I think it's about time we put a chore jar in the council chambers. Every time someone thinks of something that needs done/made (in this case, "Translation device") someone writes it on a shard and puts it in the jar.
And when a magus says, "Gee, I have no idea what to do this season," someone hands him the chore jar and he has to reach in and pull out a shard.
Better yet: spend a season making an enchanted chore jar, that comes up with chores for magi to do!
This makes me think, as a new (and eager) Bibracte player: any other broad strokes of the setting, which Tranquillina would understanding without a second thought, that it would be good for me-the-player to hear explicitly?
(I feel that with regards to RP and the game world, I should just go for it, and that you're all people who will happily steer me back on course if I do something out of place in this saga, and not hold it against me. Doesn't keep me from being a perfectionist.... 
)
Must not post on Berklist.
Must not post on Berklist
Must not post on Berklist.
There, I feel better.
My thinking is that she may not know everything that has gone on, but she may know that Tria, who has stopped in from time to time has a general distrust for House Guernicus.
That's not a bad way to play. I try really hard, and sometimes fail, to not tell players how to play their characters. I do caution that certain actions might not be reasonable given the setting, characters previous actions or a lack of Abilities, Arts or spells that support a particular action or description of their past.
Couldn't help it.
Not sure what "whoosh" meant, but after her last post, I'm thinking, "Okay, I'm out."
Getting ugly, now. And all because we read something into the initial statement that wound up not being factually accurate. Some people need to learn to say, "I stand corrected."
Woosh as in she missed the point.
I spoke my piece. There is compensation, it may not be much. The discussion was essentially about the amount of compensation. Well, that ones a lot harder to answer.
Yeah, that's what I thought. And I was with her, when I thought that the artists were getting compensation and the writers weren't (at least, beyond a comp copy). But once I found out that both were at least offered compensation and that most (if not all) writers were saying "naw, 'sall good," I was okay with it. But now, she's like a little terrier that has her teeth in a rope bone and won't let go. It's gone from a discussion on principle to what looks like a series of ad hominem attacks.
But enough about that. I have pig-shaped mines to design.
snort
Possibly because I am still trying to play catch up, I am having some trouble with dangling pronouns here. I am not generally a fan of complicated PC-to-PC/Player-to-Player relationships unless I have played with the Player for a suitable amount of time. If we're aiming to reach a point where my character "hates" his character, for some active choice of his, then this will, in my experience, negatively affect my opinion of the player (without a solid play foundation built first).
On the other hand, if the Dark Secret is one chosen out of ignorance (for example, the racist elven Good Ol' Bard I played years ago, who hated orcs cuz he's never met worth liking, except for the ones that he had), then that it far more workable in my experience with new player teams.
Yeah, Winslow is the player interested in playing a complicated PC. I think the key to playing any character who's motives are possibly counter to the motives of the other characters is to be upfront in communication. Perhaps it's closer to acting than many role-players are used to, but I'm ok with a character who is an ass. And, I think I can tell the difference between a player who is an ass and a character who is an ass. Ultimately, everything is going to be out in the open for the players to dissect, and the characters can develop a deep layered interaction. I think there is a concern when one player feels less powerful in the saga than other players. That a player has access to super secret information the other participants don't. I've refused about 5 requests over the life of the saga to introduce a character that would have an angle that is "secret" and the prospective player insisted on it being secret.
A Tytalus who had a destroyed Gift, who killed her master, a blatantly gifted necromancer Tytalus, a Bonisagus seeker, and the others I've forgotten about. I'm not saying it's true or not, but I suspect that zlorfik (Silviatos' player) isn't playing is because I wouldn't let him keep his sheet/character secret. The saga is an open book with respect to players. Secret information I impart to players is primarily designed to be exposed within a short period of time. If a player doesn't act on it, which hasn't happened, yet, then I'll probably do something that exposes whether a character knows something or not.
It is certainly easier to do this with players you know and have played with before. In the absence of that, there needs to be a lot of out of character communication and a clear understanding of where the parties are before a character does something "controversial." Everyone has my assurances that I'm not playing favorites, that I don't give one player a better deal than the other. There is some possible discussion that Viscaria has a sweet deal, since she was advanced several years with Phoenix resources, rather than 40 xp per year. The trade off was that she only advanced for a few years, and I needed her to be comparable in power to magi of Mons Electi to satisfy my sense of "fairness" for how I brought in starting characters.
And yes, it is certainly possible to assign the motivations of a character to the player and they think the player is an ass. If a character becomes too conflicting for the saga, I'm going to expect everyone to be honest and comment and then we decide that the character has to go.
That sounds vaguely familiar. Was that a character concept, or did someone have a question about the concept, over on the main boards?
Too lazy to check, but I may have convinced her to share that concept with everyone. It was either here or in the initial recruitment thread. Ultimately, I think she lost interest because her secret had to be known by the other players and couldn't trust the other players to compartmentalize information on what their characters know/don't know.
Hi Folks, just wanted to weigh in on things. Here's an overview of the results of the Dark Secret as I see it, from my character thread:
Ultimately, I don't see my character as knowingly working against the other magi, but he will be being fed false information and leads by the Quaesitors, drawing him deeper and deeper into their web. How this will be resolved, I do not know at this point. I do see him as having a relatively strong moral compass, and genuinely believes in the Quaesitors as a force for stability within the order. If/as he learns more of their schemes, I'm not sure how he will react, I suppose it will depend on the circumstances.
The last thing I want is for this character to disrupt such a long-running and fascinating saga, and would be glad to revise some elements of the background for the sake of compatibility. For the sake of research, might someone be able to direct me to the sections of the archives that detail the conflict between the covenant and the Quaesitors?
Basically anything that begins 1222.2. (If you haven't noticed, in this saga, all threads that take place in a particular year and/or season start off with a "time-stamp"; 1222.2 is Summer 1222, while 1220.4 is Winter 1220. Makes it easier to track down stuff that happened in a particular season.)
I want to say the main ones were 1222.2e, "Getting the Band Back Together", 1222.2b "The Fall of Night", 122.2a "The Lost Boys".
I've been meaning to go back and summarize more of the seasons, but I've been feeling kinda blah most of the year. Definitely on my "to-do" list, though.
I'm open to discussing some incentives for this process... For any player to recap their story, that is.
Fiona scares me sometimes. She is that || close to being able to spont a spell that can turn a room full of men into pigs.
This is the part that I like. It's the whole "corrupt cop, teaching you to do things The Chicago Way," angle which appeals to me. Especially since it doesn't place your character in active defiance of ours, but rather passively reacting with/to parties opposed to us. There's a lot of room to manuever, and the manuevering will be good story fodder (which is all that is important, really)
My concern is that I have very few positive experiences with this sort of set up. I'd like to believe that it can work, but frankly am cynical about the maturity level of gamers who've never met each other IRL. Again, as we've set things up, this is less of a concern for me than if you wanted to play, for example, an ideological adherent to Valerian's lot. What you're talking about is exploring the gray space, not playing for the black team. That wasn't clear to me initially.
Again, I'm not entirely opposed to the idea that there ARE good cops still on the Chicago payroll. Maybe Moro's first handful of connections are those legitimate good guys. But all the cops that Viscaria has seen are dirty, dirty cops who skim off the top.
That's a large reading list (1222.X), and I don't know that it is necessary. Especially since knowing what sort of information the various magi DO give out about the past events will be important to the way the story unfolds.
I've noticed that looking something up in the Ars books is a lot like watching The Incredibles: seems like every single time I pick up on something that I've missed before.