[Child of the 7th Age]

More planning issues that need to be answered before we go ahead....


Ithaeliel and Mattius,

Thanks for explaining what you meant. Now I understand what you were asking me.

Upon reading over your post, I think you've raised two issues, perhaps without fully realizing it. One of these is openly stated, while the other is implied by the question you ask. I can understand why you were confused by my own answer because I assumed certain things about your second question without actally stating these things on this thread.

So we'll need to clarify both issues before we decide which way to take the plot.

Here are the two questions/issues I see:

1. Will the Entwives all be in Fangorn Forest, or will most of them still be back on a plantation in Rhun?

This is the question that you explicitly raise on the thread. However, there's another implied issue.

2. Will the company deal with the marauding Huorn who are attacking travellers in the forest?

I made a basic asumption on my earlier post and planning ideas which I didn't really explain. (Sorry!) Let me explain. When I suggested that the company go running off to free the Entwives in the east, I assumed they would not deal with the temporary problem of getting the huorn to stop bashing travellers on the head.

This is how that could be done. You might have a background post with the King reading a missive sent to him from those who went to the forest, describing how the Entwives have been imprisoned and requesting permission to go help them.

In that same post you'd have an answer back from the King. (The easiest way to do this is to have someone from the company reading the reply.) The king would tell the companions to go to Rhun and free the imprisoned Entwives and report back to him. He would also tell the companions that he was temporarily sending a band of soldiers out to patrol the forest and try to keep the violence in check.

Then the RPG itself would focus on the quest, not on the soldier-peacekeepers left behind. I made this assumption for several reasons. I honestly don't think it would be too interesting to have a group of posters left behind in Fangorn simply to do police-keeping duties with the huorn. All the mystery would be gone, since we already understand about the Entwives and even the fact that the people of Rhun are planning an attack. Secondly, I can say from hard experience that it is almost always a bad idea to have more than one central plotline going on in an RPG. No, I'm not saying you can't have subplots. You most certainly can. But it is very hard to keep two separate storylines running. Splitting the company would force us to do that.

So here's my opinion: whatever you do, don't split the main group of posters in two. My personal preference is to go off to Rhun because I think it could be much more interesting than staying in Fangorn. As I mentioned before, you wouldn't even have to deal with the actual journey. Just use the device of space/time compression: a single narrative post where the journey is summarized in a few paragraphs. Then pick up the detailed action just outside Rhun.

If you don't want to do that, you will indeed have to bring all the Entwives to the forest, driven there by the bad guys. But wouldn't someone have seen them on their long trip from the east? I don't think you can hide that many Entwives easily on a long trip. They're just too big! Also there's too many of them. We haven't discussed numbers but there must be at least 25 or so! I'm not at all sure how you'd get around this secrecy issue.

Also, you'd have to say why the bad guys brought the Entwives along. The only thing I can think of is to join the military forces and fight..... But would the Entwives fight? I doubt it. I think they would resist. Then the focus of the plot might become the tension between the bad guys and their prisoners, and some kind of secret plot to help release them on the part of the company.

My personal preference would be to go to Rhun and free them and come racing back. Please have the game founders decide and let me know. I'll be careful to keep my next post vague about this. If necessary, I'll revise my earlier plot ideas and posts to reflect the fact that an imminent force from the east is expected to arrive in just a few days with all the Entwives in tow.

Please let me know how you prefer to handle this.

Cami

[ June 13, 2003: Message edited by: Child of the 7th Age ]