Shadows of Bankor

Life has been busy enough that I haven't hit the posting rate I might have wished for, but I've still really enjoyed Sinn'yatar and her piece of the rebellion story. Thanks to all who let me bounce her off your PCs.

Sinnya presented some new RP challenges, some old favorite stuff (esp. fleshing out made-up alien traditions), and some personality traits and story trajectories I really wasn't expecting. No idea if she would reappear in a second game (if Dapper Dog in fact decides to run one!) or not, but either way, there isn't really anything about her that needs to be kept secret, so ask away!

I may take my time answering here and in other people's topics, just because doing too much Q&A too early tends to suck away my momentum for finishing out a game, but rest assured that I will get to it.

That thread we had was a lot of fun. You were right in how they were both similar and different in a lot of ways. What came as a surprise to you about Sinnya? What story trajectory weren't you expecting?

Sinnya was interesting in that one moment I thought she looked so sweet and nice, and then the next moment she'd be like this angry little ball with lekkus. xD

Kudos on the Aznuri culture work. Nice to see how you and the other Aznuri players added in stuff there, especially considering how we had so little to work with from the original Aznuri in the first Bankor game!

Is there anything you would have wanted to do differently with Sinnya, or paths you felt you didn't get to explore enough?

Why haven't we done some more Tie-Fighter joy riding?

Verse Aura wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 20, 2020 3:49 am

Why haven't we done some more Tie-Fighter joy riding?

This is a truly excellent question. Maybe that’s our Yub Nub moment postgame, flying the stolen TIE around to launch the celebratory fireworks?

Actually though, that scene was not only hilarious fun but also a great character moment for me. Verse’s YOLO exuberance really cracked through both Sinnya’s emotional orientation of Caution/Fear, and Sinnya’s player’s habitual reluctance to do stuff that’s too risky and ‘not what I think the GM was planning.’ Sinnya was bolder in general from that scene on, so credit to Verse for that!

... perhaps this means we shouldn’t do too much TIE-jacking lest the character end up suicidally brave.

Sacha Ordo wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 20, 2020 2:36 am

That thread we had was a lot of fun. You were right in how they were both similar and different in a lot of ways. What came as a surprise to you about Sinnya? What story trajectory weren't you expecting?

Aznuri stuff became a bigger deal than I was expecting, for one thing. That Obligation going off in the first session, and then the sacking of the Enclave, really pushed Sinnya further into that part of her life than might otherwise have happened. Add in the quest for the moon temple and she ended up fully in the cultural interlocutor/middle-twi’lek role and really identifying herself with the Aznuri more than I’d anticipated.

Sinnya also turned out to be... more of a radical than I’d expected? I was hoping to play through an arc of gradually becoming committed to the resistance, and ended up picking that origin because I thought the starting setup fit best of the four, but then I had to figure out why she’d been arrested. I didn’t think it would have occurred to her at that point to actually fight the Empire directly—even that it was possible. She wasn’t super aware of galactic politics and didn’t see a clear distinction between the Republic and Empire (or CIS, etc), and one or the other had always been there. The concept ‘overthrow the Empire’ wasn’t really conceivable.

I decided on the spur of the moment that, okay, Rygor has this Imperial factory with harsh working conditions—maybe she was picked up in a sweep of Foundry labor organizers who were her Rygor friends. Then a day later the Empire wiped out her other found family group, the Enclave, which wasn’t especially prosperous under the Republic either. After those two events right on top of each other, I discovered that Sinnya wasn’t really coming out like a “restore the Republic!” or “just get rid of the obviously evil stuff!” Rebel; she’d accidentally wandered into some flavor of space-socialism or maybe space-anarchism, in which no hierarchy of rank or wealth was ever quite to be trusted.

Also, I discovered that writing blocking for somebody with head-tentacles but possibly no eyebrows was interestingly different from anything I’d done before!

Those are probably the biggest three discoveries of many.

I’ll get to Dove’s Q (and some of my own for others) probably tomorrow...

Never got a chance to interact but I'm curious about these made up alien cultural traditions you mentioned. Is there anything about the character that you wanted to flesh out more either in RP or just figuring out a backstory for?

I don't know if it is intended but just looking at your traits makes me think that Sinnya is a Vault Dweller or something.

Are my comparisons to Mission Vao unfounded? I kept making the comparison!