Planning for Book 2: Chapter 1

[Doomy]

According to a timeline I just looked at (Avast thinks the site is infected so I won't link it) 11 years passed, which puts Vonotar in the Daziarn for 7 years as he made a one-way trip.

I don't know of anything in the books to support or refute that though.

I'll take a look in the book on PA and see if any dates are mentioned for the Villains of Sommerlund.

EDIT: Nope, absolutely nothing.

EDIT 2: I'm looking at the Let's Play run through of The Masters of Darkness on RPGNet. The author has an interesting notion that Rimoah's Kai-sent vision that Lone Wolf lives may correspond with LW's encounter with the god - but from Rimoah's perception this happened three months previously, which is less than a day from LW's perspective.

[Beowuuf]

If the time delay is possible from the journey not the actual passage of time in the Daziarn, then you could argue the stable shadowgate under Toran is perhaps the one that adds the great time delay to the jounrey, not the one in the Darklands, so both LW and Vonotar suffered their 8 years from that one

[Doomy]

So, basically Evil Tiny Bird can cover whatever timescale he damn well feels like and justify it later.

[Beowuuf]

i reckon

[Doomy]

I probably should take advantage of this WW reboot to participate in some manner, but it looks quite time-consuming. Your posts are all so LONG!

[Beowuuf]

They don't have to be, infact I'm sure back in the day that used to be inconsiderate!

[Doomy]

From reading this thread it seems that a number of people established characters they could carry into the WW from the tournaments.

I kinda feel I need someone to come up with a "hook" I can grab on to to insert myself into the ongoing narrative, maybe something along those lines.

Perhaps we could look into fusing the WW with AS' game in some manner?

[Beowuuf]

Yeah, not sure about that idea, as the tournaments tend to go by pretty fast compared to the West Watch. In the past the WW has refered to stuff in tournaments, and usually it's all 'huh, why' What happened? if you read later without the tournament as a reference.

You can certainly obliquely refer to it, but I'd be vague, since you don't know what will happen in the game, and so it's difficult to balance that in the WW story.

I'm not sure how everyone else sees the narrative, I always thought the AS games are in the future once Beo had got to the MKC. The knight/dwarf tournament that you missed would have only just happened/been happening, even thought that was two and a half years ago now!

Similarly, technically Zipp's last fighting tournament was supposed to be happening while everyone was around eshnar, except that part wasnt' resolved and the tournament didn't finish.

The hook would certainly be the fact that (sadly now NPCs) Al's character as the ambassador to sommerlund, and Zundar as the diplomat to the Knights' Council are both there. Whatever reason you think your character would be part of the delegation to the meeting, that means he would know of the plot.

Plus it means you can easily meet Simey or Beowuuf

[Doomy]

Plot? What plot?
For what it's worth I PMed Al on the RPG forums. but I can't say for sure he'll respond. He's a busy man.

[Simey]

Do it, Doomy, do it! Join us!

Posts do not have to be long, they really don't - as Beo says, they didn't use to be. And if there's a bunch of us working together, it's likely that each post will contain a lot less action - at the moment, writing sort of by ourselves, we tend to do long posts because there're no other PC's actions to worry about. The more characters are around the more divided up between us the story is likely to be.

I certainly want to try and write shorter posts, 'cause I do get put off finishing things when I know I've got a long way to go. If I could sit down and know that I'm only going to write from A to B, instead of from A, via B, C, D & E to F, I'd post more regularly, and probably not find it such hard work!

And, of course, there's no expected post rate. It's nice when people post regularly, obviously, but if you're too busy for a little while, you can just time jump a bit when you can post again, or do whatever you like really, so the pressure is minimal to non-existent.

One other option regarding how the WW relates to the tournaments is to say not at all. I'm probably just lazy, but that's the option I always took. And the Simey that took part in the tournaments was an even more arrogant, even more inept and desperately stupid version, so not the same character as I use in the West Watch. I suspect Beo's above ideas are more suitable, but that's another way of thinking about it just in case.

On Daziarn time, this is very non-canon (taken from the Legends really) but if you imagine that time doesn't go in a straight line - more weaves around like a messy bit of string, so two years in the future could be closer to now than three months in the future because somewhere up ahead the time thread did a hair-pin turn and headed back alongside where it came from - and imagine that Shadow Gates are rather imprecise portals from one plane to another, then someone plunging through a Shadow Gate who might land now, could be only a few time-metres off that course and land three years into the future or six months in the past.

All that does, of course, is justify in a slightly fancy way the fact that - as was the above conclusion - you can end up whenever you like! ;D

[Doomy]

Aye, I'm up for it. Especially considering since the WW has recently become a major focus for this forum in a way it hasn't been in the last couple of years. I feel I ought to get involved considering the time I've put into this place.
It's just difficult to see an entry point as it's been going on for so long with a frankly obscene amount of back-story of which I am entirely ignorant. Did the whole thing really stem from Black Cat buying a boat?

[Simey]

Jan 15, 2010 17:42:23 GMT -5 Doomy said:

It's just difficult to see an entry point as it's been going on for so long with a frankly obscene amount of back-story of which I am entirely ignorant. Did the whole thing really stem from Black Cat buying a boat?

;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

Oh, you don't know how much that just made me laugh!! ;D

Righty, part of the point of this 'ere planning what is going on right 'ere in this thread is to make something of a fresh start without divorcing the ongoing WW from anything that's gone before. I reckon that means that if you've got time to go back and have a look at some of the WW past, great! But it is entirely unnecessary to do that in order to join in what appears is going to be Book 2.

The Story So Far.... that Beo posited further up this thread, and which will, I think, start the new Book, tells you very succinctly anything you might actually need, but - as I eventually worked out before I joined in - the best thing is to just go for it. It's hugely unlikely that you'll write anything that wildly contradicts something that's gone before, and if you do - and someone actually remembers enough to notice it - it most likely won't matter (and there's always the 'Modify' button just in case).

So concern yeself not with the past too much. Get a vague orientation of where we are now - Xog has apparently returned in Eshnar, and the Magnamund Knights' Council and various linked parties is putting together a scouting party to go and see if it's true - and jump on in!

[Doomy]

So I don't need to concern myself with whichever of the fifteen Zipps may or may not exist at any given time?
Or what a Xog is or whether it's best served with white wine or red?
And basically all we need is a "Chief O'Brien" scenario wherein a previously anonymous character takes centre stage in the spinoff?

That might work.

[Simey]

A Xog is a Darklord. One of the, er, somewhat less well known ones.

I think there have only been two Zipps - though I'm not sure myself - but I think they're both dead now, so no need for concern!

Chief O'Brien....rings a bell....is that like Frasier from Cheers going on to front an even more succesful sitcom?

Seriously, don't worry about things past. My memory isn't great, but Zipp was writing back at the beginning and Beo seems somehow to know everything, so in the unlikely event that the past is particularly relevant, there'll be someone who knows. And if there isn't then you can get away with anything!

[Doomy]

Transporter Chief Miles O'Brien went from having a few lines in Star Trek: The Next Generation to becoming one of the core cast in all seven seasons of DS9. Needless to say, he was never promoted, even when he was doing the "Scottie" thing and basically running the whole engineering department.

EDIT: The actor, Colm Meaney, was also Jimmy's Elvis-worshipping dad in The Commitments and also appeared alongside John Cusack in Con Air.