On a minor technical point it would be useful if the portal stone failure/death message went to all in the region rather than just the individual. In the middle of an attempted collective RP those remaining had to wait a couple of days to figure out what was going on from a supposed crucial moment.
An unintended consequence of the portal stones changes might create an opposite incentive to what seems to be being encourage. Namely, if you do find a few portal stones you effectively start an arms race. If you do not use them and someone else activates a portal, the implication of the last event was you would lose half of them. Or was that element a one off?
If BT isn't meant to be a bit D&D, or whitewalker influenced if you prefer, then perhaps someone could tell the legions of undead which keep crashing into our walls and sending bored players to experiment with what little variables left they can find? The main portal stone event which seems to have caused upset was because it was far too powerful. On BT where mystic happenings are not out of place, more frequent but far less powerful portal events could still be positive as well as meaning people outside the inner circle get a chance to learn about them prior to major daimon events.
Finally to answer your question M-Dan, my impression was you were slightly unlucky but certainly not extremely. The 1st failed event, we didn't get the outcome we were looking for, partly because you cannot always expect direct results and our request (via an alchemy theme, that gold funds should be boosted as lords/knights were becoming impoverished) was either not deemed worthy, or more likely was simply overtaken by the more pressing narrative of the portal stones being reformed at the very time we were activating them. The 2nd attempt as you accepted you knew there were risks, so you were only somewhat unlucky. We learned the death chance certainly is not a negligible one. I suppose part of your grievance is whether our efforts were always going to be an unrewarded endeavour even if you did avoid the death risk. That I don't know, and knowing would be useful to managing expectations.
Finally though I will turn it around and say you did not fail and thus were not unlucky after all!? You drove an RP that definitely engaged 3 of the nobles of my realm and drew in another 4 adventurers from elsewhere along with one mysterious passing tramp. I understand some disappointment but I and others enjoyed elements of it, and hope you did too at times? Thus we were successful in one meaningful sense. We had fun, learnt a tiny bit and added a line of RP we can still pursue. Cheers.
