[Belin]

I won a prize! [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] Thank you, Amanaduial; I'm very glad you enjoyed reading my sillier moments.

I had a nice time as well. First of all, I very much appreciate the very fact that people went to the trouble to set this up, and the work of the mentors, as well as the work of all non-mentors who signed up and were willing to subject themselves to a learning process. I like the idea of learning to play by playing, and I like the mentorship idea as well. In fact, the main thing I would like to suggest is more interaction between players and mentors. Maybe all the mentorees should be required to immediately post what they see as their strengths and weaknesses in the smaller discussion threads, and that should be worked at throughout. Maybe they should continue to post questions every couple of posts, with the mentors adding things for them to look at. Maybe all the mentorees could work with each other as well, since we probably all have different strengths and weaknesses, and RPGing is a group activity. I realize that many of these are thing I could have worked on and that I'm in large part criticizing myself here, but communication is something that should be addressed. For samples of questions, see my (much too late) post in the Rivendell discussion.

Next time I think I'll have a lot more posts as well. I've come to realize that my idea of posting often is not the same as other people's, and I was often thought to have disappeared when really I was just thinking.

Bigger teams is probably a good idea, and the game was just massive, yes. The time limit.. I'm not sure if more time or less would have been better. I did feel the pressure of the time limit, but then again, that's part of what caused me to post so much.

The most important thing I've learned from this: Get out of town. And that's valuable. I also learned quite a bit about collaboration from working with *Varda*--there was a lot of talk between us toward the end.

And one more thing before I stop babbling: It was an interesting experience to play a canon character. That's something that I'd always felt insecure about to some extent, and though I never felt really comfortable with Elladan, I think I did get to the point of manipulating him better than I'd expected to. So that was a challenge that was good for me, much like Varda's and Aylwen's work as dwarves.

So in some ways I learned most where the game seemed to fail.

--Belin Ibaimendi