[Child of the 7th Age]

OK, sorry I have been so tied up this past week. Things should be a bit better now.

Let's take a look at this outline and see what we have. Everyone, please eyeball this and come up with suggestions and specific ideas and examples that can be added in. Nothing here is set in concrete, except perhaps the large A, B, C divisions.

I don't want us to be so tied to an outline that we can't accomodate other subplots, but we do need some idea of which way we're heading.

A. Initial period of growing distrust and suspicion. (3 weeks real time)

1. Rangers bring notice about the bandits and the meeting: folk give their initial reactions in their first posts.

2. Conduct of the meeting: Acrimony, argument and inability to agree on anything; Evidence of discord even among the Rangers.

3. Andreth attempts to start an afternoon school for the children to help bridge the gap between the communities.

4. Step #3 above encounters disaster: anyone have ideas on this? There should be some sort of event which epitomizes the distrust of the two communities and shows them at their nadir.

B. The tide slowly turns: Steps towards rapprochement. (three weeks real time)

1. Perhaps some kind of a crisis where the communities are forced to come together; Annunfuiniel's suggestion about saving the children from a fire might be a good one.

Instead of a fire in the school....how about a forest fire... ? We said there was drought. Perhaps the hobbit children run off into the woods for a holiday and the Big Children follow along in order to tease/torment them---only they all get caught behind the fire lines.

Anyone have any knowledge of fighting forest fires?

2. Several joint missions/projects by Big and Little Folk to prepare for the onslaught.

---spying on the bandits in their lair?
---rebuilding the dyke and wall?
---rounding up the "refugees" from outlying hobbit communities and persuading them to come inside the big fence
---anything else?

C. The Successful Defense (two weeks)

I need help here! I am no expert in battles....

1. Possibly an initial scene where the bandits launch a siege attack against the town and the Breelanders defend themselves on their city walls?

2. Possibly some sort of a party sneaks out of the city by night and tries to set up an ambush to encounter the bandits outside the walls?

3. Some sort of post victory celebration.

Questions:

1. We need to have a few folk pushing for reconciliation even in stage A. From the profiles, it almost sounds as if the hobbit ranger would be the one on the Little Folk's side, and Andreth on the big folks.... What do others think?

Any chance of setting up a sparring type of friendship between Andreth and the human Ranger? Their differing views might make this interesting.

2. If the children are going to play a critical role in the school and fire scenes, how will we manage that with our characters? I am wondering if everyone who plays an adult human or hobbit should also be explicitly told to have a "secondary" child, son or daughter, to participate in these scenes? Otherwise, these posters will be sitting around and getting "bored" while the action is going on with the children.

So far, we have Nuru with Edmund, me with Kali, and Mausi with the rest of her children...

3. Do you think we have the right number of characters? You don't want too few....if you lose someone then, you're in big trouble. But too many is not good either....people tend to get lost in the plotline, and to feel less of a connection to the game.

Any ideas?