I think I'm being a somewhat realist in thinking that whatever we'll do with the new installment / continuation of the Mead Hall it will take several weeks or month(s) before we are up and writing it again. Therefore I think it very plausible all different considerations we'd need to think can be thought of & solved both individually and via a lot of PM'ing between the owners' of the characters in need of dealing with. I don't think there is any hurry. At least there shouldn't be.
It is very true different writers & characters are in different situations. Some might easily make a ten year jump and it would be only more interesting that way. For some others it would be much harder - or more of a jump into relative darkness where one would need to just decide or negotiate a bunch of things before we continue.
But considering what I said above about us having all the time we need, we could arrange for some "inrterludes", as someone called them, and give everyone a chance to write their character's POV posts about the years we jumped over (possibly collaborated posts with some other writers if there would be some important relationship-issues to solve) before we actually jump forward and start / continue writing the actual story.
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Why I favoured a longer jump was that it would make it easier for the new writers to fit in as the shadows of the past would be lighter.
And for some reasons, well actually for quite many, I still favour a longer jump. For example I think it would do good to us former writers as well to take some distance.
It should naturally be a shared decision - and so I'm going to be happy with whatever that decision is, especially as I'm looking forwards to giving the reins back to
lmp once again.
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Just as a general point of agreement... I too think the Mead Hall is not a war game (I still find it odd collaborative storytelling is called 'game' in Barrow Downs) and should stay like that. But it should be drama for sure.
So a hard winter, a plague... we should have something along those lines to get rid of the enmities and to just throw away the characters whom no one is going to write (or adopt) for.
In general terms, it should not be too hard to come up with a plot concerning the local lords causing problems to the Mead Hall. They wouldn't be a unified gang any more (which I think was one of the major outcomes of the Mead Hall's confrontation with them as we wrote it), but it should provide us with a lots of nice plotting.
With some of the other ideas I'd tend to agree with
Legate that we should have a point for them first. Just writing anomalies and seeing if they catch up or not isn't, imo, the most fruitful approach to writing in general.
Also I think we should get rid of Athanar even if I kind of really started to like writing him. And probably his household as well. But we could leave some soldiers, especially those who have writers, just with the pretext of not letting the Mead Hall fall too weak (by King Eomer's orders I presume). And what
Lommy said about the brothers here could be just real messy (in a positive way)...
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Lommy
Or maybe they stayed and matured a little, possibly going away on a campaign to Harad or the East with an éored for a year or two, and maybe once they came back Athanar and Eodwine named one of them in an important position in the household upon Athanar's departure? And then that one could have little cockfights with Thornden in the new timeline?
...
(Ackk now I'm thinking, maybe they indeed went on a campaign and Wulfric - the older and bolder one - actually died, and Wilheard returned to Scarburg with his head down, grieved and alone, and his unpredictability hidden but even more dangerous... that could make an interesting plotline for certain.)
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I mean we could come up with a nice combination of these ideas...
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What else?
Mith's finding could be fruitful. And it is a nice spotting.
But it is at the same time a bit "earlyish" for our plans of jumping a little more than just a year. And on the other hand, there just being more people wandering around in Tolkien's universe by the time X might not be that important because we can always come up with reasons to introduce wanderers to our Hall if we wish to (we've come up with reasons to bring dwarves, hobbits, elfs, rogues etc. to the Mead Hall thus far with no problems) - or if we wish more of them wandering around, we can come up with a reason for that as well.
Or could it be the kind of a nice background story we'd tell happened during our jump - that besides the terrible killer-winter / plague, there were a year or two of lots of people coming to and fro - and maybe some of our newcomers to the story would be ones who had visited the Mead Hall by that time and had come back for some personal purpose? Wouldn't that actually be a nice place to start writing a new character?
Okay. Stopping my thinking aloud for the time being...