Something To Look Forward To...

Meh. I didn't post my Friday Favorites post for two reasons. One, I got busy and two, I drew a blank on most of my favorites and said to hell with it.

I do have a couple of things coming up on the horizon. From now until maybe May, when my book release is due, I will be posting some interviews with my characters.

Most of you know that I have, in fact, based lots of my characters on some friends of mine I used to game with . Legends of Cosrin (LoC) is a text based Role Playing Game. A MuD, if you will. It helped me out in lots of different ways.

What ways, you ask?

Well. First of all, I found the game while working for America Online. (That dates me, doesn't it? Lol!) At the time, it cost $2 an hour. Seriously. And lots of people I knew would play for DAYS! But, me being an employee of AOL, I didn't have to pay to play. Some of my co-workers and I would be logged in to the game while waiting for calls to come in to support.

I got hooked from the get go. After leaving AOL, the game became self sufficient, so to speak and was only $5 a month, then free for awhile and well... anyway I digress.

Around that time I was seriously depressed and found solace in my internet friends. Lots of people got addicted to the internet and chat rooms when it first came on the scene. I admit, I was no different. So I spent a good majority of my time playing LoC. Then I got out of it and later on found World of Warcraft... the rest of this part is history.

But one huge way LoC helped me was with my writing. I had to be the character and because the game was text based (words scrolling on the screen at high speeds) you had to type out your emotions, type out different descriptions of what your character was doing, etc. When we nerds got going with our RP's, (Role Plays) there was no stopping us!

Everyone worked together to make the stories come to life on the screen. People would talk in groups about what they wanted to do and lots of people would just wing it.

One memorable RP (Role Play) story included myself and an entire Fighter's Guild.

Let me back up just a bit. At any given time way back in the heyday of the game, there would be around 200 people logged in to the game. So you were usually dealing with a large group of people over the internet and everyone was playing a character and had to be In Character (IC). Out of Character (OOC) had its own chat room and you had to "Step out of character" sometimes to ask questions or explain situations. Most people didn't know what was going to happen next, it was like a constant, unfolding story.

So anyway, the Fighter's Guild (main place for warrior type characters to train) had to be managed by a Guild Master. There were usually 3 assistants to help maintain the guild, help new people, game commands... lots of technical stuff. People were voted in and had to campaign for the spot. One of our GM's (Guild Master) wanted to cause an uprising and the Guild was divided. People who were supposed to be Comrades in Arms began fighting. A civil war of sorts. So my character (Kayta) and several others began to plot.

Muahahaha!

My character and her half sister wormed our way in to the GM's confidence and basically played the Double Agent scenario. Now, when you get a game full of geeks and role players, you get people who are "passionate" about the game. Everyone gets into character and forget reality. We got harassed both in character and out.

Seriously.

But my whole point of this is to point out just how much this game was like an on going story. If you were going to be gone for any length of time, most people would post a story of where there character had gone. Some went on adventures outside of the city, others would leave to take care of "families". All sorts of sub plots were tossed into this mix.

So, do you see where I am going with this? It was writing. It was writing a huge, epic novel of endless possibilities and proportions. Sometimes a player would quit the game and kill off their character. We would hold weddings, funerals and celebrate the births of "children". We fought gods and goddesses, we became heroes and even Legends.

And a lot of the time, we sat in the local inn and worked on our drinking skill.

Oh, and the bar fights were awesome. Hehe!

So when I speak of Cosrin, it is with fond memories and wistfulness. I have several really good friends that have kept in touch even though we no longer play the game. We connected on lots of different levels.

I came up with the idea long ago to start writing about things we did in this game, but then thought... What if i don't do those stories justice? I would hate to tarnish those memories. So I went a different route, created my own world wrapping it around my dear Cosrin. The main city in the game was called Moorgate. My main city in my stories is called Moordigan.

In the time between now and May, I'm going to introduce you to a more in-depth look at my characters. I'll be interviewing them and I will also be "interviewing" several people behind those characters. Because practically each one is based on my fellow geeks and gamers.

Hope this didn't bore you too much and I apologize for the length of the post. Everyone have a great weekend! I'll see you on Monday.