Duvors

"Right." said Sam, straightening up a little. "Let's get going then." @Lind Whisperer Looking around him, Sam attemped to take stock of the location and see where they might go next.

I suppose the point isn't to be original, it's just that planetary destruction is such a massive pet peeve of mine that the concept makes me legitimately angry. In general I hate it when a setting trivializes or disregards scale. When you've reached the point where galaxies are destroyed and wars last hundreds of years I lose the capacity to take what I'm seeing seriously. My suspension of belief is destroyed, all sense of verisimilitude is lost, and everything seems distinctly unreal and ridiculous. And yes, I understand it's not easy to feel motivated to do something you don't enjoy, but the same goes for me too. And if this project goes too far in a direction I don't find appealing then I won't have the will to offer up ideas or curate that rules revision I took ages typing up. And probably the same goes for everyone else who wants to contribute. Look, part of the reason I dislike this whole idea is the implication that people are incapable of doing something original with an established fantasy trope unless you force them to. People can do interesting and unique things with dwarfs and elves and such without being prodded from on high. And I personally feel that having homelands for these people that the players can visit isn't going to automatically mean that these races automatically overshadow all the others or be exact copies of existing fantasy settings. I mean, spaceships! There's gotta be some angle there you can exploit. To be honest I'm not sure why I was complaining about this anymore, it's not important and I don't really care now anyways. That's not really the point. I find stories treating something that big as being casually disposable immensely infuriating and to see an entire planet get killed off in the backstory just to justify why a couple of species aren't especially prominent makes me livid. Something like that should be experienced by players in the course of the game where it can have a real impact rather than being relegated to an 'oh yeah by the way'. All other concerns aside there's a bit of a logistical issue with this; Lego makes a lot of humans. Humans are in fact the most well-represented demographic among minifigs. So people are going to tend to have a lot of them. Its kind of hard to square the idea that humans and human-looking species aren't especially prominent with the fact that they're likely to make up the majority of crowd scenes and player characters. I think 'legacy' is a bit too meta to use, but this is rather in line with what I was thinking.

But I don't like the idea of them coming from a destroyed galaxy, I don't even like the idea of them being from a destroyed planet. Why is everyone here obsessed with making things ludicrously massive? Centuries long wars, destroyed galaxies, it's just gratuitous. And I just hate planet-destroying in general. Especially in this context where it just comes across as a cheap attempt to look original without actually going to the effort of actually being original. As far as I can tell you just want to slap this miserable backstory onto all the generic fantasy races while leaving everything else about them unchanged. People are quite capable of exploring 'other aspects' of these species without this childishly grim backstory and I don't see how them not being from Explodia or wherever restricts that. If you want to encourage people to explore 'other aspects' of them them why not create societies for them that encourage such behavior? I think you've misunderstood me. I was trying to indicate that any race that fills the role of elves in a setting are essentially 'elves' even if they don't have much aesthetically in common with them.

@BobIs he? I got the impression that the consensus from yesterday was to put him in the exercise room. It was a bit difficult to follow at the end.

Why do you assume the Krassar are militarists? Or strong for that matter? And yes I know there's going to be overlap, but it seems to me as if you only want elves and dwarfs and such in the setting because you feel obliged to have them. I mean, if you don't want to deal with their tropes and instead want to focus on these shiny new 'original' species then it seems kind of pointless to have them. The whole reason that elves and dwarves and goblins or whatever are so ubiquitous in fantasy RPG settings is precisely because the tropes associated with them mean that players don't need a lot of explantation about what they are and how to play them. If you're going to have 'elves, but they live in space and have tentacles and have a completely original culture we swear' then you've already passed the point where you need 'elves, but we gave them a grim and edgy backstory because we think they're boring and wanted to be original'. And on that subject I'm not particularly interested in the 'our planet dun got blowed up' backstory, it doesn't really add anything to them or change any of their tropes. In all honesty it feels tacked on and makes them feel tacked on rather than an integral part of the setting, like they were added as an afterthought or because someone made us. If we're going to have a list of species that people choose from at start, then I'd rather that list be made of species we actually want rather than ones we aren't enthusiastic about but feel we have to shove in somewhere. I'd rather not define species at all at this point, either in number or characteristics, but I seem to be in the minority right now.

The problem here is that the major players in a post-war environment are usually the people who fought in the war, because they're the ones who sign all the treaties at the end. Furthermore if the orcs didn't want to unify, then they simply wouldn't have regardless of any pragmatical considerations. Yes, that is exactly the piece I was thinking of. But again, I don't agree with your interpretation of the lore. When a sacred symbol is placed upon a national flag it is usually done because that symbol is seen as inherently unifying. A common faith is, after all, one of the ways in which a national identity can be made. If the symbol used is seen as one of extreme personal autonomy then on nation would use it. It'd be like putting the anarchist 'A' symbol on a national flag. There are several issues I have with this. First of all, there's no reason to make the war that long other than having a massive timeline for the sake of having a massive timeline. The atmosphere you say you want to evoke could be achieved just as easily with a much shorter war. And to be frank it doesn't really matter what the atmosphere of the war was because it's been over for a long time at the point the game starts. Secondly, the status quo was intend to be something along the lines of 'there are two big stable nations who don't like each other' and nothing more. That's really all anyone needs to know at start as the current situation is obviously different from that. Thirdly, the war would not be fought solely by undead and elves, and even if it were having extended natural lifespans wouldn't actually affect the casualty rate. Your excuse complexly overlooks the fact that people get killed in war (and other things like resource scarcity or the general willingness of a population to see thousands of its members sent off to die). Finally, the concept of a war lasting for centuries is such so unrelentingly grim that I personally find it kind of silly. A little grimness is fine, but that's so excessive it ceases to be interesting. Well, as has been said nothing I write here is actually official, so you needn't worry too much about that. And again, none of this is a reason not to have the discussion here where other people can join in with their own ideas. You don't need to post a complete writeup right away if you don't have one. What you saw me put up earlier in the thread was the results of ideas I've had stewing around for about a year now and it's still not in a state I'd call complete. I... don't like this. Not for any particular reason mind you, it just doesn't strike the right note in my head. The issue there is that, if they fulfill the same archetypes then why even have the original species to begin with? It seems highly redundant to have species overlap that much. If we went this route then I'd probably suggest ditching the classic races entirely.

"Well, how about the exercise room? If that's where you're keeping Ezra then I'll want to go there at some point anyway."

"Hmm. Tell me, did any of the animals in your area start behaving oddly when he arrived?"

"Okay. I think that proves my assumption that the signal jamming only started today. Still doesn't explain why though." Grace will make an examination of the bathroom with the bicorder.

As much as I appreciate the effort you've gone to here I have to say I'm not a big fan of cutting them out of the war. If I'd intended to do that then I wouldn't need feedback in the first place. While I admit that WBD may be right in objecting to the way they're used in the original writeup (which is kind of the impetus for me wanting to change it in the first place) giving them no connection to the war leaves them rather disconnected from the history I'd written. My original scheme had them as a major player whereas your history leaves no reason to even mention them in the initial blurb. I also feel you've misinterpreted the Red Banner somewhat. It wasn't in the lore writeup I did but back when we were all talking about races I mentioned a concept for a species called the Oruk. They were meant to be an ancestor species to the orcs that were technically extinct but still around in the form of undead and have a major place of esteem in orc society. The device on the Red Banner is supposed to be one of their skulls, chosen as a symbol because it's basically the only universal symbol the orcs posses. I also have to say I'm not particularly a fan of the rather individualistic bent you've given them. In my mind the orcs were always a family-and-clan-oriented culture, as opposed to the state-oriented Puuravians and the individualistic League. And what references are those? As I've said before I'm not very familiar with Star Trek outside the Original Series so I don't really know much about Klingon lore other then them being unified by some guy called Kahless. While I suppose that and the general 'fight-y species' aesthetic could be considered similar to what I wrote the unifier of the orcs was mostly based on historical figures rather than fictional ones. Why change the war's duration? There's nothing that really adds to the scenario (other than needless inflation of numbers) that couldn't be accomplished in it's original timeframe. You say it's done so that the current situation is a deviation from the status quo, but that was already the case to begin with. The only change you've made is that the war was the status quo rather than the catalyst for it's end. And to be honest it think that extending the war like that makes the entire scenario less believable. World War One only lasted a little over four years and is responsible for an estimated 15 to 22 million deaths, the fall of all continental empires in Europe, the creation of the Soviet Union, massive changes to the balance of power, and the Second World War. A conflict that lasted 6 years and a day and killed about 70 to 85 million people (approximately 3% one the world population at the time), lead to the invention and deployment of the first nuclear weapons, and set off the Cold War. Extending the war over multiple centuries makes the idea that the original nations would even exist afterwards rather unbelievable. Unless there are elements of what you've written that are supposed to be secret from the players at the start of the game there's no real reason not to just write it out here. I will warn you that @Waterbrick Down and I have already hashed out a fairly restrictive origin for the elves (and dwarves, and humans) so your ideas may not be entirely compatible with that. I do still want to see everything you've written though.

Sam tilted his head slightly. "The name's 'Old Bones', but you can call me Sam. Everyone else does. Who was that back there?"

@samurai-turtle I was referring to this: I was planning on giving my basic lore writeup a second pass and was having some trouble with how to alter or otherwise polish this particular section.

@Goliath @samurai-turtle @Classic_Spaceman @Kintobor A quick question for all of you, what are your thoughts on my writeup for the orcs in the backstory? I'm in need of some feedback on that particular front.

"I think it's been established at this point that my ignorance is your pilots' fault. And it's possible that the killer only started jamming communications after the initial message was sent. Doesn't explain why your boys in communications never radioed in about the dead body after it was found though." "Well I'm sorry, but normally people don't need more identification than my uniform. And the interceptor too. I'm not a plainclothes detective after all." "Sir, unless you can prove that such a device exists and isn't an authorial flight of fancy then I'm not going to base my assumptions on something you wrote in a book once." Grace is uncertain though, does such a device exist? Grace sputters a bit. "Wha- I'm sorry, what is it with you people? I'm the only person here who can't be guilty of murder and the moment I arrive I'm immediately the subject of suspicion? If I was in cahoots with the killer- well, why would I be? And what would they gain from me being here if I'm immediately going to be accused of helping them? And you suspect me because of a mistake that your own piloting crew admit was their fault? Have I got that right? Oh, and the communications jamming, mustn't forget that. Well that's easy to deal with." Grace will contact the Bridge. "Mr. Jason, Mr. Peirce? You should've been receiving messages telling you how close I was every 24 hours. Did you receive any?" If nothing else Grace has done counts as an action, she'll take out her Bicorder and scan the room for any evidence.

(OOC: Well considering that's the only direction that advances the plot, I'd say yes. )

@Lind Whisperer @Classic_Spaceman Sam laid a hand on Yelana's shoulder. "Miss," he said, "I think you and your wizard friend best come with us. I don't think there'll be much left of you two if you don't." Battle Order (and suggested actions) Yelana- use Smoke Bomb All others- flee

Well that puts paid to Grace's plans to run background checks on everyone here. "Oh, sorry! I almost forgot. Does anyone here know why Mr. Peck was killed?"

"Hmm. So he was probably killed before the blackout, unless he'd stayed up until midnight anyway, and most likely shortly after he'd gone to his room. Okay, thank you." With that in mind Grace opens her datapad and uses it to send a message to Space Police headquarters, telling them what she found and requesting an ambulance and a forensics team.

"Well then, at what time did Mr. Peck go to bed? And had his bead been slept in?"

(OOC: Unfortunately, Yelana and the NPC are the only ones engaged in combat at the moment. We'll have to wait until we join the battle to properly attack the enemy.) (To be honest, I'm not certain I can post battle orders for a battle I haven't joined yet. It probably doesn't matter to be honest.)

The officer takes a sip. "Well," she says "let's take this one step at a time. At what time in the day did the blackout occur?"

Old Bones cursed as the young woman began to declaim at the necromancer. This was not going to distract them, and in fact would only- -yep, there it was. Sam nodded to Magnhilder, acknowledging their question. Mags knew he'd be grimacing at this moment had he any facial muscles. "We help." he finally said. "I don't think we can fight this bastard now, but they'll need our help to escape." Battle Order (and suggested actions) ???- attack MONAD. Sonic Wand, Back Row. Yelana- do nothing. Back Row. All others- join Battle.

I don't think you need to list the Alchemist special's list of concoctions here, especially as none of the party are Alchemists.

I kind of need this question answered too @Lind Whisperer, as it'll effect whatever decision I make.

"Thank you." says Grace, taking the offered cup. "So was Mr. Peck killed before or after the blackout?" "I should probably mention that the message we received did say that the ship briefly lost power, so they mentioned that much at least."