Traveller's Cafe 4: Brainstorming, Discussion, Tea, Advice

[G-Tech Corporation]

I've been doing some prep work for the RP on a Google Doc.
I might share it to see if I'm on the right track. No shame in asking for help.
Does that sound like a good idea?

Pretty logical. I would say use Word instead of Docs, since it is more stable - but you're already not using NS, which is wise.

[New yugoslavaia]

I've been doing some prep work for the RP on a Google Doc.
I might share it to see if I'm on the right track. No shame in asking for help.
Does that sound like a good idea?

Pretty logical. I would say use Word instead of Docs, since it is more stable - but you're already not using NS, which is wise.

I don't have office. Besides, doc's is free and I've already put quite a bit of work in.

[New yugoslavaia]

Here's the R-TYPE thing.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zlg ... sp=sharing

Advice would be nice.

[West Bromwich Holme]

I've been thinking about a new political RP on here.

Although there's many focused on things like Congress etc. here it's from the viewpoint of ordinary people; set in the U.S. that's similar to our own, but a campaign to expose the President as a fraud (which takes 1.5 yrs in-universe) and the ending is a foregone conclusion - they're out of office , but in 2019, it's set in August 2017.

I've had the idea of a female president, she's 39, eccentric, but also a bit corrupt, yet not quite Donald Trump-like; think more like Willy Wonka in female form. Planning on her either being Latino or some other -American, possibly Chinese-American, for the sake of something different.

The topic's serious, but I'm looking at it from a black comedy POV.

Anyone interested in political RPs want to guide me on how this could be done?

[New Antarcticania]

Been thinking of a character RP,

Basically, the Characters are the crew of a ship that was deployed to a abandoned planet, the planetwas aabandoned a few years ago, thanks to the only method of getting to the plannet not working, without warning.

Skip time to now, where Another method of travelling to the planet is Invented and a task force of Land, Sea, And air forces are sent to Reclaim The planet.

Stuff goes wrong, and The Crew's ship is the only survivor

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

Any takers?

Age of Aurora

“How a solar flare could send us back to the Stone Age”

Perhaps we ought to have listened more to the science fiction writers and popular scientists behind eye-catching titles, such as the one above. Some damage could have been avoided. Then again, they turned out to be as foretelling as they were needlessly alarmist.

The 2021 Great Blackout took us by surprise, for sure. As a species, as an economy, we were entirely unprepared for the total loss of electrical power. The damage was catastrophic. No accurate estimate exists, but current figures put the death toll in the tens of millions, mostly in the immediate aftermath of the Event. Hospitals losing power, planes falling from the sky, safety measures of chemical plants failing… Furthermore, the economy was reduced by several trillion dollars overnight. The stock exchanges were obliterated on the middle of trading day. Whole accounting firms were wiped out due to the loss of their electronic archives. The possibility for instant communication over wire disappeared. It was a complete and total disaster, for everyone on Earth, at once. Europe and Africa lost power in the evening, leading to a panicked night, and Asia woke up to a darkened world.

But we did not fall back to the Stone Age. Of course not, how could we? Power grids are a thing of the early 20th century. Electrical computing was invented in the 1930s and 1940s. Consumer electronics did not come around until the 60s. Mobile phones are an invention of the 80s and 90s. We lost technologies, but not technologies that people didn’t have before. Many people in the US still remember a time before their home was hooked up to the grid, and many, many more in the global south have known nothing else. To claim that the loss of electricity would put us back so far, while the majority of human history was not aided by electronics, was absurd and lacked historical awareness.

Our world is vastly different now than it was at the start of 2021. In many ways, the regression is obvious. There is no TV, no internet, no instant messaging and no personal computing. But humanity is not defined by what is lacks; it is defined by how it rises to the challenge. The word ‘computer’ has come to define not a machine, but a person. Large rooms of people with pens and paper working on complex arithmetic wherever it is needed, from the largest corporations to the smallest municipalities. Some governments have began building large Babish Machines, differential engines using physical processes for computing. Factories now run on large, extremely efficient steam engines instead of mass current. And some secrets of the Modern World, like futuristic polymers and precise machine tooling, were never truly lost. In many ways, our world is entirely unlike the one that preceded it, both more advanced and more backwards than what most of us remember.

The world of 2034 is different in other ways too. The age of MAD is now, and probably forever, over. Even if the nuclear weapons of the superpowers still operated, the missiles and bombers that were supposed to carry them to their targets have been grounded forever. Modern targeting systems and radio communications have failed, leaving entire armies without logistics. But while the trucks have been silenced, firearms still shoot, and artillery is as potent as it has ever been. Opportunistic powers have begun to take advantage of the situation, even more so now that the world economy has reinvented itself. Rare earth minerals became worthless overnight. Coal and oil lost in value as the power grids collapsed, although steam engines are bringing them back into popularity. Prime horses and iron are again prime resources. Arable land is at a premium. Africa has seen surprising cooperation in this field, but the Americas and Europe are ablaze with conflict, if not open warfare.

Politically, the world is at a crossroads too. The Great Blackout has worsened xenophobic fears about national resource distribution. The problem of ‘having too many mouths to feed’ is one that speaks to many poor, working class families, who have seen their standard of living shrink dramatically over the past 13 years. Young people who have known nothing but the New Order are becoming adults, and their way of looking at the world is totally estranged from their elders, still shackled to an older, almost utopian world of technology. Meanwhile, no longer opposed by the power of complex algorithms wrought by their bosses, labourers are rediscovering the power of their labour, and the power to withhold it. Human labour is in high demand, and union membership has risen, as has the number of aggressive unions. This, in turn, has led to a far right response, and the left-right divisions of the early 20th century are back in fashion once again.

The question is, where will the world go from here? What will it mean for humanity to have lost quick, automatic computing? The power of electricity? The Bomb? Will large nations still be able to maintain their cohesion? Will smaller nations be able to defend themselves? Will larger nations be able to project power far and wide, or has a new age of regionalism dawned? Those are all questions we will answer together in Age of Aurora.

Welcome to Age of Aurora, a Nation RP about a world suffering from a 13-year blackout. A solar storm has been continuously crippling power systems since 2021, forcing the world to reinvent itself many times over, in every imaginable field. This solar storm creates auroras from pole to pole, visible every night in every part of the planet. In this RP, you will take on the role of a nation, starting in 2034, whole guiding it through both international and national politics.

[Plzen]

Any takers?

I’m interested.

[Reverend Norv]

Any takers?

Age of Aurora

(Image)

“How a solar flare could send us back to the Stone Age”

Perhaps we ought to have listened more to the science fiction writers and popular scientists behind eye-catching titles, such as the one above. Some damage could have been avoided. Then again, they turned out to be as foretelling as they were needlessly alarmist.

The 2021 Great Blackout took us by surprise, for sure. As a species, as an economy, we were entirely unprepared for the total loss of electrical power. The damage was catastrophic. No accurate estimate exists, but current figures put the death toll in the tens of millions, mostly in the immediate aftermath of the Event. Hospitals losing power, planes falling from the sky, safety measures of chemical plants failing… Furthermore, the economy was reduced by several trillion dollars overnight. The stock exchanges were obliterated on the middle of trading day. Whole accounting firms were wiped out due to the loss of their electronic archives. The possibility for instant communication over wire disappeared. It was a complete and total disaster, for everyone on Earth, at once. Europe and Africa lost power in the evening, leading to a panicked night, and Asia woke up to a darkened world.

But we did not fall back to the Stone Age. Of course not, how could we? Power grids are a thing of the early 20th century. Electrical computing was invented in the 1930s and 1940s. Consumer electronics did not come around until the 60s. Mobile phones are an invention of the 80s and 90s. We lost technologies, but not technologies that people didn’t have before. Many people in the US still remember a time before their home was hooked up to the grid, and many, many more in the global south have known nothing else. To claim that the loss of electricity would put us back so far, while the majority of human history was not aided by electronics, was absurd and lacked historical awareness.

Our world is vastly different now than it was at the start of 2021. In many ways, the regression is obvious. There is no TV, no internet, no instant messaging and no personal computing. But humanity is not defined by what is lacks; it is defined by how it rises to the challenge. The word ‘computer’ has come to define not a machine, but a person. Large rooms of people with pens and paper working on complex arithmetic wherever it is needed, from the largest corporations to the smallest municipalities. Some governments have began building large Babish Machines, differential engines using physical processes for computing. Factories now run on large, extremely efficient steam engines instead of mass current. And some secrets of the Modern World, like futuristic polymers and precise machine tooling, were never truly lost. In many ways, our world is entirely unlike the one that preceded it, both more advanced and more backwards than what most of us remember.

The world of 2034 is different in other ways too. The age of MAD is now, and probably forever, over. Even if the nuclear weapons of the superpowers still operated, the missiles and bombers that were supposed to carry them to their targets have been grounded forever. Modern targeting systems and radio communications have failed, leaving entire armies without logistics. But while the trucks have been silenced, firearms still shoot, and artillery is as potent as it has ever been. Opportunistic powers have begun to take advantage of the situation, even more so now that the world economy has reinvented itself. Rare earth minerals became worthless overnight. Coal and oil lost in value as the power grids collapsed, although steam engines are bringing them back into popularity. Prime horses and iron are again prime resources. Arable land is at a premium. Africa has seen surprising cooperation in this field, but the Americas and Europe are ablaze with conflict, if not open warfare.

Politically, the world is at a crossroads too. The Great Blackout has worsened xenophobic fears about national resource distribution. The problem of ‘having too many mouths to feed’ is one that speaks to many poor, working class families, who have seen their standard of living shrink dramatically over the past 13 years. Young people who have known nothing but the New Order are becoming adults, and their way of looking at the world is totally estranged from their elders, still shackled to an older, almost utopian world of technology. Meanwhile, no longer opposed by the power of complex algorithms wrought by their bosses, labourers are rediscovering the power of their labour, and the power to withhold it. Human labour is in high demand, and union membership has risen, as has the number of aggressive unions. This, in turn, has led to a far right response, and the left-right divisions of the early 20th century are back in fashion once again.

The question is, where will the world go from here? What will it mean for humanity to have lost quick, automatic computing? The power of electricity? The Bomb? Will large nations still be able to maintain their cohesion? Will smaller nations be able to defend themselves? Will larger nations be able to project power far and wide, or has a new age of regionalism dawned? Those are all questions we will answer together in Age of Aurora.

Welcome to Age of Aurora, a Nation RP about a world suffering from a 13-year blackout. A solar storm has been continuously crippling power systems since 2021, forcing the world to reinvent itself many times over, in every imaginable field. This solar storm creates auroras from pole to pole, visible every night in every part of the planet. In this RP, you will take on the role of a nation, starting in 2034, whole guiding it through both international and national politics.

I'm on board, for sure.

[Romextly]

RP INTEREST AND FEEDBACK REQUEST

---

Please provide as much detail as possible.
RP's Overarching Concept: Basically a group of people get stuck in a extreme environment and have to try and work out or at least survive to leave the place and they have to avoid a group of mercenaries following them as they stumbled unto their base
Genre/s: Realist I guess
Character or Faction Based: Character
Detailed Description: A group of hikers were just going spend some time in their cabin in the Andes to relax. But soon, when they go for a trip, they find a base full of mercenaries. They manage to get away, but have prints. The Hikers then have to leave the andes on foot, in the bitter cols and running from mercenaries

Need Help With: Intrests and just help in developing the plot

Please leave this hashtag in place: #Mentorhelp

[Reverend Norv]

I recently picked up a good history of the Canton trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and it has sparked some inspiration for an RP. Let me know if you are interested.

This is an old-fashioned, rip-roaring adventure at sea in the style of G.A. Henry and his ilk. It follows an American armed merchantman in 1812, sailing from Connecticut with a crew of blackguards, ex-pirates, religious refugees, fortune-seekers, wide-eyed apprentices, former frontiersmen, and more from all over the world.

The story then follows the actual, historical route of the early U.S. trade with China: braving North Atlantic storms, stopping in remote ports of Brazil to pick up bananas and explore jungle villages, then trading for seal skins near the Antarctic and perhaps even attempting some whaling. Then around the Horn - always a risky voyage - and up the coast of Peru and Mexico, trying to trade or steal enough Spanish silver dollars to be able to buy a cargo in Canton: no doubt there will be a heist, swordfights aplenty, and entanglements with Mexican revolutionaries during the War of Independence. Then it's on to Oregon, to trade with the native for sea otter pelts and dodge the Royal Navy patrols, before sailing out across the vast Pacific to Hawaii and Fiji, where there is sandlewood to be harvested and cannibalistic natives to fight or flee and terrible windless days to survive. Finally, the ship would swing through Southeast Asia to pick up sea cucumber and other delicacies, dodging British and French spies among the teeming cities of Batavia and Ayutthaya, before finally figuring out a way to sneak into Canton under the very guns of the Royal Navy.

I'm shooting for a light-hearted, pulp-adventure sort of tone, with all the clichés of the period: stowaways, swordfights, passionate brief romance on shore, pirate attacks, hostile natives, grappling hooks, mistaken identity, uncharted islands, sea shanties, and so on and so forth. Any takers?

[Kassaran]

I like it, I love it, and I want all of it. Count me in if that means anything.

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

I recently picked up a good history of the Canton trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and it has sparked some inspiration for an RP. Let me know if you are interested.

This is an old-fashioned, rip-roaring adventure at sea in the style of G.A. Henry and his ilk. It follows an American armed merchantman in 1812, sailing from Connecticut with a crew of blackguards, ex-pirates, religious refugees, fortune-seekers, wide-eyed apprentices, former frontiersmen, and more from all over the world.

The story then follows the actual, historical route of the early U.S. trade with China: braving North Atlantic storms, stopping in remote ports of Brazil to pick up bananas and explore jungle villages, then trading for seal skins near the Antarctic and perhaps even attempting some whaling. Then around the Horn - always a risky voyage - and up the coast of Peru and Mexico, trying to trade or steal enough Spanish silver dollars to be able to buy a cargo in Canton: no doubt there will be a heist, swordfights aplenty, and entanglements with Mexican revolutionaries during the War of Independence. Then it's on to Oregon, to trade with the native for sea otter pelts and dodge the Royal Navy patrols, before sailing out across the vast Pacific to Hawaii and Fiji, where there is sandlewood to be harvested and cannibalistic natives to fight or flee and terrible windless days to survive. Finally, the ship would swing through Southeast Asia to pick up sea cucumber and other delicacies, dodging British and French spies among the teeming cities of Batavia and Ayutthaya, before finally figuring out a way to sneak into Canton under the very guns of the Royal Navy.

I'm shooting for a light-hearted, pulp-adventure sort of tone, with all the clichés of the period: stowaways, swordfights, passionate brief romance on shore, pirate attacks, hostile natives, grappling hooks, mistaken identity, uncharted islands, sea shanties, and so on and so forth. Any takers?

Away, Santiana! Along the Plains of Mexico

I have plenty of ideas

[Kassaran]

So, I've begun developing a story set in a DnD themed world, but decided I wanted to part from some of the traditional stereotypes of the races I'm using while also reinforcing themes they tend to embody. The general setting is a massive semi-subterranean civilization, wherein the four mortal races present are the Dwarf, Elf, Human, and Orc races, their sub-races being left unlisted, but still present. The surface is constantly shrouded in night due to a curse upon the land and the only way they've not been overrun by undead and creatures of the night is the massive outpouring of light from a magically erupting volcano called "The Undying Pyre of Civilization" or colloquially known as "The Pyre".

So, the four races have a historic civilization planned out behind them, that I want to have expressed in this world and was wondering if anyone could throw some ideas my way outside of what I'm already thinking. The idea is to put the races within comparable real world civilizations from the Classical Age, that otherwise would fit their theme, but not the traditional stereotype of their race.

Examples I have been debating are as follows:

1. Dwarves I see as pre-imperial Romans, with a senate made up of the patrician and plebian houses for governance. Their massive stoneworks such as aqueducts being present throughout the whole of the land and their people being seen as the unparalleled architects of the Pyre. They craft massive stone barges which ride the lava floes down and into the Darkness beyond, enchanting them with magic to enable the barges to move out a set distance on the floes, and then return after a time. This results in the dwarven legions that go to the outlands to recover artifacts being in fact among some of the most veteran fighters having such a viable and effective transport and sustainment system to their distant outposts. They're on relatively good terms with each of the other races, to include the Elves, but they still minimize their contact with said races and tend to stick to crafting their weapons and armor for the use of their race alone.

2. Elves would be as the Chinese Empire, but I don't really have too much written out here as I'm pitifully lacking in knowledge on the subject. I'd picture them being rigidly structured, both socially and culturally with not much upward movement outside of the caste to which they're born in. I'd probably include some of the Hindu caste structure behind the sub-races, with the High Elves being of the Brahmins, the Kshatriyas being Eladrin, Wood Elves being Vaishya, and Drow taking up the Kshudras. The Dalit would of course be any non-elves in their midst. While this would destabilize relations with the other races if it was allowed to pass outside their influence, the High Elves do an effective job at reigning in the spread of the lower castes and keeping them focused on fighting the Darkness. The most powerful magic users can often move upwards into higher castes if so inclined, but this is often cut short by strategic assassinations from the higher castes to maintain the order and maintain peace.

3. Humans are one of the races I legitimately have not thought out a culture behind. That's kind of the major issue I'm in, I think I'll rather develop them to be more of a series of nomadic people moving from place to place around the Pyre, and being the subject of abuse by the three other races. They take up a lot of room and resources and reproduce far too quickly causing many to fall into disease or starvation. They're the most common type of mortal that moves into the outlands and then gets brought back by raiding parties on the part of the Orcs or the Elves. The major thing the Humans have going for them is that they seem to be the only race that can effectively work the surface at farflung distances from the Pyre. While they lack darkvision, the Humans around the Pyre are highly mobile within their tribes. When a chiefdom arises from the uniting of several of these tribes, it is limited in scope to the influence of the Chief and their closest companions until their eventual death, whereupon the tribes inevitably fall to infighting and break apart.

4. Orcs will be Aztec and Japanese in their design, complete with ritual sacrifice to the Pyre to enable it to continually fight the Darkness. The Rites of Sacrifice would be seen as a means to restore honor or avoid shame and disgrace in falling to the Darkness akin to Hari-kiri. Slaves taken as war trophies from the Outlands would be sacrificed en masse atop great monuments designed to drop the bodies of the deceased into a pit of undead while the heart would be cast into the Volcano itself to strengthen its light. They also develop relatively little in the way of technology, while still being incredibly sophisticated linguists, artists, and scientists. Orcish academies are renowned for their extensive treatises and reproductions of ancient works and tapestries, rivalling even the great libraries of the Dwarves and the combine knowledge of the High Elves.

So, any thoughts on how I can change or adapt some of these cultures or races to better suit the ideas I have for them, and do they suitably change the formulae while still keeping each race uniquely identifiable from one another?

[Plzen]

3. Humans are one of the races I legitimately have not thought out a culture behind. That's kind of the major issue I'm in, I think I'll rather develop them to be more of a series of nomadic people moving from place to place around the Pyre, and being the subject of abuse by the three other races. They take up a lot of room and resources and reproduce far too quickly causing many to fall into disease or starvation. They're the most common type of mortal that moves into the outlands and then gets brought back by raiding parties on the part of the Orcs or the Elves. The major thing the Humans have going for them is that they seem to be the only race that can effectively work the surface at farflung distances from the Pyre. While they lack darkvision, the Humans around the Pyre are highly mobile within their tribes. When a chiefdom arises from the uniting of several of these tribes, it is limited in scope to the influence of the Chief and their closest companions until their eventual death, whereupon the tribes inevitably fall to infighting and break apart.

Historically, raiders from Scandinavia and Central Asia had an enormous influence in history despite the fact that the societies they came from were (comparatively) impoverished and thinly-populated, because they had a martial culture which dominated a landscape that traditional agrarian societies did poorly in (the seas and the steppes, respectively). They seem like an obvious model for your vision for the human race.

[New New Sriker]

Any takers?

Age of Aurora

(Image)

“How a solar flare could send us back to the Stone Age”

Perhaps we ought to have listened more to the science fiction writers and popular scientists behind eye-catching titles, such as the one above. Some damage could have been avoided. Then again, they turned out to be as foretelling as they were needlessly alarmist.

The 2021 Great Blackout took us by surprise, for sure. As a species, as an economy, we were entirely unprepared for the total loss of electrical power. The damage was catastrophic. No accurate estimate exists, but current figures put the death toll in the tens of millions, mostly in the immediate aftermath of the Event. Hospitals losing power, planes falling from the sky, safety measures of chemical plants failing… Furthermore, the economy was reduced by several trillion dollars overnight. The stock exchanges were obliterated on the middle of trading day. Whole accounting firms were wiped out due to the loss of their electronic archives. The possibility for instant communication over wire disappeared. It was a complete and total disaster, for everyone on Earth, at once. Europe and Africa lost power in the evening, leading to a panicked night, and Asia woke up to a darkened world.

But we did not fall back to the Stone Age. Of course not, how could we? Power grids are a thing of the early 20th century. Electrical computing was invented in the 1930s and 1940s. Consumer electronics did not come around until the 60s. Mobile phones are an invention of the 80s and 90s. We lost technologies, but not technologies that people didn’t have before. Many people in the US still remember a time before their home was hooked up to the grid, and many, many more in the global south have known nothing else. To claim that the loss of electricity would put us back so far, while the majority of human history was not aided by electronics, was absurd and lacked historical awareness.

Our world is vastly different now than it was at the start of 2021. In many ways, the regression is obvious. There is no TV, no internet, no instant messaging and no personal computing. But humanity is not defined by what is lacks; it is defined by how it rises to the challenge. The word ‘computer’ has come to define not a machine, but a person. Large rooms of people with pens and paper working on complex arithmetic wherever it is needed, from the largest corporations to the smallest municipalities. Some governments have began building large Babish Machines, differential engines using physical processes for computing. Factories now run on large, extremely efficient steam engines instead of mass current. And some secrets of the Modern World, like futuristic polymers and precise machine tooling, were never truly lost. In many ways, our world is entirely unlike the one that preceded it, both more advanced and more backwards than what most of us remember.

The world of 2034 is different in other ways too. The age of MAD is now, and probably forever, over. Even if the nuclear weapons of the superpowers still operated, the missiles and bombers that were supposed to carry them to their targets have been grounded forever. Modern targeting systems and radio communications have failed, leaving entire armies without logistics. But while the trucks have been silenced, firearms still shoot, and artillery is as potent as it has ever been. Opportunistic powers have begun to take advantage of the situation, even more so now that the world economy has reinvented itself. Rare earth minerals became worthless overnight. Coal and oil lost in value as the power grids collapsed, although steam engines are bringing them back into popularity. Prime horses and iron are again prime resources. Arable land is at a premium. Africa has seen surprising cooperation in this field, but the Americas and Europe are ablaze with conflict, if not open warfare.

Politically, the world is at a crossroads too. The Great Blackout has worsened xenophobic fears about national resource distribution. The problem of ‘having too many mouths to feed’ is one that speaks to many poor, working class families, who have seen their standard of living shrink dramatically over the past 13 years. Young people who have known nothing but the New Order are becoming adults, and their way of looking at the world is totally estranged from their elders, still shackled to an older, almost utopian world of technology. Meanwhile, no longer opposed by the power of complex algorithms wrought by their bosses, labourers are rediscovering the power of their labour, and the power to withhold it. Human labour is in high demand, and union membership has risen, as has the number of aggressive unions. This, in turn, has led to a far right response, and the left-right divisions of the early 20th century are back in fashion once again.

The question is, where will the world go from here? What will it mean for humanity to have lost quick, automatic computing? The power of electricity? The Bomb? Will large nations still be able to maintain their cohesion? Will smaller nations be able to defend themselves? Will larger nations be able to project power far and wide, or has a new age of regionalism dawned? Those are all questions we will answer together in Age of Aurora.

Welcome to Age of Aurora, a Nation RP about a world suffering from a 13-year blackout. A solar storm has been continuously crippling power systems since 2021, forcing the world to reinvent itself many times over, in every imaginable field. This solar storm creates auroras from pole to pole, visible every night in every part of the planet. In this RP, you will take on the role of a nation, starting in 2034, whole guiding it through both international and national politics.

Finally a good sounding Nation RP

[Barapam]

2. Elves would be as the Chinese Empire, but I don't really have too much written out here as I'm pitifully lacking in knowledge on the subject. I'd picture them being rigidly structured, both socially and culturally with not much upward movement outside of the caste to which they're born in. I'd probably include some of the Hindu caste structure behind the sub-races, with the High Elves being of the Brahmins, the Kshatriyas being Eladrin, Wood Elves being Vaishya, and Drow taking up the Kshudras. The Dalit would of course be any non-elves in their midst. While this would destabilize relations with the other races if it was allowed to pass outside their influence, the High Elves do an effective job at reigning in the spread of the lower castes and keeping them focused on fighting the Darkness. The most powerful magic users can often move upwards into higher castes if so inclined, but this is often cut short by strategic assassinations from the higher castes to maintain the order and maintain peace.

Ancient China actually did have some social movement since scholars, the mandarins, were appointed based on merits (even if some corruption of course still existed). Even peasant sons could become a mandarin if they passed the exam. It varied with the dynasty a bit of course, so it's not too different from how you describe social movement for those who study magic.

There's also the dynamic of how China sometimes was a hermit kingdom behind walls, and sometimes went exploring (Zheng He for example), which fits well with at least how Tolkien's elves are also divided on the subject.

Regarding warriors, that wasn't a high caste in China, unlike Japan. Peasants and scholars were considered more important. In the borderlands, defense was outsourced to "half barbarians" to protect from barbarians (for example Xi Xia, who had to face Genghis Khan before the Jin dynasty). Maybe dark elves as a border guards looked down upon by the high elves?

If you have time, check out "Ice Fantasy". It's a Chinese fantasy show, available on Netflix (at least in my country). While technically only referred to as immortals, the ice tribe in particular looks much like classic western elves. Maybe the fire tribe is a good inspiration too, given the volcano.

[Rudaslavia]

I recently picked up a good history of the Canton trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and it has sparked some inspiration for an RP. Let me know if you are interested.

This is an old-fashioned, rip-roaring adventure at sea in the style of G.A. Henry and his ilk. It follows an American armed merchantman in 1812, sailing from Connecticut with a crew of blackguards, ex-pirates, religious refugees, fortune-seekers, wide-eyed apprentices, former frontiersmen, and more from all over the world.

The story then follows the actual, historical route of the early U.S. trade with China: braving North Atlantic storms, stopping in remote ports of Brazil to pick up bananas and explore jungle villages, then trading for seal skins near the Antarctic and perhaps even attempting some whaling. Then around the Horn - always a risky voyage - and up the coast of Peru and Mexico, trying to trade or steal enough Spanish silver dollars to be able to buy a cargo in Canton: no doubt there will be a heist, swordfights aplenty, and entanglements with Mexican revolutionaries during the War of Independence. Then it's on to Oregon, to trade with the native for sea otter pelts and dodge the Royal Navy patrols, before sailing out across the vast Pacific to Hawaii and Fiji, where there is sandlewood to be harvested and cannibalistic natives to fight or flee and terrible windless days to survive. Finally, the ship would swing through Southeast Asia to pick up sea cucumber and other delicacies, dodging British and French spies among the teeming cities of Batavia and Ayutthaya, before finally figuring out a way to sneak into Canton under the very guns of the Royal Navy.

I'm shooting for a light-hearted, pulp-adventure sort of tone, with all the clichés of the period: stowaways, swordfights, passionate brief romance on shore, pirate attacks, hostile natives, grappling hooks, mistaken identity, uncharted islands, sea shanties, and so on and so forth. Any takers?

I would dive headfirst into this one. Sounds awesome.

[Ceystile]

I recently picked up a good history of the Canton trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and it has sparked some inspiration for an RP. Let me know if you are interested.

This is an old-fashioned, rip-roaring adventure at sea in the style of G.A. Henry and his ilk. It follows an American armed merchantman in 1812, sailing from Connecticut with a crew of blackguards, ex-pirates, religious refugees, fortune-seekers, wide-eyed apprentices, former frontiersmen, and more from all over the world.

The story then follows the actual, historical route of the early U.S. trade with China: braving North Atlantic storms, stopping in remote ports of Brazil to pick up bananas and explore jungle villages, then trading for seal skins near the Antarctic and perhaps even attempting some whaling. Then around the Horn - always a risky voyage - and up the coast of Peru and Mexico, trying to trade or steal enough Spanish silver dollars to be able to buy a cargo in Canton: no doubt there will be a heist, swordfights aplenty, and entanglements with Mexican revolutionaries during the War of Independence. Then it's on to Oregon, to trade with the native for sea otter pelts and dodge the Royal Navy patrols, before sailing out across the vast Pacific to Hawaii and Fiji, where there is sandlewood to be harvested and cannibalistic natives to fight or flee and terrible windless days to survive. Finally, the ship would swing through Southeast Asia to pick up sea cucumber and other delicacies, dodging British and French spies among the teeming cities of Batavia and Ayutthaya, before finally figuring out a way to sneak into Canton under the very guns of the Royal Navy.

I'm shooting for a light-hearted, pulp-adventure sort of tone, with all the clichés of the period: stowaways, swordfights, passionate brief romance on shore, pirate attacks, hostile natives, grappling hooks, mistaken identity, uncharted islands, sea shanties, and so on and so forth. Any takers?

This looks really good.

[The Imperial Warglorian Empire]

Hello, so I'm part of an RP that's gonna be open in a week or so, but we're having problems concerning how to manage discord and NS activity.

Y'know, the whole "if people stay on discord, the OOC gets no activity and the RP dies" but at the same time discord is just so much more convenient then NS when communicating.

Does anyone have any good advice on how to effectively manage and balance the two?

[Great Confederacy of Commonwealth States]

Hello, so I'm part of an RP that's gonna be open in a week or so, but we're having problems concerning how to manage discord and NS activity.

Y'know, the whole "if people stay on discord, the OOC gets no activity and the RP dies" but at the same time discord is just so much more convenient then NS when communicating.

Does anyone have any good advice on how to effectively manage and balance the two?

I’d say discord only creates the illusion of better communication for the few people online at the same time. It excludes a lot more people, but those are invisible on discord.

[Dayganistan]

Hello, so I'm part of an RP that's gonna be open in a week or so, but we're having problems concerning how to manage discord and NS activity.

Y'know, the whole "if people stay on discord, the OOC gets no activity and the RP dies" but at the same time discord is just so much more convenient then NS when communicating.

Does anyone have any good advice on how to effectively manage and balance the two?

Don't balance the two and just use an OOC thread. There's the no activity in the OOC issue, but also a more glaring one. NS is an international community, you're trying to juggle radically different time zones. Discord then turns into a group of people in similar time zones get to do all the planning, while others may be asleep or at work/school while this is happening due to time difference. And that can lead to people feeling excluded and quitting the RP. I've been in discords for NS where I'm in North America and a lot of the others are in Europe so thanks to time zone difference almost all the planning and worldbuilding happens while I'm asleep or at work which isn't exactly fair.

[Plzen]

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Seconded.

After certain unpleasant recent experiences I’ve basically decided that if an RP has a Discord link and it’s not Alternative Divergence, then I simply don’t want in, full stop.

[The Imperial Warglorian Empire]

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Thanks for the advice.

What do you people think of using only the OOC thread for communication, but having the discord as a sort of "lore archive" where we can post pre-established information that people can reference.

Because the number of times I've had to edit a huge massive lore app in NS, only to be unable to update it because "this image link is invalid" is infuriating.

[Zarkenis Ultima]

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Thanks for the advice.

What do you people think of using only the OOC thread for communication, but having the discord as a sort of "lore archive" where we can post pre-established information that people can reference.

Because the number of times I've had to edit a huge massive lore app in NS, only to be unable to update it because "this image link is invalid" is infuriating.

If you need something external to serve as an archive, perhaps it would be more beneficial for you to look into setting up a google doc to serve as a lore archive?

[Plzen]

What do you people think of using only the OOC thread for communication, but having the discord as a sort of "lore archive" where we can post pre-established information that people can reference.

If the information is something that the average participant in the roleplay will reasonably be expected to know in order to fully participate in the roleplay, it probably shouldn't be hosted somewhere that can't be accessed with just a NationStates account and an internet connection.

If you just want to share documents with your IC allies without everyone else listening in, sure, Discord is fine.