OOC: Building the Tribunal Field

[Jonathan.Link]

@amul

@Jonathan.Link

@amul

I invited the Spider's Palace kids, but they're apparently kissing babies and greasing palms elsewhere. Possibly, they haven't forgiven me for the trick that I'm about to pull on them in Mother's Footsteps.

Don't pull a trick, then?

They're the only defined magi NPCs who are younger than us. Viscaria isn't being dastardly, just.....instructional.

Well, some lessons are taken the worst possible way...

@amul

You have freedom to know about other named magi from the Tribunal book, certainly Thera knows them. You even have some freedom to develop some sketches, if you want someone. Flambeau in Normandy are scarce, though a holdover of Tytalus flexing their muscles after the schism war. I'm currently working on the ladder brackets for the tourney events, these character are a bit more fully formed than last tribunal. Give me a couple of weeks and I'll post it, these would be obvious people to invite, although if you create a few, mi wouldn't object. Indeed this could be open to everyone.

I think what I'm looking for is a little more joint-creative effort in fleshing out the world like that. I don't feel like I have sufficient understanding to provide input on world development beyond the ways I have already done. How about this? I'll define a piece, then ask you for a piece, and then see if I can hand off the play to other players:

I've been wanting people to take on responsibility for developing aspects of the world I've ignored for a long time. While I don't think I put up any roadblocks in this regard, I haven't been as clear about this as I might. If I'm designing the world, there are things I'm going to forget or something isn't going to be right to meet the player's needs. I don't have any objection to players design things that meet their needs... It then becomes my responsibility to match the PC and NPC within the context of the saga to satisfy the demands of the player(s). Not everything will designed will be fait accompli, I'll make adjustments to the characters to surprise and delight PCs. The path to the reward may be twisted or convoluted, or while your PC gets what they wants, they may not want what they get, or find that they have too high a price to pay for what they want and walk away. I'm the facilitator, I'm not the decider. You guys are. You decide what you want, and a rough idea of how you want to get it, and I gin up a story within the context of the world as it exists. A lot of the things you've been asking me to decide are things I don't think I'm best able to decide, because it puts more of my marks on the saga, and less of yours. Does this make sense?

@amul

I would like a story thread wherein a few/handful/small group of magi, who are younger than us but more familiar with the Normandy Tribunal, request a visit to Mons Electi, and we have to play host for a few days, during which time Viscaria will show off the progress on the Tribunal Field. Could you, JL, come up with an outline of why they've come, and maybe a rough guide for individual characters (Two Bonisagus, 10-20 years PG, and an Ex Misc, walk into Mons Electi and ask the bartender...)

So...here's where i'm going to come in. You want that story... Their motivation for coming is that they want to be a vassal. Who are they in broad terms. Do you want them to be a pawn of yours or a pawn of Guernicus? I'm fine with letting you (the troupe) decide certain things and ensuring that you have a world that you feel like isn't all out to get you.

@amul

I have no idea what Ladder Brackets are, but if you need help, ask and I'll help.

Like for sports tournaments (NCAA basketball is probably the most common example). I'm currently making a list of magi who will attend and compete, and ranking them accordingly. I want to get the list out in a couple of weeks, so that players can see what's happening in the world, and develop strategies to respond. I'm also going to drop a few rumors, eventually. A number of things do hang on Renuad going to Confluensis...

@amul

@amul

@amul

• Among the things we dropped from the original list due to time constraints, are any important?

Is Marcus doing the baths? Andru recommended that in his letter.

I haven't figured out a good way to start that conversation yet, since I'm not in any threads with him, and it isn't clear to me if he's become a covenant member. In other words, I don't know where he lives, so I'm not sure how to ask him IC.

You and me both...I'm unclear on his status. As soon as I killed Apollodorus, I really lost my voice to advise. This is good and bad.

Call his status then, "Dependent on Fiona and that chapter." Asking him to design the Roman baths will be something V does at the end of that chapter, then.

You can probably grab him after Fiona and Marcus return from the land of giants...

@amul

Viscaria was too busy to get things done. I'd like to see a more complete shopping list. Is everything needed fully defined with all the necessary effects? Or am I designing and pricing the effects?

For the mundane items, I'm not certain how I could offer a more complete list. The ones that are general are general either because specifics don't matter ("Furniture for 300, or enough quality wood to make it ourselves") or because what's suitable and available are uncertain ("Prizes for the A&S"), or because greater specificity by me deprives others players opportunities ("books on architecture" let you bring in Tektonius of Bonisagus).

I wasn't thinking about mundane items, so much... Keep in mind that I just introduced the concept that the covenant while seemingly vastly wealthy is paying about half that annual wealth to the church. Is there enough left over? Will the church start squeezing for more, and how does one respond to that? A spell for creating a sufficient quantity of finished wood for furniture making is not that high a level and can create a lot. Talia designed one to create enough wood to build a barge.

@amul

As far as the lab texts go, they are either straight out of the book, or they've been designed and posted in this thread so you could review them and approve/disapprove of them. The only exception to that is the up to 61 Levels of ReTe spells (mostly Craft) and the up to 46 levels of MuVi including the Wizards Communion 30 we own. I assumed you'd want some input into those. I also have the Tribunal Season itself open, nominally "for learning PeVi /DEO spells or Tribunal Politicking."

I will. You're saying that they're effectively final, now I'll look at them in depth. I didn't want to put eyeballs on them and have someone say, no but wait, let's do it this way. So if you're making the executive decision for the troupe and locking everything in and want me as an SG to approve them and design their method of acquisition, I'll do that.

@amul

At this point, the Defense Discussion thread may have yielded additional lab texts we'd want to look for, but they aren't as defined.

See, that discussion has been all over the place and I can't get a handle on what's actually being decided. But if it's defense, unless it's a component item, Mons Electi will want to make everything themselves, I would think.

@amul

Maybe with Viscaria assuming a parter position she needs to hire out things that she had intended to do herself? There is a Bonisagus in Stonehenge that is unhappy....and two people Viscaria knows know about him. He'd make a good hired hand, so to speak.

Not sure who you're talking about, but I like the direction this is headed. Tell me more!

Well, that depends on certain things, such as when and how Cygna responds to Viscaria's letter.

@amul

@amul

(Tangent: I'm not sure that you grasp the full import of the proposed house rule about lab texts, but I suspect they change the value of those lab texts. Certainly, they would have influenced what choices I would have made.)

There isn't anything close to consensus there though, I see three or four opinions. It's tough to price out things with that in flux.

Currently at 4 votes for one variation, but the point that I'm trying to make is that I don't want you to have to make all these decisions at once. If, for example, you were to decide on the results of Fiona's scribal efforts at Durenmar now, and then slowly review each of the Tribunal spell designs and say, "You can find somebody who sells this," or "close but not exact," etc, then that'll give us all time to develop some RP around who has what. Then you can price stuff once we've interacted with the magi that we've created who have the stuff we want.

I'm not really making all the decisions at once... It may seem as if I'm deferring things for an extended period of time and it is driving you crazy, but I'm trying to satisfy other requirements I see as being necessary, too. Certain things will resolve themselves, but stories haven't ripened fully.

@amul

The way things have been piling up, particularly on the Tribunal Field thread, you've now got a dozen spells to approve, and it just becomes a laundry list for you to suffer through.

@amul

Is there going to be sufficient furniture, doors, etc? Do we need to worry about finding vendors or supplying foodstuffs, etc?

300 people for a week, define how much hospitality and how opulent you want things to be. I'm leaning towards not enough furniture, doors. Redcaps can handle some basic food vendor coordination. If you want fancy banquets and grand dining, probably need to borrow a chef from an allied covenant in another Tribunal

If we're in charge of food....
We'll want to show off the budding Mons Electi vineyard and Hydromel cottage industries.
Viscaria would also make sure that all the "top shelf wines" were from Phoenix. She knows a cook or two there, too, but what she wants isn't "fancy banquets." She wants dozens of "street vendors" and restaurants for an "authentic Roman street experience," (a phrase that inevitably causes the listener to want to adjust their black turtleneck and baret).

If we need more furniture, doors, etc, then we'll go looking for the additional labor in the shopping thread that I just started. We have plenty of forest in the regio. ("And if we can't get it done, let me tell you about my Best Front Door Contest idea...")

Plenty of forest in the regio? News to me...
Most of the terrain is mountainous and I've never said it was forested. There might be a few trees, but most of them are in the mundane world.

@amul

@amul

"Prizes for the A&S Competition" : Again, in addition to everything else, we've built a classical museum and are hosting a mundane craft fair, encouraging each covenant to show off the work of their most prized mundane artistans. It's a very Jerbiton sort of thing for us to do. We need prizes to give out. Alexei apparently knows a Verditus Items of Quality guy, but I got crickets when I asked for more details about him, so maybe we'll just make trophies? I wanted SG input on what was available/canonical.

How is this being communicated to the Tribunal? Past Tribunal, which is representative of all previous ones consists of the redcap run fair, basic, but not stellar food is available, housing needs are supplied, and space for the attributable and Tournament.

Have our scribes write up a bunch of pamphlets and have the Redcaps pass them out. Note that we're not ousting the Redcaps out of their usual cut. On the contrary, we're giving them much nicer accommodations and consideration than they've experienced before. If they're used to providing the food, then we just make it clear that we expect them to bring style and quality.

Viscaria wants to generate a fair amount of buzz and excitement about how cool it will be, about the unusual activities that will be there -- "authentic Roman city layout," the A&S competition for mundane covenfolk, the Roman Baths, rentable rooms for lectures and meetings. She's hoping people will request lecture hall spaces ahead of time, so as to generate more buzz.

In short, she's hoping to establish a Reputation from her effort on this project.

I'd like to see that pamphlet. Also keep in mind that the Tribunal will coinciding with a mundane fair that happens to be a vis source for Mons Electi... It's conceivable that magi, hungry for vis might try and juice that vis source a bit (or not) in an effort to get more vis, and having other covenant's mundane folk selling their less magical wares on the mundane fair grounds... Of course, there is a lot of potential for disaster there, which the magi can plainly see...

@amul

@amul

@qcipher

The Flambeau are being given a field a bit further awasy so as to contain their activities a bit more (at least thats what we originally talked about). The Milites are pretty much part and parcel with them, but my thinking is that they'll help contain and civilize them a bit further maybe.

Yes, in the Kind Word and Crowbar thread, I talk about how there's a second quarry site around to the other side of the mountain that we're using for Flambeau Field.

I was thinking any specifically Flambeau events would happen AFTER the Tourney. They wouldn't compete separately from the Tourney as they'd like to get some prizes if possible...
What's the incentive for Flambeau to have competitions concurrent with the Tourney, before the Tourney? After the Tourney, doesn't matter, because they can use the field. A separate field is, IMO, a lot of unnecessary work...