I had two players sign up for the last character slot within an hour. Now, by rights, the earlier one would get if first - which, as luck would have it, is Kyroshill, not Diamondeye. The reason I say that was lucky is because Diamondeye also sent a pretty little writeup of a character idea - something that I had not, originally, intended, but it will allow him to play anyway.
So, our final player count is 17: eight nations and nine characters. Or, to be slightly more accurate, eight, eight, and one that's a little more like an group than a character.
Now, since I'm sure you're all curious, about the quiz:
Spoiler:
A) How much FFH lore do you know (higher # = more)?
1) Well, I know that you told me it exists...
2) Why is it "FFH"? Nothing's falling, right?
3) Khazad=dwarves.
4) Laroth is my homeboy.
5) The actions of the Three Brothers have had an adverse effect not only on Erebus, but several other planes of existence as well...
B) What are the chances that you would jump off a bridge if I told you to?
1) -12%, you jerk.
2) Pretty much nil.
3) I dunno... I'm so confused...
4) 50/50.
5) Yawohl!
C) Chaos theory.
1) Huh?
2) ... ... ...
3) Pink puppies, balloons, and freeweights?
4) I think, therefore I am.
5) Acid trips me out too, it's OK.
D) Is "Buffalo buffalo buffalo" a complete sentence in the English language?
1) Are you dumb?
2) Yes.
3) No.
4) I looked it up, fool!
E) Boy, this is fun, isn't it? It's all, like, comedy-ish!
1) ...
2) ... ... ...
3) [smile slightly, then walk away]
4) If you say so, man.
5) Yes.
F) What's better; a democracy run by fools or a dictatorship run by a genius?
1) Democracy.
2) Dictatorship.
3) Communism.
G) Do you want to be a nation, a single character, or what?
1) Nation, please.
2) I'll be a character, I guess.
3) What.
4) I do not care.
5) I do not care. Life is a lie, anyway.
Question A) The intent on this one is, I hope, obvious.
B) I wanted a general idea of how accepting you would be of the greater mod involvement in what you were allowed to do. Some of the nations/characters are more limited than others, and I wanted to keep everyone as happy as possible.
C) Ah, yes... chaos. I wanted to judge how crazy everyone was, so that I could put them approprately.
D) Yes, "Buffalo buffalo buffalo" IS a complete sentence. Everyone should learn something every day, and I wanted to see how many people bothered to look it up, or actually knew, or were confident in their wrongness. Not for any good reason, but because it'll be more interesting later...
E) A combination of the "crazy" factor and the "how much will you bow to the mod" factor.
F) Actually, has nothing to do with political systems. I wanted to see how people judge freedom versus capability.
G) Again, rather obvious intention here.
As I've been typing this, I just got yet another PM about someone asking to join. Sadly, Daris, I have to draw the line somewhere... but you'll be first on the list of backups, mate. Sorry.
I'm trying to respond to PM's, but I'm at home this weekend - which means I'm working off of the Dial-Up Standard (c). It'll be a slow process.
For now, their actual identity is going to be kept secret. That will probably change rather quickly, once we get started, but a couple of them may be able to remain secret for quite a while if they choose to.
I took a look at the map, at the civs placement, a deep look within myself and wrote up a character. I myself think it's pretty good, I'd love to share it (but I won't due to gameplay)... Anyway, glad it could work out, Orangelex. Seon... I'm sure you'll get to know my character sometime, somehow...
@ Seon: No, I let Diamond do it because I felt bad that he was something like forty minutes late, and because he'd ignored my instructions and done it anyway... ... which, if anything, proves that I'll be making exceptions to almost every rule I've established. I also liked the idea, so it was kind of a win-win-win situation. Except for poor Daris, who was about forty minutes later than Diamond to respond. Ironic, that.
@ Diamond: He PM'd me. I'm not going to reveal you until you do so yourself. And I was already on that list, actually. Good job knowing what I was about to do before I even did it...
Ugh.... Now what did I do to antagonize diamondeye... Let's see... Anyways, you could make up a character? That's a blow to me. I wanted to import a certain something I digged up at Immac NES
@Seon: No, you couldn't. Diamond got an exception, because Perp looked so damn sad... I couldn't say no.
Diamond, either you are actually good at that, or you've simply got a faster connection than I do and can look at what I did and post back before I can.
Believe me, this connection is really shabby. Lets hope I am just as good at guessing what the other players do, shall we?
And, a related question: Do the people who play characters make up the events that happen to them ("Ybirn is attacked by a small group of Scorpion Clan goblins; after a long fight, he manages to slay the last one and claim a poisoned blade"?), or do you write to us and tell us what our character is going to face and let us deal with it in our way?
At the moment, the exact character mechanics are very much in a state of limbo. Which means they pretty much are nonexistant, other than as a rough idea. Which then means that suggestions made by players have a pretty damn good shot of becoming a part of the mechanics in some form.
So, as of right now, I haven't even really thought about your question, Diamond. I may end up doing either, and part of my final decision will rest on what the players would like.
I would think a controlled version of the "player decides" would be neat, with you telling us what is going nearby so our characters can interact. Example:
My hero, Ybirn the Merciless, a Sheaim adventurer (not my real char, just example dude) is currently staying in the Amurite city of Nimarail. This turn, a peasant rebellion rises up against the nobles of Nimarail. Also, a Kuriotate caravan leaves the city for Kwythellar, stocked with diverse goods. Finally, a small goblin force was defeated only recently and the Head of Guard expects the main attack to come soon. That is the info presented to me. I, as a character, will then be able to pick my action. I might...
Help the peasants against the nobles (Any unrest in Amure is in Sheaim interest!), or
Help the nobles against the peasants (They should know their place!), or
Be hired as a guard for the Kurio caravan and help them arrive safely at Kwythellar, or
Try to steal a small part of the caravans precious moonsugar cargo, or
Gather some other adventurer lowlifes and head out to kill the goblins for a bounty.
Ofcourse, I could do something else (head towards Torrelerial on my own, per example) or perhaps attempt more of the actions at once, since I have the feeling updates will be measured in rather large periods of time to make the game interesting to the nations (steal moonsugar, help the nobles and only then go goblin hunting).
I think something like that might work... Please elaborate on your own views on this when you have the time, please.
Looking forward to the game, shame it'll be almost a month judging by your timetable.
OK.... I'm here.... still palying Saturday RP.... but checking in during the break.... now that I know I'm in.... I'm gonna reread everything after the games today and familiarize myself with the land so far ....
Let me know anything I need to know, whenever ya can.... looking forward....
Diamondeye... yeah.... I was tired... so I just PM'ed
What I was maybe thinking was to have character updates be entirely separate from national updates.
So, let's say the nations get six days to work on orders and diplo. They get them in, I issue a national update. Then, the characters get three days or so to react to what's happened, and then they give me their orders and I post a character update. The actual times I list here are complete BS, it's the idea that matters.
Thus, the characters would get a whole bunch of fun nation actions to use as inspiration - it would be very possible for some peasent rising to occur near where you are. I very much doubt I'll go through the effort of listing any possible actions you could take, instead preferring to let you do that so long as what you come up with stays along the guidelines given in the character rules.
What I like about this general system is that, in a perfect world, these staggered updates do a lot of the event generating instead of me. The nations can subtly dictate on what the characters can do, and the characters can then react and cause chaos/additional effects for the nations.
Now, given that this will mostly likely end up being what I do, there are still a couple of issues to iron out. Mostly, the issue will be to figure out exactly how much a nation can effect a player, and vice versa. I forsee possibilities where there could literally be an internation manhunt for some unlucky char, so where is the line that I draw for his/her/it's chance of survivial? On the other hand, suppose a character does attempt to create a resistance movement - how much effect, realistically, could a single person do to damage an entire nation?
It's a tough balance, and not one I can set definate limits to. I will get it wrong occasionally, and people with complain, and in return I'll simply get to say that it's all in good fun, I take the blame, and if you're dead I might let you come back as Orthus and just generally be a dick to everybody. So have fun, guys!
As for you, Seon, I hope not to have to create any. If all goes well, the nations may create such things for y'all to explore or wreck, and if they don't succeed in doing that there's always the Unique Features. Trust me, the nations will get very pissed if you start messing with them, because in addition to simply losing the income or bonuses from it I'll almost certainly add international, uncontrollable repurcussions to that loss as well.
So for instance, take the Guardian of Pristinus Pass (I can do that, since it's not in the NES). It would probably do mostly nothing to the owning nation, but should some playful character wander around and happen to activate the thing, all hell would break loose. The character would likely survive the operation, but the... things... he'd release would continue to be a headache for the nearby nations.
There's no big hurry. I recommend that you just skim the General Idea section, if you haven't already - and after that, try to become a bit familiar with the Character section. I haven't yet finalized what characters will end up doing, so you don't have to know any more than the gist of it at the moment.
I'll hopefully be sending you your identity... right now, actually. If I don't get unduly distracted.
Oh, and you may also want to check out the Lore area as well. You don't have to be completely familiar with it, but the On Magic parts are pretty important, and anything that doesn't reference a specific nation might influence you a lot as well.
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