Pre-NES: Whispers- gathering ideas, players, etc at present.

[Immaculate]

Orders for Turn Two are due on Monday at midnight.

 

[Vertinari118]

Oh! Sorry about missing turn one. I ended up getting almost no sleep last week and was really busy. I will send orders in for this turn as soon as I've read the update and decided what I want to do.

 

[Immaculate]

No problems. Hope you are rested now.

 

[Immaculate]

Update Three: Lights in the East


Amius of Polemiun, already far beyond the presence of most entities remaining in Nicaea, is infused with great endurance and stamina and continues his long-distance jog south-eastwardly. He heads for the southern coast- perhaps for Attalia (modern day Antalaya)

***​

The emperor is distracted. He turns his attention from the council and his lack of leadership helps leave the mass of clergy disjointed and restless.

Regardless, he receives further visions, dreaming of distant Antioch in flames. He now knows what he must do and with only minimal goodbyes, turns northwards with his entourage, to gather his army in Constantinople. Once gathered, they will ride for Antioch. The devil threatens the east and the emperor will be ready.

Even as he receives these visions and sets upon his task, his pattern is reinforced with a strengthening weave. Something protects the emperor but has allowed the vision to form in his conscience. By what criteria does the entity decide if the emperor can be influenced?

***​

The women of the religious orphanage are braided with clarity, health, and endurance, finding themselves subtly strengthened. A new sense of purpose comes over them and they expand their mission, seeking to organize the healthy older children and set them assist in farmer’s fields. With the proceeds thereof they establish a soup charity for local poor.

***​

The council of Nicaea ends in indecision and crimination. The Trinitarians have been weakened by new divisions and distrust in the emperor. The emperor himself has withdrawn his direct support- focusing instead on his visions and preparations for war.
Eustathius of Antioch, has his pattern inexpertly reinforced to prevent against further influence and meets with Hosius of Cordoba. Together they form an alliance that focuses on countering the will of the Emperor- one because he believes he is a traitor to the cause of the Church and the other because he dreams himself emperor. Ultimately the loss of leadership from the Constantine, Hosius or Eustathius leaves a power void which Eusebius of Nicomedia’s scheming is quick to fill.

While unable to win a decisive victory for the Arians, the Nicene creed is never signed and the issue of whether Jesus is derived from God or not, as well as the whole dichotomy between God and Jesus remains unresolved.

By the end of the week the council begins to pack their bags to return to their homes; they have not even been able to decide on the date on which Easter falls.

***​

While these events unfold on the ‘physical’ plane, the aether/astral/plane of souls is suddenly illuminated by one of you entities suddenly being infused with great power of some sort. You can feel the distant entity radiating luminescence such as you could not before conceive. It travels south-westerly and suddenly begins to radiate that much more strongly. As it does, another entity begins to radiate luminescence from the position where the first entity began to radiate light. It seems that something in the south-east is allowing entities such as yourselves to infuse their presence in some unknown way.


You can all diplo with the greater and lesser entities infused with some strange energy in the south-east. They are LdiCesare and Merciary. Feel free to PM or publicly diplo them. Try to make your diplomacy reflect your non-human and alien priorities – whatever you want them to be.

***​

Your earliest influences that have not been maintained are started to wane as natural patterns begin to reassert themselves. Inquire if you have specific concerns.

Lots of players did not submit orders. I’m not sure what I’ll do.

I will send private messages to Merciary and LDiCesare.

 

[Arrow Gamer]

I did, but got nothing in the update.

 

[thomas.berubeg]

Immac, did you not get my orders?

 

[Immaculate]

I got nothing from Thomas or Arrow Gamer. I'm double checking and not seeing anything.

If you check your sent box and resend it i'll include it (edit it in). hopefully i didn't accidentally delete them or anything.

 

[Arrow Gamer]

Oh, I guess I didn't. Weird. Well, I'll send them for this turn at some point.

 

[thomas.berubeg]

Resent. I had sent them

 

[Immaculate]

Yeah- turns out Thomas thought his orders for turn 2 were for turn 3. But they got incorporated into turn 2. Also no real orders from arrow gamer.

Dont worry about it too much gentlemen- there is no penalty for not submitting orders. We'll say you just rested for a bit.

 

[Immaculate]

Orders due Thursday, March 7th,at midnight.

 

[Immaculate]

In all honesty would you rather keep doing this NES or do a more classical fantasy empire building thing like we have in the past?

You are the one who seems by far the most active and many players seem barely involved. Player interest is not great and i think i could do better with another idea i have but at the same time if you are interested i will continue this.

The problem I see with the NES is we can't easily set goals for ourselves. There's no incentive at all to act upon the physical world. [snip] Those who did act upon the world found their influence to be quite limited.
[snip]
Once that's accomplished, I have no idea what to do. I'd basically collect information but see no reason to interact with the world.
So I don't know where you're headed with the NES, but it's very hard to set goals for oneself here. It's hard to relate to one's entity. There's also no relation between players, and no incentive to have any. ([snip]
So I think the NES is interesting, but it's hard to set goals. I probably wouldn't even spend knot and mana if I could store them because I don't have anything sensible to do with them.
Empire building is easier to set goals for oneself and for diplomacy. Right now I'd prefer that because it's more familiar and game-design-wise it's easier to gather motivation. Then again, I don't know where you're headed with the current NES.

I think I am going to admit this NES is stillborn. An interesting idea but perhaps badly conceptualized and executed.

I will be launching a fresh-start fantasy NES on an earth-like world in the next two weeks or so. I will post a pre-NES thread in about 7-10 days.

My apologies for wasting your time.

 

[hbar]

Oh no!

I can't help but feel responsible - I'm in the middle of a series of business trips, and I wasn't able to get orders in last turn, or even read the update until now (wow, things ended up moving a lot faster than I expected - I thought the creed would be the focal point we were building up to).

If I had any (constructive) criticism, it would be that the combination of our alien nature, secret information, and limited powers of interaction prevented us from creating the lifeblood of any NES - stories and diplomacy. It's easy to neglect a thread when there aren't any posts between updates. I tried to come up with a story or two, but it was difficult to know where to start.

This was absolutely not a waste of time. This was one of the most unexpected and unique ideas for a NES, and I'm sorry it didn't get to develop further. Looking forward to your next idea.

 

[Immaculate]

Don't feel bad Hbar.

The fault is mine for badly executing this idea.

 

[LDiCesare]

My apologies for wasting your time.

This was certainly not a waste of time. I'd like to know the story behind it however. Like, what are the beings we play and why were they banished at Babel? It feels more like discovering the backstory you wrote than writing our own but that backstory seems interesting from what I learnt and the setup is well-done.

 

[merciary]

I'm kinda sad to see this die, I had some half-plans for what I wanted that seemed to shift every update but I thought the concept was interesting. I think the main problem which was brought up in the quote was the lack of reason to do things. I think a way that this could have been resolved was a "worship"/fuel mechanic, basically to survive and act you need people to basically acknowledged your existence and the more they do so the strong you are. This would have encouraged people to actually influence the world.

This is just my two-cents and I look forward to your next NES.

 

[Immaculate]

It was sort of about the return of magic after it was banished from the world. You were effectively the bridge between magic and people- the element that was severed in the babel story. As you gained more power over mana you could effectively reintroduce magic on a much larger scale to the world.

 

[thomas.berubeg]

I'm sorry to see this go, But, I will echo everyone else and say that the lack of Agency really crippled what I was intended to do. I did, however, try to make that fit into my plans: Lacazar was a fickle and flighty creature, ready to flit from plan to plan.

 

[Nintz]

I forgot about this.

Sorry. Really, I am. This was really promising I thought.

Maybe if you refine it, it could work though?

 

[Immaculate]

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