Solitude (4-5 players)

Play by Post Discussion Recruitment: GMs Looking for Players
#1

Campaign Title: Solitude
System: ArM5

of Players: 4-5

Deadline: As soon as possible
Starting Level: gauntlet
Advancement Rules: much lab time
Combat Rules: standard rules
Dice-Rolling Rules: use an online dice roller
Special Rules: In between ic adventures, the will be 10 +d10 years of lab time. If players want to adventure in lab seasons, these adventures will be resolved with a single roll (e.g. find a familiar) based on the character's strengths and weaknesses. This is the only way I see to make lab projects possible. Each season, there will also be a 2% chance per point of personality/story flaw that a character's life distracts her from lab work
Posting Rate: daily
Absences: Announce it. If you vanish, expect your character to fall ill and die after a while.
Writing Expectations: Low. I like good writing, but this is not FATE but Ars Magica (made in 1989).
Text Formatting: whatever. ooc at the end.
Plot- or Character-Driven: both
Focus: covenant and lab work + ic adventures so we can enjoy character growth
Character Types: normal magi (magi only). Leave me alone with complicated rules (e.g. hedge magic). And don't create a religious fanatic that gets on everybody's nerves.
Campaign Description: Chilhac, Auvergne (Southern France). You build a covenant (with a standard charter) at a prehistoric site with a magic aura, because it's quiet there.

#2

Interested. No specific concept in mind at the moment, so I'm ready to adapt to the troupe.

Note that I seldom post on weekends, but I am fairly regular on weekdays.

#3

Hi Arthur! Nice seeing you again. Over 4000 posts. Boy, you've grown! :mrgreen:

#4

I'd like to play, with the caveat that I will at times write more than desired. One of the things I'm looking for is a place to work my writing muscles (and I write Fate books!).

#5

Hey - I'd like to give it a try (mainly, like DoctorComics, to get my creative writing discipline down - "write every day, for an hour." Sort of a NaNoWriMo thing, I suppose.)

Also, I like the idea of playing an actual long-term game - I've never actually played at that end of the spectrum before.

#6

Great. Three people interested means this will get off the ground. I don't have to create my own character, but I could to fill in one of the slots. Maybe we are lucky and get anothe rone or two people willing to sign up.

As or creative writing: Nothing wrong with it at all. Who'd mind higher text quality?

Any concepts? It makes sense to state them before creating a full character to avoid overlaps.

#7

I think maybe this is my chance to make a Criamon. Lots of downtime will give me time to pursue a Mystery Path. Nothing beyond that yet.

#8

I'm involved in another forum game at the moment that hasn't yet started, and I'll give anyone who isn't in a game fair opportunity to have priority over me in joining this game but I'd like to register my interest in this.

#9

Looking this thread over, and seeing eager authors volunteering, among them proven Doctorcomics: what about a minuscule change in method and scope? Namely, to plan from the beginning for later publication of the covenant and its inhabitants e. g. in sub rosa: as a Summer covenant, or a Winter => Spring one if things got dramatic.

  • A lot of the character development will happen during off-time, so strong character concepts would be a must from the beginning - but this is the only added requirement to scope I see.
  • The method of the game would need to care for some discretion before publication: this forum's public PbPs might hence not be viable.
  • An agreement about the metacreator version to be used would also be very helpful.

In the case of such a game I would volunteer too: perhaps with a publish-or-perish career Bonisagus researcher. No, this guy is not a lab rat exclusively, but needs to keep contacts to fellows, field observers, libraries and perhaps some Mystery Cults.

Cheers

#10

I'm a simple person.
Too complicated for me. Other forum? Buying Metacreator?
The oddest innovation of yours is strong character concepts, of course: I'm sure all the players in this saga are determined to create the weakest concepts they can come up with.

#11

To later publish, we would require strong character concepts from the beginning. From the above it is obvious, that I did not claim anybody would start with a weak character concept.

Anyway,

Cheers - and I'm off

#12

Hard to believe that it was over a year since the Triamore saga. Time flies, for sure!

As for this new saga, any specific theme you want to explore or avoid? You mention to avoid religious fanatics, but you may have some elements in mind already since you selected a specific site.

Speaking of site, how will the young magi learn of it? Are they being sponsored by an older magus? From what I can see, at least part of Auvergne seems to be in the Normandy Tribunal, though Chilhac seems to fall a bit south of that into Provence. So what Tribunal will the covenant be part of? Will you be using the tribunal sourcebook? (I have Lion and the Lily but not Faith and Flame.)

I understand that the saga would be focused mainly on the characters' and covenant's long-term growth? Note that "10+d10 years" between in-character stories seem an awfully long time, but I'm willing to give it a try. 8)

#13

My idea has grown into Esse ("I exist") of Criamon, once a Tremere apprentice who suffered a Twilight accident and now everything she speaks comes out backwards; "Creo Ignem!" comes out "Mengi Oerc!" House Tremere's strict regularity made her a poor fit, and she was traded to a Criamon and initiated into Enigmatic Wisdom. Her birth name was Octa; she chose Esse because she can say it without confusing people.

She generally speaks only in palindromes, because those are the same backward as they are forward. Of course, the inflection of each syllable is different in reverse, so she sounds like she has a really weird accent. Mechanically, a very low Com and the Incomprehensible Flaw. Characters with this kind of speech impediment are a huge pain in the ass in a live game around a table, but in a game like this become manageable.

Her talisman will be a mirror (eventually). She will have a personal vis source in Imaginem; every solstice or equinox she can speak the SATOR rhyme (a famous Latin palindrome) and her words contain vis which she can capture with a wordless casting of ReVi. She will follow the Path of Walking Backwards, which usually leads to the Pious Flaw, but I think she will be a private dualist, possibly Zoroastrian.

#14

Yeah, I was assuming that I would be writing up "personal adventure summaries" for the intervening years where nothing in-game happens.

Anyway - conceptually, I was thinking about playing a Bonisagus lab rat (complete bog-standard Magic Theory min-maxer), as this seems to be a game style where you can actually finish long-term research projects, and even see the impact on the Order as a consequence.

The character concept would be "humble researcher" - in that he's not interested in large, showy projects; rather, he's much more interested in folklore and 'low-level' magic that hasn't yet been integrated into hermetic theory. Therefore, rather than chasing after dragons or farie lords, he's interviewing wise men/women and herbalists for his research projects. (Or more specifically, his Companion and grogs are out interviewing people: he's in the back, reading a book. No Gentle Gift here!); he's also be hitting up the larger Hermetic libraries for published-but-unfinished projects that he could mine for partially-completed Insight.

Personality-wise, he'd be Humble with a Higher Purpose ("magic for everyone!") - likely stemming from his relationship with his siblings, and the jealousy/rejection he had with being Gifted; likely he'd also have a "Prove that heggies are real wizards, too!" Obsession of some sort, from growing up with wise men/women in his life (as the grogs of his paren, most likely.)

#15

You can of course play a Cathar, but if you do, play a tolerant one.

It's Provence. Maybe one of you guys will be a local, a "magus come home to mom and dad" (dependant flaw! MAJOR!). Otherwise the Flambeau bigwigs have decided that the area is strangely empty and needs a presence.

I hesiataed for a long time here, unsure whether to write seasons or years. But I wanted to try something new. The rough plan is 6 months of ic gaming, then 2 months of aging together season-by-season, reading each others books, helping each other out, then 6 months of ic gaming etc.

#16

Crazy Criamon. Very Nice. Ecin Yrev!. Your character will show how initiation works out. You'll either need a mentor or a high presence.

#17

I was hoping for a Bonisagus, because of the research potential. Feel free to go for an entirely crazy breakthrough. Nothing keeps a magus at 100 years post gauntlet as busy as an innovation that can create the gift, or heal warping, or make arcane connections superfluous, or makes integrating hedgies child's play ("I've recruited 500 new members...") .... Go wild!

#18

This honors you, but as long as you have enough free time to shoulder two campaigns you don't have to let others take your place. Homo homini lupus. Being shy is a personality flaw.

#19

Me again: I've asked Michelle Nephew to open a game thread (and close Triamore). She is still the forum goddess, I hope, but there seems to be this Cam Banks guy who seems to be doing more of the daily work now. Should I have addressed him instead?

You may still have to join the player's group once we have our own playground.

#20

The instructions for starting a new saga mentions sending the request to "forum AT atlas-games DOT com" is the way to go. This is more generic than sending it to a specific administrator and probably more reliable as well.