In the Name of the Bling: A Fantasy Resource Management and Defense RP

Note: This game has already started, but is always open to new players.

---

Legends speak of the Elselands, far to the south, beyond the borders of any written map, leagues up the River Nandoah. A place where the beasts of myth roam as commonly as deer, where the dead still walk the earth, where tears in the universe line the roads like puddles, and where races never before seen reside in places of power of the darkest magics. But for the Kingdom of Rylaan, who wish to end their centuries-long war with the Empire once and for all, one legend is at the forefront: That the Elselands are the source of the materials of legend, of the woods and metals used to forge the greatest weapons in history, where gold and silver litter the ground like rocks, and jewels hang from the trees like fruit.

The Royal Council on the Acquisition of Materials, acting under orders by the King, set about to create a task force of men and woman from every race in the Kingdom. The Gold Cutlass, a costly ship powered by an incredibly rare crystallized kraken's soul, with every luxury and safety feature stripped out to maximize the number of men and women who could be carried, made its way up the Nandoah for many days, far beyond any recorded locations. Just when the heart was nearly depleted, a clearing in the endless forest with a grove of ebony indicated a promising landing spot. The rest of that day was spend putting up a quick camp using the carcass of the ship as a central building, and now on their first morning, operations are about to being. So far, the area seems normal, with the party so far having not encountered any oddities aside from finding that the ground near the river is rich with gold ore.

---

Hey, so this is an RP that' fantasy in setting, and like a hodgepodge of Minecraft, Age of Empires and Skyrim for the gameplay. As for the game itself, it'll be a combination of your characters going on small adventures as they head out from (or stay in) camp, and allocating the manpower of your workers as they do the day-to-day operations. It's up to you what your characters do and that will ultimately change what happens in the game - I've got dozens of potential encounters, but your actions, chance, and other factors will affect what you wind up seeing. If you want to just play it safe and cut trees and build walls, go ahead. Or try to capture wild trolls and use them as attack animals against cultist raiders. Or maybe you'll find some dwarven ruins that need exploration. Who knows. Will you decide to totally ignore your mission and keep everything you find as you try to survive, or remember to get riches and ship them downriver, praying that it's enough to warrant getting reinforcements? Up to you.

As for how it'll be managed, I'm trying to make it real simple. You'll just have a certain amount of workers (Roughly 35 general ones to start with, but depending on the characters you make I might throw in some "specialized" workers like a hunter or smith or doctor or something so that there isn't an obvious gap) and an NPC overseer who will handle ordering the workers around. You can decide either IC or OOC what you want them to do during the day while you're doing your own things.

Anyway, enough about that, here's a character sheet.

---

• Name:
• Sex:
• Age: Try to keep it under 500 or so.
• Race: There are standard fantasy races, like humans, dwarves, elves, halflings, orcs, gnomes, goblins, gnolls, some sorta lizard or cat guys, and the like. Feel free to make up whatever. And as an incentive to not just have everyone be a human
• Appearance: A picture is good, but if not you can just use words.
• Role: Why is your character coming along? Are they a magical researcher? An archaeologist? A cook? A healer? A smith? An engineer? A guy with a ten foot sword? I don't care what you pick as long as there's at least some reason for them to be along that makes them more useful than the workers. If you feel a certain role might not be worth sending your character along for, give them two roles, it doesn't matter. Or else you can just say they're a worker who also has the specialization that you want. I mean, for example, someone's gotta make sure that a deer the hunters catch gets cured and preserved properly.
• Personality:
• Skills and Abilities: Do they know how to fish, sew, fight with a sword, forge metal into weapons and armor, etc. Also includes any physical abilities - all characters are assumed to be at average-human-level in things that aren't specified. So don't make assumptions that we can guess what traits you want from some race you have, just lay them out here. This is a chance for you to have your custom race have a cool thing or two if you want, like maybe extra arms, gills, night eyes, elephant trunks, etc. One limitation I sadly have to have in this RP is that if your character has wings, they can't fly like an eagle - it's more like a chicken, letting them do really high wing-assisted jumps (like maybe fifty feet), glide, and not get hurt by a fall they prepare for. Overall, just shoot for Super Weight 2 or so now.
• Magic (Optional): Maybe your character is a magician of some sort. As for the strength spells can have, think about the spells in Dragon Age, Skyrim, or low-level D&D for an example. Like I said, your overall power level should be Super Weight 2 or so at most, though a specialist will be more towards the high end of that level than a generalist. Mind control, time travel, flight, and things like that which are hard to do in an RP are a no-go.
• Equipment: Everything your character brought with them on the ship. Tech is mostly medieval, so you can have all sorts of melee weapons, shields, and armor. The crossbow is the most advanced level of ranged weaponry around (so far...). While the ship was supposed to be packed very lightly to make room for manpower, I'll look the other way for most things you throw in for flavor, so go ahead and have that bear cloak or whatever, don't worry about space too much unless your character winds up having sixteen swords. Though with that said, you're most likely not gonna have a full set of plate armor if you're supposed to be an herbalist. On the plus side, they wouldn't want you ill-equipped either, so your stuff will be top-quality steel (unless you have a reason for you character to hold onto something not as good, such as it being a memento or whatever). If your character has any sort of magical equipment, then remember to take into account what I mentioned about abilities and magic.
• Brief History: Go nuts. Really, there's very little about the Kingdom because it's not going to be too important given that the RP takes place quite a distance away in a whole new place. If you don't feel like doing it and need any "official" worldbuilding, don't be afraid to ask for details about something and I'll make something up tell you what the deal is. The only tidbit I can think of that you might need is that the king of Rylaan is a half-orc (the other half is elf) named Urist Emberglakka.

---

Accepted Characters:

• Jen Beardfist: A dwarf cook played by Kiri Ame.
• Ixen Tonash: A kobold trapper played by Firock Finion.
• Abathur Solente: A human sorcerer played by Firock Finion.
• Corbin Icario: An angel cartographer played by mrminun.
• Szena Vizern: A human knight played by Stratofarius.
• Volkmarr Stonewhisper: A goliath engineer played by Mantlemask.
• Jozar Wanderer "Joe" "The Jozarian": A monkey-folk assistant played by God of Awesome.
• Erna Beraskog: A half-giant logger played by Lemurian.
• Fihelis Capricorn: A salamander alchemist played by Kyler Thatch.

• Garver Burmrod: A gnome engineer played by Locoman.
• Urk: An ogre played by Locoman.
• Lita Aemanto: A desert elf played by Sanojutsu.
• Orghuz Trarr: An orc doctor played by Tricksterson.
• Bathsheba Severa: An angel scribe played by Parable.
• George: A stegosaurus woodcutter played by Fantasy Liver.
• Rhavyn Nightshade: A faerie scout played by Brahian 1.

edited 2nd Sep '13 6:26:18 PM by nman

Interested. Possibly joining with a female knight meant to be taking care of security.

Definitely interested, just have to think up a character idea.

Though a question related to ideas I'm starting to have, any possibility of multiple characters? Or are you limiting it to just one per player?

You are reading this.

Ooooh this sounds like fun!

The graceless warrior, wielder of the edgeless blade, prophet of the old religions, writer of fluent nonsense, saviour of soul and song.

Let's make this happen.

Uh

Defs interested.

i think i mostly want to see what happens when this whole place breaks apart

Ooh, interested. I'll get right on typing up a character sheet. Maybe a cook who makes explosive pies.

• Name: Jen Beardfist
• Sex: Female
• Age: 55
• Race: Dwarf
• Appearance: As short, stocky and plump as you'd expect from any dwarf woman. Has a round face and a ruddy complexion. Her long, curly brown hair is always securely tied back in a braid, or several braids, depending on how much effort she feels like putting into her appearance. Never seen without her blue apron, Tordenklut, the legendary relic of her family. It never stains or burns no matter how much hot stew the wearer spills on it. Mystical dwarf runes adorn the edges of the apron, spelling out her family's secret recipe in a language known only to them. She looks to be in the dwarven equivalent of her mid-twenties.
• Role: A cook, but with a generous dose of culinary magic thrown in. Just one of her meals will satisfy a grown man's nutritional requirements for an entire day of vigorous work, as well as giving them the energy to work much harder and more efficiently than they otherwise would. Additionally, after experimenting with certain edible compounds, she created her own specialty: a pie that explodes when asked politely.
• Personality: Rather cheerful and boisterous, Jen is at her most enthusiastic when she is cooking. Despite her friendly exterior, she is very practical, and won't stand for anything she considers to be "bullshit" - a term that encompasses a surprising number of things. She is a hard worker, and constantly bustles around the camp making sure that everything is running smoothly - her energy levels can probably be attributed, at least in part, to her habit of sampling her own cooking. Prone to viciously guarding her kitchen from potential thefts.
• Skills and Abilities: Magical cooking, as well as life skills like hunting, fishing, sewing, gardening, etc. She treats cooking, magic and science as relatively interchangeable concepts, and knows a great deal about all three - although most of this knowledge is related to the myriad ways in which the three can interact. Aside from that, she's not too bad with an axe, and being a dwarf, she's pretty durable. Don't expect her to ever outrun anything, though. Aside from the magical benefits her cooking gives, it also tastes pretty damn delicious. As a cook, she's good at conserving ingredients and making a little bit of food go a long way - this is helped along by the magical properties of her meals.
• Magic: As mentioned above, her cooking energises those who eat it, allowing them to keep going where they might not otherwise be able to. So basically it buffs her allies a bit. Also, she can make explosive pies, and if she experiments a bit more, she'd probably be able to come up with other food spells (which can be negotiated with the GM as necessary).
• Equipment: Various pots and pans, as well as other cooking utensils. As the head cook, she has access to the camp's culinary supplies. Aside from that, she has her apron, which gives her some protection from fire; however, she is not in the habit of wearing armour, so this is all the defense she has. Wields a rather nice-looking greataxe, but has been known to improvise with a rolling pin when necessary.
• Brief History: The Beardfist family were renowned in dwarven society for their skills in the culinary arts, and Jen's older sister, Jan, had been groomed from birth to take over the family business once their father, Todd, departed for dwarf chef Valhalla. However, while Jen revelled in the culinary arts, her sister defied family convention by adhering perfectly to the conventions of greater dwarf society. Jan dreamed of being a great warrior, of having her name immortalised among the heroes of old; and being young and rash, she did as many young, strapping would-be heroes have done in the past, and ran away from home, leaving Jen in next place as heir. While Jen was briefly pleased to have the chance to shine as a chef, she soon began to see the merit in her sister's thinking; while Jen loved to cook much more than Jan ever had, there was little glory to be found as a chef in dwarf society. And so the second Beardfist sister also ran away from home, taking her family's heirloom and vowing to make a name for the Beardfists in the greater outside world. Since then, she's started to reconsider her decision, but not quite enough to seriously think of returning home.

edited 22nd Aug '13 9:47:03 PM by KiriAme

Anyway here's Blackwall

@Firock: Let's see. You (well not you. I mean everyone, but you're included in everyone, so I guess you too) can have up to two characters. Though I would appreciate it if you (you know what I mean) waited a little bit to let people posting their first character have their choice of roles. Not that only one person can fill a role, but still.

edited 22nd Aug '13 9:19:04 PM by nman

Hmm, well so much for the small group of mercs or band of Kobolds ideas.

Guess I'll have to take some time to think up something else.

You are reading this.

Edited my first post to make it a signup sheet.

Anyway here's Blackwall

Does the you get 20 workers in the OP post refer to all the players or each individual one?

edited 22nd Aug '13 9:50:09 PM by daltar

If I'm sure of something it's that I'm not sure of anything.

@Dalt: Sorry about that, the group itself gets twenty total. But that's a ballpark at this point, it depends on how many characters players make and what roles they fill. The bare minimum would be 20 workers with decent combat capabilities (most likely young military men and women of various races, all selected for being strong enough to work long hours under harsh conditions) who can deal with work or fight off minor threats, plus their overseer who acts like that guy in management video games who complains about things. If we have a large amount of players, then I'll most likely up it to perhaps fifty, so that the ratio of people who work to people who do other stuff isn't so lopsided. But like I said, it's just a ballpark figure.

@Jen: Accepted. I was just going to accept her based off of her last name, but I had to do my due diligence and look it over anyway For the new effects thing, we'll figure something out. She'll probably have to experiment with new ingredients from the area or something. Or go the Skyrim route and find an ancient tomb where someone carved their cobbler recipe into a stone wall.

I will probably apply for this, as a Yaephath◊, if that's okay.

Possible interest.

Talked with Nman privately about posting these two together. Here goes.

• Name: Ixen Tonash.

• Sex: Male.

• Age: 26. Insists he's 22.

• Race: Kobold.

• Appearance: The one on the right is close enough.◊ Scales colored a dark orange, and eyes are yellow.

• Role: Brought along as a “trapper” under official records. His position is not one of employment, but of prisoner labor.

• Personality: Greedy, a little self-centered, cowardly if he thinks he can't deal with a situation, and overconfident if he thinks he can. Doesn't like other races that much, especially the ones bigger than him. Thinks that anyone being with a member of another species is weird, but on that note can't tell the difference between Elves and Humans so he doesn't care about those.

• Skills and Abilities: An expert at setting, spotting, evading, and disarming traps, as well as a general expert at stealth. Can fight with daggers, but has trouble fighting head on, instead excelling at ambushing and using deception. A good pickpocket.

• Magic: None.

• Equipment: Lightweight leather armor, a pair of high quality steel daggers, his enchanted cloak, and enchanted collar. Usually takes along some length of rope, netting, caltrops, or other useful trap making/evading equipment.
  • His cloak is a dull green color with a simple enchantment of “obscurity”. It does not turn him invisible or camoflauge him, but the less he moves, the more anyone looking towards him simply won't notice him as well. Their eyes will just want to pass him over like he isn't noteworthy in any way. Of course, the effect is easy to overcome if he's not blending into the scene at all; standing alone against a white wall or in the middle of an empty ball room, etc..
  • The collar is a silver color with intricate designs carved into it, with a latch at the front and a simple hinge at the back. It contains a number of powerful enchantments, first and foremost being that it cannot be opened through any non-magical means, at all. The rest of the enchantments are in relation to a “handler”, allowing the handler to remove the collar, locate the person wearing the collar, or end the life of the person wearing the collar, all through the use of magic command words. The handler may also switch this power over to someone else, but if the current handler dies then so will the wearer.

• Brief History: Born into a rogue Kobold tribe, Ixen grew up among the members of his race that despised other races and did things like raiding villages and being cannon fodder for would-be adventurers. Rather than learn to fight and die like his kin, Ixen realized that simply not being seen was the best way to take things from others and get away without dying. And so he started a life of thievery and pick pocketing, getting better and better over the years and adding expertise on traps to his knowledge.

Ixen became infamous, especially after acquiring his trademark cloak, as a master thief and evader of the law. He would commonly sneak into a city, grab some highly valuable items from rich or noble houses, then flee out into the wilderness where he would eventually lose his pursuers before meeting back up with his tribe. These stolen items would usually be sold, (with plenty of that profit going to Ixen's own pockets) or otherwise put to some use.

Ixen was eventually caught after returning to his tribe from another heist. A Kobold spy sent by the Kingdom to infiltrate the tribe (Due to all the raiding the tribe had been doing.) realized who Ixen was while the tribe was celebrating his job well done. The spy alerted the militia working with her, who surrounded the tribe's camp and killed or captured everyone, while the spy ensured that Ixen didn't just sneak out through the chaos by keeping him distracted.

As with most of his kin captured then, Ixen was thrown into a jail and sentenced for a hanging. It was agents of the Royal Council on the Acquisitions of Materials that spared him from this fate, hoping to acquire a master of traps for the Southern expedition, and hearing of Ixen's infamy decided that his skills could be valuable. Ixen was given the choice of either taking the expedition position or the hanging, and obviously chose the former. The collar was added, to ensure that Ixen wouldn't just try to slip away or turn on the other members of the expedition.

---

• Name: Abathur Solente.

• Sex: Male.

• Age: 27.

• Race: Human.

• Appearance: Caucasian, tall and skinny with short, light blue hair, (the result of magic) and brown eyes.

• Role: Non-specialized sorcerer, and Ixen's handler. He's also an actual employee and thus representative of the Royal Council on the Acquisition of Materials, but presumably not the most senior one present.

• Personality: Normally quiet, unless he gets nervous in which case he won't shut up. Abathur is determined to see this mission through, and find a final stalemate breaker for the war against the Empire. Is not terribly social, instead preferring to keep to his duties and studies; though this is more out of awkwardness than a dislike of company.

• Skills and Abilities: Outside of his magical talents, Abathur is rather unimpressive, being unable to even swim. He is adept at reading and writing. (Which depending on how this setting handles that aspect of medieval fantasy, is either normal or extremely uncommon among regular people.)

• Magic: This is where Abathur excells, though not in any field specifically. Rather, Abathur is what they would call a “general” sorcerer, deciding to know some of every field instead of everything in one field. To that end, he knows the basics of every school of magic. Magic missile, fireball, ice shard, static bolt, minor illusions, a basic magic ward, basic magic armor, curing light wounds, summoning of weak creatures from other planes, and the knowledge to alchemise basic potions is just some of Abathur's arsenal. In any specific field, Abathur is about the equivalent of a sorcerer not far out of training, but the fact that this applies to every field makes him overall very well versed. (GM and I can work out whether he would know any given spell/potion as needed.)

• Equipment: On himself he usually only takes his choice of robes for that day and maybe some potions. Kept on the ship is his other sets of robes, (In various colors, which he likes to pick out of depending on what kind of magic he expects to do that day.) a bookshelf of various tomes on magic, and his alchemy supplies and equipment.

• Brief History: Abathur was raised in Rylaan's capital city, spending his youth getting a formal education then apprenticing in the school of wizardry and sorcery. As most students, he was put through an introduction class for every field, a tactic intended to make students choose one field to specialize in. Instead, he choose the path of the general sorcerer, taking classes in one or two fields at a time and slowly rotating through all of them.

Upon completion a few years prior to the expedition, he quickly found employment under the Royal Council on the Acquisitions of Materials, as one of their resident magic wielders. He spent the intervening years using his knowledge to help the Council's efforts towards finding magic-based solutions to material shortages.

When the expedition was being planned, Abathur was chosen to go along due to his adaptability. Since the Elselands were mostly unknown and shrouded in myth, it would be unknown what to expect down there, thus Abathur's non-specialized nature could hopefully guarantee some usefulness no matter what was encountered. He was also entrusted as Ixen's handler, since he actually works for the Council and is a magic user as well.

edited 23rd Aug '13 5:43:58 AM by FirockFinion

You are reading this.

Interest.

For a lumberjack.

Join us in our quest to play all RPG video games! Moving on to disc 2 of Grandia!

Interest as well. Going to be gone tomorrow so you might have to wait for an official character sheet from me.

Interested. Planning an alchemist/forager hoping to find some special new materials to work with. Character sheet coming tomorrow-ish.

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

Well, if we're calling roles, then an archer should be making his way here soon.

Uh

So would a partnership like Firock's work out? I was thinking of a character that's totally not cribbed from a certain MOBA, a small goblin or dwarf-type creature who rides around on a big ogre or troll that does all the heavy lifting.

edited 23rd Aug '13 6:58:07 AM by Locoman

(I'm in a hurry at the moment so forgive me for the quick responses, or if I forgot something)

@Eventua: I don't see why not.

@Firock: Accepted.

@Locoman: Yeah, a not-Alchemist sort of dude is alright.

Again, I'll be working on the gal taking care of everyone's security during their voyage.

• Name: Garver Burmrod
• Sex: Male
• Age: 22
• Race: Gnome
• Appearance: Approximately three feet tall, with pale skin and abnormally large feet. He's still young, and so only has a short brown beard, and his eyes are usually concealed by a pair of blackened welding goggles, while he usually wears a large leather vest full of pockets and bandoliers with which to keep whatever tool he might need in the field. In other words, something like this.
• Role: Engineer, chemist, and inventor.
• Personality: He's more than a little quirky and a little too enthusiastic about his inventioneering, which in his most... creative moments can verge on a full-on mad scientist mentality, complete with his own personal Igor to bring him materials. Other than that, he's amiable enough, although his absent-minded moments of daydreaming can annoy others around him.
• Skills and Abilities: Garver is extremely smart and quick-witted in terms of engineering and construction, and can jury-rig various machines and devices from whatever's handy, including potential weapons. His main contribution to matters of heavy lifting and personal combat is his ogre friend, Urk, a huge but rather dim specimen of its race that Garver has managed to domesticate, and usually rides a small saddle on the ogre's back.
• Equipment: As an inventor, Garver has brought more than enough tools, gizmos, and doohickeys to occupy himself on the quest. Urk wears a steam-powered harness and boiler on its back that feeds power and pressure to a variety of weapons mounted on his arms and back. His main weapons are a pneumatic harpoon launcher and a belt-fed repeater crossbow, although as his explorations and discoveries continue he'll no doubt be tinkering with his contraptions.
• Brief History: The gnomes on the outskirts of Rylaan mostly kept to themselves, not wanting to get involved in the various wars and skirmishes that Rylaan inevitably contributed to and preferring to make shoes for poor cobblers and occasionally bake cookies in magic trees. Not so for Garver. His parents initially pressured him to join the family trade of shoemaking; this came to an abrupt and premature end when Garver's automatic aglet dispenser led to the near-destruction of the tiny village of Austravona. After his parents sent him on his way, he wound up working behind the counter at a seedy bar near the outskirts of Rylaan, where he befriended a similarly outcast bouncer named Urk from the mountains. One night, an Imperial patrol happened upon the tavern, and what started as a bar brawl turned exceedingly ugly. Thinking quickly, Garver found Urk, and with his friend's superior strength the two managed to escape (with the help of an alcohol-powered flamethrower that neither party takes credit for). Eventually, the duo drifted to the center of Rylaan, where Garver applied for a job as a weapons designer and engineer. His most recent discovery- that heated water and turbines can produce vast amounts of energy- is still a work in progress, but that hasn't stopped him from building his latest creation, the steam-powered ogre-mounted weapons harness.

• Name: Urk
• Sex: Male
• Age: Grown up. Urk no remember how many years that is.
• Race: Ogre
• Appearance: Approximately 8 feet tall, with cracked greyish-green skin that almost resembles a mossy boulder.
• Role: Urk come with little gnome because gnome say Urk has to. Gnome tell Urk what to hit and then Urk hits it. Then gnome gives Urk food and shiny things.
• Personality: People say Urk dumb as a pile of rocks. Urk know that Urk not very smart, but gnome say Urk is o-bee-dee-yent (Urk no know what that means, but gnome give him food when Urk do things right, so that is good).
• Skills and Abilities: Urk very strong! Strongest ogre in old tribe, and stronger than gnome or the mens. Can lift a lot of things at once if they are not too big, and can kick things until they aren't moving no more. Gnome give Urk things to wear. Urk no like them at first, but then gnome said that they make Urk hit things better.
• Brief History: Urk lived in mountain village for many years. Then parents tell Urk that Urk must leave tribe for many years, must travel world and see what things there are to do and eat. Urk bump into gnome at bar, gnome let Urk become an "a-sissy-tent" (but Urk is no sissy). Urk doesn't know way back to home village, anyways.

edited 24th Aug '13 2:33:59 PM by Locoman

Am thinking an orc but not in a typical role, rather I'm thinking a healer, with skills both magical and mundane.

Trump delenda est

Oooh this sounds super fun. But what to play as... I kinda want a modified Tengu but the whole bird-person thing sounds not good, as we're not allowed flight.

Exist, pursued by bear