Author Topic: Prelude - Rise of the Merchant Princes  (Read 4199 times)

loren

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Prelude - Rise of the Merchant Princes
« Topic Start: August 15, 2011, 02:46:06 AM »
RP Guidelines:  We're going to follow the RP rules from the website.  All threads associated with the story should start the Subject with "Prelude -".

Setting: Soupat a relatively medium sized trading post (2,000 residents) established by a Share-holder company from a southern city-state confederation.  The town is dominated by the import and export of goods and raw materials.  A wharf occupies a large proportion of the town being over-run with ware-houses and factorages.  Competing groups have forced the issue of a town-watch that has a mixture of Southerners and Northerners many with either army or war-band experience.  They are well paid mercenaries in the employ of the Company
The story takes place before the events of SM3, so any characters will be dead by the time the game officialy gets under way.  Also Soupat may or may not exist anymore.  We'll just have to see how the story goes!
General restrictions: Spellcasters can have two skills at Basic, and a handful (read 3) of spells (I won't keep track specifically, but mana is even more rare at this time).  Nobody will be able to just up and destroy the town at this point, not even if you all banded together, though you could do some damage, in all likelyhood outright aggression in the form of spells would likely get the perpetrators killed.
Character restrictions: Your character might be a mundane or a spellcaster, but they cannot be a part of the Share-holder company operations, not to start anyways, you'll have to explore the setting some first.  Former mercs, Itinerant Knights, Youngest sons looking for fortune, Specialists in Obscure Details, and other such archtypes will probably get the most out of the story.

Indirik

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Re: Prelude - Rise of the Merchant Princes
« Reply #1: August 15, 2011, 08:28:45 PM »
I've never done forum-based RP, so I' may be asking some super-basic questions. But since there are others here who have never done forum-based RP, I hope that these questions may help others, too.

Question one: If we want to jump in, should we start a new thread for each character? Or should we try to keep the "main storyline" to a single thread? Do we intorduce each character in a separate thread, and then jump into other threads as needed?  I mean, how do we handle all the threads? I'm a bit lost on how to do this. I'm sure that once we get going it will all make sense.

Question two: Should there be a single thread where all the players list their NPC characters/descriptions/etc? Kind of like a dramatis personæ? As each new player joins the storyline, they could list their character there? Would make for a handy reference for the other players.
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loren

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Re: Prelude - Rise of the Merchant Princes
« Reply #2: August 15, 2011, 08:46:52 PM »
If a story diverges it'll move to its own thread.  Otherwise I'd post to the thread that your story continues (thats kind of the big thing, continuing the story.  My GM NPC just wrote himself out of the rest of the arrival RPs, but someone could easily pick up and continue any portion of it).  So someone could post watching the merchant prince arrive and witnessed the exchange with the guard from a shadowed building entrance before going to spread the word that a new head honcho has arrived etc.

As for separate persona threads that's up to you all.  Generally speaking there isn't really a need, but it may help people jump in later.

Zakilevo

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Re: Prelude - Rise of the Merchant Princes
« Reply #3: August 16, 2011, 03:02:03 AM »
hmm. So if my character does some other character, I have to put it in a separate thread? How do you track down one character's storyline like this?

loren

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Re: Prelude - Rise of the Merchant Princes
« Reply #4: August 16, 2011, 03:37:42 AM »
hmm. So if my character does some other character, I have to put it in a separate thread? How do you track down one character's storyline like this?

I don't follow.  Does some other character?  Think of each thread as a scene in a movie.  People can enter that scene and leave it.  There should be markers that will unite scenes together.  So for instance off screen several characters are in the town when Raenart arrives in the morning (I believe I stated it was Dawn at the start of the scene).  His entry is finished, but the camera moves to the Winking Lizard tavern where some of the characters are having a pint over mid-day meal when in bursts a gutter rat with news of a fancy and mean looking Company man.  The gutter rat is looking for some coin for this potentially valuable information.  You might be able to press him about details, notably the sword hilt I made a big deal out of.

So now people can interact in the tavern.  Lets say your character is a mercenary looking for work.  He hears of some new big shot coming to town and heads up to the stockade leaving this scene behind.  He's written out of it and into his own thread about the Stockade.  So he goes up in the early afternoon looking for work.  He might get directed towards the recruiting station for the guards.  Another person's character decides to look for information with the sailors back at the docks, so he now has his thread again with pertinent time point references so that people can judge if their characters are capable of joining that scene and so on.

You can't be two places at once, and it's been established the mines are a fair distance away at least a half days travel.  Nothing else around the town has been described beyond the harbor so anyone can RP that.  Maybe there is a road leading in from another village a few days away that someone is walking in on etc.  Its up to you guys to fill in the missing details, to figure out how to start their story.

I was sort of a spoil-sport with the first post in that I wrote it as fairly closed.  I'll try to rectify that.

Siren

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Re: Prelude - Rise of the Merchant Princes
« Reply #5: August 16, 2011, 03:43:30 AM »
Thats hilarious. I didn't see your post about the Winking Lizard tavern until after I had posted. The name was to good to pass up.

I still don't really get the whole spell thing 100% yet, so I left out any magic. But other than, that did I break any rules?

loren

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Re: Prelude - Rise of the Merchant Princes
« Reply #6: August 16, 2011, 03:57:36 AM »
Nope, but someone will notice that body sooner or later.  Going to have to give people a chance to respond ;-)

Other taverns in town might be The Flying Monkey, the Thirsty Parrot, Velvet Dog and so forth.

Indirik

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Re: Prelude - Rise of the Merchant Princes
« Reply #7: August 17, 2011, 02:45:37 AM »
If we're confused regarding a specific RP in a thread, where do we post questions? To that thread, this thread, start a new thread, something else entirely different?
If at first you don't succeed, don't take up skydiving.

Morningstar

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Re: Prelude - Rise of the Merchant Princes
« Reply #8: August 17, 2011, 03:40:25 AM »
I'm not the end authority on the matter, but my suggestion would be to start a new thread with the subject line "OOC: <original rp thread subject>". Any out of character discussion/questions for that particular thread can then be housed in a similarly titled thread for simplicity.

loren

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Re: Prelude - Rise of the Merchant Princes
« Reply #9: August 17, 2011, 04:20:22 AM »
If we're confused regarding a specific RP in a thread, where do we post questions? To that thread, this thread, start a new thread, something else entirely different?

Depends on the nature of the question.  You could always private message the poster and ask.  Or Morningstar's idea is a good one.  Hopefully that won't occur too often.