The Fellowship of the Fourth Age: A New Beginning Planning Thread

[Child of the 7th Age]

Hmm.... That was my thought too about the land. Pio is very strong on geography, and I am wondering if she knows something we don't.

I'd very much like to include a Dwarf in the Fellowship. There are two reasons for this: the orginal fellowship had a Dwarf and, perhaps more importantly, someone on the Rohan list has expressed an interest in playing a Dwarf. I'll talk to you about this by pm.

I am trying to think this character issue through.....

For the group sent out by Aragorn, how about 3 Men, 1 Elf, 1 Dwarf, 1 hobbit. It would be good to have that cross representation. These characters would need to reflect some of the skills already listed in the game proposal: stonework, metalwork, military prowess, healing or teaching. I'd be willing to consider a female as healer or teacher (but not the other roles, I think). Is that possible from your angle? I would dearly love to see interaction between a female Orc and a female human, if we include female Orcs in the story.

Regarding the refugees, I guess the first thing I'd want to know is how big the groups of refugees are. I am assuming that the Mannish slave group has to be 35 people or so. Could you really start a village with anything smaller? (Persuade me otherwise if I am wrong.) My gut feeling is to make the Orc group a bit smaller. Orcs seem so physically superior that having a group as large as 35 is a bit intimidating. Maybe 15 Orcs total? (The Orcs could also feel very outnumbered.) These figures were just drawn out of the air so if you think we should go in a very different direction, let me know. Conceivably, you could have a group of 100 ex-slaves! Also 15 Orcs versus 35 Men makes an all-out war unlikely. The nasty Orcs would probably have to resort to subterfuge and ambush rather than head-to-head brute force; this could make things more interesting.

There is obviously no way we are going to have 50 posters playing these Orcs and slaves. I have been in other "migration" stories that assumed a large group moving cross country, but only 10 or 11 major characters. I assume this is the situation we're in. There were times in that story when we had to refer to other characters in a vague way. I am also assuming that would be possible as long as there was a very brief profile put up, and the device wasn't abused.

If we have 10 posters, then we conceivably have a total of 20 characters: everyone does a major and a minor. I would encourage people to do one from each group: Aragorn's group versus everyone else. As far as the "major" characters go, I am leaning towards 2 slaves, 1 ex-slave, and 2 Orcs. So we'd have atotal of 11 major characters, and 11 minor ones. The minor ones would be a mixture of slaves, ex-slaves, and Orcs.

I'll be gone tomorrow morning but online in the afternoon.... I'll keep working on the proposal.

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I am still not 100% sure about my own characters. Let me think about it another day.