Seeking Some Wind in the Sails . . .

[Bluefae]

     . . . 'cause the last two character deaths have left me somewhat deflated.  I can recognize when I need a break from an unsuccessful character concept, and that's looking like now! 

     So . . . pitch something my way, especially if you're at a cross-roads yourself; I'm pretty much open at this point. 

Fair warning:
- I thrive on the relationships that develop between our imaginary critters.
- I also enjoy the travel/adventure aspect of the game, too, but am fairly code-stupid.  I take direction well, but if you want me in an "action role" expect to provide mentoring, and for there to be some learning curve involved.
- Love playing a "support" character (cooks, healers, etc.), but can act as a leader-type in a pinch.

     It's just too awful (painful) to see the PC's I was gaming with running around, hence the asking for something completely different. 

     PM me for specifics if ya need them on either my end or yours.  Thanks!

[jstorrie]

Have you considered playing some kind of artisan, like a working-for-Salarri or Kadius-but-not-a-family-member crafter? You could take a subguild like physician if you wanted to really be supportive, and PC hunters love being able to work with PC crafters. I bet even clans that you wouldn't associate with merchants, like the Byn or the militia, would be into sponsoring a talented healer or weaponcrafter or the like.

[Bogre]

That's a very good suggestion by jstorrie.

[bardess]

I think everyone, though perhaps not, loves a really well played physician healer char.  A well-played healer is probably my favorite non-highborn type of char.  And you always need them!  You don't have to directly join up with a clan, either, well-- you don't in the North.  You'd probably get patronage but still be free to do whatever... the last well-played healer I met was one of my favorite chars, why don't you give it a try?

[Bushranger]

How about a pirate! One leg, patch on the eye, vestric on the shoulder sailing your silt skimmer looking for booty buried in the Silt Sea and raiding in land with your band of scurvy scallywags? A pirate silt skimmer crew is always something I wish I could be a part of

[Bluefae]

Thanks for all the replies and PM's - there's some life in the old girl, yet.   

[My 2 sids]

Seems to be an influx of indy crafters and hunters in Tuluk lately.

[Maybe42or54]

You could play a D-elf. They have to party like it's 1999. All their players know that they are the last of the race... even if IC they don't know it yet.

[Troicha]

You could play a D-elf. They have to party like it's 1999. All their players know that they are the last of the race... even if IC they don't know it yet.

Oh, fuck, I hadn't been actively remembering that until just now. Thanks a lot. Geez, now I'm depressed.

[Throttle]

Play an artist in Tuluk. And I don't mean a bard.

[brytta.leofa]

You could play a D-elf. They have to party like it's 1999. All their players know that they are the last of the race... even if IC they don't know it yet.

Surely we could have something like them in 2.Arm?  Obviously we've got to legitimately and diligently excise the Dark Sun IP, but perhaps there's some compromise...a tall, immensely desert-hardy, psionic-impaired, human-alloyed, roundear descendant that we don't call an "elf," but is, in our hearts, their tribal successor?

Staff plz halp!

[X-D]

The same applies to pretty much any race but humans.

[psionic fungus]

To be honest...  Elf, dwarf, and halfling aren't DarkSun IP.  The way they are portrayed might be, but this could easily be altered...

I do have some serious reservations about having a bunch of races that are unique to Zalanthas... Back in my more active mudding days, I was always very turned off by a mud that had all these weird names to learn, and strange races that I just couldn't really get a firm grasp on.  Having an race called elf that is similar to a standard fantasy elf (so people have at least a similar mental image) and then altered to suit the setting is far more preferable, IMO. I think that 'Avian' would bring in more players than 'Kentu' (or whatever the equivalent is), but am prepared for otherwise...

I have the feeling we're going to be seeing a pretty unique and alien race list.

[Throttle]

I totally agree that having a race list consisting of trapu'quiaes and wupudi-zapadingos is pretty annoying. One of the first things to turn me away from a h&s mud (back when I played those) was if it had twenty different races with only a few of them recognizable. I doubt it'll ever be that bad on Armageddon, but ever since race discussion for Reborn started, I have been apprehensive at best. At the same time I don't think it would be quite right to keep the current races and just totally change everything about them besides their names, I think that would just be weird. Personally, I would be perfectly happy with four different variants of humans who are culturally as different as Allanakis and Arabetis are now, but still ultimately human, and then one or two races that are humanoid but slightly different.

Edit: Woah, I was only looking at PF's reply and totally missed which thread this was. Sorry for the completely off-topic post.

[psionic fungus]

Apparently I made the same mistake...

Achievable goals.  That's the only advice I have. Don't set your sights too high, and don't expect plots to come along...

Set achievable goals and work towards them. Incorporate other players into your play as much as possible but don't rely on them.  I find that even little mundane successes help keep me interested in playing day in and day out. Having a daily or weekly goal makes logging on infinitely more interesting than logging on to wander from tavern to tavern trying to find equally bored PCs to interact with.

Been there, done that, no thanks. 

[Maybe42or54]

I really would hate it if I couldn't play an elf in the next game. Seriously. How could the second most populace race just get completely and utterly wiped out? Our elves are just dark elves, but we don't call them dark. So.. THey aren't darksun. Right?

I know for sure the Allanak could use some more bodies for the up coming HRPT that I'm sensing.

[Troicha]

...maybe we'll have elves, but they'll be changed enough from the Dark Sun idea to be viable?

I hope?

[Adiadochokinesis]

This is not the thread you are looking for.

http://www.zalanthas.org/gdb/index.php/topic,28994.0.html

That is the thread you are looking for.

Now move along.

[Angela Christine]

I really would hate it if I couldn't play an elf in the next game. Seriously. How could the second most populace race just get completely and utterly wiped out?

Easy peasy.  Cataclysmic events Wipe out large portions of the population.  Survivors band together (or subjugate each other) to defend resources.  Together the Benjari and the Blackwing are stronger than either of them is alone.    The groups that fare best in the disordered environment are flexible groups containing several races rather than just one.   Yet despite their best efforts, populations continue to dwindle.  The pool of available mates shrinks.   The halflings, mantis and gith do not play well with others, so they are isolated and disappear first.  In many mixed-race settlements, the half-giants and dwarfs are very small populations, and since they tend to be used as shock troops their populations quickly dwindle, in no time at all they no longer have viable breeding populations and they too die out.  In some groups there are many humans and few elves, or vice versa, and with the decline in available mates mating across race lines doesn't seem so distasteful.  Elves and humans can reproduce together, and produce fertile offspring.  Even a half-elf is a better mate than no mate at all.  Within a few generations, most people have mixed ancestry.  Particular individuals may look more humanish or more elvanish, but in fact everyone has both elven and human ancestors.


There are no elves.  There are no humans.  Every one left is a half-elf.



So why do they look mostly human?  Because for the most part they are 70-75% human.  There were more humans to begin with.  And elven desert tribes seem to be more xenophobic, less likely to embrace outsiders or half-blood offspring.  One huge point of pride for desert elves is their running ability, and they can't use that very well in mixed-race groups.  Even if the non-elves in your group are riding, you pretty much have to slow down because even a mount will run out of energy quickly if you force it to move at a dead run.  Elves, particularly desert elves, are more likely to be stubbornly try to keep their tribe pure, and withdraw further from outsiders when threatened -- much like the mantis, gith and halflings -- and like the other isolationist races they tend to die out entirely when conditions change too quickly.  They simply are not as flexible as mixed race groups.  The elves whose genes survived were mostly city elves.


Many generations down the line, people don't realize that elves and humans were ever considered separate species.  Even such scholars, historians and archaeologist types that exist assume that elves and humans were simply two large tribal/ethnic groups that eventually merged. 




Now you may be asking yourself why I assume that city folk are more likely to survive than tribal folk?  I'm not, not entirely anyway.  More than 90% of the population of the known world lives in a handful of cities and towns.  When the governments of Tuluk and Allanak fall, probably taking access to most of the water supply with them, I would expect at least half of the population of those cities to die in short order.  Those cities, even Tuluk, simply can not meet the basic needs of their populations without a huge infrastructure and a huge military to defend it all.  Even before the killing famines start, some clever people with moderate survival skills will abandon the city to take their chances.   As conditions steadily grow worse, people will pour out of the cities.  Most of them will die.  But before they die, they will strip the land like locusts.  Every plant, every animal, anything that looks remotely edible and can be caught will be killed and eaten.  The tribal people may have more skill in the wilderness and be able to easily avoid the ravening hoards themselves, but they can't protect the game and wild plants that they rely on.  Most of them can't even speak the same language as the crazed man-beasts that are recklessly killing everything in sight.  Hunting and gathering fails as staring hoards destroy far more than they eat, horticulture becomes almost impossible, and the only way to protect domesticated herds to to take them into ever-more remote and inhospitable places.  Even if your hunters can kill the invaders by the dozen, there thousands more where they came from.  Eventually they will be over-run.   

Within the first year or two the locust-people will kill everything many leagues of the cities, nearly everything in the known world, and then most of them will die.  While most of the city people will die in the first year or two, they will easily take at least half of the tribal people with them; more among those tribes that try to fight, perhaps fewer among those tribes that opt to run and hide (and have somewhere to go).  The land will not recover.  Many species of game will have been hunted to the point of extinction, and even many edible wild plants will not reappear in places were they have traditionally grown as the locusts ate everything, even the seeds of the wild grasses.  The barren desert will spread.  While the vast majority of city people have perished, many of the ones that are left are Mad Max style savages.  They survived by taking food out of the mouths of the weak, and they are still hungry.  They don't understand the cycles of the seasons or the balance of nature, they are brutal scavengers of the lowest order.  They have no care for the future, many abandoned their own children to survive. 

The tribes with the best chance of survival will be ones that adopt an army.  There will be units of Militia, Legionnaires, the 'Byn, and various House para-military organizations that survive the initial catastrophe.  They may not know what roots are edible or how to build a shelter, but they do know how to kill people, and that is important.  The remnants of a tribe combined with the remnants of an army will have the flexibility to deal with the violent, ever-changing environment they find themselves in.  The tribals will teach the army how to survive without a city, and the army will both directly help defend the tribe and also pass on the theory of warfare and large scale maneuvers to people that have mostly used their weapons for hunting.  Hungry hungry half-giants are a burden, but you'd still rather have them on your side than against you.


Oh wow, I'm really getting off topic.   Anyway, I think the elves will merge into the human population, making their descendants technically half-elves.

[Adiadochokinesis]

Amazing as always, AC.

[Goldberry]

That was truly an awesome account.  Kudos AC.