OOC Chat

[Breila]

One page back, Jaded, you were asking if we had suddenly lost interest in the game. No we haven't, but apparently we're out of ideas or have missed an important clue. None of us has an idea of how we might go on, how we might achieve to free the kender and/or Mailka. If Babushka's last idea - letting the people know how Tarik stripped them of their money - doesn't work, we're really beyond our wits, and all that is left is a shameful retreat. Which is why things became so slow, we were thinking, but got no results.

And perhaps it was a mistake to do the horse sale in a FF/OOC mode, if we had played it out, Ulster could have spoken his warning earlier... now we really have only the way over the sea open for us.

[JadedDM]

There is no missed clue. As I said before, there is not a specific action or actions that must be taken to succeed planned ahead of time. I am not forcing you guys to try and read my mind and figure out which path is the right path. I'm simply setting up scenarios, and leaving it up to you all to figure them out on your own. When you suggest an idea, I consider whether it would work logically or not, and we play it out. If you fail, it's because something went wrong or the plan was not sound; not because I arbitrarily decided it was the wrong thing to do.

The innkeeper's name is Wahid, by the way. I assume that's who you meant when you said "Tarik."

And I really dislike roleplaying out the boring minutia of haggling with merchants, so even if Jenara had not suggested a fastforward, we still would not have played out that scene anyway. And honestly, the reason Ulster did not point out that the law would be after them earlier, is because it was common sense and he (and I) assumed you were going to take that into account. It wasn't until Jerrard said you would just 'hide' until the ship left that prompted him (and me) to bring up the question, "Hide where? And what about the guards?"

[Breila]

OK, but please answer one question: all these things we've encountered, the inn, the brothel, Malika, the kender, are you thinking of them as a challenge, a quest or adventure, for our characters or just as a colorful setting, allowing us to roleplay and find out our limitaions?

And sorry for the confusion of the names, I know them from my schoolmates and somehow the physical description of the innkeeper fits someone whose name was Tarik, so they became linked in my mind...

[JadedDM]

Everything so far, at least since we arrived in Alan Ak-Khan, has been pretty much off the cuff. The madam mentioning there were kender at the brothel was just something I came up with on the spot. (The only reason there even was a brothel in the first place was Babushka asked for a bathhouse. When I did some research, I learned a lot of Turkish bathhouses were also brothels.) Only when the party showed interest in rescuing these kender did I start fleshing out details. Same with Malika; originally, I just made up a character for Jerrard to interact with. The more interest he showed in her, the more I fleshed out, until I had a full character. So both started out as nothing more than background details. Had you shown no interest in them, that's what they would have remained. But they sort of evolved into quests due to the interest the players were showing in them.

So yeah, none of this was pre-planned. I had no plan in mind at all when you all first arrived. When Jerrard was talking to Malika, for instance, I decided on a whim she was a slave. When he asked why she doesn't try to leave, I thought to myself--good question. Why doesn't she? Then I came up with the whole magical slave device thing. And I just kept building off of that.

Once we finished Sarcophagus Legion, this game effectively became a sandbox. The quests are whatever you guys want to do. I'm just constructing scenarios and watching how you all react to them. Things play out based on your decisions and on how I think they logically would go down. That's all.

[Breila]

See, to me, the transition wasn't evident. I thought these encounters were "planted" as they are in a module, to guide the party to a possible quest, and that there was a solution to be found somewhere, like in a module someone makes up. So when every avenue we explored lead to a dead end, I got frustrated, starting to doubt my fantasy roleplaying abilities, and raking my brain for what I might have missed.

[JadedDM]

Nope. I did have a quest lined up for after Alan Ak-Khan, but as the party is departing by boat instead of land, it's not really applicable any more, so I'll have to hold on to it for later, when the situation is better for it.

For the record, though, I'm running Lost Souls in the same way. Although with a bit more prep work, and I had some quests lined up from the start so you guys had a starting point, but there is no all-encompassing single plot the party is expected to follow like in Chronicles or any other module.

Before I started running modules here at Planet, in fact, I ran all of my games like that. Very fluid and flexible, the storyline being whatever the party was interested in. Everything else was just trappings. If the land the party is in is undergoing a civil war, and the party takes part in that, so be it. If they ignore it, then it just becomes part of the background that crops up now and again. If they decide to just leave the nation entirely, then it's no longer anything they have to deal with at all.

[Breila]

Should we put the game on hold until Horizon is back? After all, she knows the laws of the land best, the group cannot do without her expertise.

[JadedDM]

Sorry, I didn't realize you were waiting specifically on her input.

It's important to remember, though, that Khur is a confederacy of seven tribes that are each independent and distinct from each other. Imani was born into the Mikku tribe and was later sold into marriage in the Mayakhur Tribe. The tribe you guys are dealing with now is the Khur tribe. After she was married, she was rarely let outside of Mehmet's palace and certainly did not travel to the other tribes' lands...so don't over-rely on her expertise, because she's not an expert at all.

[Breila]

But she knows the mentality better, what "feels" right or wrong to someone who grew up in these lands.

[JadedDM]

Locky gets herself dressed ready and waits.

Jerrard does the same.

I feel like I'm missing something here.

What, exactly, is everyone waiting for?

[Jenara]

Sorry I was really tired yesterday and wanted to go to bed and to drag hubby off too... didnt know what to say.

We will deal with that now.

[JadedDM]

That's fine. I was just under the impression that you all were waiting for me to do something, and I wasn't sure what.

[Jenara]

Locky is waiting on Wahid, to distract him.

[JadedDM]

Oh, I thought Locky went with Jerrard.

[Jenara]

Yeah, that post wasnt all that clear was it! lol, she was teasing him about the "Daddy" thing, and then went to distract Wahid.