Re: Game Discussion

[Theomore Tullison]

Quite so.

Also, since it was brought up in the Loreia/Daveth thread in a way almost suggesting that definitions may be needed:

-Sworn Sword: A knight sworn into the service of someone holding land (from king to landed knight).
-Sworn Shield: A bodyguard sworn to protect a specific person, need not be a knight (The Hound for example).

[Reader]

Will read essay tonight and comment from PC.

Fresh from our "
heroes"
helping reinforce the repressive social order, I'm now enjoying all of you helping silence the Velaryons for their accurate for socially unacceptable statements over the alleged "
Strongs"
, with the pcs acting for a wide variety of motives.

Velaryons as tragically silenced speakers of truth or venal opportunists and social climbers depending on your perspective. As ever, winners write the history.

[Baelon Drakeson]

Velaryons as tragically silenced speakers of truth or venal opportunists and social climbers depending on your perspective.

OOC I say both. The likelihood that the boys are Strong descendants is high, but the Vaemnd branch of the Velaryons wouldn't make a stink about it if they didn't stand to benefit.

[Reader]

Velaryons as tragically silenced speakers of truth or venal opportunists and social climbers depending on your perspective.

OOC I say both. The likelihood that the boys are Strong descendants is high, but the Vaemnd branch of the Velaryons wouldn't make a stink about it if they didn't stand to benefit.

Well said, looking forward to seeing how various PCs reflect on it IC too. Already had some interesting OOC chats with Ser Jorah on the matter.

viewtopic.php?f=213&
t=2817
- A harrowing scene, surely the subject matter is too gruesome for a training montage? Wonder if we'll get the Gwyn/Loreia scene that was promised/threatened along similar lines.

[Loreia]

Surely being mocked for my unorthodox role and success is enough, now I'm being made to read a book about inflections, accents, and proper sentence form! I'll be begging for the gift of mercy before I'm halfway through!

That's all gonna have to come from Gwyn, whatever material she can come up with. As I said, I'll follow her lead. I haven't seen My Fair Lady since junior high school - didn't dislike it, enjoyed it just fine, but it wasn't really my cup of tea.

Spending a DP to add a note on the slaver's body. Cliche, but effective, and such an expenditure of a DP is basically trope and/or cliche evoked at the player's whim. If you have something better in mind, please do stick to it.

[url=A really interesting read about feudalism in A Game of Thrones.][/url]
Gives a good perspective to think about what's really going on with the events surrounding our houses.

I feel richer for having read it. Gaining insight into how feudalism works and how/why it is manipulated in the format it was presented was refreshing.

[Gwyneth Drakeson]

I would like to do that, yar.

When and where's good for you, Loreia? Perhaps Jorah's event in King's Landing? Or Market Town? Or we could invite you up to our Hall?

[Reader]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... kazakhstan

Definitely game discussion - turns out GRRM's creatures on Skagos were real! It's even shaggy haired like in ASOIAF.

Will crowbar one in to the game somehow.

Yoren - should have put one of these in your wonderful Story 1 offseason.

[Septon Arlyn]

Maybe they could bring it back?

[Gwyneth Drakeson]

How? Cloning?

Hmm! You know, they have found mosquitos trapped in fossilized amber from prehistoric times. Those mosquitos would have fed on the blood from various ancient animals...and those cells could now be trapped and preserved inside the amber along with the bugs! If enough cells were gathered that a viable gene could be reconstructed, you could theoretically clone them. Oh, it would be a very difficult process, with lots of false starts and trial and error. Monstrously expensive. So it would have to be private sector. Some eccentric billionaire probably. And he'd have to have something in mind to do with them after it worked. Zoo maybe...or NO!

THEME PARK!

Dude, I'm writing this out. This is going to be an awesome story! Thanks for the inspiration!

[Septon Arlyn]

What could possibly go wrong?

[Ser Jorah Holt]

don't use frog dna though

[Baelon Drakeson]

Sadly, DNA degrades over time even in ideal conditions... we could go back to the Pleistocene so mammoths, giant deer, and saber-toothed cats are options... but not dinosaurs.

Of course, with CRISPR making genetic engineering so much easier, it would think it would be quite simple to take birds and turn on their now-dormant genes for teeth and claws to create neo-dinosaurs, but they wouldn't be authentic.

The real monsters though will be the genetic hybrids. I mean, we've had [url=glow in the dark rabbits][/url] for years now.

[Gwyneth Drakeson]

Hmm. Theme park for radiant bunnies?

Lacks force, chum.

We're going ahead with the dinosaurs! FULL STEAM AHEAD!

[Baelon Drakeson]

You're missing the point - if we can use jellyfish DNA to make rabbits glow, who knows what else we could do.

Narwhals DNA to give horses horns? UNICORNS! Proper unicorns, not hairy rhinos.
Mythology is full of animal hybrids - gryphons, manticores, Pegasus...

And then for after-hours events, we make them all glow in the dark, too. Because we can.

[Gwyneth Drakeson]

No, YOU'RE missing the point!

DINOSAURS, BABY!

Hee hee

Sorry, man. I was being silly, and here you come being all serious and stuff.

[Nathaniel Mason]

Can someone direct me to the website that we use to create combat grids?

[Kevan Lyras]

I just copy an old one and paste it into notepad to adjust it.

[Baelon Drakeson]

I make them by hand using the Notebook text editor. Any word processor can do it, just set the font to "
courier new"
.

[Loreia]

Glowing rabbits. That is so weird.

[Theomore Tullison]

So discussing over at GR forums made me thinking, should there be some sort of mechanism to not leave new players trailing too much behind the established ones?

Easy solution might be to add a floor to XP/DP gain at half regular chapter/downtime rewards (round up to nearest 10 for XP). This would put it at 40XP+one DP presently, any PC (old or new) that has received less than this floor automatically gets goodies to make up the difference and can immediately spend it (though only before doing anything if we're currently inside a chapter, else they must wait until downtime).

[Kevan Lyras]

Yeah, the discussion raised a fair point regarding the mechanical gap between new and established players.
I like the idea of a floor, however, I feel some gap between the players who have been active since the beginning and newly joining characters should still exist (hence a floor rather than an equal "
payout"
for new players)

One little tweak to a fixed floor would be a mechanic similar to the default offseason rolls:

You roll 2 abilities for a bonus per DoS and then roll two other abilites vs a TN9 (bonus from the first two rolls are applicable)
The total DoS can be spent for additional bonus dice in used abilities, xp to increase abilites / DPs or also additional gold for starting equipment. (Maybe a critical failure even has consequences) Obviously the conversion from DoS to payout has to be adjusted to the current "
floor"
for new players.

This system would implement some variance to the starting characters and could also be used to "
flesh out"
the backstory of the joining character.

Example:
Ser Jon Doe has spent the last few years fighting in the stepstones.
Rolls: Cunning + Awareness and Fighting + Deception.

He spends the resulting DoS on:
- Bonus dice in Spears
- 30xp / an additional rank in Awareness
- Gold to start with a half plate armour rather than the crappy ring armour his status would allow
Narrative: The years during the campaign have not only made him a better fighter, looking out constantly for the next ambush also trained him in keeping an eye on his surroundings, be it on the battlefield or in court.
During one of the battles, he was lucky enough to defeat a high ranking member of the Triarchy, the subsequent ransom made allowed him to buy equipment well beyond his standing.

[Ser Jorah Holt]

I like the idea of the rolls adding to your history

[Theomore Tullison]

Thing is that I don't think we can go above 40XP/1DP, if a player joining up in chapter 2 did not get post-chapter 1 downtime fun, that is what his PC would have gained including the present downtime, discounting personal goal and such.

Since nobody has yet to join up after the conclusion of chapter 2, I think setting it at 30XP+1DP+being allowed to do downtime stuff now. So maybe change the proposal of mine to be:

Floor for XP and DP is half (round down to nearest full 10XP/1DP) of what would have been gained in chapters(30XP, 1DP)/downtime (10XP) that PC does not take part in. So presently, this would be 30XP and 1 DP, anyone entering chapter 3 without doing downtime before it gets 40XP, 1 DP, anyone entering during post-chapter 3 downtime gets 50XP, 1 DP.

Equipment, well, how about each new player getting 2X GD on their money generating roll, where X is the number of completed chapters? (Which makes any status 3 knight able to afford full plate, though ransom might be tough, but always possible to get a backer in return for services rendered). And most Player Houses should have the means to properly equip their members. I'd generally be leery about retroactive glory through events and such, because glory is primarily a vehicle for benefiting one's house.

[Gwyneth Drakeson]

I am a little wary of getting to a point where new players start feeling like there's no 'point' in joining though. We have a LOT of PCs that cover a very diverse spectrum of specialties. If new players start with a big disadvantage on xp and DP, then no character they make will be able to define a niche for themselves compared to the existing ones.

I'm not saying your notion is -wrong- exactly, but I feel like we need to be careful about reaching a balance point where new characters can contribute and have an impact on the game without grubbing for weird, overly-specific character types that just happen to conform to the few areas no existing PC has touched yet.

[Baelon Drakeson]

On the other hand, as the houses continue to be put into competitive situations over various things (like Market Town) it is not just "
is there a character with this specialty"
but "
is there a character with this specialty in the house I want to join. Not to mention that even characters with "
duplicate"
specialties bring a lot to their houses. I don't think that House Marsten suffered when it was both Kevan and I having a martial specialization, nor do they suffer now with both Kevan and Ben being martial specialists.

Also, I would perhaps give some extra advantages to people joining small houses, to help even things out.

Perhaps instead of extra XP, DP, and coin, there could be some extra attributes, specialties, benefits, and equipment granted to them by Reader, based on what they've been doing. That will help prevent the impulse to over-specialize to try to be "
the best"
at something (and thereby make themselves overly weak in other areas), yet still beef them up from starting characters.

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