The Account of Adren the Bard (Discussion)

[Pine]

Given the volume of responses, I'm going to accelerate the pace of this stage. The next survey will be up for two days, and deals primarily with the setting in which our story takes place. I will finalize the data on Tuesday, 3/10.

Enjoy!

[Pine]

Oh wow, 22 responses already...feel free to discuss here if you like!

[Equinox]

Given the tough life that our dear protagonist has had, it is only appropriate that the protagonist's goal in life should be to eat the rich. Discuss.

[xofelf]

I mean obviously we're building the hero we all need and want, so of course he should eat the rich. Anything else is simply blasphemy.

[the worst]

is there another life goal worth pursuing?

[McMenno]

the hero should pursue various ranked choice voting systems in the places they visit

[Xtoxm]

Consume the bourgeoisie

[Felissan]

And when there are no rich people left to eat? Eat richer people. Then create people even wealthier, with the sole purpose of eating them. And once nothing more is possible, donate your body to a starving orphan for nutrition, and let the cycle begin anew.

[Aristophanes]

If he is destined to eat the rich I suppose a famine/low crop yield would make sense, especially as a farmer

[Jingle]

I am offended that Pine didn't consider "Abandoned by wolves" a valid choice to consider for the character's background. It would be the ultimate pull yourself up by your bootstraps story.

In other news, I'm interested in where on the spectrum of twitch plays to a single human being plays ms will fall. I expect far closer to the latter, but this community does have the capacity to be surprising.

[Cephrir]

It helps that none of the survey options are "actively hamper the game from being played"

[Pine]

Raised by wolves was regarded as a serious suggestion, but it’s a bit cliche and not really a plausible scenario. If you’d said raised by a pack of werewolves, or Awakened dire wombats...we’d have had a conversation.

[PenguinPower]

Dire wombats should definitely have been an option. I feel cheated.

[Pine]

Tell you what, I’ll work them into the story. Maybe even a recurring motif

[PenguinPower]

Redeemed.

[Pine]

Customer satisfaction is our highest priority here at Pineco

[Jingle]

Raised by wolves was regarded as a serious suggestion, but it’s a bit cliche and not really a plausible scenario. If you’d said raised by a pack of werewolves, or Awakened dire wombats...we’d have had a conversation.

The wolves didn't raise him. He was found by a pack of wolves, but the wolves were just as shitty at parenting as his actual parents and also abandoned him.

I concur with Penguin. This promise of future dire wombats has earned my support in whatever local election you're running for. Hopefully you follow through on your campaign promises.

[xofelf]

Raised by wolves was regarded as a serious suggestion, but it’s a bit cliche and not really a plausible scenario. If you’d said raised by a pack of werewolves, or Awakened dire wombats...we’d have had a conversation.

The wolves didn't raise him. He was found by a pack of wolves, but the wolves were just as shitty at parenting as his actual parents and also abandoned him.

SEE THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT TOO. It says abandoned by wolves, not raised by them. And tbh, that's been making me giggle as a concept. "Dude, you suck so bad even the wolves didn't want you."

[animorpherv1]

Any story that involves wolves has my attention.

[the worst]

Dire wombats should definitely have been an option. I feel cheated.

Can I please proxy all of my opinions about everything to PenguinPower?

[Iconeum]

more magics

[Pine]

Okay, results!

We have several decisive choices today. You, the audience, overwhelmingly voted for unexplained disappearances in the colony of a large empire, though honorable mentions go to the large empire itself and conflict/war. It may very well be that the protagonist travels to the homeland at some point, and once the disappearances are explained, war may very well result.

The magic/technology paradigm was less clear. A clear plurality decided that magic and technology have developed independently, but there was damn near a three-way tie between magic as a rare, uncommon, or common force. The more extreme options were therefore discarded, and I've exercised my discretion to split the difference. Magic is uncommon, but not strange. Most practitioners have limited power. A good analogy would be physicians - there are enough of them in the population that when you find out someone has an MD, it's impressive but not strange. At the same time, most practitioners are of the everyday, local variety. Just as world-class diagnosticians, surgeons, or specialists are rare, so too are individuals with significant sorcerous power.

Lastly, the technological level was a tossup.



As you can see, responses were all over the map. A plurality did select High Medieval, but the two industrial options combined beat out the medieval options. Given that High Medieval is kind of the 'default' for this sort of story, I'm going to conduct a runoff. All options except High Medieval and Late Pre-industrial (circa 1700 CE) will be set aside, and "Other" will not be an option. Special mention goes to the Dark Ages suggestion, as I'm fascinated with that period of history. However, I'm planning a D&D campaign set in a dark age, so I'm not interested in telling this story in one.

[Pine]

The bulk of responses are coming within the first few hours, nearly all within the first day. For the duration of this design phase, we'll step this up to a

roughly

daily schedule.

Setting 2.0

[Aristophanes]

Done!

Got a little carried away tho, apologies in advance

[PenguinPower]

As long as you got carried away in the sense that the colony is located in "a land full of dire wombats" and is about as developed as "a colony full of dire wombats" with a relationship with its homeland "similar to that of a startled dire wombat and a human" and Colonial leadership of "a Supreme Dire Wombat Overlord" which was founded to "provide a consistent source of dire wombats" then it's okay because we're on the same page.