For Bling and Country

Hey, have here's a discussion thread. And a link back to the signups. Bam! I'm waiting for a day or so to let the last couple people who contacted me make characters before starting the game, but you can feel free to start discussing plans for what to do on the first day (namely, what tasks the workers should be doing) so we can get things moving along quickly and jump right into the fun stuff.

Here's some specifics I can throw out to make planning things easier:

• It's sometime in spring, so as to have as long as possible before winter.
• The river is almost a mile wide, with the camp on the east side.
• I'm guessing the ship is probably 15 feet (~5m) wide, 80 feet (~25m) long, and with its low ceilings has two lower levels for a total height of 15 feet (~5m). I am not a medieval riverboat builder, so in case that's a weird size, it can either change or be explained with "magic".
• The geography of the area is that it's basically all trees, trees everywhere, with a giant river cutting through. The trees are a mix of things that look like redwood, oak, sequoia, etc. and range from anywhere between 30 and 200 feet tall. The ship landed in the very first clearing they saw in the treeline in days (before the seemingly endless trees, it was all seemingly endless mountains). The clearing is about a mile long and there's about 100 feet between the treeline and the river, but towards the center of the clearing there's a sort of semi-circular break in the trees that is 300 feet in radius. The ship was pulled out and set down parallel to the river, about thirty feet away from the water, which means there shouldn't be any danger of a high water level sweeping it away, while putting distance between it and the woods. Here's a quickly-patched-together image.◊ All those distances are just rough guesses.

In the area, like I said in the signups, there's trees and gold discovered so far. Some of the trees are Ebony, which is the fantasy setting version where it's a wood almost as strong as steel (which also means it takes a ton more effort to cut down, clean up, and work with) but on the plus side you don't have to wait years for the wood to season before it can be used to make things like bows. The materials brought along in the ship include four days of food, a small amount of extra arrows and bolts, tools for all the workers to do wood/stone/ore work. Plus the ship's power source, while empty, is basically a magical battery, though there's no way to really charge it at the moment. (It's like how the Dwemer use a grand soul gem in the Centurion, for you Elder Scrolls people.)

As for your workforce, I'm going to finalize the specifics once I have a better picture of what all the characters are, but there will most likely be forty general-purpose workers, and an NPC overseer who deals with the workers. Because of what the current character roster looks like, the "specialized" NPC characters will include a blacksmith in charge of workers doing things with metals, a carpenter for workers doing more precise woodwork like making bows, crossbows, arrows, bolts, etc, a stonemason for leading workers making bricks and those sorts of things, and I'm thinking about one or two more who might be needed. Let me know if I forgot someone that should exist.

edited 26th Aug '13 10:33:18 AM by nman

• Number of general laborers: 35
• Number of specialized laborers (who can double as general ones): 7
• Total number of laborers: 42

• Named NPCs
  • Overseer: Nehrun Lowen - An older gnome man with a monocle. He'll tell the workers what to do if no one's around (which just coincidentally winds up matching what you guys decided what the workers should do) and manages them throughout the day.
    • Overseer Assistant aka "Underseer": Jeffrey (Just Jeffrey) - A human man in his early thirties who is almost seven feet tall, has a lazy left eye, a shaved, tattooed head, and is essentially Nehrun's bodyguard and enforcer. He helps to encourage the workers if needed.
  • Specialized Laborers
    • Tarmana Cavedusk: Blacksmith. A drow woman who looks to be in her mid twenties by human standards, she's worked at smithing so long, could probably break you in two with her bare hands.
    • Gathik Steelmist: Fletcher. A cat dude of some sort, let's call the race "cat" for now. Probably early forties.
    • Jen Beardfist: Dwarf cook.
    • Lita Aemanto: Desert elf hunter.
    • Garver Burmrod: Gnome engineer.
    • Urk: Ogre tough guy.
    • Rhavyn Nightshade: Fairy scout.

edited 3rd Oct '13 8:41:26 PM by nman

And this one too, just to be safe.

Why is it that whenever I read that title I imagine the characters walking out of the ship with sunglasses and Thrift Shop playing in the background?

Not before, but I see it now..

Great, now I'm doing it too.

I'm gonna get some gold, only got 20 maps in my pocket

I I I'm running, scouting out land

This really sucks

I'll find some ancient chest

And it will be the best

I'm with this big-ass ogre from the tavern down the road

That's a pretty dang big river.

For a riverboat meant for this many people? It sounds freakishly short in width mainly, could probably stand to be longer too; height seems okay. 10*80*3=2400, depends on how it tapers exactly, but I'd round that down to around 2000 square feet of space, probably less. With upwards of fifty people, that's less than 40 square feet per person; before that sounds like a lot, that includes themselves, the stuff they brought with them, and all the supplies required to keep them alive on the trip there, stuffed into a space of 4 feet by 10 feet. (Spread your arms out to either side, fingers extended. Unless you've got pretty damn small arms, that length is probably over five feet.)

A cramped ass ride indeed.

edited 25th Aug '13 6:17:08 PM by FirockFinion

We have about 14 player characters and 20 workers, so that's a total of 34. Still a lot of people for a relatively small boat, but, you know; well under fifty.

Their sleeping space would be pretty cramped, but it's possible to fit a lot of bunks in a relatively small area if you don't mind being squished. I'd anticipate things like livestock (if they have any; I imagine there would be at least a couple of horses, and maybe some chickens for a reliable source of protein) would take up the most space.

I'm not very good at spatial dimensions, so I'm having trouble visualising all of this, but I think the riverboat is kind of meant to be cramped.

Plus some of the characters are quite small (Jen, Garver), so presumably they could get by with smaller and/or shared quarters, while the bigger characters (Erna, Urk) might convert a livestock stable into some kind of temporary living space.

Of course, if the sapient stegosaur is anything close to the size of an actual specimen, it just raises a whole host of new problems.

Well, my character has put as many of the laborers as he could (those not bringing things off the ship) to work digging and preparing basic lodgings and defenses. You know, digging trenches for the palisades a little way from the clearing and preparing temporary dugouts.

Might have to talk with the overseer and Erma about making the clearing a bit wider. If only we had a geomancer. Volk knows the basics of making wells, but finding water is a whole 'nother thing entirely.

@Kiri: From Nman's post at the top of this page:

So either he typo'd or he's decided since starting the signup thread to give us more workers to start with.

He also mentioned bringing between 2-4 "specialized NPCs" who by the sounds of it are not included in that forty above, so in total we're talking 43-45 NPCs, plus the 14 PCs actually brings the number of people on the boat close to 60. (Which brings that 40 square feet per person down to about 33.)

Also, I forgot about space besides for the people and their stuff on board. On the lower decks, there needs to be enough open space to walk, since they can't just climb over stuff due to ceilings. There's also the magical engine somewhere on board, the "crystallized kraken's soul", which could be who knows how big but nevertheless still needs a room somewhere on board.

So yeah, I think the boat should either be bigger, (It seems rather small for the boat hand-picked from the entire kingdom just for this job, I'll point out.) or it should do some "bigger on the inside" magical shenanigans.

edited 25th Aug '13 9:45:08 PM by FirockFinion

You're all so cute, using words like quarters You have to imagine that they'd want to maximize every cubic inch of space inside, and having things like beds and walls takes up valuable space. If you want to make a small amount of personal rooms out of the ship, you'll need to find a place to put whatever supplies are inside, and then build the rooms inside or build huts or something outside. Also, I've been debating about livestock. On one hand, horses and chickens are nice to have, and normal ships would probably have some. On the other hand, like I said, it's all about maximizing every bit of space, and animals are much harder to control in very tight quarters, and if they survive the trip they can't cut down a tree. So if anyone's got ideas I'm all ears.

@Firock: I just based the size off of a penteconter and made it a little smaller, so if you think it's too small I'll widen it up to 15 feet. The reason I specified is more for knowing that it's the size of a merchant-sized ship than a big battleship. (which I just handwave as sort of magic-crystal-pseudo-steam-powered propulsion that required a very expensive and difficult-to-obtain power source) And that river's not even that big, have you seen the Nile, man? Now that's big. And yes, I did up the number of workers like I mentioned I would in the signup thread. The reason for that is to make it so that all the player characters make up around ~25% of the total crew. That lets everyone else, who's supposed to be a specialist at one thing or another, be able to do their own thing or go off on adventures without, whereas what I originally had would mean that almost half of the manpower vanishes

@mantle: For the future/first day that's cool, but you can figure that the first day was mainly a hurried frenzy to get the ship in place before nightfall, saying some prayers for those who fell overboard, making sure nothing important in the cargo got soaked, and whatever else had to be done, so that you're all starting from virtually zero on the first "real" day.

I still think that a mile wide is a lot wider than most rivers, but I didn't mean that in a "it should be smaller" way, just dang. Sets a nice tone, actually.

As for the ship, I didn't realize that's what kind of ship you had in mind. I dunno, I figured we'd have something more advanced than a penteconter, like a schooner or at least a trireme. (Yes, I'm having to use wikipedia to remember what name corresponds to what ship, why do you ask?)

I still say the ship's a bit small for having been specially picked just for this mission, but I suppose if the trip being super uncomfortable was the point, then that would do the trick. Then we just start running into the same problems you usually have when you pack that many people into a space that small; mainly diseases getting to run rampant. But I suppose between magical cures and saying that not everyone survived the trip, that's explainable.

@Animals: I would definitely put them on the top deck if we had taken any, where it's better ventilated. Then just keep them in their cages to avoid them running rampant and put something on top of the cages to keep them shaded during the day. (Like, say, more of our luggage and equipment.) It would certainly be easy to take along chickens that way, but I can't say about horses for sure. I'm familiar with chickens, but not with horses.

edited 26th Aug '13 2:03:13 AM by FirockFinion

Get another ship.

Tow that bitch.

Also, Our Angels Are Different... because I dare say so, I said they were in this setting. Anyway, Angels can't/don't sleep, so Corbin and Bathsheba (dear god I hope I'm spelling that right) don't need sleeping quarters. Imagine that she gets her own cubicle or something, and Corbin just lives in the crow's nest. (Or the closest thing we have)

If we're talking themouth of the river, a mile wide isn't that big at all.

@Firock: It's a fairly modern/advanced ship for the setting, I just used that ship for a rough guess of what a super cramped tiny ship would be. Another example could be the Santa Maria, which is about shorter, but just as wide as the (new) width, and I suppose Columbus had them packed in there too, so I guess it works. In any case, the ship is small and packed to the gills because they only had one power source and needed to specially make something that could carry as many people as possible without wasting weight on the ship itself. So how many chickens do you think would be sent along? Keep in mind what I said about maximizing space usage.

It's your grammar, not your spelling you need to watch out for. Why can't angels sleep? My favorite part is after a hard days work the characters just plop down and conk out for the night.

Actually now that I look at it, that sleeping bit's not in the signup anywhere.

@Grammar: No, spelling her name.

@Sleeping: Ok, ignore that. I was just trying to handwave sleeping quarter restrictions.

edited 26th Aug '13 3:13:58 PM by mrminun

Joe probably curled up in the rafters.

Could we possibly assume that they've all had professional clown training?

I would feel sorry for the squeamish folk that had to sleep next to Fihelis.

"Ew ew slimy lizard slime ew"