Thoughts and feedback

[Aux-ash]

I thought I would share some of my thoughts on the world and the work you have done so far. I think it has great promise but it can improve as well.

First of all... if I am not mistaken 2,500 elves survived the invasion of harpies. Is this not a bit too few? It does not look good for the survival of their kind since the genepool will be tiny. My suggestion is to increase their population to 25,000 at the least. Preferably a lot more.

Secondly, I find the ogres a bit undeveloped. There is a lot about them that I find odd. You claim they are unintelligent, and yet they are a species that walks upright 2,1 m in length and survives (or used to at least) in a barren desert? Quite a feat of intelligence I say considering how sparce food is in a desert and how much they would need.
Big stupid roadside monsters are fantastic for random encounters and fairy tales, but make poor viable character races.

And finally, spectramancy is perhaps not the best word for light-magic considering it means colourmagic. Photomancy is the word you seek .

I mean no offense with this and I truly hope you do not take it as such. If I get any good ideas I will be sure to let you know

[Valalerin]

Elves are not my area, so I can't comment on that

Ogres are mine though, and I made them unintelligent because... They're stupid They survive thanks to hiding in the caves during the day and wandering around devouring nocturnal creatures during the night. Any desert animal can do that, they just happen to be really big desert animals.
And personally I think they'd be fun to roleplay, it's not often you roleplay something with the intellect of a toddler

And I called it Spectramancy as that is what it is called in other lore scenes, the site I lifted the magic names from called it Spectramancy so I did. Photomancy reminds me too much of photographs

Still, your input is duly noted and we're happy you're contributing in more ways than one

[Aux-ash]

Feb 15, 2008 15:35:42 GMT Valalerin said:

Ogres are mine though, and I made them unintelligent because... They're stupid They survive thanks to hiding in the caves during the day and wandering around devouring nocturnal creatures during the night. Any desert animal can do that, they just happen to be really big desert animals.
And personally I think they'd be fun to roleplay, it's not often you roleplay something with the intellect of a toddler

That is quite true, and some people enjoy it a lot. But the problem with the ogres right now is that the possible concepts of characters end there.
Having the ogre intellect norm higher will surely not be devastating to their entire idea. Allowing them to keep livestock will explain the food and clothing issue, allowing them to be able to create tools allows them them to build and create.
They can still retain a poor ability to speak human languages, but perhaps due to anatomical reasons?
A richer culture with rites, traditions and myths will definantely not make them any less interesting.
Their warlike culture allows great advancement in tactics and strategy. The warpaintings could be amazing feats of art.

And naturally, if they were in the habit of banishing the most unintelligent of their kind that would give them a good explanation why they are percieved as very unintelligent. Which makes the surpise of not being able to outwit a tribe of ogres all the more nasty. hehe

[engelbert]

The Elves are more or less my domain. I must say i had the idea of a single City for the Elves then realised that increasing the number would allow richer backgrounds for younger characters that were not alive during the taking of the old Kingdom.
Unfortunately i forgot to adjust the number of survivors to reflect this.
The total number of Elves will still remain quite low though. To say that they had the resources to save 25,000 of their kind is quite excessive. It must be remembered that they all had to sail at quite short notice. They were not expecting to have to rush away and most men were out at war rather thn ship building.

[Valalerin]

Hmm... You have swayed me. Right now I'm in the middle of a devilish game of Civ IV, but once I'm done I'll look into making the Ogres intelligent enough to hold a small livestock. It may need a new animal though... Or perhaps hyenas.

[zianorak]

Are we to have a place that we can create our characters descriptions and back stories? I think that we could really use it. It would best be placed here in the Out of Character threads, because we are, out of character telling you. It would also allow us, the other R.P.er's, to create a little history.

I just thought that I might suggest it. We have one on the A.O.W. forum, and a lot of people use it so that we can give a little history on our weapons (if magical or special), to describe ourselves, to create a childhood, or explain special events that occured in our life.

This, of course, would have to be viewed by the Admin, so that you are sure that we are not doing something that conflicts heavily with your organized history. I hate to give you extra work, but I thought that it might be helpful to us.

[engelbert]

Sounds like a wonderful idea to me. You never know, if the stories are good enough, we might ask to use it as part of the Archidet lore *wink*

[Aux-ash]

It might be an idea to add baseline information concerning technology, names and access to weapons and weapontraining in the Character audition example.

Like mentioning how rare and expensive swords are (they cost more than what a dozen farms can produce a single year if they sell everything and saves nothing for themselves). What it would take to be taught how to fight with a sword. That unarmed combat is the basics and fundaments of all armed combat. And similar information.
A few links to important topics such as "Shrenks culture" and "the other humans". And other things hadny to have easily accesable when you want to create characters.

[Valalerin]

I was going to write an article about sword style and teaching, but it quickly revealed to be an immensely long project that would not only be a job to write but also a job to read. I may write an article about the varying prices of swords though.
The detail will be staggering tough, with exact sword types being named and I think I'll throw in detail about their combat style too.

[Aux-ash]

I was more thinking along the lines of having one short text with things to keep in mind when making a character, such as that swords are expensive and whatnot. Not something with an overwhelming amount of text but simply a easy-to-read text about things to keep in mind. And then a link to topics with more information.

Oh. If you're doing a writeup on weaponry. Please cut Katanas, Wakisachis, Tantos, Naginatas, Ninjatos and other 17th century Japanese weaponry out of it. Those weapons have no place in a medieval setting, they would be horribly inefficient (inability to cut through European armour and can actually break when parrying a good euro-sword) and extremely out of place.

[Valalerin]

Eastern weaponry will be included, but it will be the most expensive and almost exclusively used by assassins. After all, an assassin is only good with a light, sharp weapon rather than a weighty European Broadsword.

But they will still be very expensive due to being made of steel (which requires a massive amount of pyromancers to create, not to mention many months of hard labour) and therefore there will probably only be one or two of them in existence, both prototypes for a new super-sword.

[Aux-ash]

Feb 19, 2008 14:15:08 GMT Valalerin said:

Eastern weaponry will be included, but it will be the most expensive and almost exclusively used by assassins. After all, an assassin is only good with a light, sharp weapon rather than a weighty European Broadsword.

But they will still be very expensive due to being made of steel (which requires a massive amount of pyromancers to create, not to mention many months of hard labour) and therefore there will probably only be one or two of them in existence, both prototypes for a new super-sword.

Well, weaponry for assassins is in general something of fiction. An assassins purpose is to kill someone without linking it to his contractors. In order to do so they must get close to their victim and then kill the victim in the method he was trained in (in general assassins had one method and stuck to that method). Some use poison, some use heavy falling objects and some use weapons. In the last category however they choose a weapon that exist in the proximity of their victim. Having a Katana (or similar) will just give you away.

And concerning steel: It is not very known but steel weaponry has existed in Europe since the early middle ages. At the time however it was only possible to create steel in the form of swords. The method did originally only exist in Spain and northern Africa but started to spread at some point.
Swords was created by folding iron rods over a charcoal-hearth, eventually forming a rough sword ready to be hammered out. During this process the iron absorbs carbon, slowly turning into steel.
This was the reason that Spanish and Moorish swords were so good. They were not made out of iron, but out of steel.
I'll see if I can find you a link on this... no guarantees though

[Valalerin]

With pyromancers they have no need for charcoal, only a fire nearby which they can convert into the sword therefore they never made steel swords unless they seriously wanted to. And since they can concentrate the heat they require much less heat, therefore need more to fuse carbon into the iron.

Pyromancers massively change the method of making swords.

Also, there is no 'giving away' in medieval times. A person has been stabbed through the heart, they have no methods to ascertain with what weapon he was killed with. Longsword, katana, nimcha, bolo... They all leave the same mark.

[engelbert]

An assassins purpose is to kill someone without linking it to his contractors. ...... Having a Katana (or similar) will just give you away.

I'd like to see anyone complain to King Shrenk if they discovered his prize assassin had killed someone. I really truly would.

Also... Were i to behead you with a broadsword, a short-sword or a katana... i'd love to see you point out which beheading was caused by which weapon.

[Aux-ash]

I believe you misunderstood me. A "special assassination weapon" will give the assassin away prematurely (unless it has the size of a stilleto or similar). It will be difficult to sneak through a score of bodyguards with a big special one-edged sword strapped to your back. And since assassins don't have protection of law... well... it usually doesn't end very well for them.

Oh, and I doubt Shrenk would bother with assassins on his subjects. It's much cheaper just to pay for a execution (he might send someone after Stronghelms nobles or Stronghelm himself though)