The king of Arkharis, the Land of Dragons, is a capricious man. Having no heirs,
he decided his successor would be chosen among the most infamous heroes of
the kingdom. He challenged two heroes to prove themselves worthy of the crown
by riding two dragons of a different kind above the castle… The first one to
succeed will be chosen the next ruler of Arkharis!
Game elements:
Board
2 hero pieces
3 decks of cards – green, red and gray
See the PDF: Dragons of Arkharis
—
Carol and Joel
Isa, Jonathan, and Kenny.
Teaser Trailer
Background
The year is 1235 PD (post-dragonism). You’re a young dragon master tasked with getting newborn dragons ready for battle. You’ve come from a small, rural town from the West, and you’ve just be thrown into the big leagues. You’re the underdog, but you’ve got grit, and you’re going to make it. Welcome to Dragon Flight.
For your first task, you’ve been allowed to choose five new dragons. Right now, they are just eggs, so you won’t be able to tell them apart. However they will soon become great warriors. Your job is to turn your dragon eggs into fighters before anyone else does.
Each dragon will come from one of four tribes: earth, fire, wind, and water. Earth dragons have a great understanding of their terrain. They use the ground to their advantage: knowing how to hide, traveling quickly, and manipulating soil. Fire dragons use heat to their advantage. They can wield fire to defend and attack. Wind dragons are the fastest. Flying through the air faster than the rest, they don’t like to stay on the ground for long. Water dragons can fly in water. Also known as swimming, these dragons have the advantage of traveling below the surface (as long as that surface is liquid). Wind and fire dragons work well together. Earth and water are friendly as well. However, fire and water don’t mix. Earth stays still and wind is ever changing – don’t let them combine!
Objective
Be the first to teach your dragon to fly!
Included Pieces
Setup
First, place the board on a flat surface. Distribute 5 eggs to each of the 2 to 4 players, randomly (either from a bad or with all eggs face down on the table). Once you have your eggs, add your color marker to your egg so you know whose eggs are whose! The board has a starting location for each color, and that is where your dragons will begin their journey.
Gameplay
The game is turned based. Each player takes a turn in order (youngest player goes first). Two(2) actions are allowed to be performed per turn. See possible actions below. The game is over when the first player successfully flies all 5 of their dragons out of their nests.
Element Interactions
Dragons born of different elements have different powers. Similar to rock paper scissors, a fire dragon might be extinguished by a water dragon when coming in contact. The chart below settles the score.
Actions
Flick
Just like in shuffleboard, curling, or table football, you need to flick your dragon eggs into their nests. For a flick to be official, the finger and thumb need to be together at the start.
How to Fly
Before your dragons can fly, they need to hatch from their eggs. Hatching requires an entire round, so you can not fly a dragon in the same turn as landing in the nest. Remember, dragon nests are not a safe place, so you don’t want to be there too long, you might just get knocked off the nest.
The mechanics of flying are fun, but be careful. When you try flying, you need to place your dragon on a certified dragon launch pad (aka: fork). Then launch your dragon into the air and for a flight to be successful, you need to catch the dragon in flight, the only way to properly harness a dragon.
Consequences
If a dragon is knocked off of the board or comes in contact with a dragon that defeats it, the dragon egg returns to your initial pile to join the battle field on your next turn.
Winning
The first player to hatch all of their dragons and successfully harness them in flight wins!!
Good luck, young Dragon Master!
(some of the images below at GIFs, which don’t seem to play unless you click on them).
Hatch Raise Train
THE GAME
Colin McDonnell, Robyn Lesh, Kyrie Caldwell
A bright dawn breaks, and the shadows cast by great, leathery wings above cross your path. You breathe quickly in the frosty morning air, a grin crawling across your face. Today you have received your dragon egg. Today you will embark upon your tasks as dragon hatcher, raiser, trainer, master. Today is the day, and it feels like no other.
Your neighbors too clutch their new eggs. It is a point of pride that you will train your dragon to flight and fullest before others train theirs. With coins in your pocket and more than a bit of luck, your pride will be your family’s as well when your dragon takes to the skies, where it truly belongs. Your excited grin morphs into a mischievous smirk. You can already imagine the set of your neighbors’ jaws when they see your dragon in its triumph.
It is time, it would seem, to begin.
Materials
1+ 6-sided die
75-square grid (the board), divided into 3 sections of 25 squares each
HRT item cards
HRT event cards
character pieces
money pieces or chips
How to Play
Phases
Every young trainer is racing to be the first to fly their dragon. There are three steps that must be completed before it is possible to fly a dragon: Hatching, Raising, and Training, representing 3 phases in the dragon’s life. Each player must move 25 steps forward to complete each phase.
Turn Structure
Each turn consists of three parts: the “money roll”, a “purchasing phase”, and the “progress roll”.
Items
Items cost $3 each. Once purchased, the player draws an item from the item deck. Each item has an effect, which is a number between -4 and +4, which can be used to augment one’s own progress roll or to subtract from another player’s roll. Items must be used after the progress roll of the person to whom they are applied. Up to three items can be held by a player at one time in their “inventory”.
Multipliers
Multipliers cost more than items ($6 for 2x and $9 for 3x), and can be used to multiply a user’s progress roll by some factor. Up to three multipliers can be held by a player at one time. Multipliers must be played before the progress roll of the person to whom they are applied.
Differences between phases
The game accelerates over time as the dragon grows in size and intelligence.
Endgame
The game ends when a person gets through all three phases (all 75 squares on the board) and finally flies their dragon!
Attribute Distribution – Character 1 (Aira)
16 – Wisdom
6 – Strength
11 – Intelligence
9 – Constitution
14 – Dexterity
12 – Charisma
This character reflects a surprising number of the things I value and is reasonably similar to me. (Though comparatively very low in strength and constitution) I’ll try a more foreign combination of attributes for my second set. This first character would be light, nimble and the ability to read people. My guess from the attributes is that the character would be a girl and potentially stuck being comparatively physically weak due to difficult circumstances earlier in her life.
Aira is a small girl, dark in coloring with unusually light hair. Some might see her as weak and vulnerable but that is what Aira wants you to believe. In reality she has an incredible ability to dodge, sneak and hide her way out of almost any difficult situation. Aira somehow can get along with almost anyone, learn from them and use what she learns to benefit not only herself but whatever she is trying to achieve. Probably due to her natural people skills and wisdom, Aira can portray herself as any of a handful of personas. Meshing each to benefit herself most in any given situation.
Attribute Distribution – Character 2 (Aveta)
16 – Constitution
6 – Charisma
11 – Strength
9 – Dexterity
14 – Intelligence
12 – Wisdom
Aveta is Aira’s pair. Aveta is either quiet and aloof or crass & jarring depending on the day. Many people don’t get along with Aveta but Aveta and Aira are an excellent match and Aveta knows it. Aveta is medium sized. Not as small as Aira but certainly not a towering giant. Despite her medium build Aveta is quite strong and in any comfortable environment will tell you so with little reserve. Though strong and clever Aveta severely lacks the people skills to get along with almost anyone without Aira’s guidance.
Aira’s background
Aira grew up a monk but that doesn’t mean her life was easy in the slightest. Eleven Monks in Aira’s region were on the very edge of society (figuratively and functionally). While almost all the other Elves moved away to easier surroundings when Aira was very young or before she was born, Aira’s family stayed. Aira and her parents lived on the very edge of the woods and struggled to have enough food (usually unsuccessfully) as well as train and practice as monks. Her parents were as kind as they could be but their lives were very hard. Her parents taught her the importance of learning exactly what it is that you most need and striving your upmost to get exactly that. Probably because of this Aira gained an amazing drive and desire to succeed. She learned that her mind and skills with people where more than just niceties, she learned that she could use her ability to read people to learn from them and her wits to use this knowledge to gain her ends.
Aira was never strong, probably partly due to lack of nutrition in her upbringing, but instead of letting her relative weakness impede her she uses it to her advantage by using it to leverage the power of her various guises.
Class Distribution – Character 1 (Aira) [oops, and Character 2 (Aveta)]
Aira is a Ranger. Or that’s what she is now anyways. Aira grew up a Monk and she learned many valuable lessons about grace, perfection and the power of the mind and body however despite Aira’s small size and amenable attitude Aira wants to DO things with her life. When Aira was young she began exploring and before long met the right people and finagled her way onto a Ranger expedition. Surprisingly to the doubtful mission leads Aira saved the expedition in two near crisis moments and since then Rangering has seemed to fulfill exactly what Aira wants. She can use her abilities and have adventures while doing good.
Aira was happy being a ranger and very good at it (utilizing her unusual people skills in unique situations) but she always felt limited by the possibility that her mission-mates might not believe her and she potentially wouldn’t have the ability to succeed if she was unable to solicit their support.
A few years ago, Aira found a perfect solution. Aira and her band at the time ran into a group of Rogues including a half-ling called Aveta. Aveta and her band were the enemy, a Rogue band stealing from an innocent group of oafs. However Aira and Aveta were thrown together as general unwilling comrades when it turned out that the oafs were not innocent, at all.
After initial tense feelings between Aira and Aveta, Aira realized that she like most other people around Aveta had initially reacted to Aveta’s tense, terse exterior. To cut a long story short Aira & Aveta warmed up to each other and Aira convinced Aveta to join her in being a Ranger. To give up the darkness of Rouge-hood and strive for good causes, while not needing to surrender any of the excitement and intrigue of exploration.
Aira’s Ethical Alignment
Aira is certainly Neutral-Lawful/Good. She was brought up to do the right thing and wants adventure but also wants to do good.
Aveta is rather less rigorous by nature and tends more towards Neutral/Neutral-Chaotic. She is however is not evil in the slightest but rather more of a mischief maker/rouge mentality by default.
Ethical Alignment examples
| Ethical\Moral | Lawful | Neutral | Chaotic |
| Good | Gandhi | Robin Hood | |
| Neutral | Hypothetically Congress | Taylor Swift | |
| Evil | Witch in Snow White | Cinderella Step Mother | Richard Nixon |
More Characters
Random Character #1
Strength – 12
Dexterity – 11
Constitution – 8
Intelligence – 11 (+ 2 from Gnome)
Wisdom – 13
Charisma – 10
Gnome
Candidate Names: Ellywick Daergel or Roywin Turen
Class: Wizard or Druid (Going with Druid)
Roywin grew up living in the carved out base of a tree (not sure if this is normal for Gnomes but this is where Roywin grew up) He loved running around bouncing off trees. Like most gnomes Roywin has lots of energy but he is also curious. He saw solemn Druids and decided that he wanted to change that. Not change all Druids of course but he wanted to be a different Druid. So he jumped at the task. Consequently, Roywin is one of the bounciest most energetic Druids you will ever meet. Don’t let that fool you though, he’s a fabulous Druid!
Instead of the character seeming to form from its self, the book method had me choose my character’s race then was given the characteristics of a good gnome. Now its my job to come up with a character that fits into the Gnome, Druid box with the right characteristics. (If I knew more about the common stereotypes of D&D characters this character would likely have turned out quite normal) It is possibly easier to play with a more formulaic character but I feel like my character has been formed around what it does but it seems less creative and I am far less attached to him at the moment.
Famous Character Attributes
Genghis Khan
Strength – 10
Dexterity – 7
Constitution – 6
Intelligence – 12
Wisdom – 14
Charisma – 16
Genghis would likely be a Barbarian. And racially (in terms of his type of world domination and tyrannical ruling) Genghis approaches a half-ork. Stereotypically his alignment would be Chaotic/Evil.
Lady Gaga
Strength – 8
Dexterity – 13
Constitution – 10
Intelligence – 8
Wisdom – 6
Charisma – 16
Gaga would be some sort of Rogue-Bard and a flamboyant Dragonborn. Her alignment would be somewhere around Chaotic/Neutral.
Trick ++ Documentation:
My trick ++ was an attempt to recreate the ambient and the a dark magic presentation.
For that, I went through some dark ambient music and Black Ambient Metal and found this really cool website / facebook page called Cryo Chamber. Their stuff is mostly paid, but as a student work I think you can find some more free stuff if you dig deep into it.
For imaging, I searched for some woodcuts as there it was the main use for visual registration from the XIV, XV and XVI centuries by european civilization. There is also some old photographic registration of shamanic rituals over central-africa and southern-america that I believed would create a higher sense of empathy and reality to the presentation.
Main question:
How could I enhance the storytelling on a magic trick by placing the audience in another actual place. Considering the history of magic, I tried to pull the sort of ambient that instead of amusing people with fun and laughs like they do on circus, to actually create a bothering atmosphere, an uncomfortable space that would take people out of their edges.
For that, I used the “dark magic ”concept, mainly extracted from the movie sent as For Fun example “Queen Elizabeth’s Magician” on youtube.
The video:
How it was made:
1) From the following link: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Glow-in-the-Dark-Fluid I created this really simple glow in the dark ink and put it on an ink pen.
2) I searched on the web for both pagan symbols (vikins, celtics, wicca…) and demonic sages, painted them in a paper and put them on the wall before the other students entered the classroom.
3) I bought a blacklight lamp and put it on the center of the table, with a trigger that I gave to my colleague to hold and gave her that “combination” when she would pull it and the light at the center of the room would light up.
4) I played the video and started talking about the obscurities of dark magic, while the macabre music played in the back, creating the mood. Then I started questioning why should we turn away from the darkness within each one of us, instead of embracing it and if it was so bad, why would people search for it over and over through centuries.
5) When the video stop, I asked for everyone to focus deeply into an obscure memory that you secretly enjoyed and could not tell anyone, the dark little secret that made you less and more human.
6) At that time I look front and my friend releases the trigger, making the light in the center glow and revealing (or at least that’s what I intended to do) the paintings on my hands and walls.
7) I thank the presence and effort of the audience and finish my trick.
Why it didn’t work:
I had some success on creating the mood, but failed deeply in actually coming to a climax. The trick was made in a very short time, on my own fault because I did it in the last minute (wasn’t able to actually pick one idea and work with it).
So in that matter, I would strongly suggest to focus on the narrative and as part of it, how you’re gonna reach and present the climax. It can’t be predictable or just simple like I did, must be overwhelming somehow.
Note: this assignment will provide you with a series of writing prompts as it goes. Please, combine all of those into a blog post and post it here on the blog when you’re done. If you’re confused about any of the steps here, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Have fun!
“You are sitting in a tavern. You look down and see a D&D homework assignment on the table…”
In this assignment you’re going to learn about how role playing games depict characters and events in magical worlds using numbers. You’re going to conduct a series of exercises meant to give you a sense for how these kinds of games use numbers to make the fantasy they depict feel real for the player. Specifically, you’re going to roll a few D&D characters.
If you’ve never played D&D (or any other role playing game) before that’s no problem. This assignment will walk you through everything you need to do. If you’ve played D&D before, that’s great. Still go through these exercises while thinking specifically about how the game is depicting the story world using its numerical systems.
First, though, let’s start by reading this short description of play from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition.
Notice how play chiefly proceeds in the form of an interactive story. The DM sets the scene, the players make choices, and the DM figures out how those choices affect the world and what the outcomes are. Sometimes in the process of doing this the DM checks various “scores” belonging to the players’ characters or rolls dice.
Question: How would you characterize the moments in this account in which stats are referenced or dice are rolled? What is happening in these moments? How do they differ from the rest of the account? How do they differ from each other (that is, how are the stats lookups different from the dice rolls)?
The dice are rolled and the stats are referenced when there is a specific question to be answered regarding the storyline and the characters ability to manipulate some part of it. For questions of capabilities (“can I do x”) usually there is a relevant stat that can guide the answer to the question. For scenarios where a major plot point is being decided, chance is used to determine the branching of the storyline, such as when the players were looking for a secret door.
Ok! Now that you have a basic sense of what playing D&D should look like let’s start moving you towards being ready to play.
Start by downloading these two documents you’ll need for this process:
5th Edition D&D Player’s Handbook
Print out the character sheet or open it in a PDF editor that will allow you to fill in the form.
The first place we’re going to focus is your character’s attributes. Those are listed along the left side of the character sheet and they are (definitions courtesy of wikipedia):
The characters we create are going to start off with scores for each of these attributes. The scores will range from three to 18. Typically these scores are created by rolling dice (usually three or four six-sided die depending on the specific version of the game referred to as 3d6 or 4d6, respectively).
A higher score means more ability in that attribute. A character with a higher strength score is stronger, one with a higher constitution is in better shape, etc. If you want to get a vivid sense for what a particular score might mean in practice read this:
D&D Stats in Simple Language (don’t worry about the modifiers and other technical details in there; for now just pay attention to the descriptions and try to imagine a real person with those qualities).
You can think of your character’s attribute as their heritable traits. Your attributes are what you’re born with. Everything else gets built on top of them.
For your very first character, you’re going to use a set of numbers I came up with. These are special magical numbers. They are:
16, 6, 11, 9, 14, 12
Assign each one of these numbers to one of the six character attributes.
Imagine what kind of person you’ve just created based on these attributes. What personality is created by combining these attributes? Do you know anyone in real life who matches this mix of characteristics? How would you describe someone like this to a friend? What jobs would they thrive in? What are some situations in which they’d be really out of place?
Strength-16
Dex – 6
Const – 11
Intel – 9
Wisdom – 14
Charisma – 12
Josh is a cool guy. He was sorta born to be a JV lineman, if that makes any sense. He can take a few hits before being knocked out and he’s a pretty big guy, but can’t really stand up to the real football lifers for long. I’m not sure if he’s been hit in the head a bit too much, but he has a hard time remembering names and doesn’t do well in school. But he has impressive moments of insight and clarity into social problems and is trusted on the team as a bit of a life advisor. But outside of contexts like that he’s pretty ordinary socially. He can hold a conversation.
Now move the numbers around and do this again. Try to create a character who’s very different from your first character without just being the exact inverse.
Str – 11
Dex – 9
Const – 14
Intel -12
Wis – 16
Char – 6
Jon is a strange dude. When you meet him or try to have a conversation with him he alternately comes off as rude or just antisocial. He probably hasn’t been the cool kid in school because he’s a small guy, clumsy, not athletic. But every so often, maybe because he’s so unattuned socially, he’s able to cut through the crap in a situation and know whats right. And when he is really dedicated to something, he really gets into it. He worked on renovating his room last summer all day every day for a week.
Would your two characters get along? How would they interact? If they were on a team would they complement each other? Would they be able to collaborate?
I don’t think these characters would get along or collaborate well. Jon doesn’t work well with people in general, and Josh is unassuming and a bit naive, which makes Jon even more rude. They complement each other physically, but even together they’re no great shakes in terms of cleverness or toughness. They wouldn’t be friends.
Pick one of these two characters that you’d like to proceed with through the next stages (or heck do all the stages for both, it really won’t take long).
Now that you know your character’s attributes, the next step is to give them a “Character Class”. This is the D&D term for what is basically your profession. So far as things like “entering a battle rage” or being “bound to a sacred oath” can be a profession.
Take a look at Chapter 3 of the Player’s Handbook. On page 39 it lists the 12 character classes included in 5th edition D&D along with a short description of each (don’t worry about the other columns for now; in fact ignore them, they are wrong and evil). The rest of that chapter also includes more details about those classes if you want to read up on them.
Now, the traditional way to pick a class is to match it to your characters best attributes. High strength score? You’re a Fighter or a Barbarian? High dexterity? You’re a Rogue. This is what shows up under the “Primary Ability” column in that table. But, to this, I say: bah! This method of coming up with characters is both boring and highly unrealistic. Is everyone you’ve ever met perfectly well-suited to their job? Do they each have exactly the traits you’d hope for in their given line-of-work and no mismatches? Have you ever had a stupid or uncharismatic teacher? Seen a musician who really believed in themselves and meant well but had no talent? Heard of a police officer or soldier who was weak or naive? Of course, these kinds of “contradictions” happen all the time.
In addition to missing most of the complexity of life, the traditional way of creating characters also makes for boring and predictable role playing. Some of the most fun characters to play are the ones whose attributes are surprising mismatches for their classes. Imagine a Rogue with low dexterity and charisma, but high intelligence and wisdom. Maybe they grew up in desperate circumstances and so even though they weren’t cut out to be a criminal they had to use their wits and street smarts to survive and so became a hustler and con artist instead of a sneak thief. Or imagine a Wizard with incredibly low wisdom and intelligence but very high charisma and dexterity. What if they actually can’t use magic, but convince people around them they can by sheer force of personality and a lot of skill at sleight of hand? Sound like anyone we know?
Notice how these combinations of attributes and classes got me started telling a story. I’m immediately imagining a bit of the character’s background, personality, and the kinds of actions they might take. This is exactly what we want to happen during the character creation process. It should start to develop its own momentum, as if you were staring to describe a real interesting person. Each choice you make should fit in with what you already know about your character, making them more well-rounded. You should feel free to make creative choices, but also constrained by the choices you’ve already made, compelled to come up with a story that makes your new choices feel consistent with your previous ones.
Select a class for your character. While considering options try imagining a person with your character’s attributes in each of the 12 classes. How would they have ended up doing that job? How would they make it work even if it might seem wildly inappropriate on the surface?
Josh is a Ranger. He isn’t ideally suited to be ranger, he could do with a bit more intelligence and hand-eye coordination. His strength occasionally gives him an advantage, and his willingness to work with other people. He is very kindhearted, and doesn’t like the long separations from other people required of his lifestyle, but he deals with it. He was pressured into leaving his childhood home by his parents at the age of 14, who wanted him to see more of the world and leave the small town they’d lived in their entire lives. They were always partial to the Rangers so he chose that path without appreciating the ramifications.
Write down your character’s profession on your character sheet. Also write a short paragraph explaining how their profession matches up with their attributes. Are they good at it? Were they a natural who always knew this was what they wanted to do? Were they forced into it by circumstance? Was it the result of a weird religious calling? Did they have some other prior life or career before doing this? Make up anything you can to make a coherent story out of these two aspects of your character
Next comes one of the worst and one of the best parts of D&D’s character system. D&D’s Race system is, frankly, kind of gross. The idea that a person’s race tells you something about their character is a sign of the racist elements in the fantasy tradition before and around D&D. If you read Tolkein, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that the tall pale people from the north are good and the dark ugly people from the south are bad. This reproduces the attitudes of the colonial era in which Tolkein came of age and its one of the worst aspects of his legacy (and that of many other contemporary and prior fantasy writers).
At its best, if you approach it from a very generous mindset, modern D&D tries to use the Race system to mean something more like cultural background than racial identity. You can soften the racism of deriving personality traits directly from a character’s race by imagining that these are generalized descriptions of the mainstream societal values of each of these (partially geographically distinct) races. Dwarves are good at building things not because of some essential genetic racial qualities, but because they are raised in a culture that values building and passes on a certain set of traditional practices around it.
If you read Chapter 2 of the Player’s Handbook, though, you’ll see they mean race in the more troubling sense I’m trying to avoid here. They list nine races:
Like we did with the classes, I’m going to encourage you to take a more creative and interpretive approach to selecting your race than the official rules suggest.
Is your character highly intelligent but weak, somewhat unworldly? Consider making them a dwarf. What would it have been like to grow up as the one dwarf who loved books? How would being an outsider from that kind of culture shape your character’s personality? Did they always wish they could fit in? Or were they more of a rebel who grew to resent and hate the mainstream of their community’s culture?
Again, you don’t only have to go for straight contrast like this, just find something that you find makes an interesting story.
As you read through the race descriptions, try each one on for size. How would they fit with the character you’ve been building? What story would you make up to explain your character’s experience growing up within this culture? Maybe they were emigrants so they didn’t grow up amongst too many people of their kind. How would that change their attitudes to their race’s mainstream values? Would they romanticize them or be embarrassed of the traits that made them different from their surroundings?
Josh is a half-tiefling, half human, half, but he grew up among a small subset of the population that lives peacefully in an isolated environment. Josh’s half-tiefling body can only just pass fo a humans under heavy garments. He has been identified as tiefling before while wandering through human villages and been chased away by armed villagers. he has to be very careful around humans, and he’s become more and more cynical towards them over time, despite his good nature.
Write down your character’s race on your character sheet. Also write a short paragraph adding to your character’s growing biography to incorporate their race. Try to sketch the outlines of their relationship to the “mainstream” of their race community. Did they grow up traditionally for their race or not? What is their relationship to those traditions, positive or negative?
Where D&D’s race system is somewhat yucky, its alignment system is awesome. Once you learn it you’ll find yourself applying to real people. The alignment system consists of two axes: one ethical and one moral.
The ethical axis ranges between lawful and chaotic. According to 3rd Edition, “Law implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability.” Whereas “chaos implies freedom, adaptability, and flexibility.” The moral axis ranges between good and evil, “Good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings.” Whereas “Evil implies harming, oppressing, and killing others.”
Combining these two into a 3×3 grid yields the following possibilities:
Good Neutral Evil
Lawful Harry Potter Dumbledore Malfoy
(True) Seamus Cho Chang
Chaotic Aberforth Ollivander Voldemort
Try to think of one or two examples of well-known historical, public, or fictional figures who match each category.
Write down the examples of each category that you came up with. It will be interesting to see how much we as a class overlap here. Can you come up with a realistic example for Chaotic Evil? It’s probably the hardest one…
Now select an alignment for your character. As should be familiar by now, start by exploring each option and imagining how you’d incorporate it into the existing portrait you’ve been building for your character. What stories can you come up with to make them make sense? Are there any alignments that seem to match particularly well with your character’s attributes, class, and relationship to their race?
Josh is Chaotic Good because he is inherently good natured but needs to be free of commitment because of his lifestyle.
Write down you character’s alignment on your character sheet and write a short paragraph explaining how that alignment fits into their wider biography.
You’ve basically completed the important parts of character creation from the role playing and storytelling perspective. You should have a pretty good sense of who your character is at this point. But there’s still a lot to fill in, particularly as it relates to wrapping the storytelling choices you’ve made with all of the numbers that are necessary to make your character playable within the systems of D&D.
If you look at your character sheet you’ll notice we’ve filled in nearly none of it. You’ve written all this great back story about your character, but haven’t filled in much of this sheet at all. Now’s the time to do that.
Rather than reproducing the instructions from the Player’s Handbook here, I’m just going to send you there to fill in the rest of the details. Refer to the sections of the manual that are relevant to your class and race in particular to see lots of the numbers that you need. If you’re a magic user (Cleric, Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard) you’ll also need to choose spells from the appropriate section of Part 3 of the Player’s Handbook.
You’ll also need to select some basic gear for your character (see Chapter 5).
Note: many of the steps in the Player’s Handbook will call for dice rolling. If you see an attribute listed as, for example, the Druid is listed as having “Hit Dice: 1d8 per Druid level”, that means you need to generate a random number between 1 and 8. If you already have access to an 8-sided die you probably don’t need me to explain this to you. If not, feel free to use any programming language or computational tool of choice. Or, for efficiency, Wizards of the Coast’s online dice roller.
As you go through each of these steps try as much as you can to root your decisions in your understanding of who your character is.
Notice how the Handbook uses numbers to represent the differences between parts of its world. It tells you to add and subtract from various character attributes when you select a class and a race. What are those changes meant to represent? Do they match the story you’re telling about your character or do they water it down?
Write down one or two examples of these kinds of numerical changes the Handbook suggested that struck you as a particularly bad match for the character you were trying to create. Document them and then don’t do them! Don’t let the Handbook push you into stereotype. Its purpose is to translate the character you want to play into numbers that let that character interact in a structured way with other elements and characters in the shared world. It’s just a starting point.
And, finally, don’t forget to give your character a name.
Once you’ve completed your character, post their attributes, class, race, and what you’ve written about them to the class blog. As a bonus, also include your completed character sheet if you’d like with your items, spells, etc.
Fill out the rest of your character sheet using the instructions in the Player Handbook. If you are confused about any of the steps don’t hesitate to ask your classmates, search the Internet, slack us, email us, or otherwise get in touch.
Since I spent almost 3000 words explaining how you should create a character the first time, you’re probably not eager to go through it all again. But what follows are a series of exercises to create stubs for characters. They’re meant to help you to gain more experience with how D&D’s systems represent various characteristics of people. You can do each of these relatively quickly, just writing down a quick set of numbers, a class, a race, and a couple sentence biographical sketch for each (where appropriate).
Roll a random character using D&D’s suggested method. For each character attribute, roll 4d6 (a six-sided die four times) and discard the lowest die. Add the other three together to produce the attribute score. Once you’ve filled in all six attributes, select a class, race, and alignment, building a story about your character as you go.
How was this process different from creating your main character before? How did the different distribution of the numbers you got for attributes change the process of coming up with the character’s story.
Write down your character’s attributes, class, race, alignment, and background sketch. Also write down some notes about how this time was different from last time. Was it easier or harder to come up with a story? Why?
Now pick two people from the following list:
For each one that you pick, write down what you think their strength, charisma, wisdom, intelligence, dexterity, and constitutions scores are. What’s the closest class to what they do in real life? What race’s traditions or aesthetic matches them? What alignment are they?
Write down your answers so we can compare them with other people in the class who chose the same subjects.
Question: How would you characterize the moments in this account in which stats are referenced or dice are rolled? What is happening in these moments? How do they differ from the rest of the account? How do they differ from each other (that is, how are the stats lookups different from the dice rolls)?
Stats and dice rolls are characterized as decision points that will guide diverges in the otherwise linear storyline/game play. A stats lookup is a conscious decision on what to focus on, while a dice roll is random chance – the butterfly effect in the game.
Imagine what kind of person you’ve just created based on these attributes. What personality is created by combining these attributes? Do you know anyone in real life who matches this mix of characteristics? How would you describe someone like this to a friend? What jobs would they thrive in? What are some situations in which they’d be really out of place? Write a paragraph describing your character as if they were a real person. Pretend you’re describing a friend or professor of yours to someone you know.
Character 1 – Jake
Intelligence: 16
Wisdom: 14
Charisma: 12
Dexterity: 11
Constitution: 9
Strength: 6
Jake is sharp. He can quickly understand the context of a concept, conversation, or joke. He’s very good at seeing other people’s point of view. He has good taste and a respect for quality. He would be friends with the jocks in high school, but not be one of them. He listens to all types of music that aren’t “country”. He loves adventure, but it also set in his ways. He wants to explore the world, but he likes eating the same thing for lunch every day. He uses an iPhone.
Now move the numbers around and do this again. Try to create a character who’s very different from your first character without just being the exact inverse.
Character 2 – Brad
Intelligence: 11
Wisdom: 6
Charisma: 12
Dexterity: 14
Constitution: 16
Strength: 9
Brad is an ambitious guy. He wants to be well liked, and could be described as a “networking”-type, but he doesn’t like that label. He cares about other people’s opinions more than he should, and he knows it. He takes good care of himself, waking up at 6am to do his morning jog. He occasionally chooses friends based on their popularity. He doesn’t like school, but gets good grades, just like all of the other social people.
Select a class for your character. While considering options try imagining a person with your character’s attributes in each of the 12 classes. How would they have ended up doing that job? How would they make it work even if it might seem wildly inappropriate on the surface?
Jake is a sorcerer. He has some charisma, but what he really brings to the table is an understanding of others. He can predict what his friends and enemies will do by understanding their motivation. While there are other sorcerers that have more charisma and better bloodlines, Jake always surprises others with how well he can keep up.
Brad is a fighter. He fell into this position he doesn’t love it. However, it’s admired in the community, and Brad always fights his way to the top, so he is usually considered the top dog.
As you read through the race descriptions, try each one on for size. How would they fit with the character you’ve been building? What story would you make up to explain your character’s experience growing up within this culture? Maybe they were emigrants so they didn’t grow up amongst too many people of their kind. How would that change their attitudes to their race’s mainstream values? Would they romanticize them or be embarrassed of the traits that made them different from their surroundings?
Jake is a human. In a world filled with eccentric creatures, Jake comes across as quite plain at first. Only when you get to know him on more than a shallow level do you learn about his passions, ambitions, and plans for the future. Jake sometimes wishes he wasn’t just a human, but realizes that this gives him the ability to play the underdog. When he hits, no one will have seen it coming.
Brad is a dragonborn. As Mr. Popular, he is proud of being a dragon born, and doesn’t really want to interact with half-rocs or high elves. Of course, he will be polite if he needs to be, but he’ll keep his distance so that others don’t notice his association’s with others.
Now select an alignment for your character. As should be familiar by now, start by exploring each option and imagining how you’d incorporate it into the existing portrait you’ve been building for your character. What stories can you come up with to make them make sense? Are there any alignments that seem to match particularly well with your character’s attributes, class, and relationship to their race?
Jake is chaotic good. He is light hearted, fun, and passionate. He wants to help others, so he does his best to do what he thinks is right. But he has no respect for the status quo, and no respect for rules. He doesn’t care what other people see as right or wrong, because those people often lack the perspective to see the big picture.
Brad is true neutral. He does what he thinks other people will want him to do. If it’s popular, it doesn’t matter if it’s right or wrong. He cares about being liked above all else.
For each one that you pick, write down what you think their strength, charisma, wisdom, intelligence, dexterity, and constitutions scores are. What’s the closest class to what they do in real life? What race’s traditions or aesthetic matches them? What alignment are they?
Serena Williams
Intelligence: 11
Wisdom: 6
Charisma: 16
Dexterity: 9
Constitution: 12
Strength: 14
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Intelligence: 12
Wisdom: 14
Charisma: 16
Dexterity: 6
Constitution: 11
Strength: 9
Kyrie Caldwell, CMS Grad Student (and thusly prepare thyself for CMSly walls of text! 🙂 )
Just to be clear, I was creating a character for a new campaign with my regular D&D group, so my process likely varied slightly from the template!
Question: How would you characterize the moments in this account in which stats are referenced or dice are rolled? What is happening in these moments? How do they differ from the rest of the account? How do they differ from each other (that is, how are the stats lookups different from the dice rolls)? Write a short answer to this. It can just be a few sentences or even a short list of words.
Stats and dice rolls account for creatures’ capability and randomness in the reactions that meet players’ narration, or their actions and attempts to influence the world; that influence (or lack thereof) as well as other events and a running description of what player characters would sense are all in the domain of the DM’s narration. Using a quantifiable system and an element of chance allows for sessions to be somewhat standardizable and relatable to how our real-world actions work. Not all will pan out, and some ideas and attempts are beyond our capabilities. Personally, I would have expected more strength checks in this excerpt!
Imagine what kind of person you’ve just created based on these attributes. What personality is created by combining these attributes? Do you know anyone in real life who matches this mix of characteristics? How would you describe someone like this to a friend? What jobs would they thrive in? What are some situations in which they’d be really out of place? Write a paragraph describing your character as if they were a real person. Pretend you’re describing a friend or professor of yours to someone you know.
Arjen Shestendeliath has the physique and mentality of an athlete in sports that do require some physical strength but further reward fine, precise movement and the ability to read a situation and glean what is needed for the immediate future (reactive rather than proactive). Although he will not be the tactician of any group, he acts reliably and attentively. He is also fairly hardy but not likely to hold up well tanking, or taking damage to shield other party members. However, he is awkward around others and often cannot find much to say, making his words less insightful and sensitive than his actions. Arjen would do well in artisan work and crafting, such as smithing and tanning or construction. He might make a good soccer or basketball player, especially a defender or goalie, but he will likely be less versatile than those a bit mentally sharper.
Note: Our DM uses the standard set of ability scores rather than having us roll.
Now move the numbers around and do this again. Try to create a character who’s very different from your first character without just being the exact inverse. Write a paragraph describing this second character. Would your two characters get along? How would they interact? If they were on a team would they complement each other? Would they be able to collaborate?
An alternate Arjen would be quick-witted and bright, someone to which others are attracted to and will be quick to follow. Although he would move and work precisely, he would be somewhat weak, and would be better suited to positions that require coordinating people and tasks rather than doing the literal heavy lifting. I think these two character types are complementary and would work well on a team together, serving as brains and brawn to an extent but likely with a better chance of reading each other and surrounding circumstances more intuitively. However, when the going got rough, it would likely seriously threaten progress to the duo without better means of physically protecting themselves.
Select a class for your character. While considering options try imagining a person with your character’s attributes in each of the 12 classes. How would they have ended up doing that job? How would they make it work even if it might seem wildly inappropriate on the surface? Write down your character’s profession on your character sheet. Also write a short paragraph explaining how their profession matches up with their attributes. Are they good at it? Were they a natural who always knew this was what they wanted to do? Were they forced into it by circumstance? Was it the result of a weird religious calling? Did they have some other prior life or career before doing this? Make up anything you can to make a coherent story out of these two aspects of your character.
Arjen is a monk, resolutely training his connection to the element of fire. Arjen’s class was chosen before his attributes were distributed, with the latter adapting to the former. Thus, his highest stats, dexterity, wisdom, and strength, will serve him well on this path, as the monk’s power comes from his/her honing of body and mind not in terms of sheer strength or intelligence, but in focused movements and thought. Arjen came to this class at a young age and has been training for sometime, but without experience in the world outside his monastery, he is prepared but not yet skilled. Yet, he respects the discipline and work that is the bread and butter of the monk class, so he may yet find success within it.
As you read through the race descriptions, try each one on for size. How would they fit with the character you’ve been building? What story would you make up to explain your character’s experience growing up within this culture? Maybe they were emigrants so they didn’t grow up amongst too many people of their kind. How would that change their attitudes to their race’s mainstream values? Would they romanticize them or be embarrassed of the traits that made them different from their surroundings? Write down your character’s race on your character sheet. Also write a short paragraph adding to your character’s growing biography to incorporate their race. Try to sketch the outlines of their relationship to the “mainstream” of their race community. Did they grow up traditionally for their race or not? What is their relationship to those traditions, positive or negative?
As a Gold Dragonborn, Arjen’s family or clan is known to value the greater good above all. Instead, Arjen respects systems and structures he sees as necessary, especially finding interest in law and science when young. Having never been one to agree wholeheartedly with the moral compass of that clan, Arjen resented their rather totaliterian insistence on worshipping the Platinum Dragon Bahamut and, at six years old, spoke his mind publicly as such. Kicked out of his clan, Arjen found himself alone and homeless until taken into a monastery by the monk Leocin Arlenthar. Arjen’s adolescence was spent training as a monk and as an acolyte. Inspired by the reflective and deliberate worship of the monks, he made personal amends with the figure of Bahamut, now understanding Bahamut’s dynamic role in the structures of the world rather than the monolithic, static figure he knew to be worshipped by the Dragonborn. Similarly, Arjen hopes to make amends with his clan too, but his ways will always be different than the culture fostered within.
Try to think of one or two examples of well-known historical, public, or fictional figures who match each [alignment] category. Write down the examples of each category that you came up with. It will be interesting to see how much we as a class overlap here. Can you come up with a realistic example for Chaotic Evil? It’s probably the hardest one…
| Moral/Ethical | Lawful | Neutral | Chaotic |
| Good | Superman | Fox Mulder (The X-Files) | Batman (depends on your version…) |
| Neutral | Solid Snake (Metal Gear series) | Dream and the other Endless (The Sandman) | Victor Frankenstein(the book) |
| Evil | Lucifer (Christian representation) | Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII) | Evil ghosts (see Japanese folklore) |
Now select an alignment for your character. As should be familiar by now, start by exploring each option and imagining how you’d incorporate it into the existing portrait you’ve been building for your character. What stories can you come up with to make them make sense? Are there any alignments that seem to match particularly well with your character’s attributes, class, and relationship to their race? Write down you character’s alignment on your character sheet and write a short paragraph explaining how that alignment fits into their wider biography.
Arjen is Lawful Neutral. His exile from his clan has left him somewhat embittered, though not vengeful. Rather, he is concerned with honor and obedience to those he feels are deserving of it, including even his clan, but he is not guided to this simply by seeing others as “good” or “bad” or “right” or “wrong,” preferring to choose his allegiances based on what he can respect. Nor is he particularly invested in beings beyond himself, those to whom he is indebted, and those under his charge. Yet, once he commits to a cause, he stays with it and lets that allegiance guide his actions, such as he has with the teachings of his monastery.
Notice how the Handbook uses numbers to represent the differences between parts of its world. It tells you to add and subtract from various character attributes when you select a class and a race. What are those changes meant to represent? Do they match the story you’re telling about your character or do they water it down? Write down one or two examples of these kinds of numerical changes the Handbook suggested that struck you as a particularly bad match for the character you were trying to create. Document them and then don’t do them! Don’t let the Handbook push you into stereotype. Its purpose is to translate the character you want to play into numbers that let that character interact in a structured way with other elements and characters in the shared world. It’s just a starting point.
In the game’s lingo (but a slightly different context), those adjustments make the idea of “proficiency” salient in actual play, even if that is based on a tenuous assumption that innate, genetic attributes or entering into a field necessarily bestows strengths and weaknesses. For a Dragonborn, this meant +2 Strength and +1 Charisma; for monk, that means +1 Wisdom and +1 Dexterity. I take issue mainly with the +1 Charisma for Arjen in particular, but really, racial bonuses are semiotically problematic all around. Class bonuses at least explore the idea that someone has trained in their field, so to speak, but racial ones suggest more, and definitely weird, physiognomic leanings.
Once you’ve completed your character, post their attributes, class, race, and what you’ve written about them to the class blog. As a bonus, also include your completed character sheet if you’d like with your items, spells, etc. Fill out the rest of your character sheet using the instructions in the Player Handbook.
This reflects the character after the first session of our campaign (hence being level 2).
Roll a random character using D&D’s suggested method. For each character attribute, roll 4d6 (a six-sided die four times) and discard the lowest die. Add the other three together to produce the attribute score. Once you’ve filled in all six attributes, select a class, race, and alignment, building a story about your character as you go. How was this process different from creating your main character before? How did the different distribution of the numbers you got for attributes change the process of coming up with the character’s story. Write down your character’s attributes, class, race, alignment, and background sketch. Also write down some notes about how this time was different from last time. Was it easier or harder to come up with a story? Why?
I got oddly pretty high rolls: 17, 11, 18, 20, 16, 14. Knowing that three attributes would be particularly strong, two moderate, and one fairly weak, it was easier to think of clear ways to develop towards a class immediately, which was my first decision, rather than race/cultural background and gender (which are more interesting to me when thinking about making a character to actually plop in a world). Those rolls suggest versatility, making a fighter or rogue appealing. However, especially at early levels or in a difficult campaign, having a powerful and hardy character from the start can be of great benefit to a team, especially one otherwise full of not-yet-skilled magic-based characters. Thus, I went with a fighter. It is easy to stereotype races along the class, and that shows up in the prescribed numbers as well, such as with halflings, but I want to play against that. Thus, I went with a surprisingly buff female high elf. In order to serve best as tank, this character needs to care about the rest of the party, so Good makes sense as the moral dimension of the alignment. But again, versatility and an effort to make a fun character drives me towards the Chaotic end rather than the Lawful one of the ethical dimension. Maybe she feels strongly about protecting others, as she outgrew other high elves and took it upon herself to protect her younger siblings from bullies. Yet, her size and physicality distanced herself from other high elves, so perhaps she’s struck out on her own, guided by her internal compass rather than a cultural one. This version of the process felt much more driven by the character’s utility rather than trying new things out for the player’s sake, which also made the backstory a bit less substantial than with a character that relies less on pre-established party roles (damage-dealers, tanks, supports, etc.).
Now pick two people from the following list: Sailor Moon Ron Weasley Lady Gaga Starlord from Guardians of the Galaxy Genghis Khan Serena Williams Martin Luther King, Jr. Tina Fey The Bride (from Kill Bill) Neil Gershenfeld Wolverine For each one that you pick, write down what you think their strength, charisma, wisdom, intelligence, dexterity, and constitutions scores are. What’s the closest class to what they do in real life? What race’s traditions or aesthetic matches them? What alignment are they? Write down your answers so we can compare them with other people in the class who chose the same subjects.
Using the standard set of ability scores…
Wolverine— 14 Strength; 12 Dexterity; 15 Constitution; 13 Intelligence; 10 Wisdom; 8 Charisma Class would be fighter, and alignment would be likely Chaotic Good (as least in the form perpetuated by the ‘90s cartoon). Although perhaps on the taller side, Wolverine would make a solid dwarf, if we characterize dwarves as gruff, hardy, stubborn, aloof until trust is earned, etc.
Martin Luther King, Jr.— A quick note: It makes me uncomfortable to apply this to actual people, as I highly doubt people can be quantified and put into moral/ethical boxes without reducing them to caricatures. But here’s for trying anyway. 10 Strength; 8 Dexterity; 12 Constitution; 13 Intelligence; 14 Wisdom; 15 Charisma Considering how MLK became the figure we understand him to be, as a D&D character, his class would likely be a wizard: studied and powerful. However, the stats would serve a warlock better. We might think of MLK as Neutral Good, although I think Lawful might be more apt, as he seemed to live fiercely along a moral code, even if it did not always align with the law. Only human works here, with a racial tendency, so to speak, towards diversity and short but often significant and memorable lives.
Kyrie Caldwell, CMS Grad Student
My Trick++ rather erroneously ended up being design work on a more ambitious, larger trick that will become my semester-long project in stages. With little previous design experience, this is a large undertaking and will require plenty of iteration and catch-up methodological work, so please bear with me!
Research Question
The initial idea came through my interest in and exploration of anime and video games’ representations of women as well as the cosplay communities around these two media forms. Cosplay is a portmanteau of “costume” and “play,” which captures both the fashion design and performance elements of the practice, which includes creating or purchasing and then wearing outfits and accessories in order to emulate favorite characters, usually from anime or games (digital or tabletop). Knowing of the magical girl anime genre and its leaks into games, I decided to explore the “transformation” sequences that appear ubiquitously in the genre.
How does one leverage technological enhancements into magic, illusionist, mentalist, etc. performances while still retaining the sought sense of wonder, often built through the showmanship and preparatory work of the performer? Alternatively but similarly, how does one incorporate the work of such magic performances into the front-end development, demonstration, and use of technology, such as via user interfaces and user experiences?
Also, how might the socio-cultural implications of the “magical girl” genre translate into real-world performances? How would this contribute to cosplay performances, namely through practitioners’ experimentation with media representations of women and through “D.I.Y.” approaches to cosplay and the status of such creator-performers in cosplay communities? These questions are somewhat out of the scope of the current project but could lead to rich research using the results of the design work represented here.
Trend Research
Although deeper research into the “magical girl” genre in media and in cosplay performances again lie outside of the current project’s scope, understanding of the aesthetics of the genre is critical here. Popular representatives of the genre include Sailor Moon and Prétear in anime and Final Fantasy X-2 in video games. In the case of Sailor Moon and Final Fantasy X-2, the action centers around an all-female main cast; in Prétear, the main cast has one female character and a group of male characters (a version of the “harem” genre, in which a male/female character is surrounded by characters of the other genre, with sexual/romantic, usually gendered respectively, antics ensuing). In Sailor Moon and Prétear, the transformation sequences mark a shift from an otherwise normal girl to one with spectacular (literally, in the sense of the spectacle) powers; in Prétear and Final Fantasy X-2, these transformations are also dependent on the powers that will be gained, resulting in different outfits for different sets of skills and abilities.
Overall, these transformations take place in a usually unnamed realm that is separate from the main setting, shown through a lack of or abstraction (moving colored light fields) of the background. The character who is transforming is often outlined as a body without clothes levitating in space as those clothes transition, either in one bright flash of light, or materializing in stages. Then the character appears again in the main setting, now in a different and usually much more elaborate outfit, complete with the new powers afforded by it.
Trend research also here includes magical performances, such as the levitation and quick change sequences that will be included in the current project. There are several ways to approach each illusion, but they are based around similar ideas. For levitation, the key is to control where the audience is looking so that very simple optical illusions become the audience’s only way of seeing the performance; that is, if a mirror is used, making sure that the audience sees the mirror not as a reflection but as a part of the flat visual landscape, requiring either a symmetrical room or a setting with visual ambiguity (such as plants or other objects that cloy where shapes begin and end). Other methods use the expectation that shoes will accompany feet, even when the latter has discreetly exited from and is moving independently of the former. For quick changes, there is almost always an obscuring element (e.g. a sheet, a burst of confetti, a flash of light) for the moment of the change. The speed of the change is usually enabled by specially-made clothes that look like normal garments but have a quick release mechanism, such as snaps.
Brainstorming
Brainstorming the performance was an exercise in thinking about what has been done and could be done through researching trends as outlined above. Each part of the performance (aesthetics, quick change, levitation, and the material/technological components needed for each) was considered as its own element. I generated ideas around each element, eliminating ones that seemed beyond my capacity in terms of technical/physical skills and temporal/financial constraints.
Concept
The working concept is a physically performed sequence set to sound and visual effects taking place in a reasonably symmetrical room with lights that can be dimmed remotely. The performer and audience is situated across from each other, oriented to maximize symmetry between the audience’s and performer’s halves of the room. The performed theatrically discusses what she was about to perform, such as needing to quickly get ready for a special performance, either theatrical or in efforts against a vague evil. The pre-programmed audiovisual sequence would begin, in which the lights would dim, a projector behind the performer would cast an animated field of colored light, and a coordinated sound effects track would play. The performer would mount the mirror levitation as a Microsoft Kinect would track her body, projecting visual noise (e.g. shimmering light) onto her. Meanwhile, the performer is carefully manipulating the quick change clothes as much as possible without showing this to the audience. The light from the projector and Kinect and the sound effects would crescendo, culminating in a flash of overhead light, during which the quick change would be performed and the mirror dismounted. Then the ambient lighting return to its dim state, and the projector and the Kinect effects would fade away as the audience’s eyes readjust to the performer’s silhouette, now in a different costume.
Storyboard/Flowchart and Enabling Technology
Timeline
Considering my inexperience with this kind of production, my timeline will be slightly more extended than might be otherwise required. The initial design work has taken two weeks, and it would be expected that perfecting each part of the performance would need similar timeframes. I am estimating two to three weeks to practice the levitation and quick change maneuvers, another two to three weeks for editing the audiovisual effects sequence, and a final two to three weeks for putting together all the elements into one performance.
Revision
I am expecting that the design will shift as the prototyping and storyboarding is attempted in real time/space. The current design is accounting as thoroughly as possible for all constraints, but iteration is likely and will be recorded as the production is realized.
Included below is the slide deck for the first presentation of my design work. Videos and GIF files are rendered here as static images.
“The joy – and terror – of Alien Encounter is that the entire experience is in your head. You can’t escape it by shutting your eyes. In fact, shutting your eyes will do very little. Now that the alien was escaped, the rest of the attraction takes place in absolute pitch black darkness.”
