The Fellowship of the Fourth Age: A New Beginning Planning Thread - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Child of the 7th Age · 06-14-2006, 01:04 AM

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.

___________________

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

piosenniel · 06-14-2006, 03:53 AM

Just putting this here for reference:

Economic Benefits of Igneous Activity

Durelin · 06-14-2006, 12:58 PM

Quote:

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.

Yes, I was thinking along the same lines as that. And that would be too fun to pass up.

Quote:

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.)

No persuasion here; I think you're absolutely right. And a smaller Orc group is better on several accounts. One because of their strength, and two because of the likelihood of Orcs doing what they are is still, I imagine, not all that much. I'd say they're a rare bunch of rebels, right?

As for the number of ex-slaves, a large group is definitely conceivable, but perhaps for our purposes we could say that they perhaps took part in the rebellion that was such a disaster, and lost a good chunk of their group (who were either killed or captured and made slaves again)? But then we would have the ex-slaves and slave escapees escaping together, I imagine, instead of the escapees meeting up with the ex-slaves. I don't know; I'm just trying to see if we can keep the numbers small so that the ex-slaves are a realistically smaller presence. Is that necessary, though?

Quote:

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.

Would we perhaps allow one or two use (as in they show up in the story once, perhaps fulfilling a simple puprose of one line of dialogue, relaying a message, dying or something) NPCs without the need of brief bios for them? Obviously ones that get more use, and so have a little more character to them than a name, would need to have a bit of information on them.

Quote:

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.

To make this possible, we would need someone to play to major characters? Sorry, I'm just trying to stay on the same page as you. If that is so, I would be fine with doing that, I think (loves playing musical characters).

Really, I think the numbers will work out fine. As long as we have some kind of representation from all the groups, since all the groups will be interacting together, we should be fine. If they groups were split up for a good portion of the game we'd be in bigger trouble.

Thank you so much for the resources, Pio! I'll look at that map and a couple others I have more carefully in a little while, I hopefully be back with something in that area...

Child of the 7th Age · 06-14-2006, 04:05 PM

Pio,

Thanks for the map!

Durelin,

I am going ahead and transferring the relevent portions of the character list to the proposal.

Durelin · 06-14-2006, 05:34 PM

Sounds great.

So, for characters needed, if I were to play a Man of Gondor and you were to play Lindir, that would be:

2 Men of Gondor
1 Hobbit
1 Dwarf

and

1 Ex-slave
2 Slave escapees
2 "Rebel" Orcs

Right? *wants to make sure*

Child of the 7th Age · 06-14-2006, 11:06 PM

Yes, you're right about the original list.

I have thought about my own characters and decided I'd rather stick with the two that I had originally thought of when I first conceived this game: Lindir the Elf and Radagast. That means I won't be playing an inhabitant of Mordor. Our total list would look something like this. I've added in some additional comments on gender, the skills possessed by those sent out by Aragorn, and the use of minor characters.

You had indicated "Men of Gondor". Do you think we could leave that open to any Men?

How does this look? It's not set in stone and can be changed......

___________________________

Characters played by the game founders:

Child of the 7th Age: Lindir the Elf; Radagast the istar , both part of the group sent out by Aragorn

Durelin: Man of Gondor; ???

________________________

Major Characters:

Each poster should select one major character from the two lists below.

A. Group Sent Out by Aragorn

2 "Men"
1 Hobbit
1 Dwarf

**Each of the above characters should possess one or more skills that would be needed by the refugees to help establish the new settlements: scouting, working with stone and/or metal, soldiering/hunting, teaching, healing, farming. If anyone has thought of additional skills you'd like your character to have, please run these by the game founders.

***The healer and teacher may be female; all others should be male.

and

B. Inhabitants of Mordor

1 Ex-slave (male)
2 Slave escapees (at least one male)
2 "Rebel" Orcs (1 male/1 female)

Minor characters

Posters are encouraged to carry one minor character, generally one of the inhabitants of Mordor. However, if the list become too lopsided and everyone is requesting one character type (Orcs, for example), we may ask some writers to consider a different choice.

_______________________

My math was wrong on the last posting, where I managed to add up the characters on the list and came up with "ten"! Rather that would be 11 posters (including us). If we get fewer than that, I think we can still manage as long as some folk write for two characters.

I am going to paste all this into the proposal and we can make further changes after you see it.

I also need to check with Piosenniel. At one time, she and I had discussed some other possible characters being sent out by Aragorn. Let me get back to you on that one.....

Child of the 7th Age · 06-14-2006, 11:08 PM

I am also tentatively adding in the final destination as the southern Plateau of Gorgoroth. This can be changed if we desire.....

06-14-2006, 01:04 AM	#1
Child of the 7th Age Spirit of the Lonely Star Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 5,133	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. ___________________ I am still not 100% sure about my own characters. Let me think about it another day. __________________ Multitasking women are never too busy to vote.

06-14-2006, 04:05 PM	#4
Child of the 7th Age Spirit of the Lonely Star Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 5,133	Pio, Thanks for the map! Durelin, I am going ahead and transferring the relevent portions of the character list to the proposal. __________________ Multitasking women are never too busy to vote.

06-14-2006, 11:06 PM	#6
Child of the 7th Age Spirit of the Lonely Star Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 5,133	Yes, you're right about the original list. I have thought about my own characters and decided I'd rather stick with the two that I had originally thought of when I first conceived this game: Lindir the Elf and Radagast. That means I won't be playing an inhabitant of Mordor. Our total list would look something like this. I've added in some additional comments on gender, the skills possessed by those sent out by Aragorn, and the use of minor characters. You had indicated "Men of Gondor". Do you think we could leave that open to any Men? How does this look? It's not set in stone and can be changed...... ___________________________ Characters played by the game founders: Child of the 7th Age: Lindir the Elf; Radagast the istar , both part of the group sent out by Aragorn Durelin: Man of Gondor; ??? ________________________ Major Characters: Each poster should select one major character from the two lists below. A. Group Sent Out by Aragorn 2 "Men" 1 Hobbit 1 Dwarf Each of the above characters should possess one or more skills that would be needed by the refugees to help establish the new settlements: scouting, working with stone and/or metal, soldiering/hunting, teaching, healing, farming. If anyone has thought of additional skills you'd like your character to have, please run these by the game founders. The healer and teacher may be female; all others should be male. and B. Inhabitants of Mordor* 1 Ex-slave (male) 2 Slave escapees (at least one male) 2 "Rebel" Orcs (1 male/1 female) Minor characters Posters are encouraged to carry one minor character, generally one of the inhabitants of Mordor. However, if the list become too lopsided and everyone is requesting one character type (Orcs, for example), we may ask some writers to consider a different choice. _______________________ My math was wrong on the last posting, where I managed to add up the characters on the list and came up with "ten"! Rather that would be 11 posters (including us). If we get fewer than that, I think we can still manage as long as some folk write for two characters. I am going to paste all this into the proposal and we can make further changes after you see it. I also need to check with Piosenniel. At one time, she and I had discussed some other possible characters being sent out by Aragorn. Let me get back to you on that one..... __________________ Multitasking women are never too busy to vote. Last edited by Child of the 7th Age; 06-14-2006 at 11:34 PM.

06-14-2006, 11:08 PM	#7
Child of the 7th Age Spirit of the Lonely Star Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 5,133	I am also tentatively adding in the final destination as the southern Plateau of Gorgoroth. This can be changed if we desire..... __________________ Multitasking women are never too busy to vote.

06-14-2006, 05:34 PM	#5
Durelin Estelo dagnir, Melo ring Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 3,063	Sounds great. So, for characters needed, if I were to play a Man of Gondor and you were to play Lindir, that would be: 2 Men of Gondor 1 Hobbit 1 Dwarf and 1 Ex-slave 2 Slave escapees 2 "Rebel" Orcs Right? wants to make sure