Race diversity among chapters

My brother and I are making sarrs as our alts soon. Resist poison is going to be a lifesaver at GB where practically everything throws poison of some sort.

They look down on battle magic? Are you sure that isn't chapter specific? I knew of several from various chapters who had no problem with doing that.
 
Sadly, it's in the national race packet for them, and thus is supposed to not be overriden by local race packets.

A weaponless, clawless Sarr is looked upon as a lesser; how can you feel the thrill of the fight if you do not get involved in combat, or rely solely upon magics to kill a foe?
Click to expand...

You could probably safely take it to be a condemnation of pure casters, though, rather than all battle magic.

B.Barber said:
So good news. Evidently that line is from the Nero packet. Not the alliance one.
Click to expand...

Sorry man, go hit up the thread Mike Ventrella posted in the 'Races' section. That line's on page 2 of the Sarr packet he links. I just downloaded a fresh copy from here to make sure.

Edit : This post, in fact. http://alliancelarp.com/forum/threads/national-race-packets.16480/#post-167272
 
Naw naw I know, I got info from someone and was mistakenly so releived that I didnt check first- thats why I edited to 'N/M'. That sucks.
 
"Looked upon as a lesser" not "cannot ever be". I just see that as a role play point you have to work with. The musk thing, I say that's a role play only sort of situation, like biata mind abilities. I wouldn't ever make someone wear musk because I don't think anyone should have to be submitted to that.

Alternatively, "in heat" could fall on all the non game weeks. :)
 
Naw I get it that just... yeah...
ANYHOW- ceasing sidetracking, what other numbers on races do people have in their games? Im actually really curious about this too.
 
Personally, I think the National Race Packets should only be about minimum Role-Playing requirements and make-up requirements. Origin stories, social cues, and the like should all be part of each chapter local packet.

That's part of the reason why I practically ignored the Stone Elf origin story and Biata origin story when I was writing the Seattle Local Culture Packets.
 
Alavatar said:
Personally, I think the National Race Packets should only be about minimum Role-Playing requirements and make-up requirements. Origin stories, social cues, and the like should all be part of each chapter local packet.

That's part of the reason why I practically ignored the Stone Elf origin story and Biata origin story when I was writing the Seattle Local Culture Packets.
Click to expand...

So much for an Alliance, huh? One guy's opinion overrules everyone else.
 
I think what Alavatar (Seth) means is that he didn't use the national packets in writing the background in the race packets for Seattle. The national race packets histories still hold true, aka the origin of biata, but the culture in the race packets for Seattle do not repeat all that information. It is specific to the campaign. It gives more of a history/culture of the campaign than of the race specifically itself. From what I have read, the Seattle packets essentially start sometime after the origin of the races. They do not extend that far back.

Just my interpretation of what I read.
 
We're trying to have consistency between chapters, and having similar racial origin stories helps make dwarves the same wherever you go. We made sure not to say where those origins took place so that every race can imagine that it happened in their land, and I think it's also clear that those stories are believed by those races even if the minute details could be lost.

In the past, we had chapters that decided that barbarians came from outer space or that biata were actually descended from phoenix and not gryphons. That is what I want to prevent.

Obviously, we want to encourage cultural differences between chapters. That makes it fun to travel to new chapters and learn that the dark elves there are completely different in the way they run themselves. What we don't want are dark elves saying "Yeah, here in our lands dark elves were created when a gelantenous cube exploded."

So while I agree that social cues and the like should be different for each chapter, I greatly object to origin stories being changed.

More importantly, we have National Race Packets for a reason, and if people think they should be changed, there is a process by which it can be done. We can't have every single chapter deciding on their own that they can ignore them when they don't feel like it because then we're no longer a consistent world. Isn't that the goal?
 
That's the thing, though. As far as I'm aware (and correct me if I'm wrong, please), none of the chapters have a mandated collective backstory or ongoing universal world plot in any other aspect than the race packets. Which means that they are a bit out of place when they mandate a culture and mythology that may very well not exist in the given campaign world because it was developed differently.
 
I completely agree that we should have a standard back story. I would hate to have someone come out and say their character was descended from aliens... Not really medieval fantasy there.

And like I said, I did not see any changes to the origin story for the races, I did see some different social structures based upon the story they are trying to tell.
 
Muir said:
That's the thing, though. As far as I'm aware (and correct me if I'm wrong, please), none of the chapters have a mandated collective backstory or ongoing universal world plot in any other aspect than the race packets. Which means that they are a bit out of place when they mandate a culture and mythology that may very well not exist in the given campaign world because it was developed differently.
Click to expand...
All chapters are considered a part of Fortannis, as I recall, and are connected as such by means of mist travel. While each chapters world don't share a collective backstory there have been some cross chapter plot shared in the past. It helps when PCs from different chapters, while having different cultures and backgrounds, still have a common origin.
Ryan
 
I disagree that we must all have the same origin stories for the same reason I disagree with IG year being the OOG year minus 1400. It limits the storytelling of the Plot team. For instance, the year 615 is barely long enough for one Elf generation much less the development of the Biata race (as indicated in the Biata National Race Packet, developing from Stone Elves who had previously developed from Gold Elves which were similar to the current Elves).

Currently, I view each chapter similar to a different D&D campaign setting. All of them have the same rules and same basic race/classes, but different reasons and different timelines for how everything came to be.

If the intent is for everyone to have the same backstory then I would recommend building one massive campaign setting (in the D&D frame of reference) where every kingdom is pre-defined and each chapter gets one of the kingdoms. No world ending plots (except maybe for the National Event). As chapters open have them establish a new kingdom from an existing one (nomads setting one up, a band of rebels taking over a Noble estate, a County declares itself independent, etc.). The risk is that Plot Teams may not like the limitations on the stories they can tell.
 
No one ever said we were all using the same year, did they? Even so, the year doesn't mean the planet was created 600 years ago. In Ashbury, that year was the year of the establishment of a certain human culture. It's an arbitrary number. The Ashbury elves don't use that number when talking about their society which is thousands of years old, for instance.

Seth, there is a middle ground from your "everyone must follow specific orders and have no variation" and "everyone can do whatever they want". The middle ground is that races agree on their origin -- which is something that was decided long ago by previous Owners and National Plot people -- but culture is left completely to the chapters.

If your biata aren't from stone elves and gryphons, then you've created a new race, and that's not allowed. Biata and stone elves, after all, are not traditional fantasy races like elves and dwarves and ogres -- they're unique to our game. As such, we need to define them more than we do for the races people already know. And if we're not all defining them the same, then that's a big problem. It's important enough that we even put the origin it in the Rule Book. Wring a biata origin story where they are not descended from Stone elves and gryphons goes against what is in the Rule Book.

Come on, there is plenty of room in the National race packets for you to have great fun with creating cultures of each race without you making up brand new races that technically don't exist in our game.
 
I didn't think I needed to say it since Norm already did. The Seattle Culture Packets don't cover origin of a race except High Orc and High Ogre (of which there is no National Race Packet origin story). The origin stories are effectively ignored.

As for the year, it must have been from a previous iteration of the book because I distinctly remember the Fortannis year being current year minus 1400 listed in the rulebook. I can't find it, now.

Still, what is the process for changing the National Race Packets?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top