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Other guilds I have seen have a separate thread just for dice rolling so as to leave it completely out of their roleplaying experience. While this is a definite option to consider I don't think it would work out nicely, since the major problem with that idea is it gets cluttered and hard to tell who rolled what and when.

Something minor I just thought of to help limit any confusion in the storyline posts would be to add a break in between the different scenes. I tend to use breaks like that all the time to delineate changes in time or scene, so I thought it might help in this case too.

Yadda yadda yadda, this is the post for Joe.

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Blah blah blah, this is where I talk about Jackie.




And I might be able to help with a story so far sort of thing... Though believe it or not, more details would really help on that sort of thing. Maybe we could keep character "journals" to help describe more about what happened during the day from our characters' point of view.

I typically seperate alternate scenes by paragraphs. But that can get confusing, I know...especially when a scene really should be multiple paragraphs anyway. I'll use line breaks to help dispel any confusion. Thanks for that, Rakinu.

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Character journals are a great idea. It is very interesting to see the same story from multiple points and also helps to develop the characters even further by revealing their inner dialogue. But outsiders who are unfamiliar with the story might get confused reading the journal of a spastic character like say, Grubbers McSpooky or wouldn't get the whole picture by reading the diary of a character who themselves didn't know everything that was going on.

If we did character journals, they would need to exist in addition to a "story thus far" thread. Rakinu, what kind of information would you need if you were to take on the job of updating our story? It wouldn't need to be anything fancy or particularly literary...just a summary of events up to the current date. I'd like to update the thread on the same day each week - maybe a Saturday or Sunday? Whatever day works for you, really.

Believe it or not, Monday is usually my best day, though recently I've had the busiest few work months I've had since I started working here. Anyway, I guess I would either need a little leeway in the way of creative license to describe scenes more intimately, or some information about the area as needed. Mostly, I picture Lyonesse as a typical medieval city with messy dirt roads, smelly people, and huge crowds in the marketplace during the day. I picture all the buildings except for a select few being one-story, a few major roads being paved while most others are little more than muddy alleyways. Stuff like that. I kind of need a bit of a picture so I can really write it out...

Anyway, the reason I mentioned character journals is because for fun, I started keeping one for my friend's D&D game. If everyone wrote one then it would really allow people to see the story from every angle and really nothing would be missed. Of course, a story thus far would still be necessary, but then we can keep it down to a more simple summary and reference other passages from the character journals for fun. It might bring a sense of pride to have your specific passage out of six characters' in the scene chosen.

The fact that I was playing Tribe 8 with some friends over the weekend may have something to do with this, but I wanted to suggest something about the rolling system. To me, the average of the stat and skill seems a little rough. It makes a Jack of All Trades character nigh impossible and tips the favor of the game into the hands of the power gamers (which most of us are as it seems). Perhaps we should take the stat + half the skill (or half the stat + skill) for the roll. It still means that the power gamers are going to have high odds of completing a task, but then the jack of all trades character doesn't have to practically roll natural successes every time he wants to do something.

Oh and I was thinking of maybe mentioning that on rolls in which you have no skill the difficulty for a critical roll be increased. It only seems fair that someone with skill would critically succeed more often than someone with out it, whereas one without skill would royally screw up a lot more...

That's all for now... >.>

Cool. It's kind of what I imagine whenever a pre-modern city is brought up. I couldn't really tell you why. I'll have to remember the magical electricity and stuff. I hadn't really thought about stuff like that.

And on the other note, the only reason that I bring it up is that it just seems you can't be good at something without specializing in it. I understand where you're coming from and all, but even to keep things low now to make things seem even greater later on makes it feel real tough on a non-specialized character. I'm just trying to look out for the little guys. Right now, I'm an extremely specialized character that's not going to fail very often in her field of specialty. Making it more difficult to succeed only helps me because I don't expect to succeed on anything I'm not skilled in, and it's less likely someone less skilled than me will succeed where I won't in something I specialize in. In a player-player aspect, it puts a specialized (read: min-maxed) character at a huge advantage. Against you as a GM, it should never be more or less difficult than you want it. Apply modifiers based on how outlandish or ridiculous the attempt may seem. Set the scene to your advantage when characters just rush in head first. GM-player conflict is always easier to control than player-player conflict.

Anyway,

First off, I want to say how grateful I am for James being here and doing all this work for us and the Guild. Congrats man. Next, I've noticed that there isn't much activity unless its over in The Sphere. So I propose we open up somekind of OOC thread for everyone to chat it up and get to know each other a little bit more.

My next suggestion is that there be some kind of update thread. That way we'll know if there is something we have to check like Bless this Mess or the EXP thread.

Usually I find it easier to notice when something has been updated by the last post date for each thread. I don't know why we would need an update thread when Gaia tells us when something has been updated... o.o()