[MR] In re: Persona Development

[E. L. Wimett]

Gee, I think it may be a "your mileage may vary" thing depending on where
you were back then.

I started out back in AS XII and in the part of the world in which I started
out, nobody did "persona development" as it is being discussed here.  People
did mostly tee tunics (I was considered a clothes horse and authenticity
freak for actually copying illustrations of period garb and insisting on
non-polyester fabrics.)  And, while some people did "talk forsoothly", it
was mostly influenced by Errol Flynn movies and struck most people as being
as ludicrous as it was.  A main thrust of language development back then was
coming up with Society-specific euphemisms for common everyday implements
(like farspeaker and dragon despite the fact that telephone was a perfectly
feasible period neologism, car is a perfectly period English term and, as
many of us frequently reminded folks, people inside dragons are seldom very
happy!)  The main time a persona story was brought up was to justify a
really weird combination of name elements ("My father was a Turkish pirate
and my mother was an Irish princess which is why my name is Deirdre Bey.")
which come to think of it is one of the main reasons we see elaborate
persona stories today so some things have not changed a lot. . .

Oh, and I admit that there was not a lot of microcomputer talk back then,
probably because it was BEFORE the appearance of the Apple II or the IBM PC.
But there was a lot of discussion of D & D runs and dungeon development.
Indeed, there were some entire groups built around a particular role-playing
abschnitt.  (And, of course, some people even today model their Society name
and sometimes their personality on their favorite dungeon character. . .)

Alisoun, who really should be packing for Crown instead of answering email.
. .