Splitting up might be a fun/good idea. One large group to consolidate our position and another smaller one to start making inroads with the natives?

That's not easy to answer, as you would first figure out where exactly you are - but in any case, the answer will be "several days of marching", but the truck will help with that for now.

Zholdin/Lewis: Splitting up or staying together? I'll assume that Bhalla and Mattaki would be more inclined to get in touch with some of their own people instead of just straggling along with these Not-Germans.

I'm with the Kapitan on this one.  Quite fine with splitting up.

If there is a base to be set up, the bulk of the Western Allies will join that effort. I think the split would be a very small group.

Bhalla would be more comfortable with a small group of the not-Nazis, anyway. Couple of PCs as “ambassadors” would be reasonable, naja?

I mean, it's not exactly effective to send a ton of people to go meet them the first time anyway, too confusing.

Sorry guys, I took a week off due to mindless insomnia... but it doesn't look like I missed anything.

No worries - I'll split the team into two groups then.
Konnikov sets up a base camp, the rest of the player characters try to establish diplomatic ties.

Will Lewis stay with Konnikov and send Captain Jackson with the diplomatic mission or will Jackson stay with the Russians and Lewis joins the rest of the PC?

Ah... I just posted in thread and sent a PM...

I don't fancy a month in game of "split the party".

Max will join the establishment of ‘base camp.’

Answered the PM - and I left the diplomatic mission thread vague on purpose while we figure out details.

Which was very appreciated.

Hoookay... orders have been issued.  Hopefully everyone is happy with them.

I just want to make it explicit OOC: Bhalla does not know where the diplomatic party is. Well...she has a sense of it that's about as useful as saying "we're somewhere in [average U.S. state]." I'm not trying to be obtuse or unhelpful, IC or OOC.

I know - I've been thinking about how to resolve the current gridlock, but with school starting up again, that has eaten into my available time.

If everybody's alright with it, I think there's some railroading in order to get you back moving.

I also wanted to mention something that works better at the table than here in PbP: Since most of you are part of the military hierarchy, there is the danger that the sense of "we can't do anything until the officers give the orders" results in everybody waiting on that one or two players to sort it out.
That can be especially the case for folks who are technically not part of the military.

While IC Konnikov and Lewis are in fact in charge of the mission, OOC you can all weigh in and make suggestions. (Technically, Mattaki is also an office in the Axtzal military, but with no soldiers around that would recognise his authority, that is less of an issue for now.)

Narrating a bit of movement sounds good to me, unless there are any important decisions we need to make.

I think that Yelena was chastised the one time she stepped outside the traditional chain-of-command by speaking out of turn, so she has tried to be more careful with when she speaks ever since then.

I think in this case we are waiting for Lena to respond to the British officer.

One reason why I made Malkin 'second in command' of the Russia contingent of the diplomatic party.  So both she and Zholdin can pip up and steer the course if need be.

Malkin has probably also subtly gotten a battle field promotion as Konnikov has been dropping the "junior" ("mladshiy") part of Junior Sergeant (Mladshiy Serzhant) the last few times he's addressed her.  Though we can have Konnikov have made it "official" for the duration of the diplomatic mission if necessary.  That happens 'quite often' in war.

I mean it cuts both ways.  Lena really shouldn't have input on any decisions, but isn't going to be subject to a tribunal for bucking that power structure either, and can talk back to anyone (in theory, in practice probably not so much).  What you lose in influence you gain in freedom.

Anyway, I had no idea he wanted anything from me, he just said my idea of working backwards was dumbass, which is fine, it was just an idea.

I gave Lena and Bhalla a little prompt (I realize I left Lena somewhat hanging there) and I wanted to point Yelena to msg #24 in the Take  us to your leader thread.

@Semyon: Any response on your thread? If you're busy IRL, we can just handwave time passing.

Zholdin and Julius have slipped away again, I don't think they'll return.

@Mattaki: You also seem to be lost at what to do?

Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, I am efficient!

Mostly I just couldn't think of anything to actually say... but yes I'm fine with zooming out on the Forest Camp and just doing a "time passes" post every so often.  Don't worry about me, I'm vaguely keeping tabs on the diplomatic/scouting mission.

Not going anywhere (after all the game I first joined on RPoL has been going for over 8 years and only three weeks have passed for my oldest character in it, it's a very slow burn game).

Came back to work from hurricane Ian to find out they decided I need to be a Team Lead... so more hours, more responsibility, more everything (except sleep and hourly pay).

Luckily we've semi-zoomed out a bit, so I probably keep pace here - and when we pick up [pace] again, hopefully I'll have a better handle on my sleep and lack of time (of course come Dec 7th we'll go back into the slower season again so, by then for sure).
This message was last edited by the player at 11:52, Fri 14 Oct 2022.

I'm glad you made it through Ian!

(Last weeks of grading periods are more than a little busy. Sorry for the delay!)

That's alright - we're knee-deep in tax returns for the October deadline, so plenty of busy to go around!