~ Suggestions & Improvement ~

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Would it be permissible to write an adventure in which one of the PC's classmates is implied to have snuck some intoxicant to use during a banquet for adults? It would be Miya, if that makes any difference. She is hardly the most honest or rule-abiding.

[Legate of Mineta]

Of course, go right ahead.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: I am thinking about writing a scene for the opening of Y2 in which Pelia grants the PC an ingame ability to study brewing with her (gaining a study level in brewing and a skill level in a brewing subskill whenever used). My questions are:

Would this benefit be over-powered?

Would this event and ability be redundant? I mean, in Y1, Pelia is already set up as an instructor for the PC in alchemy, so maybe this will already be in Y2.

[Legate of Mineta]

While I can't comment on the status of Pella in Y2, I wouldn't say that's entirely over-powered.

[Metis]

+1 skill level as opposed to +1 skill step is a little out there, at least as far as Y1 would be concerned. No clue whether Y2 would consider it unbalanced.

[Rhialto]

35 minutes ago, Metis said:

+1 skill level as opposed to +1 skill step is a little out there, at least as far as Y1 would be concerned. No clue whether Y2 would consider it unbalanced.

In all fairness, brew is a specialized skill that is not as generally used as, for example, blackmail. Still, I will take both of your thoughts into consideration. The way I see it, though, it seems to be about equal in power to Zoe's study ability, which grants two skill step and two study levels as the player chooses. @Legate of Mineta, would you be more accepting of my proposed mechanic if in were time-limited (say, once per week). Speaking of which, has more effort been created to make sure that Y2 abilities that are supposed to be usable only once per week or the like are usable only that often?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

Well, as with any fan-created submission, the Team will review it (and make changes if needed!), so I don't think you need to worry too much about the specifics. It's the intent that matters more.

But, it's always more helpful to have something closer to what would be entered in the game, so in that spirit, I'd say it probably deviates a bit too much from what else is out there. True, Brew is not as often used as others, but...that's Y1.

[Rhialto]

20 hours ago, Legate of Mineta said:

Rhi;

Well, as with any fan-created submission, the Team will review it (and make changes if needed!), so I don't think you need to worry too much about the specifics. It's the intent that matters more.

But, it's always more helpful to have something closer to what would be entered in the game, so in that spirit, I'd say it probably deviates a bit too much from what else is out there. True, Brew is not as often used as others, but...that's Y1.

What about +1 skill step, then? Is that better?

[Metis]

I'd say +2, maybe +1 and +1 Poisons (describe it as Pelia unintentionally teaching that through "here's how you don't do this process, or else you end up with this" if necessary) since Poisons is such a hard skill to learn relative to Alchemical Tools/Analyse/Chemistry. Of course who knows whether that'll still be the case in Y2, certainly not me .

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Maybe you could create a hidden variable for NPCs that would make them never use gates magic (and the same for mastery magic) - adjusted for their characters. This would allow them to learn these forbidden pillars through various ways but avoid a problem of too many characters getting expelled for illegal magic use.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta and @Schwarzbart: Would it be permissible for me to write an adventure for Y2 involving the cavern of crystal and one of the entities living within its crystals?

[Schwarzbart]

The crystals in the cave are not alive from my imagination after all its "just" a hidden away beginner library and the test you have to do is against a "simulation" of a mind. (The team might view this different) 

But with a adventure already in year 1 where a toy become alive there is the chance that after century if not millennia of wear and tear a mastery related device can become alive, especial when there was no maintenance. I think one or more of the crystals you can use to train your magic could have this problem.

If you don't mind that only few players will ever see this adventure, as the place is supposed to very difficult to find, I don't mind if you write something.

[Rhialto]

3 hours ago, Schwarzbart said:

The crystals in the cave are not alive from my imagination after all its "just" a hidden away beginner library and the test you have to do is against a "simulation" of a mind. (The team might view this different) 

But with a adventure already in year 1 where a toy become alive there is the chance that after century if not millennia of wear and tear a mastery related device can become alive, especial when there was no maintenance. I think one or more of the crystals you can use to train your magic could have this problem.

If you don't mind that only few players will ever see this adventure, as the place is supposed to very difficult to find, I don't mind if you write something.

That is even more interesting than I thought. Story writing, here I come!

[Schwarzbart]

@Rhialto you also have to make sure that it not conflict with the Y2 adventure to join the summer class between Y2 and Y3.

You can find my adventure writing for Y2 and some of my other ideas regarding this cave in this thread (there you also find out about the test I talked in the posting before):

 

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: In Y2, will the doll familiar be more powerful if it acquired a nose during Y1? I honestly think that the acquisition of a nose in Y1 should have given the doll bonuses - but I suppose that it is too late for that now.

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

It would follow, but I don't recall that it does in Y2. It's a good suggestion.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Would it be permissible for authors of adventures to create characters/lineages with functions similar to those of Radhanite (Raðanite) Jews? I ask because yesterday I realized that the satyrs whom I am hoping to write a Y2 adventure about - although their culture would be based upon the Lydians, their function would be that of the Radhanite (Raðanite) Jews: wealthy traders to distant lands, yearning for a homeland to which they cannot return.

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

I think you could certainly invent cultural groups in the Adventures, yes.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Would you or the Team be interested if I were to write some suggestions for distant lands/islands based upon my knowledge of more obscure areas of Earth's history? One of these settings would be part (albeit distantly) of an adventure that I am planning to write involving Tabin.

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

I think the answer would be YES.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Has the Team given any thought to Paradoxus's home land in Cyve? If so, then I will give a shorter list of suggested regions.

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

No response as yet!

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta:

Distant Lands for Academagia:

 

All of these lands are based upon parts of Earth’s history and cultures, as is indicated in perentheses for every proposal. The Team is welcome to use or not use these lands.

 

Land of People who Paint Themselves (Inspiration: Beothuk of Newfoundland): Members of the Society of the West are not sure what to make of the accounts of these people that they sometime hear about from travellers to Valvili. Are these people real? Or are they travellers’ tales about the dangers of opposing dragons while not being guided by the New Gods? In any case, the following things are claimed about these people. They have no magic excepting astrology, and they paint themselves with red ochre in order to create symbols that seem to represent astrological phemes. They evince little interest in trading or learning about or interacting with outsiders, but will let outsiders camp on their island for a while. Often, however, they will steal from visitors, and they sometimes carry equipment that seems to be based upon scavenged or stolen goods from the Empire of Man, Oursouk, Saisyne, and even more distant lands. They live in small bands and do not make permanent settlements.

 

Given this paucity of interaction, little that is definitive about them can be said, but some accounts, of unknown reliability and credibility, claim that they regard all other people as slaves of Dragons, and refuse to interact meaningfully with them for this reason. They, it is said, have a habit of killing all outsiders who try to establish a presence too long within certain parts of their territory – although which parts is unknown – and regard this as a very good deed to be celebrated and commemorated. Some people from Valvili claim that certain family members were killed by these painted people, who supposedly keep careful track of wrongs done to them and seek to gain revenge against certain people or their allies.

 

Na (Inspiration: Nakoku and Yamatai in Southern Japan): Meaning “Slave”, Na is a city upon an island whose citizens are famous for two things – their skill in master magic (and anti-mastery charms) and their gathering, training, and exporting slaves to other lands. How they get these slaves is a source of some controversy to people, since the merchants of Na are unwilling to reveal their sources. The slaves whom they trade seem to use many languages and to come from many lands – but not all of them are poor people and criminals from Na.

 

Na’s ruler apparently bears the title Princess-Priestess, and must be a woman belonging to a certain lineage. She rules not only over Na, but also over around thirty permanently settled towns, whose inhabitants regard her with awe as a protector and great mage. She almost certainly is an archmage in Mastery magic, but she, once proclaimed princess-priestess, never leaves the fortified palace whence she rules Na. She is waited upon by 1000 women and only 1 or 2 men.

 

Ang Mata ng Daigdig (Inspiration: Malayo-Polynesian-speakers, and Pre-Historic Taiwan): These people live in a diverse patchwork of petty chiefdoms, in which hereditary nobles rule over commoners and slaves. This diversity extends to their languages – the term “Ang Mata ng Daigdig” (meaning “World’s Eye”) is based upon the fact that their Island is shaped like an eye and that all languages use Mata to say Eye.

 

Incantation and revision, which some of the polities often use to make elaborate terraces for growing rice, are their highest pillars of magic.

 

Most of the polities are skilled makers of airships and ships. Some of the most powerful polities openly worship dragons and have writing systems, but members of all polities are often travelling, either as merchants or as sailors. They live in permanent towns and villages.

 

RiverLand (Inspiration: The Amazon River Chiefdoms): To these people, whose island is a fragment of a tropical rainforest and its rivers, Land and water are not two opposites, but are complementary parts of the basis for their civilization. And it is a civilization. Scores of miles of rivers have been turned into waterfronts for vast cities, all of which are made entirely out of wood. Through a mixture of Chemistry, Alchemy, and Enchantment magic, they have vastly improved the fertility of their soil, and every single plant that grows upon this island was either domesticated by them or at least planted by them deliberately. They travel throughout the vast networks of rivers in canoes, with which they transport fine pottery (often enchanted), other trade goods (including emeralds), parties of warriors and slaves, and pilgrims eager to visit the sacred geoglyphs that some polities have created in ways to focus magical and religious powers.

 

The people, although divided into nobles and commoners, are egalitarian in their gender roles, and it is not unusual for the women to fight in wars and become leaders. These people share the river with river dolphins, some of whom are intelligent and powerful magical creatures who use their shape shifting to interact with humans on land. Some lineages of humans are allegedly of part-Inteeligent-Magical-Dolphin heritage.

 

Sea’s Remains (Inspiration: Sogdians, Pre-Islamic Afghans, and Pre-Islamic Sindhians): These polities are cities founded in a series of diverse environments (mountain valleys, seashores to seas that are on Cyve’s surface, and the dissicated remnants of seas that were dying when Cyve was united and young). They are also religiously diverse, with some polities worshpping the stars (and elevating astrology as the highest pillar of Magic), others venerating the teachings of the Awakened Man (and feuding amongst each other about which teachings attributed to him are real and whether people ultimately exist), and others conceiving of the universe as divided between good and evil. All of these polities and their people, though, are united by three things: similar languages, similar gaining of wealth as places where traders stop on their ways to other places (including the Empire of Man), and constant fear that dragons will meddle into their lives. For this reason, even the most puritanical monk in the Person-believing School of the Awakened Man’s Wisdom, who dismisses the longer scriptures of other Schools of the Awakened Man’s Wisdom as human or draconic forgeries, will not openly accuse the dragons of this forgery – and will, as part of rites, venerate dragons and not teach that being born as a dragon is a bad rebirth.

 

The merchants of these polities (who often become rich through their trading journeys) are devout followers of the Awakened Man’s teachings (even if they find incomprehensible the discussions about whether people ultimately exist) and they finance rich monasteries and associated schools that teach religion, magic, literacy, and numeracy to the people. The monarchs of these polities either support the Awakened Man’s religion themselves or have learned to tolerate such devotion even while supporting other state religons in order to gain mercantile support that is not wealthy enough to challenge their power. Pievre, the wisest monarchs realize, could be happening to them if their merchants were forbidden to invest in their temples.

 

The Character Roxan, from some of my writings for Y2, is an orphan from one of these cities.

 

Lake Land (Gunditjmara and Arnhamland in Australia): The people in this land, from the perspective of Mineta (if any Minetan were to know about them) seem to be opposite in many ways. Their summer is Mineta’s winter. They farm for their meat and seek for their plants in the wilderness. They regard Mastery as a sacred and useful Pillar of Magic. And they regard a benevolent dragon as the creator of the universe., and worship this dragon

 

Still, these people are like Minatans in at least two ways. They use stone for major public works and important buildings in their permanent villages. They use canal networks for transportation, for aquaculture, and for irrigating water in order to ensure that good plants can grow there for their gatherers. And even as they elevate Incantation Magic to the highest importance, they despise gates magic. Thousands of years ago, a being came to them through teleportation and taught them magic, but tried to replace their traditional laws with his own rule and whims. When his whims became unspeakably horrible, they ambushed him and killed him – but not before torturing him into revealing all of the phemes of Gates magic that he knew. The mages in this land are taught the phemes for Gates Magic and how to detect Gates Magic – but for them to use gates magic would be punished by their deaths.

[Legate of Mineta]

Cool.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Can an item slot in Y2 be created for drinking straws, or is it too late for that?