The King's Players - Discussion/Planning Thread

[Mnemosyne]

Boro, thanks for your points. I had been wondering about the likelihood of someone like Branor getting married, but still wanted to punt the idea out there for consideration.

I'll think about it a little bit longer.

In the meantime, I wouldn't mind some input on the timeline for the game: do we want to go "real time" or "half time"? Which do you think your posting ability, and your characters, will be better for the game? (I have no preferences on my end.)

[Pitchwife]

Mnemo has been so generous as to draft an utter RP noob into this troupe (not that it took an awful lot of convincing), so here I am, and help me Eru. Since I'm new to this whole section of the Downs (as a participant, if not as an occasional observer) I hope you'll bear with me if I get confuddled at times.

Mnemo, I've just read your lengthy character bio for Brinn and noticed that, among her other duties as head of the troupe, she's supposed to take care of the prompting. This is quite a pity for me, as I have this character in the back of my skull wanting to be let out - the prompter cum poète manqué, who is convinced he could have done a much better job than the actual playwright (if only he had the stamina to ever get more down on paper than a list of dramatis personae and some disjointed snippets of dialogue) and is constantly fighting the temptation to 'improve' on the script during the performance (possibly succumbing to it at times). Do you think that might be negotiable?

While I'm at it, did Brinn write the play herself, did the troupe write it collectively, or do we have a playwright who's somehow involved in the production? Going with the Shakespearean/Elizabethan model, the playwright would probably be the director of his own play and an actor with a substantial role all at the same time, if I'm not mistaken?

As for theatrical logistics: with 6-8 players, I suppose all of us will have to play double or multiple roles (referring to the play, not the game, I mean)?

As for production style (i.e. Shakespearean, Greek, medieval or whatever): how much anachronism would you be willing to tolerate? Because I've got this mad vision in my brain of the War of the Ring as a Pantomime, complete with cross dressing, slapstick scenes, audience participation and popular song parodies... (Allright, I just notice Mnemo's been there before me (#26). Yes!!!)

Finally, speaking of anachronisms, I move that our mechanical dragon be nicknamed Puff.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

I move that our mechanical dragon be nicknamed Puff.

I vote Trogdor.

[Mnemosyne]

Pitch, go ahead and take over the prompting. I'm thinking that we have one over-worked writer who will have to take all of our information and distill it properly. On the other hand, relegating that to an NPC (no matter who it is) would, I think, be a shame since much of the action will revolve around rewriting. I think that we would all have some input, but ultimately the decisions have to be made by someone or no one will get it done.

Has anyone read, or seen a really good adaptation of, Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens? The title character falls into an acting troupe as an actor-cum-writer, and has to juggle the multiple players requesting that their own favorite bits be inserted (i.e., a tragic character, preserving the Three Unities, etc.). The results can often be hilarious. Anyway, that was what I vaguely had in mind when thinking of what our poor overworked writer would do.

As far as the pantomime: were you thinking the contemporary panto, then, or the early pantomimes in which people actually didn't talk? (Say, you do a comical version in pantomime, a song for intermission, and then the serious spoken play.) I don't think we're limited to one performance, depending on what sort of theatrical era we're imitating. So we're also not limited to one style of theater (drama, melodrama, farce, etc.).

I, too, was thinking that multiple parts could be a necessity, but we can also have more NPC players if we need to fill out more parts on the stage at some point.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Apart from NPCs, it's possible (indeed, probable?) that traveling actors might have multiple roles within their community.

For instance, when not being Shieldmaiden, Therian is likely busy playing Gondorian Soldier #3, or Wedding Celebrant #7. The costume changes can be a bit daunting, but that's what wigs and cloaks are for...

[Anguirel]

NAME: Cirdacil, Lord of Burlach

AGE/GENDER/RACE/WHERE FROM: 88, Male, Man, Minas Anor (but originally Pelargir)

APPEARANCE: Lord Cirdacil is one of the most venerable of King Elessar's counsellors, but certainly not the most dignified. Though he is proud and stern and would certainly contest the point with fierce anger if anyone dared to tell him so, he is no Numenorean hero; his face is coarse and ignoble, his bearing relatively short and stooping. Only his acute mind and active personality at a great age confirms that the blood of Numenor runs in him strongly. Several inches short of six feet, his wears a long white beard and dresses in expensively made, but plain looking robes of black cloth touched with a little gold thread.

BITS OF CHARACTER/HISTORY YOU FEEL MIGHT BE HELPFUL IN DEFINING THE CHARACTER: No one has exactly heard of Lord Cirdacil's family before, which is perhaps one of the reasons he stands upon his honour with great pride. He is, in fact, of solidly mercantile stock. Decades ago in his middle years, he was noticed as a particularly shrewd, as well as sober-minded and trustworthy, merchant by Denethor, the last Ruling Steward. Denethor, whose genius was for war, diplomacy, and strategy, valued the help of a reliable domestic financier; Cirdacil was given the unimportant suburban fief of Burlach in one of the lower circles of Minas Tirith, and admitted to great responsibility in the Steward's treasury, where he worked long and diligently.

By the War of the Ring he was a long established presence among Denethor's highest ministers, long practiced in swelling the Steward's revenue; but becoming overshadowed, like all men of peace who served Denethor, by the overpowering threat of a greater Shadow still.

Since the return of the King he has been honoured and his employment retained, but in fact his power has greatly diminished, as King Elessar has a far more generous attitude to taxation than the old man and often restrains his more ingenious financial initiatives. He is an awkward figure at the optimistic young royal court, though the King is outwardly very kind to him and jokes that he is one of the few royal counsellors he has within two decades of his own age.

The Lord of Burlach acutely disapproves of too much spending on dancing, poetry, song, and especially the stage, but the King always overrules him on this matter too. Famously, he once exclaimed against a royal grant of a pension to a bard who wrote an epic poem in praise of the legendary Queen of the Golden Wood: "What? all this for a song?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Burghley


and his son, Sador:

NAME: Goes by the nickname of Sador in reference to his lameness, apparently by his own choice. This might seem an odd thing to do, but then, you don't know his birth name. His legal title while his father lives is Lord Sador of Burlach, but as a second son, he has few prospects afterwards.

AGE/GENDER/RACE/WHERE FROM: Twenty four year old Man of Gondor, born and bred in the Citadel itself (indeed, born into privilege within the Houses of Healing).

APPEARANCE: Handsome, but in miniature for the men of Gondor; shorter even than his none too impressive looking father, at about five feet seven inches. His bright, intelligent green eyes and long, very pale blond hair, however, are extremely attractive looking - if not at all reminiscent of the blood of Numenor.

BITS OF CHARACTER/HISTORY YOU FEEL MIGHT BE HELPFUL IN DEFINING THE CHARACTER: Sador is the youngest of his four siblings; Ecsichil is in his forties, Aerwen mid thirties (these two are half-siblings from Cirdacil's prior marriage), Circilie twenty-eight. His birth killed his mother, Aerin. His leg failed to grow properly. He is his father's favoured son, easily outstripping his dull elder brother Ecsichil. He is jolly clever and perhaps rather inclined to show this compensation off, but otherwise very courteous. He seems to work very hard, and nobody - his doting father included - is ever quite sure what at.


and his daughter, Aerwen:

NAME: Aerwen, daughter of Aerin, Lady of Burlach

AGE/GENDER/RACE/WHERE FROM: Thirty six year old Woman of Gondor, born in Minas Tirith at her maternal grandfather's house.

APPEARANCE: Tall and stately - both for her family and for a woman - but otherwise not very attractive; a big, beaky nose, lank dark hair never cared for, skin not so much luminous as unhealthily phosphorescent. Always dresses in plain blue frocks.

BITS OF CHARACTER/HISTORY YOU FEEL MIGHT BE HELPFUL IN DEFINING THE CHARACTER: Aerwen is the second and final child of Lord Cirdacil's first wife, Aerin of Minas Tirith. Neither of her parents paid her very much attention until she forced them to do so, by being quite the most studious blue-stocking of her rank in the entire city. With reluctant admiration, Cirdacil made arrangements for the advanced education which has, to the present date, filled her life (or has it?)

But when Aerwen was seven, her mother, never particularly strong, was carried off by plague. To everyone's surprise, Cirdacil married again at once. Though his first wife, married just after his ennoblement, had been born of the city gentry, his second, Eadgyth, was quite different - the daughter of a Rohirric trader. Cirdacil enforced a veneer of respectability to what was obviously an improper situation by changing Eadgyth's name to Aerin, too.

Aerwen loathed her stepmother and the usurper of her mother's name, and wished her nothing but ill. When the second Aerin died in truth, bearing a living but sickly and crippled son, Aerwen could not but feel responsible. Partly because they are 'the clever ones', partly because of her guilt, she is close to Sador as she is not to Ecsichil or Circilie (ever so lovely as Circilie is).

Finally, Aerwen has a secret for which she herself feels bitter contempt. She has not given up hope of marriage, and is frequently subject to the inward pangs of attraction, never yet requited...

[Anguirel]

His dashing young son/son-in-law/nephew who likes players could be called Safilipsidne, or Eddevir, or Robessicse, or Sarfapton, or Pembrocil...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Sidney
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_...Earl_of_Oxford
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_..._Earl_of_Essex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_W...of_Southampton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...rl_of_Pembroke

(plus, some have claimed Lord Eddevir as the true author of the legendarium, obviously (thankyou, Mithalwen-like voice inside head))