Red Flows the Sirannon Planning/Discussion Thread

[Durelin]

My goodness, I'm really having a hard time getting my brain to work properly.

My apologies...the game will not be starting in SA 1693, but rather 1695. Unfortunately, that means that we will not be dealing with the hiding of the rings, but that really cannot be fit in. Rather, the game will begin with the following:

• Sauron will have invaded Eriador
• A council in Lindon will decide to send a contingent under Elrond's command to Ost-in-Edhil
• Lorien will send a small contingent to Ost-in-Edhil to participate in the defense
  • shortly, this contingent will be met by the dwarves who will join up with them and lead them through Moria
• 'refugees' from the outlying lands of Eregion surrounding Ost-in-Edhil will be arriving at the city and the inhabitants will be preparing for battle, mustering forces
• the baddies will not have entered the picture yet

(Note: if you'll notice, we must start the game in 1695 to be able to get things moving properly.)

At some point, we will be making a transition where we jump a period of time to get to the battle itself in 1697. We wil assume that the battle occured early in that year, and that we will be starting late in the year of 1695. A little over a year later, the battle will begin, but, of course, we will have to skip some of that. What I propose is this: an almost 'journal' style rush through time. We could begin with December of 1695, and then after a week, with a post from me, I suppose, the game would move to February of 1696, skipping every other month.

That could get really confusing, though. So, the simpler way is to simply say that we will spend about a month and a half (RL time) in 1695, and then jump to 1697. That jump would not land us in the battle immediately, but then there would be only a week or two (RL time) until the battle (unless of course we wanted to spend longer on the battle).

I hope that made sense.... and a question for all: more battle, or less battle?

Confuzzedly yours,
-Durelin

P.S. - Sorry for the delay on my post. I'm working on the adjustments, and I think I'm almost done. Thanks.

[Firefoot]

So, the simpler way is to simply say that we will spend about a month and a half (RL time) in 1695, and then jump to 1697.

So the baddies would be dormant in this first month and a half if we did it that way, right?

[Amanaduial the archer]

Firefoot makes a valid point - this would be rather unfortunate. No matter which of Durelin's two methods we use, the baddies are going to have a period of 'dormancy' at the beginning. However, I do much prefer the second idea:

we will spend about a month and a half (RL time) in 1695, and then jump to 1697. That jump would not land us in the battle immediately, but then there would be only a week or two (RL time) until the battle (unless of course we wanted to spend longer on the battle).

This idea has worked well in other RPGs (e.g. Shadow of the West), and is I think much preferable to the first suggestion, which could threaten to break the game up to be maybe a little too patchwork; plus, as a rush through time, it would probably end up concentrating solely on events and skimping on character interaction and development of characters and relationships, which would rather defeat the point of RPGing. Plus, as Durelin pointed out, it wouldn't half get confusing! I would therefore go for the second idea, certainly.

As to the answer to the big question, the ultimate question, the question that has indeed been plaguing generations of RPGers since the days of Ye Olde Freestyle Roome: heck, more battle! Yeah, I would say more rather than less battle - but maybe that's just me being trigger happy. Battle is always fun to play, and in this game, spending a larger proportion of time on the battle would mean the baddies were able to play in a larger proportion of the game, meaning no players are left scuffing their toes on the sidelines, so to speak. On the other hand, there are certainly more events happening before the actual battle begins, and as there are some non-fighting characters (*cough*Narisiel!*cough), having less battle is still certainly an option. The events before the battle could allow more character development and give the game more span and variety. So maybe this would be better.

Looking at the options, I'm happy either way I suppose - but maybe I would lean a little more towards 'less battle', for the reasons specified above. Thoughts of one and all?