Vampire: Dark Ages - OOC Discussion

[Menolly]

Seska is an old gods type pagan. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and any off-shoots, sub-sects, or anything that might even possibly be related are all the same to her. They all care about the Holy Land, so they've got to be the same, right? That there are important differences will be forever lost on her.

Ah, OK. I can understand that.

...but you really did have me confused there for a bit.

[Goatkiller666]

It would just figure... I spent all day yesterday trying to sleep away the fever I picked up. And while I was less sleepy today, I was more busy. And now I'm going to bed. But I promise that I'll get an update out tomorrow. Unless I don't.

[Goatkiller666]

Well, I pretty much slept all day today. Good thing work was pretty quiet. I'm getting started on the posts, but I'm realizing a big mistake I made earlier. I allowed the different Vienna threads to get out of sync, time-wise. I assumed that the two groups wouldn't be interacting with each other much, but I wasn't thinking about how the background events from the vampire stuff would need to still be present in the changer stuff. The stuff Lament is walking into would be old news to the changers, and that will get kind of confusing.

So, if you'll pardon the cheesy hack-writing, I'm going to put some delays into a few of the threads so that everyone is back on the same timeline. Mostly that means that the vampire threads will get a couple days of delay. Isabelle's ball will be delayed a couple days, Faelan will have nothing interesting happen, and Lament will have nothing interesting happen.

[Corrozus]

I will admit, I was slightly disappointed that there were no maurading hordes waiting for her. She could've totally kicked their butts.

[Goatkiller666]

Well, there ARE a group of actual lupines walking up to the city walls right now, as we speak.

[Corrozus]

Oh. Well. I guess that's true. I really HAVE been paying attention. Honest.

[Gedeminas]

Um, Storyteller?

It's been a while since I worked out what the armor actually was with you, and I may be remembering what they are wrongly, but these were supposed to be the same as the armor Gedeminas is wearing, which was made of unusually thick silk (equivalent of leather armor, or armor 1) with layers of metal thread over vital points (raising it to armor 2 overall, because those are the points often aimed for).

This would be in a PM, but since something contradicting what I thought I knew has actually been posted, not PM'd...

Also, are our retainers with us at the moment?

[Goatkiller666]

Ged, I purged all of my old PMs a while back, so chances are I've lost that PM. I seem to remember the topic of silk, though. According to the rules in the book, armors range from 1-4, with 4 being "knight's armor", that includes chainmail, gauntlets, helmet, etc. Armor 2 is kind of scrapped together pieces of this and that, sections are chain, some are leather, etc. So, the book seems to equate the level of protection AND the level of craftsmanship to the same scale. I see no reason that there couldn't be finely crafted stuff that was less protective than the armor 4 stuff, and intentionally crafted to be only armor 2, so as to not be as heavy / loud as Knight's armor.

I know that using silks in armor was common in asia, though I'm not sure what the timing of that works out to. I don't think that silk was brought into Europe until Marco Polo's trips to China in the 1400s, so it wouldn't be period appropriate for you to have them be made of silks. We can say a mix of fine leathers with chain over the important parts, and give it an armor rating of 2. Honestly, the specific material is really a role-playing thing, not a rules thing. Treat this as standard "armor 2" stuff, except that it's not all ratty and rusted. If you want to say that your Lithuanian holdings include some trade with the far east that gets you silks that you can then make into armors, it's not too much of a stretch. As long as we're sticking with the idea that this is still amazingly rare stuff, and pretty much only Gedeminas himself (or those of his company) can do repairs on them, the armor itself is allowed. I wouldn't expect that you have very many more pieces of the stuff in reserve, at this point.


Update on Me

So, I thought that we had the group presentation due this past Saturday, and then the 10pg design project due this next Friday. I forgot (it was on the syllabus, I just didn't make the connection) that there's ALSO a 15pg paper due, covering the stuff from the group presentation. So, I spent all day today churning out about half of that thing. The rest of my team gets to add their bits, though I hope that I covered everything else enough that they can just drop their sections in and we're good.

The rest of this week, I'll be taking the 8 page second draft I turned in a couple weeks ago, add a new section, polish it a bit, and turn it in as a 10pg thing. I really felt like I did a half-assed job on that one, but they gave me a freakin' perfect score on it. Thus denying me any kind of idea on how I need to structure this last version. But, whatever.

So anyway, I hope to be able to keep things going in-game this week, while I'm juggling those two things. After Saturday, classes are done until January 8th. Hopefully between now and then, we can cram a lot of power-gaming in all around, eh?

Other news

Many of you are in the Darkwood game, so you're aware that Olaf's player will be going on a hiatus for a little while. It's unsure exactly how long. I'll be NPC'ing him, based on a general set of instructions that he's given me.

I believe that everybody has gotten me information on gmail accounts, so that I can properly share out your character stats pages. I'll continue to post the weekly XP stuff in here (mostly as a reminder to myself that I need to give out XP in the first place), but then I'll go add it to each of your sheets. Hopefully, you're all set up where it notifies you of any edits, so you can confirm that. You should also be notified when I mark down blood / willpower / gnosis / rage expenditures. Once classes are done, one of my projects is to get the complete character sheet put into those same docs. It's only text, but those editable PDFs are turning out to be just a bit too limiting in some ways, so I'd really just like to have this one doc with all the relevant info in it.

Experience

Giovanni
Alina: 1xp
Gedeminas: 1xp
Olaf: 1xp
Sabine: 1xp
Seska: 1xp
Taduz: 1xp

Vienna
Casper: 1xp
Ekaterina: 1xp
Faelan: 1xp
Kaldrenzi: 1xp
Lament: 1xp
Lucretia: 1xp
Sasha: 1xp

[Menolly]

I believe that everybody has gotten me information on gmail accounts, so that I can properly share out your character stats pages. I'll continue to post the weekly XP stuff in here (mostly as a reminder to myself that I need to give out XP in the first place), but then I'll go add it to each of your sheets. Hopefully, you're all set up where it notifies you of any edits, so you can confirm that. You should also be notified when I mark down blood / willpower / gnosis / rage expenditures. Once classes are done, one of my projects is to get the complete character sheet put into those same docs. It's only text, but those editable PDFs are turning out to be just a bit too limiting in some ways, so I'd really just like to have this one doc with all the relevant info in it.

hmm, nope.
I'm not receiving any notifications of edits.

Do I need to set that up somehow? Or is that done at your end?

[Seska Karantanija]

I did not receive direct notification, which is fine since I don't want my e-mail spammed.

Going into my gdocs folder though shows the files as bolded, indicating they have been edited.

GK, can I request we get dates with the xp if you're going to line-item them? Having a bunch of "xp: 1" won't be very useful for tracking in the long-run.

[Menolly]

I did not receive direct notification, which is fine since I don't want my e-mail spammed.

Good point.

Going into my gdocs folder though shows the files as bolded, indicating they have been edited.

Yep, that I got.
I just don't tend to go in to my gdocs folder all that much.

GK, can I request we get dates with the xp if you're going to line-item them? Having a bunch of "xp: 1" won't be very useful for tracking in the long-run.

If it is not too much extra effort, I would like this as well.

I do like the listing of what XP has been used on when spent.
Thanks.

[Goatkiller666]

I did not receive direct notification, which is fine since I don't want my e-mail spammed.

Good point.

Yeah, it only sent notification when I first shared the doc, not with every update. My bad. I don't see a way for it to be notifying with every change.

Going into my gdocs folder though shows the files as bolded, indicating they have been edited.

Yep, that I got.
I just don't tend to go in to my gdocs folder all that much.

So, I don't suppose you'll need to go in there very often, except to check your balances. I'll go in whenever someone uses a power that burns blood / willpower / whatever. Or weekly to add xp.

That said, let me reiterate that it's on you, the players, to bring to my attention when your character has done something that would warrant gaining back any of these temporary stats. You should know your natures and demeanors for gaining willpower. You should know when you gain renown. Call those out to me in posts or PMs, and I'll account you back. Otherwise, you may stay low.

GK, can I request we get dates with the xp if you're going to line-item them? Having a bunch of "xp: 1" won't be very useful for tracking in the long-run.

If it is not too much extra effort, I would like this as well.

I do like the listing of what XP has been used on when spent.
Thanks.

The many many lines of "Seska: 1xp" were actually an artifact of how I calculated that in the first place. I just went through the OOC thread and copied all the XP posts, then sorted them by character. For the two characters I've already done full character stats into these sheets, I got rid of the single lines for XP earned. I kept the XP spent lines, though I'm not sure there's a lot of value there, either.

So, let me ask this: how much detail would you all like to see? Obviously, there will be all the current stats from your character sheets. Plus merits, flaws, itemized languages, brief blurbs about each backgrounds (names of allies, contacts, etc.) probably a list of the major items you have (horse, family manor, plot of land, etc.) and possibly other notes for my benefit. Do you want a week-by-week (with timestamp) breakdown on all the XP earned and spent?

[Seska Karantanija]

I don't need a specific breakdown. It was just a suggestion if you were going to make a line for every reward. If you're consolidating with the completed sheets, then that's fine.

All the notes you're thinking of putting in I already track in my own sheet as you've seen (I'm such a trend setter), so no complaints there. Maybe all this will cause me to make the ultimate gdoc editable character sheet.

[Menolly]

So, let me ask this: how much detail would you all like to see? Obviously, there will be all the current stats from your character sheets. Plus merits, flaws, itemized languages, brief blurbs about each backgrounds (names of allies, contacts, etc.) probably a list of the major items you have (horse, family manor, plot of land, etc.) and possibly other notes for my benefit. Do you want a week-by-week (with timestamp) breakdown on all the XP earned and spent?

For me, the more detail the better. I am finding I am terrible at keeping track of what I earn/spend and then remembering I have something I could call on when needed. But I don't want to make more work for you either. So, whatever you find works best for you.

[Goatkiller666]

It'll be geared towards having a compact list (so I can see as much as possible without having to scroll up or down) of all the different options you have that I need to consider. So you should hopefully be able to know what stuff you can call on. And your current XP totals will be listed at the top.

Do you really care that on Oct 12th, you got 2xp instead of 1xp, from an acting point? Or that you purchased thaumaturgy in November? Or you just want to know that you HAVE thaumaturgy?

[Menolly]

Do you really care that on Oct 12th, you got 2xp instead of 1xp, from an acting point?

Again for me, it helps to have either a date, or the reason why, it would be different from the regular weekly total gained. That way I could go back and review what I did and possibly learn to play even better.

Or that you purchased thaumaturgy in November? Or you just want to know that you HAVE thaumaturgy?

Just knowing should work, for me anyway.

[Gedeminas]

Ged, I purged all of my old PMs a while back, so chances are I've lost that PM. I seem to remember the topic of silk, though. According to the rules in the book, armors range from 1-4, with 4 being "knight's armor", that includes chainmail, gauntlets, helmet, etc. Armor 2 is kind of scrapped together pieces of this and that, sections are chain, some are leather, etc. So, the book seems to equate the level of protection AND the level of craftsmanship to the same scale. I see no reason that there couldn't be finely crafted stuff that was less protective than the armor 4 stuff, and intentionally crafted to be only armor 2, so as to not be as heavy / loud as Knight's armor.

I know that using silks in armor was common in asia, though I'm not sure what the timing of that works out to. I don't think that silk was brought into Europe until Marco Polo's trips to China in the 1400s, so it wouldn't be period appropriate for you to have them be made of silks. We can say a mix of fine leathers with chain over the important parts, and give it an armor rating of 2. Honestly, the specific material is really a role-playing thing, not a rules thing. Treat this as standard "armor 2" stuff, except that it's not all ratty and rusted. If you want to say that your Lithuanian holdings include some trade with the far east that gets you silks that you can then make into armors, it's not too much of a stretch. As long as we're sticking with the idea that this is still amazingly rare stuff, and pretty much only Gedeminas himself (or those of his company) can do repairs on them, the armor itself is allowed. I wouldn't expect that you have very many more pieces of the stuff in reserve, at this point.

Actually, the point was for it not to appear unusual. If that would be accomplished better with leather, then it's made of leather. The point was that it looked like ordinary clothes, with embroidery showing through where there was metal, to explain why that area felt different if someone nearby brushed against it.

[Goatkiller666]

Actually, the point was for it not to appear unusual. If that would be accomplished better with leather, then it's made of leather. The point was that it looked like ordinary clothes, with embroidery showing through where there was metal, to explain why that area felt different if someone nearby brushed against it.

Ah, okay. It can look like thick material, with fine cloth on the outside and sturdy leather / chains on the inside. It'll be necessarily stiff, but that can be made to look like an aesthetic choice, not as armor.

Seska, after this discussion, I would guess that this armor, while probably designed for a slim male would, in fact, completely cover the whole back / neck area. I imagine that it would have a high, stiff collar that even closed around the front of the throat.

If people are going to want to wear these long-term, it would probably be worth somebody (mostly Gedeminas) adjusting them to fit more properly. Especially fitting for women would need changes.

(For some reason, I'm having this flash-back to the first X-Men movie, when they all got their uniforms. They match.)

[Corrozus]

I think that having the character sheet in doc's is a good idea. Gives me a reason to actually use my gmail account occasionally. Personally I'm not that concerned with dates for things.

[Goatkiller666]

Well, both my papers are done. I have the final class tomorrow morning, and the quarter is all done. This weekend will see a big jump in me doing stuff, I hope. I'll get all the character sheets into google docs, and hopefully get Lucretia and Kaldrenzi caught up to the rest of the Vienna threads.

Sabine has some honeydews for me, but one of them involves writing some crap for Acropolis. So I guess I can't complain too much.