[The Quiet Year] A single point of light - Winter

GrimmyTOA

Where have we found ourselves?

@Kilnaga, @Neaden, For a long time, we were at war with the Jackals. Now, finally, we’ve driven them off, and we’re left with this: a year of relative peace. One quiet year, with which to build our community up and learn again how to work together. Come Winter, the Frost Shepherds will arrive and we might not survive the encounter. This is when the game will end. But we don’t know about that yet. What we know is that right now, in this moment, there is an opportunity to build something.

We start by creating a map. Where are we? Neaden had suggested an island archipelago. That sounds good to me. Once we've discussed the general lay of the land, we'll start drawing the map and then get down to specifics.

General Stuff:

It's important to remember that this game is as much about what isn't said as what is. Our statements, responses, and questions should be short and simple. Paint in broad strokes to allow for other people to fill in the detail later. We should also be aware of turn order. Talking out of turn can really hurt this game, apparently. People are supposed to be unable to weigh in whenever they want. People are supposed to feel like things are slipping ever so slightly out of their control. As @simonwolf said, it's "vital to the game's design that things just happen, and other people don't get a say about it."

Turn Order
Neaden
Iron Weasel
TRV
Grimmy

Erin The Red

If bradicus isn't up for it, I'll join. he expressed interest before I did.

GrimmyTOA

Good stuff. We will wait and see what Bradicus has to say, then.

Oh, incidentally for all four of us (whichever four that ends up being): I have never played this game before, so I'm bound to do a few things wrong. Hopefully you can be forgiving of my foibles. :P

Erin The Red

I think everyone here is pretty forgiving about these things. At least, they were when I ran my LNoE game.

BradicusMaximus

I would love to play. Thanks again trv for deferring to me

GrimmyTOA

Alright, so now that we have a full complement of citizens, let's finish talking about our home.

Bradicus and Kilnaga, are you okay with the archipelago idea?

BradicusMaximus

Seems like a pretty good place to start us off

Kilnaga

Island archipelago works.

GrimmyTOA

Great. Now we all take a turn describing a feature of our surroundings. It can be anything -- from "there's a big factory just west of our community" to "we're surrounded by ice floes" to "there's a sea monster that lives off the coast", to literally anything else. We describe the world, and in doing so we create it.

When you make a description, download this map (you'll notice that there is nothing on it right now) and add a drawing that can symbolize your addition. It... it doesn't have to by high art, you understand. We should try to keep things fairly zoomed in. Our community will take up ~40% of the map itself, with the rest of the space devoted to its surroundings.

I'll go first, and then everyone can take a turn in whatever order you'd like.

Our Island is pretty big, and has a volcano on it.



EDIT: Forgot to mention that you should feel free to erase, alter, amend, etc the coastline as you see fit. It's sort of a "Yes, and..." situation.

@kilnaga
@bradicusmaximus
@neaden

BradicusMaximus

This is awesome. Unfortunately, I'm not gonna be able to mess with this until I get off of work tonight. So, if theres some sort of turn order for this, I should probably be last.

GrimmyTOA

No worries. I was thinking that we could let the order that people make their contributions at this stage inform the turn order.

Kilnaga

I'll get around to my turn at some point tonight.

What's the little sword looking thing on the SW of the island?

GrimmyTOA

It's supposed to represent that we live on this island as opposed to any other ones we might draw, without taking up to much space. Feel free to draw over it.

Neaden

Excuse my horrible paint skills


There are several several ships that have run aground on the reefs that out community uses for supplies and materials.

GrimmyTOA

Cool, not bad paint skills at all. At first, though, lets try to leave the uses of our various additions alone. We'll come to them soon enough.

Kilnaga

The river, To'o'ak, runs from the base of the volcano and empties out into the sea on the eastern side of the island.

GrimmyTOA

Nice. That ought to come in handy.

BradicusMaximus

North of river To'o'ak lies The Forest of Whispers

GrimmyTOA

Alright, we have a pretty creepy island going on here, with the volcano and the forest and the shipwrecks and all.

For the next round, we each take a turn and name a resource that the community finds valuable. We don't put it on the map yet, because after we've all named our resources we determine which one is Abundant, and which three are Scarce. Each of these resources, whether plentiful or not, will begin to shape our story as we move forward. Resources can be physical stuff (fresh air, corn fields), or can be more of a condition. Keep in mind, though, that at this point we don't know whether we have little or lots of the resource in question.

I'll go first, and I choose Trust as a resource.

If you're the fourth person to go, in addition to naming a resource, go ahead and say which of the four resources you think we should have in abundance. We'll then all chip in on that, and proceed from there.

Kilnaga

Same turn order, or... ?

GrimmyTOA

As you like. Turn order will get important when we are in the game proper, but right now it isn't that big a deal. Better to keep things moving along than to worry about it.

Kilnaga

Hmm... since I made the river, let's go with Fresh Water.

Neaden

weapons.

GrimmyTOA

Awesome stuff. Once @BradicusMaximus comes up with a resource, we all decide which one of them will be abundant and which ones will be scarce. Then we draw those on the map.

BradicusMaximus

Everyone loves crabs

..Wait

GrimmyTOA

I assume you mean the saltwater delicacies. Right? RIGHT?

Anyway, we now move onto the next phase: deciding which of these resources is abundant. I'm inclined to say weapons, based on the idea that a heavily-armed community that's lacking in trust, water, and food might create some interesting situations. Thoughts?

There's no turn order to this part, but try to keep your arguments to a sentence or two and include a vote.

Once we've decided, we draw the resource (or lack thereof) that we suggested on the map and we're ready to play.

BradicusMaximus

I fully support an abundance of weapons. My AK has a revolver attached to it!

E: totally bolded the wrong word

Neaden

Paranoid hungry thirsty people with a lot of guns sounds good to me. Weapons.

Kilnaga

Well I say abundant water, just because lacking in trust and scarce weapons would lead to some brutal mistreatment by the few who do have them, and that sounds fun.

But it looks like weapons wins.

BradicusMaximus

So, drawing our chosen resource on the map comes next correct?

GrimmyTOA

I think you can take a contempt token if you want, @Kilnaga, but yes -- it looks like weapons win.

Yes, @BradicusMaximus. We draw our chosen resource on the map and give it a bit of flavour that people can use going forward.

Here's my contribution:

In a world like ours, any man who really trusts another has only himself to blame when things go bad.


(The picture is two people shaking hands, crossed out.)

BradicusMaximus

Ahhh, delicious crabs. They'd make for a wonderful commodity had the people of [island] not hunted these delicacies to the point of near extinction

(For clarification, its where the end of the river meets the ocean)

GrimmyTOA

Cool. Maybe try to come up with a bit of fluff about the lack of crabs there. Have we fished them out already? Are they plentiful but toxic for some reason? Guarded by rabid bears?

BradicusMaximus

Sorry. I'm still not sure what should be added and what shouldn't. Editing now

GrimmyTOA

No worries, I'm still figuring things out myself.

I think, as a general principle, that the idea is that our actions come along with a descriptive sentence that helps to shape the world we find ourselves in.

Neaden

A shipment of firearms was on one of the ships with in good condition and with plentiful ammunition.

GrimmyTOA

Just need @Kilnaga to chip in with a representation of lack of water and some fluff to explain it and we are off to the races.

Kilnaga

Clearly we have a lack of crabs for the same reason we have a lack of fresh water. The river, To'a'ak, is polluted with volcanic runoff.

GrimmyTOA

That is really excellent.Alright, I've randomized our names and come up with the following turn order.

@Neaden
BradicusMaximus
Kilnaga
Grimmy

Neaden, you are presented with the following:

The First Week of Spring
Someone new arrives. Who?
-or-
Two of the community’s younger members
get into a fight. What provoked them?

Choose one option and tell us what happened, and then take an action (hold a discussion on one of our map icons, start a project, or discover something new on the map).

When your done, if you'd be so kind as to @ Bradicus so he knows it's his turn, that would be great.

Neaden

At dawn two young men from the teenager break out in a loud fight after Jonathon, the older one accuses Samuel, the younger one of hoarding crabs in his hut. The fight turns brutal as both boys have knives, blood is spilled but luckily no one is killed or severely hurt.

For my action I will start a discussion on the Forest of Whispers, we are short food, we should burn down some of the forest to plant crops. What do you think @Bradicus

GrimmyTOA

(We can speak in any order in discussions, so I'll @Kilnaga too)

My contribution:
There is plenty of other space to farm on this island. Lets not start burning things yet.