One of the people we lost was our paladin healer.

As such, since I like my raid and want to keep raiding, I offered to swap Annorah over to healing (and Yva will be swapping to paladin healing).

To put this into context, the last time I healed anything other than myself while questing, I was running LFD at the end of Wrath with my priest. Which means it’s been more than two years since I healed, closer to FOUR years since I healed as a Shaman (though I may have healed a Naxx run or two, I don’t remember…)

My healer instincts are, hopefully, still around, but I’m pretty sure the skill is gone. Thankfully, shaman healing doesn’t seem too terribly different than it’s been in the past, especially for raid healing, so I’m hoping that transition goes well. (Also, what would we do without EJ? Their resto shaman thread has a “Help! I’m elemental and need to fill in for our missing healer in 5 minutes!” section that was a total lifesaver toward getting me started.)

Also thankfully, my gear is pretty balanced with +Spirit on it (since elemental shamans convert spirit into hit), so other than picking up my 2 piece Tier 12, which I should be able to do with little difficulty running heroics, I’m not in bad shape gear wise. This is primarily why I didn’t switch to Aely – as much as it would mean only one character having to switch, Paladin healing is both a) more difficult and b) would require a /complete/ gear up. Aely’s got about 348 ilevel ret gear, and that’s it.

I feel a little sheepish that I’ve gotten so out of practice, to be honest, but mentally I really needed a break from healing. So now I have until next Thursday to figure out how to push buttons again.

Just keybind everything to chain heal and roll my face on the keyboard, right?

*When TRI splits down into 10 mans, we’re no longer just Totally Raids, Inc. We’re TRI *something*. The Saturday 10 man is TRI Hangover (since they raid in the morning and are, occasionally, hungover). Our raid now runs Thursday evenings – at the same time as the third TRI 10 man raid. Both Thursday raids are working on Ultraxion, which is kind of cool. Anyway, we don’t have a name yet. Because we’re bads and haven’t thought of one. Suggestions are, of course, accepted.

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Form of Healer – ACTIVATE!

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Devilish

So I’ve been playing Annorah (level 85 and running Trollish heroics now) quite a lot more than Aely. Which isn’t a slight against Aely at all, but more that elemental shamaning is awesome. It’s like ShamBLAST. Lava all over. Teuthida would be proud of all the blasting!

(I am considering speccing Aely into Holy again, and trying my hand at healing, for the record. I just… haven’t exactly had the gumption to relearn it all yet. But that’s another post entirely)

Unfortunately Annorah is… difficult… to RP. Back in the early days I wrote a (rather bad) piece of fic from her perspective – the only one I’ve written with her as a main character other than her part in the Bittertongue/Maggie plot last year. Since then, she’s been the epitome of difficult to RP. She’s a farseer, so I have to struggle with how she sees the future, and what kind of future that is that she sees (usually I go with a Galadriel type oracle – “things that are, things that were, and some things that have not yet come to pass”). Also, every time I’ve tried to RP with her, she’s a totally different personality.

Sometimes she’s grumpy or sarcastic, sometimes short tempered, sometimes witty, occasionally drunk. She’s smug on occasion, and other times so painfully shy as to sit and hardly speak for an entire evening. A few people (Gharr and Marty, I think) have mentioned that her personality shifts aren’t exactly out of character for anyone with any ties to the Elemental plane in Azeroth right now, but that doesn’t make it any easier to RP. Especially when I don’t really know which Annorah is going to show up. (Multiple Personality Shaman, FTW?)

And that makes her difficult to interact with. Unpredictable characters are difficult both as the roleplayer and within the roleplay community. There’s something to be said for a character like Aely, who will always be Aely, in the face of pretty much any situation. Even Tarquin, who is always dangerous, and Bricu, who is usually a Bastard, have their levels of continuity. Being predictably unpredictable makes people in real life hard to deal with, and no less so in game.

I also wonder if I just don’t GET the character yet. Multiple folks have told me that Draenei are just hard to play, and what about “reskinning” her as a Dwarf? But she’s NOT a Dwarf. That much I know. She’s got a history, and she’s a strong willed sort of Draenei shaman, with a bit of a vindictive streak and a serious crush on Nobundo. And mood swings, apparently.

Perhaps she’ll be more revealing during the upcoming raid events (I’ll hopefully be rejoining a TRI-esque 10 man on Monday nights) when we really get to start attacking the big bads of this expansion.

I know how much a raid instance and interaction with the forces that change the world can change a character. Arthas and the Scourge DEFINED Aely for most of Wrath, and she’s still finding her feet in the new world, but that kind of confusion is AS a character, not ABOUT her character, if that makes any sense?]

Anyway, I’ll let you know how it shapes up. Maybe just forcing her into RP situations will help, but my willingness to do un-fun RP is… uh… limited. I’d rather not have my “raiding” character and my “roleplay” characters split up, as I’ve always done both, so hopefully things will sort out as I do more shamaning.

If nothing else, I can still cast frostshock? Totems totems totems?

Anyone?

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Integrating Character and (role)Playability

Why?

Annorah is a Farseer - a Shaman trained in the art of scrying and divination, of speaking directly with the Elements and using that connection not only to see the past and the present, but to look into the future. Her combat skills are weak, but her ties to the Elements are incredibly strong.

Which means, basically, that every time I RP her in that function, whether it be in a simple parlor “fortunetelling” trick or in a serious scrying attempt (as was done on Sunday for Bricu and Threnn), I have in my hands the ability to “god mod” and ruin other people’s stories. Giving Annorah the ability to see the future, as well as see (even remotely) anything going on in the past or present, gives her the opportunity to be incredibly powerful. But it also makes her really fun – and an unusual plot element or ability.

So how do I keep that in check, and make sure that I don’t accidentally squash someone else’s long-planned story?

First, I make sure that her powers are limited: by her own knowledge, ability to understand what the Elements show or tell her, the time she has, and the amount of preparation she puts into a Seeing. A quick scrying in a black bowl of water with a candle flame won’t yeild the same kind of complete responses that a fully prepared Spirit Walk would. I also allow for the Elements to say no, to speak in cryptic riddles, or to simply be unable to see something at a certain time.

By placing limits on the character and her oracle, I actually make her interactions more fun as well as more controlled. If she were able to simply stare into a candle flame and see anything and everything anyone wanted to know… she’d be kind of boring.

Those limits are not just something I place on myself though, which leads to the real way that this kind of a character actually works within a group.

(This answer won’t surprise many long-time readers of my blog.)

Communication.

The entire time that Annorah was scrying for Bricu and Threnn, I was in whispers making sure that she was only “able” to see the things that Bricu and Threnn were OK with having turn up at that point in their story. Bricu gave me an excellent framework, and I worked within it to make a meaningful interaction that left all of the characters with something to think about. (The lack of closure actually spurred on some other writing with Annorah, who is now one step more involved – but still very much on the periphery – because of her skills and training.)

Annorah actually did three scryings on Sunday evening – Bricu and Threnn’s, one for Arrens, and one for Ulthanon. Each involved at least a quick “tell me what you want her to see, and whether you want her to be direct about it” kind of conversation, others involved more planning. Arrens actually gave me the thumbs-up to do a little creative “seeing” for Arrens just to freak him out.

By keeping that line of OOC communication open, I keep the story progressing as the person writing it would like, while still having the creative (and very fun) element of scrying and far-seeing. The word of another character is final in these situations as well. Obviously there’s room for a conversation about what would or wouldn’t be see-able, but when someone says “I don’t want her to see more than XYZ yet, my character/the story isn’t ready for more”, that’s where Annorah stops – either because she gets tired, or something clouds her vision, or the candle gets blown out by a draft.

OOC communication makes the character “usable” – and makes it so that other people are curious and want to see what she might “See” for them.

Obviously most of this is character specific. Annorah’s particular flavor of “powerful” is relatively easily tempered by making sure that other players know what’s going on. But the same goes for other character interactions that contain power. Fight scenes, warlock summonings, anything having to do with powerful magic is best at least loosely worked out with other players. That way everyone involved can have fun and know that they still retain the ultimate decisions about their own character.

RPing is not about anyone else doing anything they want to your character and you being forced to respond to it. (That’s pretty unfair actually, because then you don’t get to decide, for instance, if your character gets their nose broken or – in extreme cases – is killed)

Communication, especially in situations where there is an exchange of power, is vital to allowing everyone to have fun with the RP.

Oh and PS: If you’re on Feathermoon and see Annorah around, don’t be afraid to ask her stuff. Though be warned, she lives with one foot in the Elemental world most of the time, so she can be a little bit strange…

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RPing Potentially Powerful Character Concepts

She was my raiding main in Burning Crusade, and I did a lot of RP with her while she was leveling, but once she hit 80, a lot of that trickled off due to attrition – most of the people she’d associated with while leveling rolled new alts or straight up quit playing for one reason or another. After Aelflaed hit 80 and I started RPing more with her – which led to joining the Wildfire Riders and her becoming my new main – my poor shaman, on whom I’d spent so much time and energy, got pushed aside, since she didn’t have a voice or a connection to the new RP group that I was playing with.

Which doesn’t, of course, mean I wasn’t interested in RPing with her. I’d just lost her voice, after losing the connections that she had to other people.

And that made me sad.

Unlike other characters that I’ve “lost” in the past, I really /like/ Annorah: I like her personality and her RP, I like her backstory. I like her being Draenei (as much as I’d love a Dwarf shaman).

Rather than letting her go into the character graveyard in favor of a new and different shaman, I decided I wanted to take a shot at bringing her back and finding her again.

So I started asking around. I knew I wanted to make the connection again, but I also knew just marching her into the Pig and Whistle wasn’t likely to magically work any better than with any other random new character would right now – the Riders are in the midst of a very dark bit of story, and forging a new relationship without a “connector” would be hard. In a sense, it would be like completely starting over, even with the same people I already knew OOCly.(Starting completely from scratch with a brand new group where you don’t have any connections already made is MUCH more difficult… but I’ll save that subject for a different post.)

Since I wanted to introduce Annorah peripherally and “logically” within a story, I started the following process to bring her into the fold slowly and without an awkward “first meeting.”

Step 1 was to make sure people knew about her or remembered her from TRI days in Burning Crusade. ICly, anyone that had done any raiding with TRI before Lich King would have seen Annorah around and remembered her for her healing, but I wanted to reforge that connection outside of a “battle” environment. I talked with various people OOCly about who she was and what she did (more on that in a later post). I made sure that a few people I trusted knew that I wanted to bring her back around. (This process started… months ago really, it’s not been a quick or easy thing.)

Step 2 was to be patient and work on finding a place that she would fit in. I kept her in my mind, and would occasionally bring her up, and in the end it was Arrens that made the initial connection for me. He had need of a Shaman who was accustomed to speaking directly with the elements, so he asked Aely if she knew anyone who might be able to help.

I took the connection from there (since both Aely and Annorah were part of TRI during Burning Crusade), having a little memory jog where Aely would suggest that Arrens spoke to Annorah. (Lots of A-names!)

Step 3, of course, was to follow through and make time for the RP to happen. Once that link was made, bringing Annorah around for RP was MUCH easier, since she had an explicit reason to be there. Even though I’m essentially using her as a plot device right now, she’s making connections to other people. Last night she spoke not only with Arrens, but also with Bricu and Threnn, as well as with Ulthanon and Pitchblack.

She’s certainly not part of the social circle in any way yet, but she’s done a favor for the Bittertongues, used her skills for several people, and gotten free drinks at the Pig and Whistle out of it. In the future, the Riders now have a connection to a Farseer should they need one, and Annorah’s got a little tiny thread of connection to the people I’d like to see her RPing with more.

It’s a small first step, but it’s a first step nonetheless. I really hope that it leads to more RP in the future!

I’ll talk tomorrow about exactly who Annorah is and how that connection was made, as well as a bit about roleplaying successfully with a character that has the potential to stray into godmodding territory very easily. See you then!

(And yes, to anyone following the various signatures that show up on these posts, this is the first time since I’ve been using them that Annorah’s has been visible on the blog. Yay!)

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Introducing a new/old character: Annorah