Volcano's Land - Forged in Blood (Inactive)

Game Master Miner Cotren

Glad to see everyone still posting after this latest outage. Go us!

Hear, hear!

Well, back again for now...since it's essentially the weekend, I'm going to let the scene sit for now and see what responses there are. But I'm here!

Just in time for me to be out of town for the weekend...I'll plan on posting Monday night!

Grand job. Enjoy your weekend.

Sorry, I always forget that the maintenance screen will keep reloading even when it’s working again. I’ll have a post up today

Long trip home, so that's all I've got in me for tonight. Feel free to RP any preparations you are making for your arrival at Forge (trying to be stealthy, just running right in, finding any sort of help before revealing your findings, etc)

Samen raises an excellent point, as is his wont. I'll let the scene sit for tonight as you debate.

Samen is our annoying but often correct sibling!

Every family has one. :)

Very interesting discussion going on in Gameplay. I don't want to let us lag too much, however, now that the website seems to have been roused from its great slumber, so I'm planning on updating later tonight (around 1030 or 11 EST)

Hey all - being that we've been playing together for 4 months now, I'd like to open the discussion up for any feedback you have. This is not me fishing for compliments - I want to know if the game is roughly aligning with your expectations, anything that you would change, etc. I'm in this for the long haul, and I think it's easiest/best to make any tweaks now rather than later.

If for whatever reason you don't want to comment in public, feel free to PM me instead.

From my end, I appreciate A) how consistent you all are with posting, and B) the characters you have created and your interactions with each other.

I'm enjoying the game. Levelling could be a little faster for my tastes (if only for skills), but it's not crazy slow and not a huge issue.

I am liking what we all have built too. I don’t mind the social encounters, but I’ll admit I was expecting more combat. I get the feeling that we won’t always be in this setting, seems pretty likely that we’ll be exploring the Breathless Valleys at some point. Basically, I’d like more combat, but I don’t mind if I don’t get that immediately or even soon.

I just want a list of links so I can remember things from a glossary of terms. :)

Thanks so much everyone! There will definitely be a little (not necessarily a lot) more combat and levels coming up - I like to start with a good understanding of the characters first.

Samoon, what's missing right now? I'm always happy to help with terms, etc.

--Under Campaign Info > Timeline, etc> Phrases and Idioms, there is a lot of terms I use now and then

--Under Society > Hours, Days, Months are things like candles = hours, the different days, etc

--At the top of the Campaign Info (above the Timeline spoiler) is a link to the initial recruitment post, which has a crazy amount of stuff in it. More info on all the different languages, more on the descriptions of the different races, etc.

I know it's not an ideal system, as things are spread about, so let me know A) if there is anything missing that you would like to see and B) any suggestions for improving the organization (which only makes sense to me)

I wonder if a wiki would be worth setting up to collate all of this data.

Interesting idea! I've never made one before - any suggestions on a site/platform to use?

Unfortunately not. But I vaguely recall someone created one for a story I was reading. I'll see if I can't dig that up.

I forget what I used--PBWorks, maybe, to build a wiki.

Hmm. After a bit of exploration I'm honestly completely overwhelmed at the thought of moving all this stuff somewhere else, especially reformatting it all.

I certainly don't want it seem like I don't care how accessible the campaign info is for you all, so I'll open it up to all of you, same question I asked Samoon - what is difficult/annoying/impossible to find right now?

Here's a breakdown of what is contained in each spoiler:

--Campaign Intro link has almost nothing you would need to access on a regular basis. This is more the stuff you needed to create your character at the beginning.

--Timeline contains all things that are updated as we go, like the summary of the plot, NPCs you've met, places you've been, and phrases and idioms.

--The three "pbp" spoilers are really just for those not familiar with pbp. The only thing there is what languages you can type for each in-game language (like italian for ifrit, etc). I'll be putting these at the bottom, as they are not very useful.

--Maps are maps, plus city info documents

--Gods and Magic covers setting-specific gods and fluff about magic

--Environment covers "Wonders" as well as all the natural biomes, creatures, etc

--Society is truly the catch-all that could use a little work. History; details on all four races; guilds; hours, days, and holidays; games and sports. I could see giving the races their own tab. I think a language tab for "what are all the languages" and "how do I type them in-character" could be useful too.

In short,

Most of the categories are fairly self-explanatory (timeline, maps, environment, gods and magic). If you are ever stuck on where to go, "Society" could be what you are looking for.

Ok, I've updated the campaign info page to (hopefully) be slightly less hideous.

--Campaign Diary, NPCs, and Places are likely the things you'll be referencing most often

--Languages and Idioms are important for posting

--Race Info

--Followed by a tab more descriptive than "Society"

--Next three tabs are gods, magic, etc, also updated descriptions of tabs.

--Next four are grouped into environment, etc, then maps

--And finally put all the essentially unnecessary stuff at the very bottom

I'm still interested in what might be missing, and if this makes it a little easier to find stuff.

Marianne, Pugliesi was harassing her on behalf on the v'Borio family. Bree didn't come right out and say it, but she implied the wealthy family was unhappy with her for a recent inspection/report she gave on one of their mines.

Cheers for the reorganisation. That's helpful.

So I’ve got this idea for a racial slur that purposely butchers “ifrit” to sound like “efreet”, maybe “ifreet”, that Marianne might use on occasion. Thoughts?

"Freets" or "fritfreets" might do the trick? Ultimately it's up to you - your character, your swear word :)

"hotheads"? :D

I'll be in the woods from Thursday to Sunday, with no signal. Bot Samoon as needed!

Flameouts?

To answer Samoon's question from gameplay, her office is only one story, has a small storage basement, and a roof that a sylph would be comfortable on, but perhaps too steep for most oreads.

Burnouts? ;)

Lots of flame puns to be had, for sure.

A thought occurred to me.

Should one of the family perish, what shall we do about replacement characters?

I have notions.

A cousin, perhaps legitimate, perhaps a bastard. Uncle may not exempted as a possibility for siring here.

An investigator or inquisitor (whether class or not) looking into bizarre events.

Albreane, who has uncovered new talents. Perhaps by exposure to certain strange items.

That's a very good point - and I also agree it would be best to keep it relevant to the current group, and not just a random person. It will depend somewhat on when/where (if) the death happens.

I've gotten more busy over the past couple weeks, and it's becoming harder to post. I still have the time, but it is more of an issue of remembering that I haven't posted yet and being in a position to post at the same time. It doesn't seem to be getting in the way yet, but it might get worse, or I might figure it out. If it starts to become a problem, please tell me, because I am going to keep trying to figure this out until you guys say it's becoming a real problem. If and when it gets to that point, we can discuss possible alternatives, but I would probably drop out. Again, no clue if it will come to that, just wanted you guys aware of my situation.

Fair enough. Thanks for the heads up, and hopefully you will be able to post as you would like to.

Thanks for letting us know! Definitely keep us posted if you anticipate it getting worse, and I might bot you for a bit. I'd like you to stay if at all possible--I really like all four of the Firenze clan--but real life comes first, of course.

I may be delayed in posting myself over the next week or so, will be moving.

Samen asks a good question, and I think this is one of those times that it's easier to do OOC than IC.

--Dealing with Albreane's antagonist is understandable, but won't get you directly to your goal (I assume the goal is getting your inheritance and getting more info on your artifacts; I'm sure Marianne bare minimum is quite motivated by this. Now is the time to let me know if your character has other interests so we can set that up too)

--You have evidence as witnessed by a mining inspector that Hotah is not to be held responsible for the trouble in the mine.
a) you could decide to go straight to Albreane's dad, the one who first put the lien on your inheritance, and settle it/threaten him out of court
b) or go through the system and counter the claim there
c) there's always just breaking and entering into Ferri's office I suppose

--There is also the unknown factor of Ereet

Or, do something unexpected! I know we are still relatively "new" as a group, so I want to make it clear that you don't have to feel shackled by the choices before you. If you prefer to run off to the Cedar Smoke tribe, or ask Mother who you might ask for help on her side of the family, feel free to do so! Run south to Hearth and see what a delightful place it is! :)

Laid out like that, Wamblee would be inclined to go directly to Albreane's Dad and confront him.

Same here. We don't know what his deal is, and I'd rather find out.

Cool, that was fast! Barring any strong objections, my rule is seconded = let's go forward.

Even though I posted Albreane's reaction, I'd still like to hear the initial proposal from one of you (whoever wants to)

Sorry for the absence. I am also in favor of direct confrontation. Too many mysteries, not enough answers.

The last conversation - that was great. Just great.

The overall quality of rp in this campaign is pretty solid, imho.

It's all you guys - seriously. It's like you all jumped into your characters from the very first page.

I was about to say something similar, and then saw that ablee beat me to the punch. Don’t sell yourself short though Hubristic Efreeti, you’ve obviously got a great campaign cooking.

I appreciate that, truly. It is always a surprise and a delight to see how new PbP groups fit together.

As a friendly reminder - in this world, dragons are essentially mythological. On roughly the same time scale as "the creation of the world", the ifrit holy book, the Rove Voce, claims that dragons were punished by Volcano, and turned into the mindless pogonas of the present age. This had been endlessly debated as being literally true versus an allegory for greed, etc.

Cheers for the reminder!

I think I need more info to decide Marianne's reaction to this news. Are dragons only related to the mythology of Volcano, or does she know of some connection, good or ill, to Sky? Basically, since he said the thing is covered in brass, which appears to have been established as an evil substance, she's not going to give us much option in killing it, especially with everything else surrounding it, unless there is some connection to Sky. Here's a roll for extra knowledge.

Knowledge (Religion): 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (14) + 6 = 20