The Interview
1. Where did your original character concept come from? What were your desires for your PC when you were creating him?
The character concept was one that came to me when I was a mod of a city on a different site where I developed a conjunction of metalworking with magic. It was something that I wanted to try from a player point of view as a way of developing a trade skills based character.
If I were to say that I had a clear plan from the start then that would be very much untrue. When I write a character they are always the result of a gut feel for their personality, so my desires were very much tied into how I saw how Eanos would think rather than any specific goals. I would say that I also had in mind RL folklore such as Waylands Smithy where your horse would be reshod overnight in return for a silver coin, so the idea of a reclusive smith who could do wonderous things was always in the back of my mind. Smithing though was always a means to an end and a way of making his way in the world outside of Sultros, rather than an end in itself hence the choice of the Pitreus clan whose primary focus is magic.
Because Sultros was closed, yet Isur rarely leave their cities, I had no choice but to include a degree of friction into his history as explanation as to why he had left and was intended to be a search for ancient lores about magecrafting etc. What I wanted for him was to be in an uncomfortable situation which would drive him to do what he needed to do in order to return to Sultros.
2. One of the hardest things about smithing is choosing between blacksmithing, weaponsmithing, metalworking, and working on armor. How do you choose between these and how do you strike a balance in working on all four skills at once?
I think that metal working is quite unique in being split into those four skills, and bear in mind that when I created Eanos there was very little in the Lore about these skills. For me blacksmithing and metalsmithing are the core skills of the smith, so including at least one of those as your starting point is essential. Weaponsmithing and Armourer are application skills which rely upon and develop those two core skills.
You can see from my choice of starting points that I went with a core of blacksmithing with similar experience in weaponsmithing. In hindsight and with the since written metalsmithing writeup I would now have gone with a stronger base of the two core skills and lighter on the weaponsmithing.
You might well ask why weapons but the answer is quite obvious as it gives the maximum interaction with the other players. Whilst some players might be interested in armour, some shoes for their horses and so forth, nearly all players have some interest in weapons even if it’s just a knife and any who are making weapons part of their character concept ought to be interested sooner or later in something more than what they can buy over the counter in a shop.
The game has grown enough now that I don’t think that train of thought is anywhere near as important as it was at the start and I have a great deal of respect for those players I now see taking a different course such as Ethan who is focusing on blacksmithing.
Balance between the skills should follow naturally from the chosen career. Eanos developed on a pure metal forming skill and so far that worked for him. Now he needs to move on which means that he needs to start studying metalsmithing much more seriously and this study should run hand in hand with his mage training. So balance follows storyline for me, mixing a little from each skill into a particular project as needed, and lacking skill in one discipline was a perfect opportunity for Eanos to ask Hadyn for assistance recently and hopefully the same will be true of at least one thread coming up with another player.
3. How has being a business owner in Syliras changed your PC’s outlook or life? What advice would you offer people who are trying or thinking of setting up their own businesses?
I guess I should start by qualifying and pointing out that businesses in Syliras is different to elsewhere since the businesses are owned by the Knights and this changes some of the fundamentals of how the business operates.
For Eanos, owning a business has given him the freedom to pursue his goals in a way that wouldn’t be easily possible if he were working within the strictures set out by a location that was already created and working for someone else. It has also brought a depth to his character that simply wouldn’t exist if I didn’t have to consider how what he does reflects on the business and its success or failure.
One of the biggest challenges for Eanos was of all the cities that could have been chosen, Syliras was the last one I should have chosen in which to place a weapons shop. Gillar uses it as an example of how not to do it in his business advice. That said, I had a rationale which was to create a specialist, expensive, custom workshop which is now starting I think to bear fruit and to stand on it’s own feet as different from the Ironworks.
I would strongly recommend PCs to set up their own businesses once they have the skills in place to do so. If you have a trade - and in the end unless you are a Knight, slave or similar you have to earn your money somehow, then running your own business is right in my mind for the Mizahar environment - some cities of course will always be an exception to this. Being a shop assistant and then running off on an adventure expecting to walk back into your job at the end has always struck me as an RPing fail.
That said I am not, and never have been a fan of the business investor concept where a PC sets up a business often with NPC employees which acts as a cash cow with minimal investment of time and XP by the PC, especially where they attempt to build a business empire purely for the cash generation. But since Eanos uses his business as a way of funding his studies perhaps I’m not the best placed to pass judgement on that.
4. How does outlining goals for your PC each season help with your plans for your threads throughout the season? Do you find yourself meeting those goals more often than not or do you fall behind?
Seasonal goals are in my mind a great thing and I would wholeheartedly recommend them. I find it all too easy to obsess over one particular thing as I write and I end up not being able to see the forest because of all the trees in the way. At the start of the season I find it very useful to sit back and consider if I’ve been overly focused on one area to the detriment of another or lost sight of the bigger goals. Then too I sometimes become aware of an area of Lore that I hadn’t really paid any attention to before and realise that it contains an aspect which I should be including. During the season it’s useful then to come back to the seasonal goals to see if there is something that I’ve forgotten about and that is especially useful if I’ve come to a point where I’ve hit a wall and can’t think what to do next.
Eanos is a character I intend to be playing for a very long time yet. NaNo pushed him ahead on the smithing faster than I’d planned but it was a natural progression as the time was right to bring together certain parts of the story arc. Over time, more threads will be tied together and new links formed, but attempting to do that in my head is very difficult and the seasonal plan allows me to put some of those things down in a way that makes sense to me and reminds me of the larger picture.
If I’m not meeting the seasonal goals because IC has taken a different direction then it doesn’t worry me - the goal will either not be relevant any more or I’ll shift it to next season. On the whole though I’d say that I meet goals more than I fall behind so perhaps I’m not setting them high enough.
5. Why did you choose Syliras for your setting? Have you found it more helpful for your goals as a PC than say Sultros or have you come across big roadblocks? Talk a little bit about how Syliras interacts with your PC’s life and what influences it has on Eanos.
As I mentioned above, when I started this character Sultros wasn’t available for play and the list of available cities was smaller. Even now I wouldn’t recommend anyone playing in Sultros, and I have considered this several times, as it isn’t actively modded. That isn’t a complaint about the modding by the way, as these things happen, though it is a shame as there is so much potential there.
Syliras was an obvious choice as it was actively modded, though I think not as busy as it is now, and the Ironworks offered a place of employment where I could round out the character - develop what I might call real XP rather than starting XP and establish just how the character would play out. There were a few dead ends from that early time, but that is natural for me since I never look to establish the character background until the bones have worked themselves out in play.
Eanos now can barely swing a hammer in Syliras without hitting another smithing PC so it’s clear that many others have had the same ideas about it being a good place to start that sort of character. It’s also a good reminder that he needs to be more than just a smith.
Sultros aside I can’t think of a city more suited IC to Eanos and I can’t say that I’ve hit any roadblocks, certainly not IC, though I tend to think of roadblocks as opportunities for some creative thought. Syliras is a large city with access to mines for iron and steel and being the provincial capital as it were would attract in at some point all of those wealthy enough to afford the sort of expensive weaponry that Eanos will create. It also has for now the magical resources for Eanos to continue that side of his training, so it is the perfect setting for his business. The influx of new players into Sultros has proved useful to Eanos as a way of furthering his smithing by making blades. Now of course he is pricing himself out of that market which is a potential roadblock because he will need to use the mods time in order to work with NPCs who could afford his wares.
In the longer run he will need to return to his original quest for knowledge and that will take him elsewhere which will be a new chapter in his development, but that is some way off as yet.
6. Do you have any advice for fellow Isur? We would love to see more of them in the game so any encouragement you could offer would be fantastic.
It think that we have a basic issue with the Isur as the Lore tells us that for them to leave Sultros is very hard. This pushes players into the cliches of rebellion etc in order to play an Isur outside of Sultros which many won’t want to do. But there is little active moderation in Sultros so the players that do try to make a start there soon give up. The work that Gillar has just recently published has nicely fleshed out more detail which makes it all the more attractive to want to start a character there.
Looking past the above I do find it a little odd that the Isur are underplayed if your consider their physical advantages over humans whilst not requiring the out of the box thinking in order to play them that you need for the more exotic races. I suspect part of the problem is the description in the Races section which lists them as metalworkers. This helps to explain the relatively high proportion of Isurian smiths played and why someone wanting an adventurer or mercenary type character will skip on past - which to me is clearly a mistake.
Isur are great to play with very few disadvantages. If you want an action based PC then they are an excellent choice.
7. Most PC’s have a routine to sit down and post. What is yours? Do you have favorite music? Favorite beverages? What is your routine to sit down and catch up with posts?
I don’t have a specific routine and at the moment I’d guess my posting is the reverse of many as I rarely get chance to post at the weekends. Most of the time I’m trying to squeeze posting in between doing other things which means I’m as likely to make a post from work as I am from home.
Posting on a purely character basis there isn’t the pressure to sit down and write unless I’m excited by a plot, especially when I’m writing with or for someone and can’t wait to get the next post done. Often I write offline, especially where there is pressure to get things done - such as this reply for example and having done NaNo in the past I use Scrivener for that as I can sync the data files between PC’s.
During NaNo I had to be more focused than normal to get the volume in so I was listening to music more than normal. My tastes vary quite widely but looking at my LastFM profile reveals that my most listened to artists are Blutengel, Rammstein, Enya, Clannad and Muse, in that order. Blutengels placing in there I blame entirely on NaNo as I had that on random every evening as I was posting.
I’d like to blame drunk posting for most of my turgid writing but the truth is that the only thing you are likely to find me drinking is tea. I do tend to prioritise threads with other players for answers over solo’s but on the whole most of my posting with Eanos is solo.
8. What do you think makes a great character on Mizahar? We don't want to hear what the 'normal' thought on this is. We want to hear what YOUR thought on this is. What sorts of PCs do you like reading about and writing for? What actually attracts your notice as a player when you look around for potential threading partners?
To be honest I normally try not to pass judgement on other players and characters. Not modding fortunately gives me that luxury. Of course I do find myself doing that but I try to refrain.
Since you’ve asked though, what I find makes a great character is one who plays true to the Lore. I suppose we all do it when we start, but I find it much more exciting to see a character who is epitomising the race/ culture etc of their character than the one who is playing against it.
I’m bored of the whole cliche scene of dead parents/ yellow eyed humans/ rebelling etc, and I tend to view it as somewhat superficial character creation. There are a lot of races and cultures here and I’d like to see them played and explored rather than choosing a race because it has some cool feature and then playing counter to the culture because you don’t want the bother of actually playing the race. Yes, I am throwing stones whilst living in a house of glass, but I’m not suggesting that I’m among the better writers on this site or that I can’t do better myself. This for me is one good reason for the seasonal plans as it allows me to have a reality check as to how and where I’m playing and if I’m taking Eanos away from how an Isur should be played.
I don’t read as much of other players writing as I should and certainly this is something that I should change as I’ve been less actively seeking out other players than I should have been. When I do interact then yes I’m going to be more interested in someone who is playing their role well. If someone comes to Eanos for a weapon then it is nice if they actually have some idea of what the weapon actually looks like and how it is used rather than something they’ve seen in Anime and wouldn’t know what makes a good one in RL.
9. Having known you for quite a while, I know you’ve been collaboratively storytelling for quite some time. What is the draw of this hobby for you and why do you keep coming back to it?
That is a really hard question to answer, especially since I have a very small social circle in RL and the fact that I interact here with other people by choice would probably surprise most of that circle who know me well. However one of my strongest traits is curiosity and I enjoy learning new things and exploring new places, even if those places don’t actually exist.
Fantasy is my favourite genre, possibly second to military science fiction but it is fantasy that I enjoy writing about and Mizahar provides a wonderful place in which to do that. Mizahar is a combination of ideas and people and I enjoy the challenges and surprises that writing for other people provide. I make a terrible mod it has to be said, as I lack on the whole the connection with people and I’d much rather be creating details of locations and building them together into a cohesive whole than I would be in sitting in chat and trying to think of things to say to people.
10. This is a Mizahar specific question. What are some of the things you really love about Mizahar? What direction would you like to see the game head towards in the future? Are there any blatant feasible changes you think the game needs since we’ve been growing so rapidly?
What I love about Mizahar is the expansiveness of it and the ability of players to make their own mark on it. At the end of the day it is the players that make or break a game and Mizahar has attracted some really good players.
I think that the game as a whole is still on course. The issues that I see are in large part down to that very expansiveness which makes the game great. We have a small team of people attempting to control every aspect of the game that still needs a lot of development and just a few of them are doing most of the work; running themselves ragged trying to do it. We of course need more people involved in the running of the game to match the increase in player base, but finding them and motivating them is quite another challenge. I think the most blatant changes that need to be made are at this fundamental level, and I don’t think that it’s news to anyone.
The Graders are a big step in the right direction as grading is a massively time intensive task, and is a technical exercise that isn’t automatically compatible with the skill set of the creative personalities that you need in the mods who love to run quests etc and generally motivate the players.
Much of the unwritten Lore is locked up in the minds of the Founders and your vLog on Gnosis is a good example of that (I have pending questions on Shielding). When I look at the Lore I see stubs and when I look at the World Development I see a sparse and stalled process. Articles that do make it through to Founder Review appear to be just sitting there unreviewed, which is hardly likely to motivate people to undertake the challenging process of writing articles. I have a small twinge of guilt that I was one of those who escalated the travel times issue which meant that something else got delayed.
The changes are feasible in theory, but the Founders who are active are firefighting too much of the time. To me this is the change in direction that I’d like to see. Somehow the Founders need to delegate, and part of the problem might well be in the existence of that user group itself since I don’t see a mechanism for replacing the functions of Founders who are no longer active, and that assumes that the Founders ever had the well balanced skill set to run a game rather than to set one up.
11. This question is your soapbox. Would you like to say anything to the people? Have you any further thoughts? Please feel free to speak up and say your mind.
I suspect that there was enough potential negativity in the last answer so instead what I’d like to express here is gratitude for the staff and the players for their time and their creativity which makes this place what it is today.
Thank you all for your work and I look forward to the chance of interacting with you in the future.
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by Caelum on January 2nd, 2014, 6:24 pm 
That was a lovely interview.
