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I think I'm a regular voter, but I was ill last week and missed the poll, as well as this weeks one too. I have to get back into reading this when it is fresh and still open for vote.

Besides that, I have a question regarding the idea of solo roleplay. How do sessions play out for you? Are you playing out loud or in your head and writing notes once a scene is done? Are you writing down conversations while playing, or do you fill them in later?

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I play out loud, in my head, and take notes on virtual notecards (I use a platform called Miro, which lets me write notecards, move them around, arrange them in columns, etc., among other useful brainstorming tools). The notecards vary in level of specificity, but at a minimum, they cover scene beats -- important descriptions, actions and character statements.

Sometimes, the beats will be quite vague -- for example, in this episode, a few of the note cards read stuff like "Anwen and Vahid head back to the second terrace" and "Anwen asks why they call it Gordin's Delve." But usually, they are specific enough that I can copy and paste them directly into Substack's editor, clean them up a bit, and add a bit of connecting verbiage and we're good to go.

As for dialogue -- for most conversations, I write the dialogue on notecards as I go, and then I give it a second pass when I sit down to produce the episode. Most of the lines I'm happiest with come on that second pass -- I'll have an important point or interesting exchange roughed out, but the good turns of phrase are sharpened on the second pass.

Someday, for a PTFOOO, I could do a 'making of' and show my notes alongside a produced episode -- would that be worthwhile?

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Mar 15, 2023Liked by SGH

I wound up voting from in the email, which doesn’t show any live tally.

Neat trick flipping a Miss from “Vahid just makes up some BS about the Delve because he failed to Know Things” into a mysterious encounter that pulls him off into trouble.

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Misses on "Know Things" can be hard to represent while being a fan of the character, particularly a character who's supposed to be very knowledgeable. Two approaches I often use are 'you knew things, but the process of knowing things distracted you from an important development' and 'you knew things, but they're bad things for your current situation.' I wouldn't be surprised if we see both of those before this session ends. ;-)

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Mar 15, 2023Liked by SGH

I not infrequently miss the voting cut-off. I tend to catch up on newsletters over the weekend, so publishing Monday and closing Wednesday often means I haven’t even started the session before the poll is over.

Shorter sessions would help with this - it’s easier to squeeze in a shorter post, while I tend to put off a longer one till I have more time for it.

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That makes sense -- I've often puzzled over how best to arrange writing time and publishing. The weekend gives me a good amount of time to dedicate to the work, whereas weeknights are more spotty, so publishing on Monday feels very safe. With many polls, I can start writing the episode before I have the final result (and in a lot of polls, the result is clear well before the poll is closed), but for safety I tend to hold off beginning to play the next episode's events until around Wednesday or Thursday.

But I do regret that folks who do most of their reading on the weekends are hedged out of poll participation. Definitely will keep publication date in active consideration moving forward.

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Mar 14, 2023Liked by SGH

I'm going to suggest that there's going to be more participation with a blind vote.

If one disagreed with the visible trend, one might not vote.

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That makes sense. I think I might go back to Google polls after this one -- I like having them all recorded in one place for perusal, and it's got slightly more features. Oh well!

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This episode was SO DELIGHTFUL! I loved especially the second half in Parvati’s - baraz is very easy to like (I have a soft spot for big, buff, fat, clever guys). I keeps thinking “Oh! He must be an eater!” But I realize that’s the wrong IP lol.

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