Mirror Road: moderator journal (mirrormod) wrote in mirrorroad_ooc, @ 2020-10-11 17:26:00 |
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Listed here are some hobbies, pastimes, and sports that your character might engage in. This is intended to help flesh characters out and also to provide inspiration for interaction. It isn't exhaustive.
Entertainments
Theatre - encompasses a number of different live entertainments on the stage, from plays and ballets to acrobats and rope walkers.
Pleasure gardens - formal gardens where pedestrians stroll together
Fairs and markets - Fairs can last for a week or more and are often linked to local saints' or feast days, markets, or civic celebrations.
Curiosities, exhibitions, and crazes - varies but often includes the showing of exotic animals imported from other countries (birds, lions, monkeys, etc.), performing animals, or scientific spectacles.
Blood sports, fox hunting, hare-coursing, etc.
Hobbies and Pastimes
Cards and Dice, including gambling - Popular games include Cribbage, Faro, Hazard, Commerce, Loo, Piquet, Vingt-et-Un, Whist. Fortunes may be made or lost at the card table.
Board Games - include Backgammon, Billiards, Chess, Dissections (today we call these jigsaw puzzles), Draughts (Checkers), Fox and Geese, the Game of Goose.
Parlor Games - include Blind Man's Buff, Buffy Gruffy, Bullet Pudding, Charades, Musical Magic, Short Answers, Snapdragon.
Artistic accomplishments - particularly valued in a lady; drawing, painting, playing an instrument (the pianoforte and harp are considered the most suitable for young women though the harp is much more expensive), handwork such as embroidery.
Singing, both solos and group singalongs
Reading - the first novels are being published at this time. Also common are history, books on conduct, poetry, and assorted magazines and journals. Reading is also a group pastime with people taking turns reading to one another. Books are expensive but it is possible to pay to join a circulating library.
Social visits
Ballroom dancing - include the cotillon, country dance, and the Scotch reel (the waltz and the quadrille come later than this game is set but we can introduce them earlier. It IS an AU, after all.)
Sports and Outdoor Entertainments
Bowls (Lawn Bowling)
Pall Mall (pale-maille, paille-maille, mall) - a precursor to modern croquet
Cricket
Horse Racing
Fencing
Boxing
Fishing
Shooting
Archery - note that this is thought suitable for men and women
Boat rides
Travel