GATEWAY MEMORIES AND COMMENTS

GATEWAY MEMORIES AND COMMENTS

We'd like to know what you think, remember, or would like other players to know about the Gateway Chronicles. Please leave your comments in this public guest book so we can share your thoughts with other visitors.

Date:: 11/30/2003
Time:: 11:50:50 AM
Remote User:

Comments

Please add your thoughts, comments, or memories about Gateway here. Got some secret you've been dying to spill, this is the place for it! The Game Staff will be fielding questions on the Message Boards. --Tom Dowd

Date:: 01 Dec 2003
Time:: 22:20:36

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Here's some things I remember: I remember coming into this game as a PC. The first villain PC, if I remember correctly. Rasp was a blast to play, and I appreciate Alex giving me the chance to be REALLY BAD, and yet to die in an exciting and interesting way(the first death of many!) A special thanks to Tom as Kedrick for "lighting me up like the 4th of July!" and sending Rasp spectacularly on his way. I remember the "Slayer problem". Thanks to Doug as my storyteller, and a brief idea at the beginning of the session of Slayer's first "death", he became larger than I had ever imagined,and larger than life all at once. Never has one charcter died so often, and been able to tell the tale....(well, mostly tell the tale. There were those little...gaps...in his memory.) Again, a special thanks to our game masters for letting me play the first blind character in the game,and the substantially LEAST of the three blind characters that were played. But Simon the zealot was fun to be for awhile. And it was worth dying in 3/4(!) of a session with Duncan Hawke, just to see the look on Hunter's face as she tried to explain the concept of "god" to Hawke. It was VERY hard to keep from laughing,and busting the moment. Thanks, Vicki. And, finally, Alex, if you had ANY idea what you had created, you never would have given me the job of "Castellan" for the first Stronghold. Playing him has been my joy for the last 5 years or so. He has been my chance to play (in a lot of ways) my opposite number. He has been an opportunity to play an incredibly flawed human being, without the constraints of script, deadline, or stage. From the standpoint of a performer, he has been my chance at Epic. I was allowed to see him through from beginning of tale to end, and to be surprised at the end! (Thank you, Gnome!) I love character development, and crisis, and Nathan gave me the opportunity for both at every turn. I'd especially like to thank a couple of players for their character's interaction with him. Corrie, I LOVED having Owland Nathan at loggerheads. It was fun, and entertaining to me on so many levels. Thank you. Eileen, you gave Nathan PURPOSE with Rhianna. At every moment, he was willing to give up EVERYTHING for her. And she was so good to him. Thank you. Anandi and Joel, you gave Nathan a new life. I was seriously considering having him die either valiantly of stupidly at one point, and then Cedrick,and the Merissa---- arrived. You created a happenstance that surprised me as a player, and a performer. Thanks for giving him a family. Thank you Marc for the Chamberlain, easily Nathan's greatest and most powerful adversary. And finally, last, and most definitely not least, Margaret Landreth. I don't know how I can even describe what you've done for and with Nathan with ALL of your PCs and one "particular" NPC. Miette was and absolute delight to annoy, and confound, and surprise, and occasionally impress.... Gretchen was a good intellectual foil for him. She was MUCH smarter than he was, and although she probably didn't know it, kept him honest occasionally. And of course, Dana was the thing that kept him going. His reason for existence. I got more mileage out of that "smitten" disad than ANY of Nathan's other character traits (except perhaps for his sense of vengeance.) So thank you Margaret, for being a wonderful cast of "thousands". Most of all, I think that I'll remember that I never thought I would spend seven years of my life meeting and getting to know SO MANY wonderful friends and confidants. From the continuing friendships with Tony, Corrie, Rob Wilson, and James Silverstein, to the new circle of friends (SO MANY!!), I am overwhelmed at the luck and sheer joy I have at having found such wonderful folks to know. Thank you all so much.

Date:: 02 Dec 2003
Time:: 04:53:56

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Hello, What a long strange trip its been, both as staff and as a player. My characters have all been designed to play with the ideas of belief and how other characters interact with it. Umbar, the unquestioning fanatic Inquisitor of Dain (Racklid) who was a good friend if you were on the right side of the line and a vile bastard if you weren't. Stammel, the deranged illusionist who didn't truly believe in reality, much less anything else. Retic, the magic-fearing sailor who was raised to revere the Pantheist Gods simply because they were divine and deserved it, and who found the idea of a person trying his best to get along to be much more interesting than a hero. The key to all three of these characters was their interaction (usually their arguments or discussions) with everyone else- I purposely chose characters that would conflict with many other Ram's Head members to encourage that interaction, in the hope that it would develop my character further and perhaps help those I talked to break out of any standard 'basic hero' character mold they may have been in. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. What it did do was make for a lot of fun, let me play a decent guy without really playing a Good guy, and unfortunately sometimes convince people who didn't know me personally very well that I was a dick:). Regardless, I had a great time for the most part and met a lot of new friends. As the Archivist for 4-5 years, I got to use my knowledge of the rules for Good instead of Evil :). And that too was fun. As a sometime GM and writer, I had a good time as well. Things often got hectic and rushed, but they always do- that's called last-minute fun. Somehow, I got a reputation as a bloodthirsty killer- perhaps because I killed PCs on the expeditions I ran, perhaps because people knew I was more willing than most GMs to do so (though I didn't go out of my way to kill them), perhaps because the characters I played as a PC were known to kill other PCs from time to time as well- I don't know. I do know I advocated more PC death. Here's a little secret, from me to you- here's why. KEEP IN MIND, THIS IS JUST MY OPINION, people, and I was outvoted by the rest of the staff. First, in a game as large as this one became, as Archivist, player and GM, I had a pretty unique perspective on the varying levels of power of characters vs. other characters vs. NPCs vs. monsters, and what it came down to was that there were so many varying levels of power among the PCs that anything that might be written into a game might conceivably run into a new character or a powerhouse who had been around since the beginning and planning for that became impossible, so balance became tougher than it needed to be. Also, characters that had gone through an entire personal storyline in the game were sort of hanging around as deadwood instead of retiring, taking up space in expeditions that new characters could have been using to grow and make connections. Third, death lost its sting- when people did die, they were almost always saved by magic, so it didn't matter. I couldn't take away the magic, but I could hope for enough death to overwhelm it and make you pick and choose who to save and who to let die. Having at least one person or two die each session reminds you that the world is dangerous again, and that there are consequences to adventuring or heroing or whatever it is you do. Fourth, variety is the spice of gaming, and death is often what people need to create a new and interesting character. To keep new characters flowing into the Ram's Head, it seemed like people either needed to die or retire, and not many were choosing to retire. Fifth, I just think a good death is a great cap to a character. Hell, my last character died because he bet his life on a toss of the dice and I rolled low- of course, if I'd rolled high the stupid Cabal sigil would have been removed... So there you are. Some ramblings, and perhaps some insight into what I was doing while I was at the game, having all that fun :). Cheers to you all! Flake

Date:: 05 Dec 2003
Time:: 17:10:40

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Just like about everyone else, I approached that first LARP game at the MacGregor's house that snowy day as a one shot. I would never have thought to be playing Hunter nearly 7 years later. It is so cool to see how she changed from an irresponsible, a bit hedonistic immature girl with a good heart to an adult who had come to realize and fulfill her destiny. She went from the one who asked all the questions to the one others went to for answers. I can't even begin to mention all of the moments over 7 years or all of the characters in that time that shaped her life and made her what she eventually became. It was a work of many hands. Thank you all and especially the GMs who wrote the stories. I will miss telling them with you all, but I know many of the friendships made over the past few years will outlast this 'one shot' LARP.

Date:: 08 Jan 2004
Time:: 18:28:47

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I want to thank everyone at gateway, because this game helped me tremendously. I hope that another game will be starting soon. sincerely Debbie M. a.k.a. Karrigan Starr

Date:: 16 Feb 2004
Time:: 15:47:18

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This game has always ment a lot to me. It was my first introduction to larping, as well as the first time I ever spent time playing with people that are like, old enough to be my parents. Thank you all for putting up with me, it was a marvelous growing experiance. I would feel bad though if I didn't talk about how great the actual game is. Never before have I even heard of such a rich enviroment with fully formed characters and plots that could involve everyone. I feel like a geek saying it but I have never before stayed up all night not playing, but just talking about a game until I started playing gateway, joel can back up that the only way I could get through gym class was chatting about the world enviroment. Thanks to everyone that made it so wonderful and I hope to see it repeated success in the future. ----Zach