The Honorable Club of Role Playing Gentlemen and Ladies of the Center Total war

[Gandalfus]

You retract an endorsement from a retracted statement? Nice.


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[Poach]

Well, is anyone actively working on a game concept?

[Mary The Quene]

Then I retract my endorsement

? Whats this supposed to mean..

[Poach]

I suspect it means the endorsement was based more on LW's judgement of Ponti's character and not the quality of the ideas posted. There's no other reason he'd retract the endorsement after finding that Ponti regards one from him as negative: the ideas haven't changed, but his assessment of Ponti's character has.

[Lord William]

Well, is anyone actively working on a game concept?

I have a couple of ideas that I have been working on which upon reflection I won't be sharing but I look forward to reading other ideas

[VictorAYorke]

There may be one or two H:TW RP members waiting to see what the main RPG people agree upon...

[Dirty Chai]

Hmm..

Well, there's been plans and discussions (old and new) to create a game set around the fourth age of Middle Earth, inspired primarily by the RTW mod. We haven't actually done any polls of course, but it sure seemed like most active people were amenable to that idea in discussions about Tolkien and a possible RPG. The idea was/is to roleplay within the Reunited Kingdom (a reaffirmed Gondor and a reestablished Arnor, basically) of Elessar's and Eldarion's successors, with other states/kingdoms/tribes/whatever being NPC. However, there's absolutely no work done on that - only talk and speculation and, on my part, some attempts to figure out a map (I like highly detailed maps but the ones I like are blurry, so I have to make my own such derivative map for every little province, but then .. well, I have to figure out how provinces/regions/whatever should be drawn... etc.). I think the folks (myself included) who wanted to work on it have all either been too busy or focused on other things, so it's been completely on the backburner for probably a few weeks now.

Other than that, I've seen the usual discussion going around; everything from Romans to Vikings to Warhammer to Dragon Age to Crusades has been mentioned (mostly offhand, tbh I think).

So.. in other words, it's all up in the air, there's no grand plan at the moment really, and feel free to go crazy and pop ideas.

[VictorAYorke]

As someone who's never done one of the larger-scaled RPs favoured here (apart from an RP intensive hotseat or two), I --may-- be up for joining something. Depends on what is available and how it's done, though.

But yes, everyone pitch everything and we'll see what develops support.

Speaking of which, what about a session in the Fire Emblem (7 / Rekka no Ken / Blazing Blade / the one with Sain) setting?

Player-controlled regions/factions are the various minor states within the Lycian League, and have to navigate the instability of their feudal federation - the surprise invasions of neighbouring provinces by Laus, the surfacing and international power-grab of a vast assassin guild known as the Black Fang, wandering brigands from the north (and false-flag 'bandit' attacks by nearby Bern), and at least to start with the sheer mixup of the game's original party marching, fighting and inexplicably recruiting their way across the entire continent...

The rules would have to be implemented by someone familiar with the house system(s), but I'm not sure whether a GoT-derived system could handle 3 offensive magics (with specialisations plus their own rock-paper-scisors relationship) plus battlefield-deployed healing magics AND 2 distinct flavours of winged cavalry.

Thoughts?

[Poach]

I know far too little about the lore (I've never even heard of it) to comment with any degree of insight. I suspect most are in the same boat.

[Lord Dread]

The LotR: Fourth Age proposal could work in my eyes, granted though it provides enough conflict for everyone to potentially war or ally up upon eachother to create conflict.
If it's a game with multiple factions, there should be reasons, why the West wouldn't rally up behind Gondor, if they face for example threats from the eastern factions again,
while vice versa there should be potential for weird alliances from Third Age perspective like Rhun maybe allying up with Thal against Dwarves or whatever. (Just examples)
Else things become not only predictable but boring as well. Pure 'Good VS Evil' conflicts might end up in a permanent split of the player base into forced groups, thus leaving also
less freeroom for own character ambitions.

If it is a reunited Arnor/Gondor/Greater western Kingdom or whatever else you come up with, people should have opportunities to move against the ruler, when needed
or should have some political stuff with which they can meddle around. Barely can imagine an RP being interesting, if the main ruler under whom the majority would serve is
an ideal character like Aragorn from the books - it would cause rebellions and internal conflicts to become onesided, but I guess I don't need to explain that.
In past RPs we already made the expierience, that the most interesting scenarios get always provided by an unstable rulership or a gouvernment, which can't keep its
vassals permanently under controll - vice versa roleplays, which featured a way too benevolent/semi-perfect King without any conflict potential or him refusing the conflict potential,
tended to die fast.

These are my only concerns about a LotR-scenario, if it's ever going to happen.
Other than that, I wouldn't mind it, if a fleshed out proposal regarding this is posted and the majority of people agrees to it.

[Dirty Chai]

One of the main attractions to the Fourth Age as a setting for an RPG is that, with the defeat of the Melkor's hosts (for the time being at least, you never know), there's no "enemy"'; there's no pure-light-good cause to rally behind (throwing everything mortal and common and regular on the backburner, putting aside differences), because true evil is all but vanquished. Tolkien has fragments of a story called the New Shadow in which he describes men becoming restless, corrupt, and generally discontent - with political strife and all that. The idea is sort of based on that, but tilted so that the sides that might be taken are more based on political and ideological values. Life after Elessar (Aragorn) isn't perfect.. Middle Earth is supposed to "degrade" or evolve into a morally grey world resembling our own over time.

@Victor,

The Fire Emblems I've played are Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance, and Radiant Dawn; so I don't know any of the lore of the ones you listed, really, but I'm quite familiar with the general system Fire Emblem uses. I think the main/first question in that scenario is how to translate what makes Fire Emblem Fire Emblem into forum RPG rules (preferably using some sort of ultimate battle formula/calculator or a very simple "minigame" of sorts).

[Pontifex Maximus]

Given the retraction of aforementioned endorsement, I formally reintroduce my statement and voice support for any lotr concept.

Or we can bring back BP purely for the lulz

[VictorAYorke]

One of the main attractions to the Fourth Age as a setting for an RPG is that, with the defeat of the Melkor's hosts (for the time being at least, you never know), there's no "enemy"'; there's no pure-light-good cause to rally behind (throwing everything mortal and common and regular on the backburner, putting aside differences), because true evil is all but vanquished. Tolkien has fragments of a story called the New Shadow in which he describes men becoming restless, corrupt, and generally discontent - with political strife and all that. The idea is sort of based on that, but tilted so that the sides that might be taken are more based on political and ideological values. Life after Elessar (Aragorn) isn't perfect.. Middle Earth is supposed to "degrade" or evolve into a morally grey world resembling our own over time.

@Victor,

The Fire Emblems I've played are Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance, and Radiant Dawn; so I don't know any of the lore of the ones you listed, really, but I'm quite familiar with the general system Fire Emblem uses. I think the main/first question in that scenario is how to translate what makes Fire Emblem Fire Emblem into forum RPG rules (preferably using some sort of ultimate battle formula/calculator or a very simple "minigame" of sorts).

Count me as interested for the Fourth Age idea, but not yet ready to sign up.

One question I should ask is, have we any idea what new ideologies are developing, and where? Which regions have what kind of flavour to them?

@FE
There's a few ways to try and do a Fire Emblem forum rpg:
1. Hyrule style, following one rag-tag warband, with a narrative focus for everything. Ahe/a GM controls and scales the mooks to curate PvE action scenes, while players negotiate PvP conflict in-character.
2. Lean heavily into the game's own stat system, which worked really well and is relatively parsable as wargame statlines go. total of 9 stats with class-based caps (HP strength magic skill speed luck defence resistance constitution) and takes some maths to get either a d100 to-hit or to-crit roll or a fixed outcome. (eg, to damage a successfully hit target = strength/magic + weapon damage +/- weapon matchup). can be simplified dramatically to suit our tastes.
3. If going larger-scale with each player controlling a military at a time, we use a GoT-derived system adjusted for the FE unit classes (various flavours of light and medium melee infantry, archers, heavy armoured infantry, medium and missile cavalry, healer infantry and cavalry, 1 faux-archers for each magic type, light and heavy winged cavalry), maybe with a table of suitably thematic modifiers like those i attempted above.
4. combination of the above as and when we need them.

[Dirty Chai]

Arnor in the north is conceptualized as a place to be resettled, rebuilt, with lots of frontier. Gondor is more populated but has room to grow of course. The elves are diminishing, and the dwarves are having their last golden age. The dominion of men has come. Rhovanion is being repopulated (but we want it to be an NPC faction or rather series of NPC factions - Dale, Rhovanion itself, the Beornings, etc). Mordor we think is largely a military zone that keeps an eye on the orc tribes still living there, but can't really be settled because it's all rather permanently scarred by the dark lord. Nurn is settled of course though, by the former slave populations and is directly part of the Reunited Kingdom.

Threats consist of internal disagreements becoming feuds and rivalries, compounded by external enemies resurgent: the Haradrim have either broken tribute or are about to, and are forming their own empire or confederation; Harondor might be about to break away or be taken by the Haradrim; Umbar has fallen out of Gondorian hands, once again; the Easterlings of Rhun and the Variags of Khand are always a threat.

On ideological rifts within the Reunited Kingdom, I'll bring Gandalf in here.....

[Gandalfus]

For the ideological issues, we envisaged them as being the "innate evil" that Tolkien describes as existing within all men; the sins of pride, wrath, lust, etc. With Sauron gone and the Numenorean King of the Reunited Kingdom reigning supreme, I imagined that perhaps a sense of superiority would grow within some of them, like the King's men that ruled over Numenor. Perhaps a renaissance of old Adunaic culture, a belief that those born with the blood of the High Men within their veins are superior to all others, including the subjects and allies who are middle-men. Perhaps some kind of Manichean cult that venerates struggle between the light and dark shall spring forth, also, as our take upon the "evil cult" that is apparently brewing in Tolkein's unfinished story 'The New Shadow'.

An idea we'd explored is this issue being centred around the King and his brother. The King is rather uninterested in ruling, decadently allowing the reunited kingdom to slide into stagnation whilst external enemies emerge (as BF mentioned above). His brother is warlike and proud, pursuing the agenda mentioned previously, and giving the opportunity for factions to form either around the King, his brother, or the other nobles/advisors (such as the steward of Gondor) who will all be pursuing different agendas.

[Poach]

A somewhat looser Kingdom is always better for RP and having a King that isn't as attentive as he could be would make that a possibility indeed. The sheer size of the Reunited Kingdom could also mean events at the periphery are less known about (eg could we adapt the timing rule for Raven messages in GoT into something that covers the spread of information in LOTR?), allowing more freedom for players.

[Pontifex Maximus]

Mordor we think is largely a military zone that keeps an eye on the orc tribes still living there, but can't really be settled because it's all rather permanently scarred by the dark lord.

It's worth noting this is also borne out by all the extra-canonical sources I can possibly think of and would be a logical continuation in the game I think.

Threats consist of internal disagreements becoming feuds and rivalries, compounded by external enemies resurgent: the Haradrim have either broken tribute or are about to, and are forming their own empire or confederation; Harondor might be about to break away or be taken by the Haradrim; Umbar has fallen out of Gondorian hands, once again; the Easterlings of Rhun and the Variags of Khand are always a threat.

On ideological rifts within the Reunited Kingdom, I'll bring Gandalf in here.....

Or perhaps even successors to Sauron - Balrog chieftains, lesser adherents to Morgoth, black Numenoreans, evil dwarves

[Gandalfus]

There will be a 'successor' to Sauron, of sorts, but I'd prefer to keep that under wraps so there's an element of mystery when/if we play the game

[Pontifex Maximus]

.....Lauron?

[The Mad Skylord]

Ponti! You playing Mars?