-tasteful way possible, charmed to purr and briefly frolic on your desk. It claims 'randomly'. Dolohov has tweaked the charms until it's actually "whenever you can least stand the interruption". It's also charmed to be unbreakable, un-knock-overable, etc, etc. It is lovingly presented in the Heirloom Keepsake Box with signed Certificate of Authenticity and played absolutely, painstakingly straight without even a whiff of irony."

Full list forthcoming, but that's a nice teaser.

[cheyinka]

That kind of charm (when the awful knick-knack purrs) is one of the things I found most fascinating in Alternity - the little things of magic. (The itchy socks are the other one that comes immediately to mind.)

Because if it were a gift for somebody else, Dolohov could have tweaked the charm so that it purrs whenever the recipient feels sad (which could be creepy if it starts purring while a visitor is waiting for the recipient to come back to their desk, hmmmm...), or to purr whenever someone in the room has hostile intent, but no, of course, it's whenever the interruption will be the least welcome.