A Sudden End
Well, now we’re playing again and it seems like it got a really sudden ending unfortunately, and Ankan got the worst part of it.
At first I thought it would be just another slow start but then the ‘accident’ happened. I later told Daniel how I thought he should have done, and had he just prepared himself a little more it would have worked. But now it happened as it did, and even though I tried to apply all possible means to not instantly kill you all and give you a fair chance… Ankan still died unfortunately for the group since this was like a full blow to the gut and everyone is breathless.
What now? The Arc ended with only one, or technically two, deaths and two seriously injured players? Well, the healing period is quite long since its Massive Damage. Massive Damage is not only the hard focused CC and afflictions you get but also a long painful period where your character literary goes from having a penalty modification on CC so he only have 1 CC for some time, then 2 then 3 and so on until he finally gets full CC. It’s first then he starts to heal himself again. And say that you are a regular guy without any drug and no enhancements and you have say 20 CC. It would take about 100-130 days for you to heal depending on your CON. This is not exact but you get the point. Massive damage mostly deals afflictions, penalties and if you are unlucky deficiencies or serious afflictions which might kill you anyway.
Ankan though had over -100% which I would define as totally dead and with over T30 times three body parts seriously wounded. It equals death in the best possible way, in this way by exploding or something. I’m terribly sorry about this; once again I did not want Ankan to die so this highly untimely death took as all on the bed to say the least.
But this month long pause hasn’t been completely in vain. I’ve been able to sort out a lot of information even though I wanted to play it out more casually instead of just skipping it, but there is no other way now. The epic event and how it happened was one of the things I actually wanted to try to play out. Now instead you’ll all see how Magun, Magicka and Taraien together starts to build up what will be the Status Quo Taraien (the regular country). And you’ll be able to witness smaller historic events towards this Status Quo before the real Government Wars will start that it. As you might have understood, this is the prelude to the start of the apocalyptic ages for Taraien.
The Takfir Timeline with Kadaji was planned to be a part of it all, but since Kadaji still haven’t gotten what he needs, I will have to alter his plans and his timeline to suit the future in Arc Three instead. I am afraid that, Kadaji and the Macabre Timeline is the only thing that can bring the group back together. I got the impression that you wanted this, so if I get no complains about it I will probably force some things in motion and control the first session with very limited choices and give you tasks to help the process going.
I will probably think up some new timelines and try to make an interesting involvement to tie you all together even after all the events. And I will give PB aka Violet a fair chance to fight off the Demonic Lineage for the last time too. So I will try with this arc to involve your characters more socially, dig into your personality and history to make this a social, bonding and interesting arc with grand events and epic battles. I will probably modify the Macabre Timeline to become longer and more intense now that Kadaji and Macabre are so close together. But I will also give you time to pursue your own agendas and characters so you can play on different ends as I’ve explained earlier. Think of it as single sessions in group form.
If Ankan have a hard time coming up with a concept I might have a couple of things he might play that might give a good spin to the arc if he is willing to, though I prefer you to think up something of your own instead. And most likely, if you don’t require pre-sessions I can accept you to jump right into the group after the character sessions too. So I have a few entry points and such that will most likely become NPCs otherwise.
That’s also a new approach and theme I’m thinking about for this Arc, to have more non-active, non-stat, social NPCs that will appear in a more flowing way for this arc. Let’s call them ‘Guest Stars’. I think of them as roles and frequently emergent characters that are moving around a lot in your vicinity. Like Yami has been for the all the Shikárs. A familiar face, but not someone that will ‘group’ with you other than momentarily over a session or so. So I’ll try to create some more of that kind of guest stars and try to have an even more base of operation style adventure group this arc.
Well, any requests or questions about this arc you can take with me here or over MSN if you need privacy. I gladly though answer on questions here instead. I want some more visible activity from you (my players) here on the blog or all my work will seem to be in vain if I don’t get feedback. And I hope you think about instead of just saying; “Yeah, yeah… whatever niggah”. It’s the interest that gives me reason to do what I do, and if I lose faith in your interest than I will most likely move on as soon as I’m ready to move on from the kids1. Just that you know. Every little thing to make it so it’s all I say. I don’t expect essays or elaborate feedback, just something big or small. Acknowledgement of my work.
Best regards,
Herid Fel
Robert and Rasmus ↩
Well this sudden end was not good =/ , it messed up alot of things.
And yeah I think guest stars is an interesting choice because it will let you react/play out more different scenarios and I think that might be wise both for the players and characters to have more varied social interactions, but will there be any permanent new npcs?
You talked about speeding up things towards going back to macabre line , that sounds abit hasty(though I guess in-game time will go alot faster).
Me and Daniel also discussed the option of eventually leaving Taraien if Macabre would be fully given up on , how would that work out and where could we travel if this were to happen? Is meno the only option still or is there other routes to travel now(just curious, if you dont want to answer out of game its ok , just checking some options =)?
I have some small ideas, but nothing concrete and nothing really to build a character on right now. Only a small detail on a background, and another that is just about nothing. The NPC-thing could be an alternative, we should have a chat about it.
Right now I am going to try to to complete this period of courses before I start creating a character for real. Should only be the next week, then I have quite a lot of time. But I might start discussing stuff before that.
So long.
The result of my little ‘test’ was undesireable to say the least. And in hindsight it was kind of dumb not to practice throwing before the actual test, however there’s little use to lament it out of game.
On the other hand this is an interesting turn of events from a character developement perspective, it’s quite the sombering experience and I’ve thought abit more about how it will affect Devon specificly.
‘Forcing’ and speeding things up is probably a good idea at this point for a few reasons. First of all we’re pretty split up at the moment, which would probably take quite abit of ingame time to resolve properly. Second it feels like we’ve spent abit too much time having little or no progress, moving things up to a point where actual progress can be achieved would be good, in my opinion.
The most terrible comback ever. But as Daniel said it might be positive in some ways (for the survivors anyway). 🙁
About the guest stars I think it might be a good idea, though perhaps they might feel abit shallow, well maybe not. Could be suitable tool to help us move towards progress anyway.
Well, I’m happy to have seen the last of those grenades.
Cya around Ankan.