Brian Rogers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
subplotkudzu) wrote2007-08-24 06:03 am
subplotkudzu) wrote2007-08-24 06:03 am
Entry tags:
deathly hollows
Thanks to ashacatI've finally finished the Harry Potter series, and have two thoughts:
One, now that she's rich beyond all imagining, do you ever wonder if Rowling's ex ever wanders by looking to borrow a couple of quid?
ashacatI've finally finished the Harry Potter series, and have two thoughts:One, now that she's rich beyond all imagining, do you ever wonder if Rowling's ex ever wanders by looking to borrow a couple of quid?
Two, several events in book seven reminded me of something I'd noticed in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - when our heroes were in situations where they were about to die, they instead lost something of value. For example, in Sky Captain during the Pteradon attack where rather than falling down the gorge or becoming monster chow Polly loses one of the shots on her camera and Joe drops his pistol - the latter a useful tool for coming events, the former a defining aspect of the character. It struck me at the time as a workable pulp game mechanic - trading a game ending bad outcome for one that would make simply it more difficult to succeed.
Likewise in Deathly Hollows Harry nearly dies in leaving Privit Drive but loses Hedwig instead, nearly dies in Godric's Hollow but instead breaks his wand, nearly dies in the Malfoy house but Dobbie dies in his place. Now, I know that in HP this is meant as the classic stripping away of the heroes tools to test his resolve, but it still triggered the connection. And again, I wonder how well it would work as a game mechanic.
chaduhas something similar in place already in PDQ, where damage can be taken against the ranks of any skill (for instance, damage from a swordfight could first go against your Dapper Dresser trait rather than your Dashing Swordplay trait, because you want to keep the Dashing Swordplay as high as possible as long as possible in a swordfight. If you're trying to seduce the evil genius's beautiful daughter, you'd put the temporary rank loss from her cutting remarks against Dashing Swordplay, since being a Dapper Dresser is more useful for seduction). To get the same feel as the events in the book and movie you'd have to rank out several items either permanently or temporarily sacrifice ranks in them to avoid other worse consequences.
One thing this does mean is that if I ever run my Pulp Atlantis game I'll probably settle on PDQ as the engine for it as the best place to test this out.
Likewise in Deathly Hollows Harry nearly dies in leaving Privit Drive but loses Hedwig instead, nearly dies in Godric's Hollow but instead breaks his wand, nearly dies in the Malfoy house but Dobbie dies in his place. Now, I know that in HP this is meant as the classic stripping away of the heroes tools to test his resolve, but it still triggered the connection. And again, I wonder how well it would work as a game mechanic.
chaduhas something similar in place already in PDQ, where damage can be taken against the ranks of any skill (for instance, damage from a swordfight could first go against your Dapper Dresser trait rather than your Dashing Swordplay trait, because you want to keep the Dashing Swordplay as high as possible as long as possible in a swordfight. If you're trying to seduce the evil genius's beautiful daughter, you'd put the temporary rank loss from her cutting remarks against Dashing Swordplay, since being a Dapper Dresser is more useful for seduction). To get the same feel as the events in the book and movie you'd have to rank out several items either permanently or temporarily sacrifice ranks in them to avoid other worse consequences. One thing this does mean is that if I ever run my Pulp Atlantis game I'll probably settle on PDQ as the engine for it as the best place to test this out.
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Someone else out there has one that says "Why yes, I am made of Awesome."
It figures that once again, my favorite character of the series is the "Wedge Antilles."
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