Table talk (Bibracte)

Retired Play by Post Campaigns Ars Magica 5th Edition: In the Ruins of Bibracte
401

Warning: SG Vent

I've been debating taking some time out, and I think now is the time to do it. Feel free to try and convince me otherwise...

Here's where I see the roadblocks:
Grog equipment, this has neither been defined or looked at, and I expected this to be part of the Turb thread. Peregrine brought it up and it needs to be addressed. I tried to get players to look at it without spelling it out directly. This affects the Lost boys thread. Yes, I did this story in direct response to prod the issue.

Vis allocation for 1221 harvest, and possible discussions of changes in vis harvests. Deciding how the ReTe vis is going to be stored (as kings, or a collection of different pieces). This happened pretty easily with Fiona being in charge. Chico has done a disappearing act, someone needs to step up and calculate it.

Money. I've ignored money, for the most part, but things have grown, people need labs. Alexei may want to spend an arm and a leg on equipment. I'd like to know where we stand. I'll review and answer questions, and if there's a shortfall, I'll plug it, but I get players asking me questions about funds, and in reality I think everyone should know where the covenant stands in regards to funds. If you want me to continue to handwave it, I will, but expect a story about money shortly, and repeatedly.

So, you, the players need to have a discussion about these items. Apollodorus is out, so I have no dog in the hunt so to speak. There's a reason I took him out of the council thread this time. He pushed issues far more than I would've liked.

Amul's said it, Ars is a game for those who didn't get enough homework. I've been extraordinarily free (summertime and the living is easy) in allowing players to make the saga as they like it. Characters want an apprentice, they get one. They want to have babies, they do. You want a correspondent, you make one up, or look to your backstory.

I feel as if the cruncy bits are being ignored or pushed onto me. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for a guideline indicating a base, and a full RDT +additional magnitudes when calculating spells. Afterall, when you don't provide them, then I have to go looking them up. If I'm doing that, it's taking time away from other stuff (like writing letters back).

Yeah, I'm cranky. Deal. I seem to have gotten crankier as I wrote this.

I am posting this, nonetheless. I think these are important issues (at least they are to me), if they aren't important to you, then accept SG fiat. I don't like to play that way, I don't think anyone in this game likes to play that way.

I will respond to this thread, and only this thread for the rest of the week. I will address action in story threads next Monday.

Thank you for your attention.

402

See, I glance over these grogs, and the first thing that came to mind was, "How did a man born and raised in France come to speak just enough Russian to get by?" (Actually, the first thing that came to mind was "Cool, someone for Cygna to talk to," but this was a close second.)

And pretty much each of these "random" grogs (even Nameless) is just begging to be developed.

403

It had to be said. I've been watching the game grow larger but less organized (not establishing blame, just making an observation).

I suggest that some people take on certain rolls more or less permanently. They can have their character be the IC in charge of it (or introduce a new character). Then we make a permanent thread up top where the Letters and Seasonal Activities thread is where we keep track of these important things. We make a thread for the Library, the Armoury, the Finances and Income, Vis, Magic Items. Community property in other words.

Alexei/Me, would volunteer for the Armoury. Give me the thread and he'll come up with a chamber to swtore and maintain the armoury and keep track of it. This is something that he'd take personal interest in, and even spend his own money (he's got a decent amount of silver) to make sure that there were enough weapons and armour, that they were quality and maintained. His personal interest in this goes with his fighting style and personality, plus his ambitions for building a better turb and staying permanently as the Imperator.

Someone else can volunteer their time to organize the other things. Sound good?

404

That's actually not a bad idea. I volunteer to be the "Treasurer," for lack of a better word. Fiona could be the keeper of the vis, and I could either take Reynault or (my preference) create a new character to be the Exchequer.

The Correspondence thread, I think, would pretty much take care of itself as long as people keep the letters going (either writing out the letters, or putting a "Fiona writes a letter to B, saying x, y, and z, and asking about u and v," or something like that.

((deleted bit about librarian, since Arya expressed an interest in handling the library.))

405

I can maintain the Library, but that's the limit of my crunchability.

Remember I can't even successfully complete a 1040EZ.

406

Girl, if you got MetaCreator you'd be dangerous... And that fancy rig you built for KoTR (am I remembering this right) is screaming for something else to do...

407

Not for nothing, but yesterday WAS the beginning of the full moon. I. Am. Just. Say. 'Ing.

First and foremost, this is a game. You should be having fun. If you are not having fun, then I am committed to doing as much as I can to help. Real life is, and always should be more important than the game.

As I've alluded to elsewhere, another reason I game is to put a microscope on my habits. What I'm hearing you express is that you're having difficulty delegating. If you've come to the point where, in our game, you throw your hands up in the air and say, "I'm in charge of everything! I need a break!" Then I worry about whether you're successfully delegating as much as you need to in your real life.

I freely admit that I base this assumption entirely on my own baggage, and I am projecting my own issues onto you, but, from my biased perspective, I think it might be good for you to look at that. I know you have a lot going on right now. Have you been asking for as much help as you really need?

I could do the finances, but I suspect that someone with MetaCreator could do them more quickly.

Either that, or I could be in charge of the wiki. We really have not been using that resource as much as I did in Phoenix, and it was very helpful there. Unless someone sees some other responsibilty that I could pick up?

Given that you've stated this is a pet peeve of yours, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for you to make a House Rule that all spell effects, including published ones if you so desire, need to have full details written out in the thread for you before you rule on them. Then, instead of looking them up when we forget to, you can just reply back with, "You need to give me those details," and stop there.

Also, bear in mind that it is a pet peeve, which means that particular crunchy bit is provocative to you in a way that it is not to others. When I fail to give you that info, I'm not trying to piss you off (however much I'm succeeding). I do it for some other reason. In my case, I do it because I'm trying to get good enough at the spell guidelines to eyeball them. That doesn't make it any less irritating to you, but it does probably mean that I didn't remember that irritates you.

408

I can't use the wiki. I tried to use my email address, it defaulted to my livejournal login (?) and JL didn't recognize the "realname" (it's not) associated with my LJ account, denied the registration, and now my email address seems to be blacklisted by the wiki site's arcane attempt at cross-site homology.

409

Okay, I can definitely help you fix that problem. First thing's first. Log out of whatever account got accidentally created for you, and then create a new account through a method of your choosing. PM me the account info when you've got it, and I'll try to add you to my defunct campaign, purely for test purposes.

410

I can't create a login based on my email address because it's now associated with my LJ account. I would have to make a new email address.

411

I think if you sent either of us your email address, we could invite you back in, and maybe it would unblacklist the account. Or at least for purposes of our sagas.

412

What about logging in using FB, or any of those other ones? Do you want an extra email account? I have like a gazillion free domains.

413

My FB and other options, those all use the same blacklisted email address, hence the no-workiness. Which is my username, at "my distraction dot net", with no space between those two words in the domain name.

amul: I would take an email account if you offer imap and smtp and have any awesome sounding domains. Actually I own winterfell-dot-com, but the machine that ran it finally died (ancient dual Pentium 500 machine with scsi raid10 I was quite proud of). If you have a unix box somewhere I would be happy to park my domain with you, and you could have any westerosi email alias you like besides arya :slight_smile:

414

Is Mercury also retrograde? Feels like it is. I should check.

I had largely said before that I'm not doing all the crunch stuff. Trouble was, not much of it was getting done, and as SG, those questions came back to me. I would prefer to review/audit and let you guys be in charge. Apollodorus isn't going to live forever, you know. So, I had said I'm not doing it, however I hadn't assigned anyone to do it, nor had I set deadlines. I'm reluctant to do that, this is a game afterall, and I feel like I'm assigning homework.

Mebbe. see above.

No, we haven't been. Arya and I have had this discussion, running a saga is about like herding cats. I like Obsidian Portal because it's like a bazillian times faster than wetpaint. I can literally go make a ham sandwich and come back and it might be finished loading. I've tried it in the three major browsers (4 if you cound Safari on an iPad) and it behaves poorly on all of them.

I'll be perfectly honest. Sponts require as much work as an item. Think about that for a second. You have to design the effect from guideline including RDT. If you don't outline those, are you expecting me to do it? I could, conceivably make decisions you would not. By not specifying things clearly, then you're asking me to make decisions on your charcter's behalf. It's not only that it's irritating to me for adding more to my plate point of view, but that you're asking me to take over your character for a bit. And then you're going to disagree with the decisions I made on your character's behalf and you're going to want to do it over. Note, I'm using you in the general sense, not in the specific sense. I'm just trying to be clear about where I'm coming from: there is plenty of room for differing interpretations in a bunch of areas, let's not add anymore than are necessary. You decide what your character does, and describe it as specifically as you can, and I determine what the results are. I don't like determining what any character CAN do, and then also determining what the results are.
Does that put it in a better light? It's a pet peeve, because you're turning your character over to me for a limited time, and of course you're going to disagree with what he does if you don't like the result, or have a differing opinion on what he would've done, so you've put me in a no win situation.

415

Agree for sponts.

I could maintain such a thread.
Assuming I have the time (there's a reason I'm doing reclusive characters).

Thing is, as you've all probably noticed, I tend to be conservative and check these things a lot, so I may appear as... constraining :frowning:

416

I don't think there's anything that needs to be maintained. There are the guidelines from the various books, and then there's also a PDF of supplemental guidelines I have. Now, I don't have all the books, but I have a good many of them. Maybe, the HR: should just be something as simple as, for spontaneous spells, pick the guideline R/D/T. If the guideline isn't in the MRB or the PDF (and I'll link to it), kindly indicate where you're pulling it from.

I think that's reasonable.

417

:open_mouth:
Sleep deprivation in full effect.

I swear I read something else, although it is clear he didn't write it and it was all in my mind.
I thought he wrote about an "enchanted items" thread.

Just forget the last few posts... :blush:

418

Maintaining an enchanted items list on the wiki isn't a bad idea.

419

Well, do you know proust's madeleine?

It might taste like a childhood food. The better or the worse, it doesn't matter, but it's a taste that brings back memories.

420

I really like this idea.