TVC II OOC Restarting the TVC II - A Suggestion

@Harland

This could also work, and would hasten things along (by skipping the wait for RPers who were possibly inactive) but if one RPer had their character address another, and then the time limit ran out, the conversation might be left hanging. I suppose it could be finished in a flashback, of course. It might stall the plot progression, however. This is an interesting and viable alternative, though.

They could do this, but I don't see chaos launching two surprise assaults and completely failing to assassinate the council. It would make it believable (in terms of lore) to kill some of the characters in the band off, and Krieger's ones are ideal targets.

I absolutely agree with you on characters surviving on their own merit (perhaps I did not make this clear), but if players do not post before the time/post limit is up (they may not have the time to do so, and when I said they might not want to, I was referring to players with temporarily hectic schedules who did not want to hold up the implementation of the reboot), and want their characters to survive regardless, DoN should be allowed (so that waiting for inactive players does not become too lengthy a process - some players may have left the RP entirely without announcing that they have done so) to post actions for the characters of RPers who have not responded by then. E.g. "Dozy the Inactive leapt aside as the blade came for his throat and jumped through the exit portal."

I think that aid from the Lahmians in warning the characters would justify the survival of most of the council -- it's not as if the chaos forces, which include people who have experience of the skills of a council containing several powerful vampires, would send out assassins against the council that were easy to notice and defend against. However, if the council were warned, they could defend themselves and escape.

Regarding the fortress, the council were hoping to enter it anyway (for an audience with Neferata) and it would be the most secure place to kill one's enemies in, so I don't see why chaos wouldn't lead the council into the Silver Pinnacle before launching the assassination attempt. In fact, that would be the best place to do so by far. They could lead them into a room of their choice (where no doubt assassins who have prepared to attack the council in that room are waiting) and, after persuading the council members to settle down, get the assassins to attack the council.

It gives spiney and Shar a viable reason for having their characters join the council when Neferata's alliance is still unclear. Those two would naturally run to their mistress (being faithful) unless they were in such a situation as the one I described in my previous post in this thread.

As for Neferata, perhaps her alliance could be left unclear whilst still allowing the two characters of spiney and Shar to join the council in the way I've described earlier. It could be said that she relocated from the pinnacle hurriedly, leaving some of her servants behind, who were subjugated by chaos (or adopted into its ranks, if Neferata joined forces with chaos). They didn't like serving chaos, and did not know of Neferata's allegiance, and so waited for an opportunity to leave the pinnacle without being overpowered. This opportunity could come in the council members at the pinnacle.

 

This I entirely agree with, I was more contesting the need to involve new characters in the assassin strike. I truly believe it would be much cleaner, easier, and most importantly quicker if it is dealt with simply with what's already there. None of the council members are lacking in ability, there are a vast number of reasons why the assassins could be detected - magical alarms, restlessness, or simple underestimation of the council's abilities. Plus we don't know if Shareya and/or spiney are even going to keep their characters.

 

Excellent!

I suppose, but I feel something a bit more than the reasons you just listed would be required (Vekarin is probably with chaos, and if not, there are likely some in the chaos force that once served the members of the previous council, or, at least, those who knew of how Nagash fell at the hands of the council). They would not be likely to make the mistake of underestimating the council, or not preparing for any restlessness/magical surprises they might have. The only one of these I can see as credible is Rowhaine being given new intelligence (warning about the imminent assassinations) that the Nehekharan gods have just uncovered. However, this could not apply to chapter 4, as it happens much earlier than chapter 5 in the role-play timezone and Rowhaine isn't at the silver pinnacle, unlike the characters of the RPers participating in chapter 4.

GoW's top-secret plan for the reboot post will likely give credibility to the council's escape from the pinnacle, whether or not share and spiny are involved.

We might to find out about this before we launch the reboot. Shouldn't the matter of unaccepted bios for RPers not currently participating in the TVC II be dealt with before the IC relaunch of action? It would allow them to instantly get involved as soon as the council had returned to drakenhof.

I am referring to the bios of characters of the five RPers highlighted in red in my List post on page 2 of this thread. Speaking of that list, I have just updated it with the 'Last online' times of all the players, and the overall statistics post I made that follows it.

To quote the now-updated List post: "At 10:30pm on the 8th July 2014, whilst updating the Last Online sections of each RPer, I found an error (Anilar's username was neither underlined nor emboldened). I have corrected this now, but I apologise for any inconvenience it might have caused before this edit."

 

I think I have a relatively clear idea of how to wrap things up now (GoW idea was great ).

I'll update tomorrow (watching Hannibal at mo) about how it should work.

 

Even if Chaos didn't, Vekarin is not stupid enough to ignore them.

 

...[QUOTE(watching Hannibal at mo)[/QUOTE]

Oh no, please don't tell me you're going to "wrap things up" like they do in that show.

 

Yep, wrap them up in a nice bit of sliced sautéed human liver, finished with a good wine of course!

So chaps (do we have any chapettes?), the way this will go is as follows:

• Assassination attempt at the Silver Pinnacle. Don't worry about the who or where, only that it will be sprung (all been sorted ). You can respond as you like with your characters however we will be outnumbered and overpowered, so everyone will be fighting to escape (no chance of beating them). The point to escape to will be the parked coaches which will then zoom those who survive back to Drakenhof.
• Ambush in the wastes. Literally before Graveclaw and Rowhaine kick off, Graveclaw heightened senses hear / smell something. These two will have gone off at a slight angle, not the direct path Igor took, hence Igor not running into them. Asaph (who is of course watching her champion) realises that for some reason she cannot see what Graveclaw is sensing, and that some how she and the other Nehekharan gods have been blinded. She warns Rowhaine who realises they are being drawn into a trap, and calls for a retreat until they can figure out what is going on. Realising they have been rumbled, the hidden forces of Chaos (how they know of them being there has been thought of, but it's a sideplot secret ) attack. This battle is more of a trying to keep ahead of the horde of chaos warriors drawing down on them, with Nekhlior saying he is only able to easily reopen the portal where they came through as reality will still be weak there (normally takes a while to do the ceremony as previously).

In both scenarios I will not post how it ends. Simply there will be attacks and then posts from members about them fighting and escaping. For those that don't post, we won't know what happened to them. In the next chapter they will be missing (and IC we will assume them dead). However should the players come back later, then we can say they escaped in a different fashion and have been recuperating / hiding out etc.

The next chapter will be approx a few weeks later at Drakenhof. It will be assumed that everyone was injured in one fashion or another, and this time was spent recovering. New characters will have been told to attend a new meeting at this specific date to discuss what to do next.

Does anyone see any problems with this?

 

Sounds perfect to me (chapter 4 at least). I can't wait!

 

*Disciple of Nagash Will it be set a few weeks later IC, or will it be IRL a few weeks later?

If the former is the case, how many IRL days will it be set after the initial assassination post?

If the latter is the case, when will it the next Drakenhof chapter be set in terms of IC times?

Otherwise, I second what Harland said, and have no problems with the imminent assassination post (bring it on! ), barring the fact that you might want to deal with implementing all remaining structural changes (among other things, picking and announcing mini-GMs -- although of course the question of when this will be done has been cleared up by you saying the deadline for mini-GM entries is by today).

Also, you might want to approve the characters of people who haven't entered their first character into the TVC II yet before starting the action again. However, if the Drakenhof chapter is set a few weeks IRL (or even just a few days in terms of IRL) after the assassination posts, then I suppose these sign-ups could easily be dealt with after the assassination post, but before the Drakenhof chapter is launched.

Advertisements for the reboot and the Drakenhof chapter should also be dealt with now-ish, although again, if there is more than a week IRL between the assassination posts and the Drakenhof chapter, the advertisements could just be put up when the assassination attempts were posted. If you want to plan the advertisements' details (and their targeted areas of the forum) meticulously to maximise their effectiveness, you might want to start doing so now, though, and if you need/wouldn't mind a helping hand, we're happy to assist.

Here are a few methods by which you might want to advertise this reboot:

1. The first step is to write a good description, encouraging old TVC II players to return, old TVC I players to return, and anyone new to come. I'd try to give a sense of freshness to the RP, explain why it stands a smaller chance of falling into inactivity again (by briefly describing structural changes), but also create an air of nostalgia to bring old players back. I'd probably structure it like this (note the IC here is poor; I'm only trying to draw a basic outline of what one could do:

You! Yes, you there! Dire times are upon us!

[Small IC introductory paragraph explaining IC situation and why new vampires/other creatures are needed for the council].

[OOC paragraph explaining what the TVC II is and why one might want to join it. Links to sign-up thread, 'the story so far', the sub-forum 'The Vampire Council II' and the TVC II guidelines page. This invites the reader to join.]

This could be sent in a forum-wide PM and/or put up as a forum-wide announcement and/or as a special offer in the Theatre de Vampyre (the readers in that sub-forum are the ones most likely to join the TVC II). There might be other methods of advertisement too.

You might want to send an email to the role-players currently involved (they have submitted bios for the TVC II) in the TVC II who are not active on CN, because they will almost certainly not receive notification that the TVC II is about to become active once more, because they will probably not check their PM inboxes, as infrequent visitors of this website. Whilst this may seem intrusive, some of them might be grateful for the email; they might have left the site because of the TVC II's inactivity (Lord_Mortis, for instance, was only involved in the inactive TVC II at the time of his last visit to CN) -- but this doesn't necessarily mean that they wouldn't be eager to rejoin it should it become active once more.

These role-players have their 'last online' dates highlighted in orange beneath their username on the list post I made on page 2.

@Disciple of Nagash Thanks again for all the work you've put into making the TVC II, and its reboot, happen. I'm certainly looking forward to RPing in this roleplay again.

Edit: gah! Ninja'd by a post in the other thread. Please ignore my information about the GM sign-up still being open!

 

Ah yes, in regards to the actions around the TVC II for the reboot, the plan is as follows:

• Confirm general acceptance of the above plot development / tidy-up (which seems to be good so far)
• Confirm new GM team and set up new GM area
• New sign-up will open. Everyone will need to submit their characters to this thread, even if it is copy pasting over from the old thread. These characters will be for the reboot, any characters fighting the assassins / ambush will be based on old bios
• Chapters 4 & 5 will be progressed as per my previous post. It is expected that with a reasonable amount of posting, for the threads to be wrapped up in 2-3 weeks, maybe less if there is a lot of posting in a short space of time.
• Chapter 6 will be scheduled to start around early / mid Aug. The delay spoken in my previous post is IC only. It may be possible for chapter's 4 & 5 to finish (if they take a while to wrap up) and then for us to go straight into Chapter 6.
  
• Advertisement will be carried out as normal with announcements / emails etc. A PM has already been made explaining the concept to most of the previous players, I'll reply to that as well with information.
• All players will also be requested to submit (or re-submit in many cases) their sideplots. These will be reviewed, and agreed upon, before being logged in the new GM area.
• Things progress as normal!

 

Sounds great! Will this new bio have magic abilities nerfed by you to represent the decline in necromancy? I remember some discussion at the original start of the TVC II revolving around this, but I believe it was later assumed that this was taken into account by you through making people have bios with lower stats to start with. Just checking that I get to keep Mort as he is now. Also, I assume reading the book of Nagash once wouldn't up his magic stats (correct me if I'm wrong - I'm asking because he read Nekhlior's whole book of Nagash in chapter 2).

I'm certainly looking forward to progressing with my side plot!

 

There's usually a gullible fool or two willing to vouch for the most unsavoury of characters. A skaven will easily fit.

EDIT: Sometimes I hate text and its double meanings. Come join us Sanai!

 

Not sure I get your meaning there, Archy...

 

The sentence prior to that one on its own! Don't think me so vulgar!

 

@Harland @Get of W'soran I believe that Archy was unintentionally implying that he was the gullible fool vouching for Sanai (in this implicatipn, the unsavoury character) to join the RP.

And GoW, that's a nice idea (I wasn't trying to get a power-up for Mort, just asking what the effect of the book would be). Thanks for the help on this.

I think he'd remember the passage well, though; perhaps it could work something like what follows. I think the theme of Mort's mental power vs his relative physical weakness fits nicely into this idea.

Forbidden Lore

Recently having read a whole book of Nagash, Morturion seeks to attempt to weave its dark magicks into his spells in times of great need. Whilst this increases his arcane powers temporarily, it takes a heavy toll on his physical frame to generate spells of such power -- his mortal form buckles under the stress of generating these dark magicks. Consequently, for a time after usig magic from the book - which cannot be done for extended periods of time, and cannot be done often - Morturion is fatigued and physically weak.

Occasionally, Morturion can increase his raw magical power to 8 for a short time, but for a period after this, his speed, (agility also? What do you think?) and raw strength are reduced by 1 each.

I just noticed that I've been ninja'd by Archy, but oh well. I'll post my comment on his double meaning anyway. *Sighs*