Changing Courses in the Alternity-verse....

[gwendolyngrace]

Aliethen asked:
Can you give us a sense of (a few of the) plots which were surprises but worked really well in the end? For example I always had the impression that Terry/Hermione was supposed to be endgame at first but Draco/Hermione ended up evolving organically...was I right? (Was it even known at first that Draco would be in the Order in the end?) Did you always know Harry and Neville would die?


I felt like that sort of thing deserves its own thread, so here. Discuss!

Comments

[gwendolyngrace]

Here's something that surprised the players - though I'm twisting the question a little, so that I can brag about it.

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.

[synecdochic]

I did love getting the teacher end of those!

[ursamajor]

Omigosh, this sounds delightful.

[gwendolyngrace]

It was pretty cool. They actually had to mark off which subjects they wanted to continue in. I even marked up my own PCs'. And then I sent everything back to the Professors' players. (Mind you, we were talking about it on our list, anyway, so it wasn't a surprise who was doing what. But it injected a little realism....)