Out of character chatter and discussion

We'll start as soon as we get three or more characters. I will be accepting new players beyond that, though.

Probably I'll stop somewhere from five to seven, depending on how much activity there is (more activity is always better, but will mean I will have to keep a tighter cast).

Six is probably ideal regardless, since there are often a couple early dropouts.

It's good to see you back, Froggy.

Thanks, it's sweet to be a GM again :)

Looks like fun trouble ahead.  We're gonna have fun I think.

That's the plan :)

We're pretty close to being able to start. Probably a couple more days, though.

Great.

Приветствую Emily.

Privet? Like the hedge?  Greetings to you Vladislav.

Oh, also worth mentioning:

There will be a map for this game (or multiple, depending on where you go)

At the moment, there is only "Spawnpoint", so I'm not gonna make a map for just that.

The map itself won't be super pretty, but it will be clean and legible.

Mainly, you can use it for navigation and overall awareness.

---

BTW, I have two big things that will be revealed early, so I apologize ahead of time if I end up interrupting any of you during your introductions.

It's also possible for those things not to come up for a while, however. Still, they should eventually.

I'm quite excited :)

Hey guys, so of the three RTJs I've got, one hasn't gotten back to me in a couple days.

It is starting to look like we won't be able to start until I can bump the game ad.

Sorry for any delay

It happens, unfortunately.

Such is life, I'm afraid.

Pretty sure tomorrow is the soonest I can bump, since it's once per week.

Really hoping that attracts some attention to the game...

If it does not, then I can start us off with only 2 players, as long as you guys are okay with that; since it will mean you'll be doing a lot of one-on-one with me, or one-on-one with one another, at least for a while.

I will say, this game lends itself very well to solo play, but it's totally understandable to want a reasonably-sized class to bounce off of.

Opinions on starting with two (if it comes to that)? You for it, against it, or neutral either way? LMK :)

Neither for nor against but I guess it's worth a try.

One on one is generally fine with me.

Alright then, I'll bump the game tomorrow, and if it doesn't get any attention, we'll start a little low on cast.

My hook has caught us some new players :)

I should be ready to start us off in a couple days, once things are mostly settled!

Hope y'all are looking forward to this as much as I am, haha

I seeing new faces, new names. Welcome, welcome!

Hello Dmitri and Otto and welcome.

Hello there!

Excited to be here, not really sure what to expect honestly, but that's part of the fun.

Isn't it just.

Alright!

It's finally time for us to start this whole thing up!

Introductory post incoming; looking forward to seeing your responses :-)

Hah ha!

A few small things:

1. The notification sound is supposed to be private information

2. I am having some trouble with the Secret Line function, so if you can see screens that are supposedly hidden to others, it's a technical error and please report it to me. I've already been aware of some errors

3. I'm considering leaving private information public, and just have everyone play in good faith. It's a little less immersive, but so is leaked information because I got my formatting wrong, lol

4. Oh also, how is everyone feeling about the game so far? I know we just started, so I'm mainly inquiring to see if anything immediately jumps out as problematic for the future.

Having fun so far! Thanks again for running it.

Definitely having formatting issues in the Spawn point thread, but I'm not sure that's you, it's likely just me being on mobile at the moment.

Having fun too. A little more trouble mentally staying on the character, but he's new and should come together more in my head as I play.

Good to know!

I'm not familiar with RPOL on mobile (except that supposedly they have a secondary site to improve it's formatting), so I cannot say for sure which is which.

At the moment, I am making a large number of edits to clear up anything I improperly formatted.

I think some confusions may have arisen from there, especially on the part of Dmitri.

Unfortunately, your status screens are now a little hideous using '()' and '{}' over the far more crisp '[]'. I am thinking that is causing the problems... It could also be the table function.

---

I've been there! A few months ago I started playing an evil-leaning tiefling and couldn't really get into that headspace, so I talked with the other players and they gave me some advice. I ended up making him a little more sympathetic, as he was 'struggling with evil' rather than 'has a cruel personality'.

Of course, time is also the best way to become comfortable with a PC

Edited my last post to respond to Emily.

Missed it in my first reply.

In case you're getting a little frustrated Dmitri, let me give you a hint:

 - You haven't even confirmed how this skill works yet, :wink:

Were messages #57 and #58 overlooked?

My bad! I skipped over them because there is no response, but forgot to mention that in my post.

Hello all. Thanks for letting me join the game.

I based my character concept off the actor who plays Penny in The Magicians, though after discussing it with the GM, we both want to be clear that this is an alternate universe sort of thing, so it's not any kind of commentary on real-world shows or people.

Anyway, please decide for yourself if your character was a fan of the urban fantasy / Students At Magic University show that my character is most known for.

Penny eh?  I recognise him from How to Get Away With Murder but I always get the Magicians mixed up with The Librarians.

Welcome Arjun

My rough outline of a thing that could laughably be called a "plan" is to have him be a sort of cynical actor, who might fall into acting the character that feels most appropriate to the setting, given what little info we have, as a kind of armor against the weirdness.

I'm sure this plan will change quickly.

And Arjun gets the hundredth post.

You're going to be a grifter, Arjun? ;)

My "plan" (also subject to change) is to make you look like a villain, as the System sticks to you like a lost puppy >:-D

So far, you've all been getting along FAR too well...

It seems you haven't realized yet, but...

"Figures, man. I always get screwed. At least this isn't another gorram cattle call."

Seriously, though, I encourage you to let us get along until we exit the spawn point. Let the competition and hostility occur organically :)

That said, I'm playing somebody who has the ego necessary to survive the acting world. I'm 100% cool with that seeming villainous.

I'm totally with you on having a bit of a grace period!

It just gives me more time to design my evil schemes... :totally innocent smile:

Don't worry though, I'll only be causing suspicions and dropping incentives to a reasonable degree, lol.

Once you guys get a little further in progression, you might guess why I'm running things like this. Of course, it's possible you won't know until the end game... hehehe

Truth be told, at present, we have not yet seen any reason not to co-operate.

The problem with game concepts like this is the that the first thing I want to do is mash all the buttons to see what menus come up.

I'll try not spam the IC thread as soon as I show up, but I will gently nudge the Voice of the System for confirmation that none of the new commands I tried have worked.

In reply to Emily Khorashandi (msg # 40):

This is what I'm saying. Let the bickering happen naturally. I've been in too many rpol games where the players beeline straight for PvP conflict.

How big is this disc we're on?

How many people besides the PCs do we see on the disc?

Also, can we call them Notifications, or Alerts, or something? I suspect that at some point, we're going to see an actual window on a house or something and get confused.

The disc is a hundred feet in diameter. The OP has this info, also.

The PCs are the only individuals on the disc.

If you prefer that, I can begin to use the term "alert" instead.

Welcome to the game, Arjun. I was out of the lair for some exercise and just got back. I'll read and catch up.

By the way, the character is too stubborn (selfish) to think that he needs more information than simply saying you have the skill. It may take a while to get there.

In reply to Dmitri Alvin Reslin (msg # 46):

Good to know. I was planning to pose a few questions to him already :)

It would be useful to be able to narratively convince everyone to open certain windows alerts as part of our posts. For example, if someone could write, "I tell them all to open up their Map, and once they do I describe the mountain we need to travel to."

But that also feels super presumptuous, so I figured I would ask before writing something like that.

A compromise would be to post something after the fact like, "Wow! There's some neat stuff to look at on this Quests page! See for yourself!"

In the future, once you are all comfortable with how I format the status screens and system alerts, I will not be posting the full thing every time unless there are major changes.

Spawnpoint is very spamtastic right now from my POV, but for you all it should look alright since you're only seeing the messages meant for you.

Also, if you guys don't make any major progress in a couple days, I will give you some hints on how to move forward. I don't really have anything SPECIFIC planned, but I can assure you there is a lot you are still not seeing.

Congratulations! You solved the second major problem I had planned!

The first, of course, was granting everyone the interpretation skill :)

Well done, Arjun :-)

Also, Emily, you were extremely close to solving this problem before!

In reply to Voice of The System (msg # 50):

If there was some kind of in-game prize for getting that, Emily should absolutely get it. I wouldn't have thought of it on my own, and the only reason I got to it before her was she logged off for the night.

Speaking of logging off,

Since you've all made a large amount of progress today, I'm thinking of not responding to any more posts until tomorrow. You are still free to converse, and even pre-empt tomorrow's actions.

I'm thinking in the future, in order to maintain a semblance of balance for players who only post once daily (unlike some of us, who are almost always online haha), I will cease my adjudications once you have all spent your daily expansions.

Thoughts on this? The intention is to not have anyone get too far ahead, chronologically and power-wise. It also keeps the pace reasonable, overall.

That's a good stopping point for today. Again, it's hard on pacing right now because we're not sure what the system can do.

We might want to think about some kind of self-imposed limit on interactions with the system. Or make these kinds of announcements about when we'll stop getting to interact with The System a regular thing.

Sounds good.

I figured this was all just part of the initial excitement phase, and that our pace will slow to something more measured over the next few days.

Sorry guys. I missed a whole lot on account of being in England and sleeping.

Sleeping? That was a major blunder on your part... unbelievable!

But really though, don't stress about it :) You didn't miss a lot, really.

Anyway, I'm not going do any adjudication right away. I'm going to take a couple hours to ensure I get all my college work done.

Have the spells that Arjun and Vladislav have been attempting had any visible effects, or only triggering System alerts?

In reply to Emily Khorashandi (msg # 55):

I thought it might be something like that. I definitely wouldn't have thought to drop things over the edge without the groundwork you had laid.

---

By my count, the only person whose told me their name so far is Otto, so Arjun is coming up with names for all of you, like Node Guy, and Cleric Dude. And Emily still hasn't reacted to my character, so I'm currently playing like I don't know if she's real or visible to everyone else. That's not a complaint, btw, just how he's reacting.

He's not trying to be rude, just we're in a  strange, time critical situation here and so we're all being a bit brusque. I sort of love it, actually, along with worrying about things that we, as the players, know isn't true (like Emily being a ghost), but the PCs don't know.

Basically, Arjun is questioning everything he knows right now.

Yeah she has, post 107 was a reaction to your 106.  You talked about thinking about where to expand the disc and someone else talked about using the outside as a latrine, as long as no nodes are available today.  She made suggestions in response to both of you.

Just saw that :) You were typing that while I was typing OOC 58.

Again, out-of-character, no offense intended and I hope none was taken. IC, feel free to think my character is a jerk.

Aight, first adjudication of the day filled out!

Please tell me if I missed anything, there was quite a lot to cover :)

Otto was looking for vines dense enough to be used as a weapon, but you sort of covered it with Emily's post I think...

This never got answered from here in OOC:



Also, I had a question about the DINGs. I know sometimes we can hear other PCs get the audio notifications, but not always? How are you differentiating between those? Audible and mental?

I'm holding off on Valdislav reacting in character just yet, pending the answer about our spells.

edited my last post to include responses to what Emily and Otto said.

Edited mine to include conversation with Arjun and to remove the accusation.

In reply to Emily Khorashandi (msg # 66):

To be explicit, the accusation is perfectly reasonable in-character. My alignment is Romantic Turned Cynic (Selfish Sociopath), so apparently you all perceive him as selfish and shady. I am encouraging other players to find Arjun's behavior to be suspect.

So far, your spells have had no effect except for system alerts.

And yes, this DING effect is normally only audible to the recipient (it should come with every system interaction, but i think i've missed more than a few), except in some cases.

So far, the only case you've discovered where a DING is audible to everyone is when a player finds a new class option.

I think there was one other time I made a DING audible as well...

I will continue always noting whether the ding is 'mental' or 'audible' to prevent confusion.

Okay. So trying to use a spell to help Otto with making a fire won't do much... yet. Hmm.

In reply to Vladislav Chigrakov (msg # 69):

Not until we commit, no.

As usual, please tell me if I missed anything.

That took nearly an hour (!) to compose, so its totally possible!
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:19, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Wow! This is a new PB on 'quickest time to 200 posts' :)

In reply to Voice of The System (msg # 71):



Did either of those work?

Note that I don't mind if other people decide their character would know ASL, but Arjun is hoping that a) the Human Language Interpretation skill doesn't cover it, as it's not a spoken or written language, and b) that he can use it so other people can't always see/hear what he's doing. He works in an industry well known for stealing and plagiarism, so keeping things close to his chest is just habit at this point. (though, again, other PCs are welcome to find that suspicious if it makes sense for them.)

* I don't need you to make the formatted alert windows for each of these, I'm just asking about setting details: did the request for more information about a specific class take me to the general Classes screen, or did they pop up specific alerts with just the information about the two classes I asked for more details on by name (Magic Swordsman and Druid)? I assume the info would be the same, even if there was a window for each class?
This message was last edited by the player at 18:30, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Just want to say, I really appreciate you writing out all those class summaries, even if I'm not going to use them. That obviously took a lot of time, and the work was appreciated.

I missed those! My bad!

The first one works fine, yes. You can use ASL to interact with the system menus (just like verbal commands), and it should actually have netted you some XP in your Body Language skill.

By the way, the formula I am using for that skill is 5 XP per word signed with ASL, but 10 XP per word that interacts with the system.

The latter failed, unfortunately.



So, when you asked for information of those two classes, you were sent a portion of your extended status window, which contained information on all your class options.

This is the same thing I did when Dmitri asked the System to explain his Node skill. The System sent him a snapshot of all his skills.



It's not a problem for me :)

I enjoy being thorough, and it's good for me to set some groundwork early because otherwise I will certainly go around in circles on how I want classes to work.

In the long run, all that information may be helpful to you, even if you do not personally choose that class. This is why I posted it long-form.

Your constructions so far should now be placed on the map.

They aren't really to scale, and I left them unlabeled since they only visually show up on your map screen, and have not been recognized by the system (in the same way that root island and cloth island have not been named either)

By the way, the original plan of mine was for each island to be a thread, but given their size, I will probably only start separating areas into multiple threads once there is a sufficient distance between them.

Lastly, as for the current time, if anyone thinks their character should have a good sense of time, or if they have a high INTELLIGENCE stat, then you should know you have all only been here for under an hour (If I have measured accurately).

Meaning, you have like 23 more hours to burn before the system gives you more expansions, unless you all agree to do a time skip at some point.

Also, despite the fact that the system cured any minor injuries you had upon arrival, it did not fill your stomachs nor hydrate you.

In reply to Voice of The System (msg # 76):

I wanted the latrine to be going over the edge of the discs, preferably on the acute-angle side where Cloth meets Grass.

Apparently, I missed lunchtime because I didn't notice whatever the second construction is, and clearly need to reread all of today. :)

+grabs you by the shirt, leans in very close and glares directly into your eyes+

Take.

The.

Gorram.

Compliment.

;)

Looks like I'll probably have to accept a class soon so I can create food & water. Oh well. Will try a bunch more spells to unlock further possibilities before that.

On the other hand... World Tree's magic system does not restrict any spell types from any class (nor from any of the player races, though some monsters do have restrictions).

Just in case there's confusion, I'm calling them Grass Disc (where we started), Root Disc, and Cloth Disc. I think Voice has been using Grass Disc to refer to what I call Root Disc.

Dmitri, when you log in, you might try attaching named nodes to the existing locations -- the Grass, Root, and Cloth discs, the latrine, and the pit that Otto dug.

Yes, I've been calling Root Disc by both that and Grass Disc

I've been calling "Spawnpoint" as Original Disc, or First Disc.

Sometimes I also call Cloth Disc as Shirt Disc.

I will update the map to move your latrine after I've constructed my latest post.

As far as I'm concerned, until we managed to get the System to label those places, it makes sense for their to be confusion in-game. Honestly, it's part of the fun for me. I just wanted to clarify what I meant OOC.

Same here :)

Love me some chaos :)

*Looks at the most recent updates.*

Careful what you wish for ;)

In reply to Otto Bruckner (msg # 84):

What did I do wrong?

Nothing at all, I think you are doing a great job.

I am just looking everything our GM would have to update between his last IC post and now and it's a lot of material!

I haven't read your post yet, Vladislav, but since I can immediately tell it's dense, I will be adjudicating it separately, and after a quick break :)

For the rest of you, the chef has prepared a mega-post!

As usual, tell me if I missed something

I held back. Was thinking of doing more systems in one post, but thought to myself that if my computer crashed I would lose too much work.

I really love how the differences in our two magic systems are going to develop from the fact that you're basing Vlad's understanding on RPGs and CRPGs, while Arjun is basing his off the way magic works in TV shows.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:25, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Quick question, did I actually cross onto the fabric disk? It may have been missed as it registered on the system just after the "let's call it for the night" post did.

If you wanna be there, you can be, no problem.

Thanks. It was more of a continuity issue.

That's probably my last major post for today.

Good work, everyone! I'll be keeping an eye out here until I go to sleep, so feel free to lemme know of any problems or things I missed :)

Thanks for hangin' out !

I believe Emily also picked her class?

That she did! I'll send her a private message with the information she gets!

Also, a similar flashy effects occurs for her as well. You now have two beacons in quick succession :)

Sorry about that, Emily. PMing you with details!

Moving at a heroic pace here. I'm impressed!

Haha, don't get too confident...

You haven't faced a single hostile entity, yet >:)

In reply to Voice of The System (msg # 97):

"Ancient spirits of evil, transform this Slavic form into..."


Like that?

I tried to pick a second class. Did that work?

After picking X class, if you were to ask the system ''choose Y class'' you would get a response like 'no classes available', probably by being shown an empty class list.

Cool.

So, Dmitri is using GURPS as his base? I recognize that spell.

If the System Parser can handle it, great! If not, I may try other things or just wait for non-magical options to kick in finally. Original Torg has the most dynamic spell system I know, but I am certain the Parser is not equipped for it.

It handled both game systems I tried without any trouble. It should be able to handle GURPS and Torg (at least conceptually).

Wonder if I should throw Arduin at it next?

I would need four skills and at least one arcane knowledge to get the Original Torg spell design up and running. I'd probably choose Folk as my first arcane knowledge, or Water if we still need water.

Pfft. I'll take ArM over Torg any day, any edition.

See y'all tomorrow probably.

Sounds good.

Let us know if we need to dial it back so you are not coming back to 50 posts worth of updates.

Pah. No worries. Fifty is my limit. Seventy five is too much.

Here ya go, fellas, your daily dose of adjudication!

Now, run wild!

Also, I will say this now:

Anyone with an Intelligence of 4 or more is vaguely aware that they have been summoned here for around 90 Minutes. To those who were unsure of how long things have been, overall.

Time is a bit wibbly wobbly at the moment. I may be enforcing stricter rules on that, in the future.

Right now it doesn't matter because nothing is really urgent, and you are all in one place.

300 posts in less than 2 weeks!

Well done all.

More impressively, most of those posts are in the public IC channel!

I've been considering giving your PCs an XP reward once we hit 1000 posts, by the way.

LMK if you think that's a good idea or not.

Always nice to have little milestones like that in my opinion.

I say base the reward on IC post numbers, not total posts.

Also, I think my preference would be for smaller milestone rewards more often. I worry that burnout and ghosting is more likely on rpol right now, given the state of the world, and tiny incentives that always feel within reach could be helpful.

Meh. I don't view such rewards as meaning much.
Would rather enjoy playing than be powerful.

Rewards are nice, but guidance on what is expected of us would be more important. See my next IC post for further insight, and if that doesn't help, I'll converse in PM about it.

That's my main draw to them, as well.



And that's my main aversion to them.



Hm... not bad advice. I'll consider it.



That's also an understandable take.



I mean, you can do both, but I get what you're saying.

---

I'm thinking even though it's pretty fun (for most, at least), we really don't need another feature in this game at the moment (especially since you guys have only figured out, I'd say about maybe 75% of the main features so far).

Frankly, power balance would be fine either way, but it would probably be more immersive if you get your XP the way the {System} intends for you to :evil laughter:

So, for now at least, I'll probably drop the topic. That doesn't mean we can't start doing milestones in the future, though :-)

---

Oh, and speaking of burn-out, I'm doing good over here. It's quite a lot though, so I will probably be making it a (soft) rule for myself to only do 2-3 Major adjudications per day (smaller posts can be done throughout the day).

Also, I just started new college semester and need to make sure I don't fall behind, haha.

Things are being intentionally left vague in-game. If you want hints, you might be better asking me OOC, rather than expecting any response IC.

It's okay (and encouraged) for your characters to feel confused or even frustrated at the strange situation.

If you're feeling that as a player, we should talk about it. I don't want anybody to not be having fun.

My character is extremely frustrated, but I'm having a blast.

If Arjun knows the direction of a light source in-character, making suitable shadows should be simplicity itself with the fabric disc.

I'm trying to keep an eye out for tiny QoL improvements we can make without hampering the thematics of the game -- I've mentioned before that I worry about GM and player burnout on rpol.

One such QoL improvement I'd like to suggest is that when we get new skills, etc, that have both a condensed display and a longer listing on the Expanded Sheet, that the notification includes the full* description. It would save us all an unnecessary interaction with the forum.

*well, as full as this gorram System gives anything



He's getting there. He's not the brightest bulb on the highway, despite what his in-System stats say. :)

In reply to Arjun Gandhi (msg # 123):

Vlad's Intelligence is only 1 point above the minimum. Common sense, on the other hand, may be somewhere else.

I dunno about the rest of the PCs, but Arjun's in-game stats do not conform to his previous existence.

Otto's are very loosely inspired by his current situation. For example his Speed and Stamina are not impressive because he's a big fat guy.

His willpower is also not great, because that's how he developed poor habits, eventually becoming said big fat guy.

But that's part of the fun for me, starting for a "believable" place and watching the character grow organically, changing over time with his I'm game experiences and in his interactions with others.

I went a different route :) Why Arjun's got the stats he has is a mystery to him as of yet, and they don't conform to who he is. Dunno if Voice is making that a subplot for him or if it will always be a mystery.

I suppose that does beg the question of whether his mental image of himself conforms to what the other players are seeing. It's not like we've got any mirrors -- unless the variety of cloth on Cloth Disc includes metallics.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:32, Sat 15 Jan 2022.

On another note, would it be possible to unlock our Character Sheet display to add things as we get them, or do we have to wait for actual Character Classes to do that?

*starts planning another dense post full of spells*

I'd really like it if I knew of a way to give you all your Status Window, and let you edit it in response to my IC posts. Don't know how to do that, though.

Also, there is always the chance that some stuff that I do not announce will appear on your status window, in that case I'd still have to inform you of that separately.

I'm currently using the Scratchpad. It's also got my notes in it.

Voice, you could use the Character Sheets to let the players keep track of their info. It's basically just a post that only one player can see.

Another option would be to make a Character Sheet thread, and then post in it as each character (giving that player edit access). The problem with the second option is that we might accidentally reveal info we don't want others to see.

I was roughly aware there was a character sheet feature, so I'll figure out how to use it and get back to y'all :)

Thanks for the suggestion, Dmitri!

Just for transparency sake, I have learned a bunch of information, but I figure I'll wait until Emily is back online, since we don't want to spam the thread too much.

Once everyone figures out the player chat function Arjun just discovered, I would also suggest a party chat thread, to simulate being able to see the conversation like a chat log. That way, Arjun can share important information that he's discovered to the group, without risk of it getting lost in the deluge.

Excellent idea. I'll make that thread when I am done with the character sheets.

Okay you should all have your character sheets displaying your status window now :)

LMK if there are any problems. You can also fix them if you know how to, but tell me what you change so I am aware :)

Also, for those with their status windows or some part of that info in their descriptions, please change it to something else. You may include some bits of info in their if you like, but don't list it all out in status form.

I recommend a physical description of your character goes in that place, or at least some vague info for everyone to use.

Creating party chat thread. I'll paste Arjun's first message there as well.

That's all folks.

Im knocking out for today. am sleepy. peace

I literally rolled d4+1 for Emily's stats.

I picked mine with certain images in my mind I was trying to match.

Cat woke me up after like 3 hours of sleep, so I adjudicated some posts to give myself a head start for when yall pick it back up again.

Also forgot to mention the node Dmitri spawned is about a foot and a half tall, and maybe 10 inches in diameter. It's not a perfect semicircle, either. The color is a medium brown.

I can reveal some more information if anyone inspects it more closely.

Also for an update; you've all been here for about 2 hours at this point.

Sorry to hear that you are not sleeping well.

No progress on Otto tearing up blanket sized cloth sections?

Ah, forgot about that.

We'll say in the time other people were crafting, you managed to make some progress.

I don't know what kind of blanket you are going for, so I'll give you a choice here:

 - 4x blankets with measurements of 3 ft by 4 ft (you would have to curl up to fit in fully)

 - 2x blankets with measurements of 6 ft by 8 ft (can cover a whole person with some spare)

Doing so will also cause you to become a little tired, and you should rest for at least half the time you spent working.

Will go with the x2, thanks.

So, we can see our Character Sheets now, but we still can't edit them ourselves.

That must be a setting issue, I'll see what I can do.

Never used this feature before, as a GM

Edit: Aight, should be good now!
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:43, Sat 15 Jan 2022.

Seems like that worked.

Worked! I reformatted my Character Sheet. I hope you can still edit it easily. Should be fairly easy to read, even in code-mode.

I was intimidated at first, but if you're saying it's easy enough then I'll take a closer look at it.

For some reason, RPOL seems to handle bar-formatted tables better than HTML-formatted ones. In a pinch, you should still be able to use your browser's Search/Find feature to find what you're looking to edit.

I figured it out, but I gotta say you might wanna reformat it somewhat since I majorly bloated your whole thang, lol. Wasn't sure how to add extra lines so it's very loooong, now :P

In reply to Voice of The System (msg # 149):

Yeah, line breaks don't seem to work. We were both editing it at the same time for a bit there, too. That took me forever to work out.

Map has been updated with Kite and Dirt Node.

I believe that Vlad sat down somewhere... maybe on the grass (original) disc?

+whimpers+ I thought Emily was watching my back by the kite!

I thought the kite was somewhere else, on the origin disc but that's where I thought the wind was coming from as well.

+standing ovation got Vlad's moment of faith+

Agreed, well said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orYdNyav2ro

Don't ask.

Hmm, how, what, why, where, who?

While I am happy that all y'all are actually busy on a Saturday afternoon, I also really want to sneak in and get some reading in every half hour or so ;)
This message was last edited by the player at 01:47, Sun 16 Jan 2022.

Yeah, very interested to see where this is all leading...

Another hundred posts!

I'm impressed.

You said you made the kite from Cloth, so I placed it on Cloth disc.

If you look at the game map, the wind you measured comes from the east. Of course, whether or not that is "True east" or if that even has any meaning or not has not been confirmed.

In the same vein, the shadow is being cast northwards / rootwards, meaning the light source should be somewhere in the southwards / clothwards direction. However, Emily has already noticed that she cannot see any such thing as a 'sun', nor any other celestial bodies, for that matter. No clouds, either.

Dmitri, you seem a little confused about what's happening IC vs OOC, so I had to remove your most recent post.

I will adjudicate the newest posts of Vlad and Emily in a moment.

Emily, you are not missing your Crafting skill, I just forgot to include it

Not sure where you got the idea that the moth can feign invisibility, but if that's your character's interpretation I won't stop you.

I'm adding your new class options now, Vlad.

Ahh. Thanks Voice.  I'll amend.  The invisibility thing is a loose hypothesis right now, which she'll drop later but for now, that's what she thinks.

Not a problem.

Let me take a minute to check what your Craft XP should be at, BTW. Then ill update your sheet.

Updated Vlad's last IC post for what he does after seeing the new classes.

You guys gonna do an "I'm flying, Jack"?

lmao

In reply to Voice of The System (msg # 169):

It could lead to all sorts of dance routines... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h723mkKX7Y

In reply to Voice of The System (msg # 169):

Body weight routine!

It's like prison. Have to work out with your cell mates so you don't get shanked by the monsters in the yard.

That video was gimmicky as hell, in a majorly fun way :D

Also, the song itself was good (not that I can understand the lyrics) but I was more interested in that ridiculous music video haha

In reply to Voice of The System (msg # 172):

It's about dancing, and (allegedly) based on how the singer met his wife.

By pranking the hell out of the other guys?

Seems like a good method, especially since he had a whole damn crew with him lololol

In reply to Voice of The System (msg # 174):

Well, what do you expect from any band in The Little Big Family? They are known for comedy in Russia. And if I remember right, the main singer in this one trained as a clown in college.

Clarification request: the cloth disc is covered in cloth "vines" much like the Vine disc, right?

Could we get a more verbose description of both discs, now that we're currently assembled and Emily is sharing about what she's observed?

Sure enough.

The vine disc is made of these 'vines' as I've been calling them, though their actual shape has been described as more akin to hollow tubes of plant matter. Not really vines, and honestly closer to bamboo, if any of you are familiar.

Unlike bamboo though, they are soft and malleable, as they do intertwine quite thickly like vines while bending in curves.

The cloth disc is not made of plant matter whatsoever, but rather a strange type of fabric, not the same as it's source material (dmitri's undershirt [overshirt? I dont remember]).

It is actually a little offputting, because it is almost as soft as down, but quite hefty like wool, and entirely unfamiliar to any of you overall. It is braided very tightly, almost like yarn, but it's shape is the same as the 'roots' of the root disc.

If you have any more specific questions, I can answer them.

Awesome, particularly the vodka in the Balalaika.

*waits to see what the class he accepted in msg #239 provides*

yeah yeah im on it :P

Sorry. Didn't mean to be pushy.

No worries, I'm just bantering with ya

Anybody else listen to the audiobook version of the Dresden Files? In my head, Vlad sounds like Marster's version of Sanya.

In reply to Arjun Gandhi (msg # 183):

No, I haven't heard that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXJWNfcnvAc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtvsn9_y9S8

Hmm. Seeing as Vlad's preferred weapon would be too big to request from the shadows, this might do instead.

If you're on a computer, Arjun, diacritics are easier if you cut and paste.

Węæve.  But I have to say I don't think æ (which occurs mostly in British English and Danish these days) and ę (which I think occur in Czech and Polish) exist in the same language.

They don't, not at all. That was intentional. The word he chose came from a TV show based on a book that is a "Wheel of Time"-analogue, only much more poorly written. In WoT, all the magic is called Weaving, which is where I got the base word from. Then I tried to come up with the kind of nonsense "ooh, let's make it look more mystical and exotic" suggestions that a Producer might suggest.

In other words, it's a joke at the expense of low-quality, poorly researched fantasy novels that somehow get popular enough that a streaming service decides to make a TV show out of it, and the way the TV industry ruins the stuff they try to harvest for shows.

I am on a computer, and I actually had a tiny notepad file open on my screen for the diacritic version, but I also felt like it was a pointless burden to put on the GM and other players. I know Otto has said he's mostly posting from his phone, and the diacritic marks don't even show up on my phone's browser, so what's the point if 20% of the audience can't even see it?

Fair point.  Also it'd be pronounced w[ɛŋ]iving which would be hideous.

Something that occured to me...

Would love to get the group opinion on it.

Would it be helpful for you System if we had a "Current Actions" thread, or something similar with all of our character actions in short, easily to tackle, bullet pointed lines?

I ask. Because we have been looking at around a hundred posts a day, and I feel for you and want to make things as smooth as possible.

But only concern would be that stuff that is not included in the list might be glossed over by habit over time?

This is one of the reasons I've been using bold for anything that I explicitly want the GM's attention on.

Assuming we ever move beyond a minute to minute pace, a thread for day-long actions or something might be useful, but not until then (that's my vote).

Definitely concerned about burning out the GM.

Also, Dmitri's player seems to be being left behind. He does not appear to have as much time online as the others of us (or possibly is in a very different time zone).

Yeah, I'm worried about that too. I joined late, but I've already got 3 times as many posts as him. But I'm having really slow work days. :/

Weekends are a time when I do the most outside of this game. I run a RL D&D game every weekend, a Torg game on alternate weekends, and another Torg game here on RPoL in addition to my normal responsibilities. This means when I do get here, I spend my time catching up on what's happening before actually acting.

To top it off, I thought I had posted in the midst of this but it seems to have been lost in the "Æθρ", or Aether for the character-challenged. I will hunt for it and if it is still missing, I will include the relevant parts in my latest post.

Dmitri, I believe the GM said that there was some confusion in your post Yesterday, between IC and OOC stuff, and he deleted the post.

Again, Dmitri, I believe the issue with your previous post was that the IC Character Sheet and stuff can't be edited the way the OOC Character Sheet can be.

Plus, the formatting for the OOC Character Sheet is more limited than regular posts, for some reason.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:07, Sun 16 Jan 2022.

Given what I was doing (adjusting the character sheet info and offering to help others do the same), I'm not surprised. It's technically an OOC action, but since characters have access to it, it seemed appropriate that Dmitri was spending the time while others were doing their actions working on this action on his screen. Still two curds with one bone, as it were.

It's hard to tell what only I'm seeing, and what everybody sees, short of trying to quote the post from Voice and look for what's missing. Did everybody see my comedic failure to pluck a blade of grass?

In reply to Arjun Gandhi (msg # 197):

I certainly did!

Just to laugh at my own joke: Vlad, do you-the-player actually understand why Arjun glared at you when you asked about Epic and Heroic classes?

It was cuz he was telling you about how you were going about it all wrong, like he was some kind of expert at finding obscure classes because he had found a Rare class, just a second before.

In reply to Arjun Gandhi (msg # 199):

No. This player is autistic.
Vlad asked that in-character because his first batch of heroic classes had popped up.

In reply to Vladislav Chigrakov (msg # 200):

I figured you didn't do it intentionally, it was just funny timing to me and my character is a bit self congratulatory.

This is post 499! Whose going to claim #500?

Boom! 3 out of 3.

It looks like the stuff in boxes is private to the character, the rest is public.

There are messages I'm getting that aren't in boxes, because the GM seems to have decided to make me the Imposter in this game of Among Us.

That would be bad for all of us.

And in another vein... a Russian martial artist demonstrating the usage of a log.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wodaofs5N0

Once we got your character sheets working, I stopped posting everything in table form.

I'll try and find a way to keep things more obvious on what's hidden to you, and what is public text, since that is not something I had considered before (mostly I've been concerned over messing up a tag and leaking sensitive information). For now, I'll simply mark all secret lines with "secret to [your name here]", which hopefully won't screw up RPOLs syntax.

Also, the switch to character sheets was entirely OOC. Nothing has changed IC, whatsoever. This was just done to allow players to keep their own information up to date (which helps reduce my workload, and gives them a sense of agency).

Your status windows have never been visible to other PLAYERs. If there was a case like that, it means I probably messed up. You guys only know as much about one another as has been shown in action, or revealed by word of mouth. Both of those sources are obviously fallible, however. Since people can hide their power, and also lie.

In regards to Dmitri falling behind a little, I have definitely noticed that. I'm going to try and be a little more generous to him, in order to catch him up a bit. I admittedly had to do the same thing with Otto a bit ago, because he was slipping in terms of power progression.

Fortunately, the worst-case scenario has been avoided. In case you all do not know, that would have been if the first player to unlock a class, which is a powerful feature overall, decided to become a full-blown tyrant. Of course, that could have easily qualified as PVP, so was unlikely to go too far, but it still could have made things difficult for all of you.

Despite our insane posting rate, I have plenty of tools to make sure you are all on an even playing field, to some extent. Though I will say, I actually want there to be 'strong' and 'weak' ones among you. Not to the extent of a great difference in rank, but to the point that it adds some dynamic tensions. These positions may also change overtime, so you will never be the permanent 'weakest link' nor the permanent 'undefeatable king'.

I'm not feeling burned out or anything, but I definitely feel a little confused about some things at the moment. This may be from a lack of sleep on my end, or maybe some of the PLAYERs are having some confusion.

Anyway, beyond that there is one thing I want to take some time to explain to you all:

The influence of stats.

To preface, none of you know very much, but from what you all have inferred, stats seem to work a little strangely...

For example, it seems, in a way, that the distance between 3 and 5 is greater than the distance between 6 and 10. Those with lower original stats may be feeling a little left out at the moment in some fields, while those with higher starting stats may be a little surprised by how well things are going for them...

Anyway, I don't think any of you are at 10 in any stat yet (some of u may be close, tho) so lemme explain the bounds of your stats so far:

You can think of 2 through 5 as honestly being fairly similar in how they seem on the surface. The main difference is in the background, which some of you have picked up on, or may begin to start picking up on.

Above that, you guys start to feel a sense of growth. Still, everything is quite muddled and subjective right now, so let me give you some guidelines on how to react to changes:

You can consider '2' as 'quite bad'. For example, a 2 in intellect is somewhat dim, while a 2 in stamina means you basically get tired from walking too much.

In the first place, whatever your stats are may not reflect how you were before arrival, even if you roughly based them off that during char creation. You may feel better or worse in some areas, depending on these  things called 'stats'.

most importantly, I think, is don't overestimate yourselves. '5' is not genius level, it's just 'above average' from a human society standard.

Somewhere around '8' through '10' you will start being extraordinary. For example, '8' in strength is talented boxer, or high-level belt in karate. While, a 10 in intelligence would be top-of-class, maybe even valedictorian of the school.

The changes are not huge, but they are noticeable. However, the way they work is also odd. Mainly, if you do not use your strength, you will see the full benefits of a high strength, at least during this part of the game.

Same with intelligence or any other stat. You won't suddenly grow explosively, even from a large increase.

Thus, it's possible to show a performance 'behind' or even 'ahead of' your current stats. The former is most likely to occur for you all - being regular people before comiung here - , while the latter is the sort of thing that would be called 'pushing' or even 'breaking' your limits. This would result in the stats increasing, most of the time.

I hope this helps a little. None of you are at the point where you are THAT much stronger, smarter, or more aware of your surroundings.

You won't even be seeing 'prodigy' level talents until around ~15. You could consider ~20 the limit of normal humans. Anything beyond that is spoiler  territory.

Thanks for the explanation about stats. Is this something that the PCs have figured out, or should we consider this out of game knowledge to help us play our characters as they experience the setting?

As for the confusion, is there anything we can do, generally or specifically, to help avoid that in the future?

You're all good, I'll let you know if there's anything specifically, though.

(I think I may personally just be having a bit of COVID brain lately. My sleep's been bad and I'm slipping in school for no reason, so I've made some plans with the family for us all to try and get back to basics. It also doesn't help that I've been skipping important meds because of my scatterbrain)

As for the stats, let's go with your characters don't know that much at the moment, but they may start becoming aware of it from here on out. I mean, for example, some of you have had increases in intelligence, so if you are mindful you will notice some differences in your thinking. I think Arjun had a moment there when he said it had been '83' minutes instead of '1.5' hours. That's a good start, and a good take, since these changes are happening right under your noses, so to speak.

Mainly, I'm telling you about this because I want you to know that the stats don't force growth upon your characters, but rather you can think of it as increasing your potential.

Like, 20 Intelligence won't make you Einstein right away. At most you will become noticeably wittier, and you will be able to remember things better. It just means if you take the path of a character who strongly uses their Intelligence stat, either through actual thinking or related abilities, you will become closer to that Einstein.

I hope that makes sense. Like, Otto has not lost any of his weight and gained muscle mass instead, just because he started with a high Strength stat. But, if he does a lot of exercise, he will reach that state more easily than he would have on Earth.

To be clear, my latest post takes place after Vladislav's but before the two new ones.

I have some behind the scenes stuff to do before I can read / adjudicate your posts.

Oh man... I did it again, didn't I?

What, nearly break the universe?

I'd be seriously concerned if you've done THAT before! kek

In reply to Voice of The System (msg # 214):

 More times than I care to count, in a variety of games.

I bet you left a lotta GMs with some pretty crazy stories... maybe a little trauma too, lol

That's fine, we had a campaign end on its second session because someone threw a fireball into the wrong transport truck.

Hahaha

Updated message 320. Apologies for the retroactive edit, but it just adds color to the character, and shouldn't mess up the timeline at all.

You're good.

In reply to Dmitri Alvin Reslin (msg # 217):

I once played a sixteen year old who had to be talked out of planting a home made nuke in downtown Savannah in order to kill a nest of vampires.

I bet the party babysitter (every party of misfits has one) had a really stressful time, that day xD

And the party witch.  Turns out there's no spell for neutralising nuclear weapons.

Nukes do beat like 99% of magic

Archmages would kinda just die in real life. Like, your stupid arcane shield doesnt stand against high caliber rifle, though?

I love the way the shields in dune slow down bullets into ineffectiveness but when you shoot a laser at it, the result is a nuclear explosion.

In the end though, she was talked down.  Instead she filled a fire engine with holy water and started a wet t-shirt contest among the vamps.

I have also done the wet t-shirt contest thing to pick the vamps out of the crowd. But that was more like a sneaky drive-by-blessing at a thing that was already going to happen.

Wasn't there an episode of Buffy were an ancient unstoppable evil turned out to only be unstoppable to medieval weaponry?

Yeah, Buffy had to use a bazooka to take it out.

GM, my apologies for failing to accurately frame my question:

What visual obstructions exist on the Vine Disc? On the Cloth Disc? What is the height range of these obstructions? I understand that the vine disc has long, 6in diameter hollow vines, and the cloth disc has 6in diameter cloth tubes that are spooled into skeins and larger woven clumps, but I am not sure how densely clumped these get, or how high they are. Would you describe these as a bramble, a thicket, or a field with patches?

Also, since you said you don't really see what the players can see: I dunno what tool you're using to make some parts private to some players and other parts visible to everybody, but it seems to be different than the bracketed Private to XX: stuff, which is quite easy for the players to see.

Right under 'insert a private line', there is a GM only feature (I think so at least) called 'insert a secret line' and it's the same as a private line but blends right in with the text so you would not know ANYTHING was there in the first place

Seemed cool when I found it, but admittedly is my first time using it, and private lines are probably better overall for the reason that they are less confusing to us all.

As for the height, the highest 'arcs' of the two types of tubes reach below the waistline, so maybe 2 to 3 ft. Most of them are barely a foot off the ground. Some parts are more or less flat.

You guys have been doing a fair bit of destruction / construction, so that is changed in a few parts.

I was going to suggest to everyone that we focus on clearing out specific areas on each disc, but you made them all scary now. :)

Didn't feel like fitting it in the main post, so here's your rewards Emily and Dmitri:

BTW everyone, for those who care:

We're around 3 1/3 Hours after being summoned

Wow. Felt longer.

It's been quite eventful, ha ha. You are all slowly becoming tired from that as well, though.

Okay one thing I've noticed;

@Dmitri, Why do you keep having weird things in your character's posts?

I have pointed some of these out, but you have not edited them. I really hate deleting players posts, but if I have to I have to.



There is no character sheet screen. This has been explained three times now?

If you want to make yours look different, go ahead, but why are you commenting on it in-game?

You do know that the status windows do not change to fit the user's taste, right?



... That has never been a system message I've used, though?

You know you don't get to play the System right? That's not one of your characters...

---

Honestly not sure how much more clear I can be. There is also the fact that you keep doing things the hard way, what with the whole coordinates test you were doing that I barely understood... like, the coordinates are very clear in how they work. If YOU are confused, that should come before anything else. Even if your character doesn't get it, you still need to get these things.

Honestly, at least for that it's just you playing your character a certain way. IF you want Dmitri to be the guy to try and do everything himself, even when it is inherently obvious to everyone - including him - that he should not and does not need to be doing so that way, I respect your character choices as long as they aren't harmful to the game environs.

Oh yeah, and why are you called a Super genius now? In case you missed it, I gave a breakdown of stat ranges here a bit ago. 5 is not super genius, not even close. it's above average. Maybe Dmitri was a 'super genius' back on earth (you know most people who go to Ivy League schools aren't extraordinarily smart, right?), but even in that case he's been nerfed upon arrival to this world.

---

Maybe it's just me who is noticing these things, but if anyone else reading understands what I'm saying, I sincerely hope they can try and explain these things to you, because my words doesn't seem to be reaching.

I understand that we are all missing some things sometimes, because this games moves very fast. For example, I recall forgetting Emily's craft skill, and that led to some brief confusion IC. We resolved it OOC, but she has not edited her original post. I let that go no problem, because at least we all knew what was going on now, and I'm not a stickler for making people do extra work if its not needed, especially if it would mean backtracking.

For you, I do not think you have responded to me once yet over these things. Maybe you are backlogged and haven't read the OOC posts in question, but if so, that is something I should absolutely know. Reading comes before writing in roleplay. Always.

This is becoming a problem for me, so I need to let you know about it.

I also want to say I'm not upset with you. I'm just frustrated over this, and I think it is understandably why.

Personally, I believe this is just a misunderstanding or miscommunication, and it could even have started because of me at some point. I don't think you're acting in bad faith or anything like that, either.

Sorry about that. There is a bit of a disconnect here. I am trying to explain certain actions that seem to cross the fourth wall and offer suggestions as to how to flavor them at the same time.

In this last case, I personally changed the parts of the character sheet I knew about, but I also know that other changes are coming based on the choice made. So the {SYSTEM} message was an attempt to explain in-game the reality that the changes are half-done at the moment.

Are you aware that instead of deleting such posts, you can edit them? I have no problem with that. In fact, it would help to clarify the situation and give (me at least) a better understanding. I don't expect to be running the game as a player, but I have found as a gamemaster (in other games) that sometimes a player comes up with a promising idea that should be explored. We can discuss this further if needed.

Dimitri, it sounds like one point of confusion you're having is that not everything on rpol is part of the setting that the game is in.

Looks like Arjun snagged Post 600. Great work one and all.

I'm going to bed (after a way too long day), but tomorrow I'll definitely consider doing a few edits, since I have your blessing on the matter.



You really don't need to do that. This game can get way too confusing if we don't keep a clear line between OOC and IC. The terminology is just front-loaded that way.



I see what you're saying here, and if you have an idea you want to push you can put it in OOC or in a PM to me if it's secret info.

To be honest, I really don't know if you meant that as an example, or if you actually have an idea you've been aiming for. That's why I say the fourth wall breaks (though in this case it isn't even meta humor, just - as you said - a disconnect between what should and should not be IC vs OOC) get too confusing.

---

On my end, I probably should have sent this to you in a PM. I cannot remember 100%, but I feel like I've made this same sort of mistake before. I often speak my mind in OOC, even if it's just to one person. I never made a habit of using PMs beyond RTJs and responding to them.

In this game, I've actually used them quite a bit, since most players have some secret info that I don't always want to cram into a post.



You're 5-1 now, right? LOL

This is definitely soaring, which is great. I thought it might when I got your RTJs, since I recognized most of your screen names as active users, ha ha

I didn't track who got 200-400, and i was post 499, not 500, but I'm certainly seem to be the person in this game with the most free time. (Which, as I've alluded to, is Not For Awesome Reasons (tm), but I'm really grateful for the distraction this game is providing.

True, but enough of them are to blur the lines. We no longer need to ask for a Map when we can just use the Game Map tab. The same goes for character sheets. The fact that some things are part of the game means we need clarity on which are and which aren't.

In reply to Dmitri Alvin Reslin (msg # 242):

Sure, it's confusing, and when you add in the crazy posting rate we've been maintaining all week, that makes it harder to keep track. Absolutely no judgement.

---

I know that Voice is in Eastern time zone, and I believe Emily has previously stated she's in Greenwich. I'm in Central Time Zone. Where's everybody else at?

GMT-8 over here.

Southern California (Pacific Time) here. Though being what I am, I'm as likely to be up at night as during the day.

Here's my explanation:

 - Your character still needs to request access to the "Map" to view it. Even though alert screens stay open until your character closes them, they do not update in real time.
I am using the Game Map feature on RPOL to show what the in-world "Map" screen looks like. I get that could be confusing, so hopefully this clears up what it's like in-world.
It is still way better than linking you to a custom IMGUR every time your character asks to see the world.

 - There is no 'character sheet' in the game. Since the beginning, your characters have had a Status Window. I began to use (at your guys' request) the RPOL Character Sheet function to help keep tack of your characters' status windows.
Whenever your character views your extended status window, you will see what is displayed in your character sheet. I get that is also a little confusing, if you weren't following the history of it.
This is also still better than me having to rewrite your whole status window every time you want to look at it.

With that said, even though your character has to request to see the Map / their Status Window when they want to check it for updates, I am not going to make you type it every time. You can consider that your character is always up to date on the world's information and their own, unless they are in a situation where they could not check either of those alert screens (such as being unable to speak, being unconscious, or being locked out by some effect).

It's never been my intent to blur the lines, but as Arjun said, since we move really fast even if you're away it is definitely reasonable that you could get confused while catching up. Personally, I speed read posts more than I know I should, so I have many times made some dumb mistakes (I usually fix them afterwards, at least). I think Vlad and Emily can verify that, since I've been their GM before.

---

My sleep schedule is finally fixed, it seems, so I am properly in EST now lolol



Oh yeah, you've told me about this before.

So that I can know when you're likely available, is there certain times where you're up at night, or is it erratic (sort of like me, since I sometime have sleep issues)?

Not trying to pry.

We have?  Oh, was that when you were Dorian?

I don't think I've ever used the alias 'Dorian'

It was from when you were the Mountain Nation of Gizakiak :)

Ah yes, that I do remember, Gizakiak was trying to invent modern Chemical Theory and also to plant colonies on the edges of the continents. I enjoyed that even though it was sometimes frustrating.

Guys you really need to stop messing with the world... You're getting glimpses of things you cannot and should not be dealing with right now lmao

Also, I'm opening up a downtime activities thread. This will allow you to post your actions that will take longer than a couple minutes.

These things will be automatically completed as time moves forward in the world. Hopefully, this is a helpful addition. I think it's been requested independently twice, though maybe just once and I'm misremembering.

I'm in US Central, just one hour behind EST.

So, if my numbers are right, we have:

GMT (Emily)

GMT-5 (Me)

GMT-6 (Dmitri, Arjun)

GMT-8 (Vlad, Otto)

It looks like quite a spread, but actually we are all within 3 hours of one another if we exclude Emily (sorry Emily lol)

Good to know

Not sure who you were asking, but my availability is generally irregular, from about 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. cst.

Downtime Thread has accidentally been closed. Unless you're intending to be the only one in posting to it.

I was thinking since the goal of it is to reduce clutter and be easy to navigate, one mega post would be best for those goals.

I've updated downtime with your crafts.

You guys , at any point , can also agree to do a time skip.

Whenever we time skip, those who are crafting cannot perform other actions, but those who are not can feel free to tell me other things they want to try and accomplish in that time.

As a rule of thumb, for each 10 minutes that pass during time skip, I will let you try and do one small thing. 30 minutes can be one medium thing, and an hour is a large thing.

A small thing is a little chore you want done. A medium thing is like testing a skill or grinding your stats. There are not many large things you can do at the moment.

Anyway, these are not hard rules, and you can give me more or less than that. It's up to me to decide what actions can / cannot fit into the time you are allotted.

I recommend giving me less, because I will be more generous with you if you want to try and do a few things well, rather than if you give me a list of a whole bunch of stuff you want to do.

Also, for those of you without Craft, you can still make stuff, but the System won't recognize them in the same way. Most of you probably don't have a clue what that means right now, but let me just tell you in advance items crafted with a skill are better than mundane items.

As for how I am giving you all skills, many of you have tried copying other peoples' skills, and sometimes it has worked sometimes it has not.

I am basing my choices off several things.

1. Your stats. A low-mystic player will have a hard time learning magic, and a person with low strength will not gain any weight lifting skills without extreme effort and luck

2. The number of people already with that skill. It's not fun if you all have the same skills, I think we can all agree, yes?

3. Your method. Simply copying someone else is not a good way to learn, and this remains true in this World as well. Not to mention, nobody has a Teaching skill which could lessen this penalty.

4. The timing. As time passes, it may become harder to learn certain skills that someone has already learned. This is pretty similar to rule #2 and #3, but the difference is it allows  for multiple people to gain the same skill from the same event.

Skipping Time.

Dmitri (the only player not crafting or unconscious) if you have anything you want to try in that hour, post it right here instead of including it in your IC post.

As a reminder, don't assume anything you try will be successful. You can do some 'if/else' scenarios, but too many will be burdensome for me.

Also, Emily, it's my bad for not reminding you, but you went ahead and started playing your drum even though we never time skipped past it. I'll let it go this time, but in the future ensure your crafts are marked off in DT Notice before you use them

Slight edit to my last post, changed toiletries to general purpose rags.

Gotcha. How many do you want to make, and at what sizes?

Each hand-cloth size would take 1 minute (for wiping small stains).

Each washcloth size would take 3 minutes (for cleaning ones' hands or feet).

Each bath towel would take 7 minutes (enough to wrap yourself up in).

You can spend as much time as you want. The first craft of each kind will give you 2x XP and the relevant recipe, as usual.

Let's start with 10, so 30 minutes worth give or take, and then he can hopefully move on to the yard.

So ten medium-sizes?

Marking it down like that for now.

Oh, and claiming the Devil's post >:-D

In reply to Voice of The System (msg # 263):

Correct, my mistake for not clarifying.

In reply to Voice of The System (msg # 259):

Ach, yes.

I read those posts in the wrong order.  I've amended my spawnpoint post to ensure that the next dance comes AFTER the drum is complete as does Emily's request for a view of her status.

Hey, folks? I just want to clarify something. It is absolutely reasonable to hear Arjun talk about these Market Coins, which he briefly mentioned a while ago, and then only tells everybody about just now, and assume that he waited until he had some kind of advantage before telling the others about it. He's a character that engenders suspicion of his behavior.

However, I want to make it clear to everybody that I, the player, would never do that. Arjun might be a jerk, Player-of-Arjun is not. I told everybody about the Market as soon as I got answers worth sharing.

Honestly, trying to play a jerk character is turning out to be more stressful than I imagined, because I don't want people to think that I'm the kind of player who finds that behavior acceptable. :D :D

It seems reasonable to me because to add one's information during a chaotic stream of information from all sides makes it less useful than waiting until someone needs it.

While everyone else is doing their crafting/dancing/singing/etc. projects, I will examine anything I possibly can, looking for details I may have missed. I do this a lot in real life, and refer to it as "hawk mode". I will examine the main disk first, followed by the cloth disk, then the root disk.

Hey all, this has gotta be short 'cause I'm heading out imminently.

1. My sleep schedule is a mess, so don't pay attention to what time it is for me lol

2. When I get back I'll do these edits

3. I think there was something else, but I forgot lmaooo

okay see yall briefly

Made some small edits to my last two posts:

3. Slowly lower the 15' rope off the side of the grass disc, with a thick knot at the end acting as a weight. This will determine if there is any kind of invisible surface underneath the disc, and give them information about wind and other conditions below. This step will be done as far from either of the smaller discs as possible.

"We could check out the Soil Node and see if we can use whatever comes out of it make a bigger lip for you to catch yourself on, or you can hold onto the hentai tentacles from the cloth disc, but I don't see how we can make the rope any stronger. Do you have any other ideas?"

And I wake up to get post 700.

Dmitri, I've seen your suggestion on how to run the telepathic link thread, but I don't like making and deleting threads every time you use this ability, so instead your characters can just use the private line feature to speak mentally to one another.

Also, while your telepathic bond is open, not all surface thoughts are audible to one another, only those directed at the other person.

Dmitri, as a telepath you have the ability for that to have more versatility and strength in the future, however you are still too low level to pry into someone's thoughts, or to have a constant read on those in your Bond.

Hope that helps explain the intent of the ability, at it's current level.

Clarity request: The last Downtime notation happened at Day 1 4:48:36 hours after arrival, which is about when Emily went to sleep. Emily, are you RP'ing as if you're already tired, as I've been assuming in my last several posts? Or are you proposing we all skip ahead a day?

To be clear, I'm fine with either option, I just want to check that we're on the same page. I just assumed that the GM wasn't gonna let that happen cleanly.

I'm posting after I've had eight hours sleep but the rest of you are not going to sleep for another hour or two.

How I'm currently reading is that Emily went to bed super early and then slept for like only 1.5 hours.

This is very unlikely to be her intent, but that's why you pay attention to the DT thread, folks. I also keep the current time there.

By the way, please make sure (and of you who are crafting) that the 'time remaining' on your crafts is at 0 before you write about how they are finished. Just because the time difference between then and now is enough to have finished crafting, it doesn't mean you have spent that time doing so.

For example, Otto is still making washcloths, because he spent the 25 minutes I did skip helping Otto with rope plan.

Arjun hasn't even started his quiver / bow

You posted wayyy too early. Emily has barely slept.



Depending on your time zone this experience will wreck your circadian rhythm for a time, so it's possible people will start getting tired at the point you predict, but that is also an assumption of those characters' schedules.

I'm enjoying the aspect of dealing with the disruption to our circadian rhythms. I'll edit my posts to assume I'm only at about Day 1 6:00, then.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:40, Thu 20 Jan 2022.

Gotcha, my mistake.

I'll be sure to double check that DT thread in the future before moving forward.

No worries, I don't mind if you stack up a load of projects at once, and you can even work on them out of order, and mix n match. But you cannot get the XP nor final products until you've 100% completed the task.

Updating the DT thread with a tiny jump forward (couple minutes) and the new crafts.

I think it's a good time for you all to decide if there is a period of time you want to skip.

Also, Emily, I wrote that you only slept for about an hour, meaning you took a nap. If this is fine with you (since Emily would have trouble sleeping anyway given the general ruckus and stress) we'll go with it, but if you intended for Emily to take a full eight hours of sleep, then you won't be able to start crafts or help arjun inspect the soil node, until you wake up.

I updated my posts from #408 on, to correct for the time as we just discussed. It's mostly just the roleplay elements of the actions that I've adjusted.

I'm happy to skip forward any amount of time. Barring the mystery of the Soil Node, I think all Arjun has left that he wants to do is try to make things to sell to the Market.

I currently have 6 hours worth of Crafting tasks queued, so I guess that makes my vote that we jump 7 hours ahead, to include a short rest for Arjun after his labors.

My one concern with skipping ahead is we have not found water (or food, but that's of less concern).

In reply to Dmitri Alvin Reslin (msg # 283):

I mean, yeah, absolutely, that's a problem, but the only idea I have to solve that problem right now is to either:

* Grind crafts and sell them to unlock the Marketplace and try to buy some
* Wait until tomorrow when the Expansions refresh and try spitting over the edge.

Other than that, I'm all out of ideas on how to find water in this setting.

As far as the tasks/mysteries I've noticed/claimed, the only one left is the Soil Node. Everything else just needs us to survive the day.

I'm set up for a potential skip ahead if we want to take it. The bond lasts 2 hours, and I'm using it to try to invoke my improved Intelligence score to figure out ideas for the water problem. If I get one, I'll use the remaining time to work on it (or ask for help on whatever I discover).

I am absolutely letting you do this to me, Dmitri, so I can be the first person to try to develop mental defenses against telepathic attacks, now that Arjun knows they're in the game.

Also good for a skip.

Not sure what Otto will do for the interim yet, maybe try to work out, but I can think of something.

Also edited his last post per your response Voice, back to working on washcloths
This message was last edited by the player at 23:14, Thu 20 Jan 2022.

Oh right.  Emily only slept for about an hour.  I can think of more things to do but I'm losing track of what everyone else is doing.

I'd like to skip ahead but not sure how long.

After Otto lowered Arjun down over the side of the discs, the two of them have been crafting.

Vlad is still asleep. Dmitri is trying to figure out water, I think.

Let's say that the current convo between Emily, Arjun, and anyone else who wants to join in, takes place after Emily's 1 hour nap. That should collapse the multiple timelines, and puts Arjun's queued crafting tasks on pause while we investigate.

GM, I've undone the crafting XP additions to my character sheet to sync with that time.

I as a player understand, but Dmitri is likely to remain oblivious to that unless it's explicitly said in character.

Perfect. At the current moment, nothing has been said IC, but that may change based on future RP.

Okay, I'm gonna initiate a 7 Hour Skip

Here's a rundown for the incoming post:

Arjun

 - Brainstorms with Dmitri through Telepathic Bond
 - Finish his queued Crafts
 - Takes a short rest

Otto

 - Does some light exercise (to avoid dehydration)
 - Finish his queued Crafts

Dmitri

 - Maintains Telepathic Bond as much as possible
 - Attempts to devise new ways to obtain water

Emily

 - Maybe she takes the rest of her sleep? You would have enough time to do fully rest.

Lastly, I also want to tell you how you are all doing on water at the moment.

Otto and Arjun are both becoming parched, but not dehydrated. Otto, you will become slightly dehydrated if you do any exercise. If you do hardcore exercise, you will become pretty badly dehydrated, to the point of discomfort and possibly symptoms of nausea/dizziness.

Emily and Dmitri have not drunk anything, but they are not parched yet.

Sounds good to me. Drams here I come.

Looks good.

Otto did want to make spools of yard or thread after he had finished with the wash clothes.

He would also like to bandage his wound.

After that has been done he will try to rest and recover while he tries to watch the moth and the vine Crawlers' for a little entertainment and to see if he can spot them doing anything interesting.

So

Finishing washclothes.
Light workout
Bandage wound
Make large spool of yarn
Rest and watch the Monsters

That's all for me, today!

See ya tomorrow o7

I'm starting to have a really bad "count your chickens before they hatch" issue in this game :) So much I want to try!

Welcome to Day Two, Everyone!

1000 posts seemed pretty ambitious, but we could be there by the end of next week!

Was bragging about the same thing to my brother earlier, lol

Map is now up to date with everything.

The distortion on Cloth Island is to represent you guys repeated consumption of fabric.

You guys have used approximately between 400 to 600 Fabric, so you're slowly but sure depleting that island of it's resources. If any of you want to take an estimate of how much you have left, lemme know.

Since I'm already in hawk mode and on the cloth island for my other plan, I'll do a survey of how much "harvesting" is available.

I think I missed it, what are the five blue dots arranged in a pentagon on the original disc?

I assumed those were our bedrolls.

Ahh, yes, makes sense. Beautifully arranged

Yes they are your bedrolls.

Also, Dmitri, here's what you find (secret listing):

Are these nests protruding st all from the surface in a way that would allow them to be hit by a ranged weapon?

Or are all four completely "underground".

Three of the four 'nests' are basically just a gathering of the vine crawlers deep in the coiling roots. The other is the same, except you ripped up the surface to get a clear shot and they filled it in with (what is most likely) some sort of excrement

So, only one of them has anything you can attack, but it's not going to be effective. The others are not even clear where their boundaries are, since you simply observed that things live vaguely down there somewhere

None of you have poison, water, acid, smoke nor fire, so you cannot really use this terrain against them.

Here is some ideas:

 - You could send attacks in after opening a path to their nest.
 - You could try and bait them out, somehow.
 - You could try haphazardly stomping around, in hoping of breaking the ground.

None of you have gone deep enough to observe if they are even 'constructing' anything nest-like. We are just calling them 'nests' because they are tightly packed in that location. They could just be hanging out on the roots underneath, chewed their way into the hollow portions, or used that brown material to fortify their territory.

800 Posts!

Map updated with ya new island :)

Emily, are you sure you want to use that tone in your post? At the moment, Emily is basically calmly accepting the sudden chaos (which isn't really a skill she should have) and continuing with her conversation calmly (which is irrational and frankly abnormal behavior).

This doesn't make sense to me. I'll run with it if you can explain it somehow (if you cant please revise it), but this would certainly strongly influence everyone's impression of the character if she behaves this way, regardless of intent.

I know it's one more thing to put on you.

But while you are updating the downtime thread, would it be alright to strike through the completed tasks so that we know when our characters are done with a particular task?

Not a problem.

I've been thinking of having only active tasks display, but I also use the private lines in the DT thread to remember how much XP to give you guys for certain crafts.

Strikethrough is an ideal solution. Thanks

Strikethrough is a WAY better option.

Having played in a game where we frequently edited our posts in specific threads, I absolutely, 100%, STRONGLY advise against edits as a standard element of play. Documentation will always turn out to be more important than we realized.

Preach!

I've used the CTRL+F feature so much in the last week or two, lmao

Most I will edit is for corrections, and unless they are minor fixes I give alerts first.

Starting to feel pretty selfish with all my posts today. What's everybody else doing? Or, if you're just focused on an ongoing task like Otto, what are you thinking about while you work?

Selfish sociopath?

XD



It's definitely slowed down a little.

Not sure why, but maybe people are starting to feel this is frustrating or repetitive. You have all been stuck on some of the same problems for a while.

If it becomes serious enough for me to think the players might lose interest, I'll start giving out hints, or straight hand you the answer if I need to.

For now, I'll just say your water problem has an extremely simple and easy solution. Whether or not it is an obvious one is debatable at this point.

Honestly, here's a hint:

 - None of you know how Automatic Expansion actually works. You might think that you have figured it out, but you do not really understand it yet.

Too hard to say any more without making it a freebie

---

Also, Vlad seems MIA atm. I know the player fairly well, but I don't remember this happening before. Most likely IRL stuff came up, because I think he'd say if he decided to dip.

I'm also talking with some people in PMs about various matters, mostly to make sure everyone is enjoying the game. I'm also looking to improve the parts you guys don't like.

It's a bit late to say this, but honestly I do not think I am a very good GM. I know I'm not bad at all, and I definitely avoid the major red flags, but I make a lot of dumb mistakes and despite always talking with the players, I find that I am fairly bad at actually communicating when it comes to the important stuff.

I also have a bad habit of forgetting information, and sometimes even responding on auto-pilot which can result in a feeling of railroading, which is terrible for a sandbox game like this.

One thing I've realized is that I've definitely not been clear when I cut off certain paths.

My attempts at invoking an atmosphere of mystery have resulted in a lot of 'no's.

I'm not dictating the overall story, since there are many ways this could go, but I do have a solid background for this setting, which only I have influence over. This is intentional, because I am quite confidence in it's quality and flexibility (in the first place it's closer to a borrowed idea then an IC property, so you can call it 'tried and true').

However with that said none of you should be trying to understand the system at the moment. Really, your ONLY priority should be survival. You all have the skills to accomplish that, and it can fit each of your playstyles. If I had made that clear sooner there would have been less dissatisfaction, I believe.

Anyways, as always please tell me if you have any ideas, grow any concerns, or notice any mistakes I make.

The way I have come to see it over the years is that a good GM provides fuel for the players fire, so to speak.

Good, creative, prolific players like you have here can burn quite a while on a little bit of fuel, they are very efficient. But they inevitably burn up the new material, or fuel, that they have and begin to gutter a little bit.

Keeping that fuel coming is the key to the games that end up lasting years. Not every GM post can be a big step forward or provide the characters something shiny, but it can be significant in giving them things to respond to.

All that being said, I think you are doing a great job.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:36, Tue 25 Jan 2022.

thnk u :)

Totally agree on the 'not every post can be important'. I feel like I have even been giving too many skills lately. So, I'm planning on slowing that for the time, especially for miscellaneous things not related to your class/attribute.

Also, I've (arbitrarily) decided to skip around ten minutes. So, Otto is finished with his foot wraps, Arjun is sleepy and Emily and Dmitri have ten minutes of time stockpiled before their next post. They can include it or just incorporate it into their responses to the newest stuff. Doesn't matter much, since it's quite a short period.

Forgive me if my last post had a sleepy tone, it was somewhat intended given Arjun's mental and physical exertion but I cannot deny that I just got my vaccine booster and am feeling tuckered out.

If I wanted professional quality GMing, I would be paying for it. :P

We're all here to have fun, exercise our minds, indulge in a bit of escapism, and try new things.

As somebody pointed out, I've chosen to play a character that is seen as selfish and a sociopath. I'm very deliberately basing his actions off my understanding of someone in my personal life who I particularly despise, because I thought that maybe roleplaying her a little would help me develop some empathy towards that particular social drama. I am certainly not any good at that, either.

Stop beating yourself up about quality and have fun experimenting. We're here to have fun, and we all signed up based on the info you gave. If you need to retcon, or if you're worried you've led us down the wrong path, there is ZERO problem with correcting that OOC or doing a bit of retcon.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:12, Tue 25 Jan 2022.

Dammit. None of us have tried any other methods of creating expansions, while we still had expansions left, other than using the first method I found.


I would try it myself, but I'm about to pass out.

Dmitri - I'm the one sweating, not Otto.

Will edit to reflect.

I could be wrong, but I think the emphasis was on that Arjun was sweating a lot in the past.

As opposed to his condition now.

In reply to Otto Bruckner (msg # 324):

Dmitri and Emily have time banked, so D could have been wiping my brow anytime during my little fainting spell.

The sweating thing wasn't the solution I was thinking of, but maybe it'll work.

Also, I figure that I'll keep rp'ing worry about Vlad. I plan to try to make a stretcher or a travois to carry him with us if we move. Because, you know, we don't have enough to deal with right now, I've got to make more trouble for us :-)

A simple solution to water.  Ohhh... maybe it's in the wind.

In reply to Emily Khorashandi (msg # 326):

I'm thinking a COMPLETELY different direction than that, but Dmitri has already cast the dice. If it doesn't work, I'll try th my idea tomorrow.

Emily were you helping Otto with his task to make ten bandages?

Or were you making yours separately and adding to that total?

I was making additional bandages.

Hey all, no posts (or reading) from me today because I'm feeling crappy.

Sucks that vaccines can give you a sort of faux fever/flu, but at least that means it's doing it's job.

If I feel better tomorrow, I'll post. If not, the next day. These symptoms shouldn't last longer than a couple days, so don't wait for me. I'll catch up when I get back.

Thanks for understanding, and sorry for any inconvenience

Full recovery!

Now, where were we...

First things first, @Emily: You guys cannot initiate time skip (well if you all agree to do so it's fine, but none of you can just force things along like that). Only the GM can do that.

With that said, perhaps the phrase 'After an hour or so crafting bandages, Emily gets up and walks back to the new disc.' was meant as a sort of pre-empt of your actions if/when a time skip occurs. In that case, it's not a problem, but please @Everyone should note that if you are going to pre-empt, do not pre-empt more than once. Otherwise you're just getting too far ahead of me, and also building up situations which are more and more likely to be stopped before you can arrive at them.

Oh, also people have asked for Emily's name before, I believe? Maybe I'm wrong. Either way, what's said is said, so either Emily is right or she misremembered.

Also I'm with Otto on the behavior of some of your characters. It's inhumane to the point of reflecting a huge shift from modern morality. Either this is intentional, or you need to reconsider your angles. Perhaps trauma would be an underlying motivation, but if so I'd expect some inner monologue on the matter.

Please have situational awareness when posting. One of the soft rules of the game (guidelines thread) was to match the level of writing of the other players. This does not just include style and sophistication, but also sensibility and attention to detail which Emily and Dmitri seem to have lacked in response to a major injury of a fellow person.

Anyway, off to adjudicate o7

Seems like we're slowing down.

Only to be expected, but that was a heck of a run.

Sorry, I feel like it's my fault. I'm afraid my household grew chaotic. Should be back to normal in a few days.

I think it was everybody. No need for anyone to take the blame, these shifts just kind of happen sometimes.

I think there may have also been a bit of frustration when we didn't make potable water, and that maybe we all needed a bit to mourn that. If so, then from a certain perspective, the silence in the game was us playing our characters. :)

Voice snagged post #900.

Evil laughter

Time to answer the important questions.

Does a sack that contains your enemy count as a heavy weapon if it's swung with two hands?

Corollary : can you wield your enemies one handed? What about your friends?

Looks like my evening plans were cancelled due to a sick kid at my intended destination, so I'm going to be around, after all. Though my character is still pretty delirious.

Well, it seems we've lost Vlad.

That was careless of us wasn't it. Looks down the back of the sofa. I'd give it another week to be honest, but I guess I'm all optimistic like.

At this point, I feel like it would be hypocritical of me to complain. Do we want to consider bringing a new player in?

It's really strange to me, that he'd disappear.

I kind of feel like denying it, but since he has up and left for two weeks I can't give him the benefit of the doubt forever.

I think I'll have to end his story, and then I'll consider bumping the post when I feel ready to work in a new player.

Also, sorry I've been gone for a day or two, I was a little distracted. I'll adjudicate what you all have posted so far, today.

No worries about disappearing. Gave us a chance to catch up on each other's posts.

Can we box Vlad, so if he comes back, he can rejoin?

Also, you forgot the 3 bedrolls for my Downtime list.

What do you mean by 'box'? If you guys want to make him a casket or something in-game, feel free to do so.

At the moment he is still 'half-alive' and that's a fine state for him to be from a meta-perspective, but I'm willing to have something happen to him (though nothing as final as death, in case he rejoins) if you all think it would be a sort of Chekhov's Gun.

Personally, I think it's a little cute to have you all taking care of someone who is basically in a magic-coma. It would show to each other your dedication to the group, as well as show to yourselves that you are retaining your humanity.

From a GM point of view, I will probably make him an NPC. If that's what you meant by 'box', then yes that's the plan :-)



Sorry, I'll add those. I think I got a little confused and wrote smth like 'yes Arjun sells his bedrolls and exits the demo' but forgot those take a fairly long time to make.

At the moment, Arjun is working on those, so I'll cut off about ten minutes from the remaining time, since I did also do a minor advancement in DT, along with adding yours and Emily's crafts.

And Otto is still on track?

Sorry, you're making bandages right?

I'll subtract about 15-20 minutes from your time. That should get you caught up.

Yeah, I was making 10 bandages (listed), which seems to be a number we've all agreed on somehow. After that is the bedrolls, then the rest is already on the list.

Though, now that I'm thinking about it, Arjun should probably do the bedrolls first, since water & food is a higher priority than more bandages. I should be able to borrow bandages as needed to keep the wound as clean as possible.

Sorry, I guess I've been playing too many legacy board games. By "box," I meant putting the piece back in the box, as opposed to destroying it. In other words, find a way to put him out of play without killing him. +Shrug+ we're all saying the same thing.

Just wanted to assure people I as a player have been paying attention to what is going on, but Dmitri has been a bit slow on the uptake on certain concepts, which is being reflected in his posts.

No worries, and good to know.

I'll keep this in mind that he's 'shutting down' a little bit, since it's important that I keep track of the characters' mental states.

---

Anyways, there wasn't a ton for me to adjudicate this time, but you all keep on with your roleplaying!

I will say that I have no intention for this to become a grind-fest where we all use the DT thread more than the other threads, but since you're all in a bit of a lull right now (understandably haha), it's pretty appropriate to sort of have a 'shopping episode' here.

With that said, how does everyone feel about me skipping to the 'end' of this day? It should let you all complete many outstanding tasks, and also move us along a little.

---

Lastly, on an OOC note, I want to say that I was tempted to give Arjun and INTELLIGENCE stat for his ideas about expansion (i didnt because ive been to liberal with those so far, and i need to hold back my generosity haha), but it would be best for you all to follow through on those ideas, which is a huge 'hint hint wink wink' from me to you!

Another time jump works for me.

Just would like to know how much time to "fill" before the next segment.

Probably until 'lights out', so approximately 8.5 hours, if my math and memory is right.

I would have assumed that you'd want to skip forward to one of us unlocking the Market and not finding any water there either :D :p :B

But yeah, time jump is fine.

Considering how I got burned for assuming a time jump when it didn't exist, I can see moving forward a bit.