Tuesday 12 February 2002

Pic of the day: Showoff! "Grrls just want to have fun!" (Screenshot from Dark Age of Camelot.)
Because I am tired, I'll serve this drivel instead of a real entry. Enjoy.

Stereotyping myselves

In Dark Age of Camelot, on the Gawaine server, I have 4 different characters. They are Itland the paladin, Pekunia the cabalist, Porcupet the cleric and Prismagrrl the theurgist. They are all different, but some are more different than others.

The most similar are Itland and Porcupet. They are both church men, and their main goal is to help others. They gravitate to areas where there is a need for them; currently they are both at the Tomb of Mithra. They also are the same level and have been for some days, as I tend to alternate between the two. This means they get to know the same people. They even wear the same kind of green hooded cloak. But there are differences, that follow mainly from the class.

Porcupet is the most self-denying in serving others, as his service consists in healing and resurrecting; there is little reward for that. He is popular in group, but tries to avoid them. He may join one or two armsmen (or preferably armswomen): His specialty is "buffing", or enhancement as it is officially named. He can increase the armor factor, strength, healing rate, and agility of himself and up to two other players quite a bit, making them far more effective in battle. And of course he can heal them, though less effectively than a healing specialist. He wears good defensive armor that he has made himself; but even so, he knows that in a big group the healer is the first to die. This is part of the artificial intelligence of several monsters, and it predictably succeeds against natural stupidity. In a large group, it is easy for fighters to forget the healer for the short time it takes the enemy to kill him.

With the same knowledge, Itland reacts very differently. As a specialist Chant Paladin, he is most effective in large groups, preferably armsmen or fellow paladins. His healing chant makes him the natural target if there are no healers, or if they don't heal much during battle. He can heal everyone in the group at the same time, and even if the healing is moderate it really adds up in a chaotic battle where almost everyone is wounded. But as a paladin, Itland has the armor and fighting skills to survive the onslaught of a whole group of enemies for a short while. He becomes a natural rallying point – as the enemies converge on him, so do the friends who fight them. You will find Itland standing at a high point or in the middle of the room, surrounded by a ring of friends and foes, while he calmly gives strategy advice even as he trades blows with the strongest of the opponents.

Pekunia is solitary. Rarely seen without a golem nearby, she roams the wilderness and interacts little with others unless they beg her to. She is cautious and self-protecting, preferring to let her golem do the dirty work for her. She is more interested in loot than experience points anyway. She is also the least played character.

Prismagrrl is the hyper genki adolescent girl wonder. She has a speed running spell and wears it constantly. Rarely standing still unless to cast a spell, she roams the lands looking for fun and newbies. She will stop briefly by a younger character and enhance his weapons with speed and destructive power. The spells wear off over time, but can significantly ease the leveling for a young character. Up to level 5 (and beyond for some classes) the extra damage from the spell will more than double the damage of the weapon. Prismagrrl will not stop to watch, but run away looking for more newbies to help. Occasionally she will join a group if they are out in the open air where she can run free; her special move in a group is to freeze the target in a block of ice. Apart from enhancing the weapons, of course, but she would have done that anyway. Prismagrrl can also summon short-lived "pets" of air, earth or ice, and will do so if necessary to exact revenge. Due to her careless habits and lack of armor, she dies a lot, but she bounces back easily. Once she's got her revenge, she moves on. She will shout silly slogans ("read my shirt!" probably being the most obscure) and call even enemies by cute nicknames. Prismagrrl is by far the most childish of the characters, and is usually played along with bouncy dance songs from the Norwegian band Infinity.

***

Do these characters really reflect my view on how I expect men and women respectively to behave? Men are calm, responsible, reliable, hard working and somewhat dull in peacetime? Women are impulsive, fragile, unable to form lasting friendships but able to conjure up expendable "friends" from nowhere to fight for them? I don't think we can generalize quite that far. Remember, generalization is always wrong...