That is Awesome, but I'm assuming she means collateral descendants or deathbed pay-per-ordination, otherwise she's descended from the worst Templars...

Right, finally an update:

Waiting for a few more answers to questions posed in PM, but I have a basic structure I'm almost happy with. Season Two will start approximately nine days from the events of the last thread of "Season One", and I put forward a tentative date of Epiphany (5 Jan) for a start.

Any specific objections, let me know, and anyone chomping at the bit for Wyzenwood activity, feel free to give me more information on what your character's been up to in that week-odd of downtime and/or anything you think of that you'd like more focus on.

Bear in mind that another year being past at an appropriate chapter break, you will get a sticking around bonus of some sort added to your sheets - be sure to look out for them when rolling things in the new season.


Couple of general queries:

- do we want to keep using this game board and/or keep everything visible?

- was half-considering fishing for a player for Janet or one of the Hall servants, would like opinions...six players are often just a little too much for me, but it'd give me someone in the Hall and new blood with related enthusiasm, maybe.

Maggie has told her sister Kate and Hester her big news, swearing them to secrecy until an announcement is made (I'm guessing at Sunday services).

She is devastated that Mercy has been arrested and taken away but lets wiser heads persuade her not to storm the manor and raise a ruckus.

She consults with the older wives of Scorch Norton to see if they will approve her moving into Mercy's cottage as caretaker.

I think announcements are a matter to be discussed with the other party involved...maybe best to wait until there's news back from the colonies and so on. Or at least until rumours of witchlike behaviour have died down before the barefoot kid with a bastard in tow suddenly announces having bagged a gentleman.

Such a course would rather strengthen the charges of Goodie Westcott stirring up impressionable villagers against the gentry for nefarious reasons in the eyes of the authorities, yes...

Widow Sexton can probably persuade the others that Maggie's not going to use it as a free house/den of sin, though I may ask you for some rolls later due to some loose threads centred there, depending.

Any thoughts on the questions there?

Just doing my daily sign off from work and thought I'd add here too. I currently have covid (first time amazingly) and not really up to looking at a screen. Once symptoms settle down I'll be back.

Oh no! Alas, I cannot really help, but I shall roll electronic oranges in your direction:

^{{ {{}O   ^{{ {{}O    ^{{ {{}O

Do stay put and stay hydrated, and to stay on-topic for this game, here you can strut around Versailles like you own the place (without having to pee in a fancy vase!): http://www.versailles3d.com/en...the-3d-scale-models/

---

Meanwhile, I shall take this opportunity to rattle the game a little and ask for some general response to the queries above, or at the least to those separately asked. Whenever I remember what else I wanted to ask you all, I shall edit here, I'm sure there was something. I'll bring over amusements at the solstice at least, that seems appropriate.

In reply to Martin Lovelace (msg # 826):

Oh no! I'm sorry to hear that.

Happy holidays to one and all! ^_^

Thanks, Vicar, really appreciate it - we really are at the midpoint of winter holidays as well as winter in general, aren't we? I shall go update everyone's sheets, I think, then when folk are back and Martin's not sick the additions will be waiting there.

YouTube badly wants to make me watch this video on UK folk traditions but I'm wary of it. The video-maker is very even-handed and does call out 18th century colonialist cannibalism (the height of the health fad for mummy dust) in one of her British Museum bits, though, so maybe I can trust one non-UK person to understand the nuances between different countries and swathes of culture in the area. I'll just put it down here in case anyone's interested.


Lastly-ish, it's the time of year for ghost stories, so here's The Red Room read in old-timey BBC English. I hope he does more Carnacki someday, for some reason he hasn't touched the best ones.

---

I'd say for my thoughts on the queries:

• I'd say to use this one for convenience - that way you don't have to copy over sheets, maps, etc. Obviously I'm good either way, but my take is that it would be easier to use what you already have.
• I'd be fine if someone wanted to play Janet, but if it would be too many players for you I totally get it.

[headtilt] I'm asking what you think, not what I think...if you find it easier to have everything right there for reference, then noted, and thank you. I am willing to do the work if preferred (personally I feel somewhat oppressed by the sheer volume of old threads, given I can't hide them from myself), but not if my players are inconvienienced by it, hence asking in the first place.

...I'll take that as no specific objection. Thanks for the answer.

[scoots solstice carol that's been on the brain all day across as a kind of reward]

In reply to The Keeper (msg # 832):

Correct, my take is that I'd prefer to keep it here.
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:24, Sat 23 Dec 2023.

I'm all for new blood if it adds to the game. I have no strong opinion regarding visibility. Cecil hasn't been privy to many secrets during my tenure. It's been closer to one-on-one play for me, I've seldom interacted long with any of the other PCs.

It was more removing to an entirely new board and leaving this one as archive, but yes, we have group coherence problems, I am thinking on them.

Reply appreciated, at any rate. I will try to sleep now, since I'm fairly sure tomorrow won't actually go away if I stay up long enough...

Good grief, the "new responsive look" is a hard Windows XP-lookin' heap of a thing. Ugh.

Anyway, a red ping for a heads up that I'm going to be going about and biting heels, since I can only assume the crickets in response to my proposal of starting in a week was a lack of objection, and I need some significant 'yes/no' answers from some of y'all.

Has anyone been doing any reading outside their own previous threads? You don't have to tell me, just curious to know what y'all are aware of, kind of thing.

You can change the color scheme just like before. From the main page, click the Preferences link and you'll see a pull-down menu in the Settings box. It defaults to 'light' but there are twelve other options. Find one you like (or create one!) and click the Update Details button.

Trust me, that was the first thing I did (tried to do it before when the warning about the site change showed up, but then it ate my scheme, so that was annoying). Maybe The new boxes fit together more aesthetically on an intelligent telephone, but augh, they're a mess on my faithful, fixed and ancient laptop, particularly the dice roller, now a thousand miles long. Viewing everything at 90% and the thread name/bands are still huge and the posting information all tiny.

I'm just bemused about the update to a retro aesthetic/non-mobile device jank rather than complaining, mind (the default scheme was always fugly, I changed that @~^&* even in Windows XP), but be aware that my inherited/mildly insane iPad is coping very badly with the 'scroll for everything' format and it seems I have to put in voice colours, bolding etc. by hand, which will severely limit quick morning posts.

If I'm (mildly) upset about anything, it's being unable to see whether fellow players are still present in a game/have been through and seen a post (I'm noisy, as a player, but I know it and try to give folk a fair chance if it makes sense for their character to speak first without letting a game lose momentum). I wonder if it'll drive down engagement. Oh, and further FYI to the others since I know I was batting at you in a panicky fashion about it awhile back: iPad can't see player login times from the GM screen, either, no matter what I try to hover or poke, so if I prod you unfairly or seem to be ignoring your going back and forth in a 'trying to work out what to ask for help on' fashion then that's what's going on.

Related to nothing technical, I got the Ghastly Potpourri grab-bag of additions for Ghastly Affair in the last DriveThru sale and am terribly jealous of the effortless 18th century flavour, though it's of the 'everything is Very Fancy and coated in the finest layer of filth' type rather than the 'behold, muskets, potatoes and portable soup!' kind that my brewing revolves around. As a not-quite review amongst folk maybe interested in Georgian-era gaming.

The Dark Shadows game I've played for the past several years uses Ghastly Affair, it works well enough for our needs and the Gothic soap-opera setting is suitably melodramatic.

[a mysterious man in dark tricorn, mask, kerchief and coat comes in for the first-footing, brandishing cake and coal and accepting his dram with a flourish before striding out]

...Happy New Year, friends and companions; may fortune wax with the daylight.


(@the Reverend - I can imagine! Thank you for pointing me at it.)

I am back.

Christmas and New Year and my daughter's visit have passed joyously, even though we sort of raqn out of steam and time to get all the preparations done to our satisfaction. Still, it all came right in the end.

I would be glad to have some new blood. I see value to changing houses, as it were, leaving the old place to hold memories and mementos. Fine to stay here in the old digs either.

The new formats are taking some getting used to, rather like moving house and figuring out where old items live now. Hate the die roller but will become accustomed, no doubt.

Hi!

The thing about beloved guests is that it's just as much/more fun to have them help with the prep, no?

My thanks for the responses...still waiting to hear from Tom and the Doc on both those and OOC queries - I can get to a start point for everyone except Tom without them, but unless folk are champing at the bit we can delay a bit and give him/them until the weekend, particularly if I'm going fishing or/and changing boards (Vicar, you didn't give me a clear opinion on that).

So much scrolling...

If the temperature is favorable, by all means go fishing. You have to post pics though, so I can experience that vicariously. As for the board changing, I will always advocate for whatever choice means less work or confusion for the gamemaster. Except when I can't find the factoid I need from an earlier thread, then I'll whine and pout. Clear enough now? ~_^

[squints]  I think you're saying you don't care about changing boards (all threads will stay on this one to behold regardless, at most an extra two clicks) and are confusing my fishing for players for fishing for fish, though I'm happy to post pictures of pretty seaweed and/or the North Atlantic whenever you like. Or seagulls, if you like seagulls. The fish are all out at sea/the middle of the lochs at present, though.

If I'm off and you do have some sort of preference, do say. I am a direct sort of creature by nature and genteel hints and fan-fluttering will absolutely sail over my head.

Truthfully, I don't even know what you mean by 'changing boards'. Creating a new game (leaving this one up as reference) so we start with fewer threads cluttering things up? Sounds good to me, if so.

 
No, I was just being facetious. Am all for fishing for new players, thought I said so previously. Also amenable to sea, -weed, and -gull pictures. The pigeon mafia here in New York is always contesting the seagulls' access to inland resources.

I meant that, and thank you. We'll see what the other two say when I can get hold of them, as it makes more sense to bring a new player to a fresh message board (or whatever one wishes to call the infrastructure of a game that is itself continuing) if that's what we're doing.

You did say that, but were then very vague about the other question then got distracted. Here is a picture of frosty seaweed from the big freeze a little while back: