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I dunno if I really have time for this but I want to see what happens and I have a Big Picture that I love already: A primordial floating continent's figurative rise and literal fall
Abyssal Squid fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Nov 24, 2014 |
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Nov 24, 2014 05:15
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FredMSloniker posted:I've trimmed these two suggestions down to appropriate lengths. Note particularly in the latter that I've omitted the description of what the World Torrent is. Yeah, I looked back on the examples and realized how bloated that was. I'd change it slightly still, to "A primordial floating continent's figurative rise and literal fall." I could edit my other post if you'd like.
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Nov 24, 2014 06:08
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I wasn't actually expecting to get picked, or I would have brainstormed more than just the floating continent  I'm guessing that means FredMSloniker really liked it. Here's another one if you'd like: A castle adapts, and at times fails to adapt, to the changing world around it.The colonization of KOI-3010.01. (A RICH WHITE MAN) I really want this to be about literal koi. In the wake of the Event, monstrous fantasy races rise to rule the Earth. (FredMSloniker) I'd love to see what kind of monstrous creatures show up, and who rises to the top. Angels and Demons switch jobs for a Celestial Day (10,000 years for Earth), to see who has it easier. (EclecticTastes) I think this one speaks for itself. I'm especially partial to the monster takeover and the Angels and Demons scenarios. It's late and tomorrow's Thanksgiving, so I'd better just throw this up here for now.
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Nov 27, 2014 07:57
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Yeah I feel kinda cheesy about having only one Big Picture to begin with, and I like the castle idea better than the floating continent one anyway. The castle, Angels and Demons, and monster-takeover all have a similar theme of an explicit shift in power that should give lots of opportunities for entertaining conflict.
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Nov 28, 2014 02:57
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FredMSloniker posted:While I do like Abyssal Squid's latest suggestion, I'm not entirely comfortable with the world 'castle'. It brings a certain feel to the Big Picture I don't like. Could we change the word? Maybe bring in some of my idea with 'lair' or 'dungeon'? Yeah, I'm fine with changing it, I just want some sort of, let's say, insular community in a fortification. If you want it to be inhabited by monsters at some point, there's nothing about a castle that prevents that, just make sure you slap that in during step 3: the Palette. I do feel like those monster-specific communities imply substantially more aloofness from the rest of the world than a castle does, even if the castle is occupied by man-eating goblins.
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Nov 29, 2014 00:22
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I'm a little hesitant to change it to a "kingdom" in particular, because I want to see a relatively small political entity react to political and social changes that it has no control over: changes imposed from above, changes from without, and changes rising from below. On the scale of a kingdom, the king is the one imposing the changes from above, he has an army to repel change from without, and changes from below happen more or less at the king's pleasure. I'm not married to the idea of a "castle" exactly, but I think something like a "fiefdom" or a "village" is a more organic unit that has a stronger sense of continuity than a kingdom that shatters and is reassembled every time there's a succession. and would have a stronger sense of community with its neighbors. If barbarians sack the next country over, that's great, means they're not gonna invade next year. If barbarians sack the next village over, that's a disaster because you actually know people there. All that said, "A kingdom adapts, and at times fails to adapt, to the changing world around it." is good enough that I'd be willing to roll with it if everybody else wants to work at that scale. There's plenty of time to shape the setting to my whims in the rest of the game. 
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Nov 29, 2014 06:14
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A RICH WHITE MAN posted:How about : Perfect. I'm in for that.
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Nov 29, 2014 06:28
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Throwing more ideas into the ring: Beginning: Merchants and artisans flock to a backwater outpost on the Southern Fringe, as patrols continually liberate treasure the haggard river pirates have looted from other kingdoms. (light) End: Survivors flee in search of healthy cities and to the countryside as the Choking Fever claims countless lives. (dark)
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Nov 30, 2014 01:22
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Well, it's relatively easy to see a Dark beginning, but it's hard to see how an ending can be happy for pretty much any social institution. I guess some sort of incorporation into a larger entity where it loses its individual identity, possibly. I started typing up a scenario where the end of a regime would be a positive period for some, but it would be a dark period for the regime itself, and those situations are so dire (the slave trade, the Nazis) that I feel gross for even thinking about them in game terms. To be honest, it seems like the larger your scale, the fewer Light endings are plausible. A life or a relationship can end on a high note, and a castle could be decommissioned into a museum or somesuch, but a city is pretty much either going to go on forever, or end in some kind of ruin. Similarly, a nation or civilization is going to keep going until it ends, and there's no pretty way for them to end either. I have some thoughts about the ideas people have put out, but I've gotta take the trip back home pretty soon, so for now I'll just say that I'd like to see the beginning being a resumption of normal activity after a period of stagnation and depopulation, especially with some sort of mlitary figure deciding to fortify a strategic location, and then the end being a return to global stagnation and flight from the cities. Probably better to work out broad themes than to nitpick about specific wording anyway.
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Nov 30, 2014 21:08
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I think it's a good point that the bookends don't have to be the beginning and the ending of the entity, but just of our story. A nice Light ending for a city would be "the city becomes the capital of a new nation" or something. On the other hand, I'm a little skeezed by "there's nobody here, let's make a city" origin stories, because the only place that happens is in American history textbooks. For as long as cities have been a thing, pretty much every habitable bit of land (excepting some remote islands) has been occupied by people, and founding a city usually means displacing the people who were there before. As long as that's acknowledged though, we're good.
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Dec 3, 2014 22:05
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Looks good to me! Only thing is those sound more like Events than Periods, and minor tweaks to the wording should fix that. Protracted struggles over succession allow the Dragon and her minions establish a new order in the city. (Dark) Archaeologists explore the ruins of the city, and its lost secrets. (Light) Just changing things to continual verbs and periods, rather than unique events. The king death only takes an instant but the arguments over succession could last years; claiming the city takes only a single word whereas establishing a new order requires time to eliminate the old and to build up the institutions of the new. Uncovering could take place repeatedly, but I still feel like it's a singular action, for an on-the-spot analogy, setting the table is a continuous activity (you've got your plates and your glasses and your silverware and your napkins and the dishes of food themselves) while uncovering the dishes happens once for each dish, in a second or so. I figure that's something we should be aware of before we move on. It's fine for a Period to revolve around an Event, but the Period itself needs to be a framework that can fit multiple Events inside it. If the Big Picture is about Jesse's life, Moved by desperation, Jesse robs a bank would be an Event, while Moved by desperation, Jesse turns to a life of crime would be a Period. Plenty of time in that Period for Jesse to rob a bank and also take a forced vacation to the Cayman Islands.
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Dec 3, 2014 23:54
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Seconding that beginnings and endings are changes, and allowing an invader to take over because you can't get your house in order definitely seems like a failure to adapt to me! That is a good point though, we should keep the Big Picture in mind as we come up with Periods during the game. Some more ideas for the ending: The population dwindles as the countryside yields sustenance with ever-increasing reluctance. (Dark) Surrounded by foes on all sides, the city dwindles to insignificance. (Dark) United with its neighbors, the city flourishes as the capital of a new kingdom. (Light) All of these happen as a result of changes outside the city itself.
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Dec 4, 2014 03:35
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In defense of the second, the "surrounded by foes" one, I meant that more to be a drawn-out affair of cultural attrition rather than a dramatic showdown between armies. Even if the city has a powerful army, all of its neighbors imposing onerous tariffs and tolls would kill it just as surely as the farms failing to produce would. I'm equally open to dramatic and subdued stories, for what it's worth, as long as the tone is kept somewhat consistent.
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Dec 4, 2014 05:47
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FredMSloniker posted:I'm partial to this pairing myself: Looks good, except again the beginning is worded like an Event rather than a Period. Change it to "sets about establishing" and I'm sold. EclecticTastes, you seem to have experience with the system, am I being pedantic here?
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Dec 5, 2014 03:50
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I feel you, Fred, I was gonna say "No: corporeal undead" and "Yes: ghosts" but I think we should play by the rules and have Palette suggestions be non-negotiable. "No: fantastic stuff" is a really huge ban but I feel like I can work with it. My suggestion: Yes: Widespread BELIEF in the supernatural which I think shouldn't be in conflict with EclecticTaste's ban. Someone may hire a sorcerer to curse a rival, but the effects of that curse are purely psychological or social.
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Dec 6, 2014 00:29
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Note to self: at some point, create a period, The Age of the Sorcerors (dark).
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Dec 6, 2014 01:05
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FredMSloniker posted:Just to bump the thread, the Palette currently consists of the following: Augh, I lost my post, I'll try to reconstruct it. First, I'd say that EclecticTastes' would probably work better as something like No: D&D-style magic, because it's more about banning stuff like fireballs and Summon Monster III than it is about protecting anything from being banned. It still leaves room for people to Yes in particular supernatural elements they like, such as your monstrous humanoids, but I think we can assume that anything that isn't specifically put in would be vanishingly rare at best. For mine, I still like my idea but I'll reword it to Yes: Ubiquitous magical thinking. Belief in magic underpins the belief system of most people and is a daily part of their lives, even if it isn't the focus of it, and even if the magic they believe in is real. Hell, there's easily lots of conflict between people who believe in different forms of magic, like you see the Moral Majority condemning astrology. Also, I read "focus on politics" as not necessarily being "nobody has any agency other than the king" but more like a look at the city on a macro level, with Scenes zooming in on the micro level only insofar as the relate to the macro. Kings and diplomats and advisors are a large part of that, but not the only part. Anyway, I don't really have the time to refine my thoughts here, but hopefully I'm clear enough.
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Dec 7, 2014 18:47
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Not ubiquitous MAGIC, ubiquitous MAGICAL THINKING. People going to astrologers before making major decisions, blaming problems on the interference of malign spirits or sorcery, rituals for protection in battle, that sort of thing. It's still common in the real world to varying degrees, even though magic isn't real. EclecticTastes strongly agreed with the idea before, so I'm assuming he's still up for it with different wording:EclecticTastes posted:This is both a great idea and also a good description of how people used to weaponize feng shui with the help of their friendly local geomancer (or, at least, so says the folklore). Just to reiterate, "Ubiquitous magical thinking" means that people THINK that curses and blessings, elves and goblins, and other supernatural forces are everywhere, not that they actually ARE. For the next round, No: Corporeal undead. I like ghosts but I'm leaving room for somebody else to ban them, but as much as I also like skeletons I really dislike zombies. Not earthshaking in light of this being a low-magic setting but I really really don't want there to be zombies or necromancer armies.
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Dec 8, 2014 23:01
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No complaints here.
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Dec 10, 2014 00:16
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Timeline:
Note that the Seers' revelations aren't necessarily true, let alone supernatural in origin.
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Dec 11, 2014 00:11
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An entertainer? How about Chuppy Charf, goblin actor of the Forever Players, a traveling troupe that performs religious pageants. I feel like I should come up with a name for his hometown, but I'm not feeling particularly inspired right now.
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Dec 11, 2014 22:36
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There's not many performances left, it's five? Six, counting this one. Give it everything you've got, Charf, the more folks we convince to participate in the ritual, the more folks get to go on to the afterlife. And the last pageant got half the audience to agree to go to the ritual! You're not just helping, Charf, you're saving lives. Go break a leg out there!
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Dec 14, 2014 02:56
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Yeah, I've been feeling exhausted lately, but I've got a good hook for Chuppy that I'll write up this evening. I'll probably give him some performing companions, but I'll try to keep the cast small and allow for a fair amount of audience participation.
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Dec 16, 2014 00:39
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I could go one of two ways, either EclecticTastes does his thing at T-5h while everybody else does their thing at T-1h (you might have to pull double-duty, Fred, if you're up for that) or we can Push to have the meeting established in flashbacks while the party goes on. Either way, I think it's less disruptive and more in the spirit of the game to retcon as little as possible, so the main timeline should stay at T-1h..
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Dec 16, 2014 04:16
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Yeah, the "five more shows tonight" was when I was expecting there to be enough time left in the night to do five more shows, and one hour really wasn't. I originally put in Chuppy's thoughts that it was the last show of the night but I can't remember why I changed it, and I somehow forgot that everybody else can't read my mind. :I
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Dec 17, 2014 06:09
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 15:35 |
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Yeah, just swamped over here too.
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Dec 22, 2014 16:37
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