The Griffin Sword Saga (storyline)/saved posts

An Interview with Harith

Category: Quests, Sagas, and Events
Topic: The Griffon Sword Saga
Message #:
Author: GRELF
Date: 2/22/2002
Subject: An Interview with Harith

An Interview with Harith, The Whip of Mularos - Dated The Eighth Day of Eorgaen, 5102

In the first of a series entitled "The Women of The Dark Alliance," our interviewer has secured a session with Whip of Mularos, Harith Caerines.

Having contacted Harith by means of amulet, I convinced her to do me the favor of allowing me to interview her. Of course, the interview occurred with me sitting my usual table at Hagath's Tavern, and The Whip? Well, wherever she is.

For ease of reading, you can assume all my questions where directly sent to Harith over the amulet waves, while her responses were hear directly within my mind. Needless to say, this was the most interesting interview I've ever done, or, will ever do.

Interviewer: What is your Formal Title and Name?

Harith: My formal title is the Whip of Mularos. My formal name is Harith Caerines. I claim no other titles, for that one alone is more glory to me than most will taste in a lifetime.

Interviewer: First and foremost of course, how is the occupation of Ta'Illistim going?

Harith: The wishes of the Alliance with regards to the conquered city of Ta'Illistim are being carried out. The city varies erratically between dissident and obedient... but it is all within Mularos's will, and all within mine. The Alliance is pleased.

Interviewer: What are the current root goals of the Alliance, in regards to the Elven Nations?

Harith: The root goals of the Alliance... I am the Whip of Mularos, and not His chosen priest. It would be inappropriate for me to speak to the will of Eryael, or to the will of others of the Alliance whose commands I must obey. I submit, and I dominate, as is my nature.

Interviewer: Do you plan to occupy Ta'Illistim indefinitely, or only until you find the sword piece?

Harith: Like the final will of the Alliance, I cannot speak to that. I can say that, if the siege is lifted by command, I personally will not forget those who have knelt to me, and those who have done well by the Alliance. The will of Mularos is paramount. The minds that cringe beneath my blow are a sacrifice to Him... but there are other sacrifices that may be made. It is all in His name.

Interviewer: Where does your power to control the amulet waves come from? This was previously thought impossible?

Harith: It is my Gift, by my suffering, my sacrifice, and His will. Those that can touch can give again, and those who sacrifice most deeply can control most fully as well... for what I am, you are, if I choose to make you so.

[Interviewers Note: At this point The Whip had to excuse herself to deal with some matters of concern. She returned shortly, having resolved whatever issues were at hand.]

Interviewer: What of your background can you share with the readers of the Journal?

[Interviewers Note: Immediately after this question was asked, there was a ferocious growl within my mind, thankfully not directed towards me, and Harith left again, only to return a number of minutes later.]

Harith: Those who have known great suffering... in time, some learn to embrace it. In further time, some learn to transcend it and to deal as they have been dealt... to wield in ways they never dreamed possible, but in ways which are second nature... a gift of Mularos. What I was before -- matters not. What I am now is all that matters, and what I have become is all that interests me beyond the will of my Lord and dominator.

Interviewer: There are those who are interested in your physical appearance. Is it permitted to ask?

Harith: An interesting request. How to best show you, that is the question... a moment, abide...

[Interviewers Note: At this point, The Whip directed this interviewer to obtain a mirror. Not being of the vain Dark Elven type, he had to borrow one from Lady Alisaire. After gazing into the mirror, the interviewer looked upon the Whip of Mularos, Harith Caerines. What he saw, is sketched below for your perusal.]

You see a sketch of a mirror. Within the mirror is framed a mature female human, but one terribly transformed by the vicious scars that contort her exposed alabaster skin. Her eyes are pale grey, and her chin-length hair is sandy blond and braided. The hood of her grey cloak casts a brooding shadow over her features, while a white spidersilk tunic hides her skin -- except for the jagged rents torn through the spidersilk, which are bloodstained around the edges, and the deep welts you see through those gaps in the cloth. Her face is broad, her nose is aquiline, and, as the mirror tilts slightly, you glimpse a barbed razern chain bracelet wrapped about her slender wrist. Scarlet blood streams silently from beneath the bracelet, flowing down her elbow and out of sight.

Interviewer: The block you placed into Charna's mind, she wants to know what she has to do to remove it. Or, as she put it, "Could she just remove it??

[Interviewers note: At this point, a vision of Charna, and whispered words to her, "Consider this your last warning before you are permanently crippled." Was placed within the interviewers head.]

Harith: Can she just remove it'... of course not. If she could, why would I bother to place it there?

Interviewer: I think she meant for you to remove it

Harith: When she surrenders, I will heal her. Not before

At this point, the interviewer thanked Harith for her time, and Harith bade him to attach this last message, to be read by the inhabitants of Ta'Illistim.

"Remind the city of Ta'Illistim who controls it. Too many forget too quickly, and, as joyous as it is to wield the lash, it is annoying when it catches them off guard."

See Also

• Elanthian Journal 9

Invasion Suggestion Response

Category: Quests, Sagas, and Events
Topic: The Griffon Sword Saga
Message #: 7369
Author: GS3-VORAVIEL
Date: 4/15/2003 2:37:41 PM
Subject: Re: Invasion suggestion

Ah, the ever-elusive "real invasion" mechanics.

Currently, critters aren't at the level of customability where you can tell them to *stay* in a specific range of rooms. They'll wander everywhere they can, and there's only a few hard limits to where they can't go. Unfortunately, this does not do well when you want to simulate real warfare automatically.

Otherwise, when manually running invasions, I try to bring a more realistic feel to it. I tend to stress guarding choke-points, mainly because things like bridges, etc, objects you can actually GO/CLIMB through, are one of the things critters don't normally go through unless you flag it as critter-crossable. However, this is not perfect since I can't see every person and every group of people and how their progress is and adjust things accordingly.

I eventually want to try making a system wherein everything is automatically taken into account - group bonuses, player numbers vs. critter numbers - if players are guarding a pass, then the critters can't just go past them unless a significant amount of them are dead or incapicitated in some way. If players smash a significant portion of the critters numbers, then they'll retreat for a while only to come back at a specified starting point (and have to fight back to their 'goal' which can also be set). However, right now, telling a critter go on a path is pretty hard since there's a hell of a lot of things to take into account.

I do have ideas on how to accomplish these things, tho, but we'll see if they're feasible and approved in the future. But, I doubt we'll see it in time for this invasion. That's alright, tho, since this incursion is just the appetizer for what's to come.

~ V, insert evil laughter.

The Ominous Meanwhile

Category: Quests, Sagas, and Events
Topic: The Griffon Sword Saga
Message #: 7604
Author: HATESHI
Date: 4/20/2003 6:39:26 AM
Subject: Re: The Ominous Meanwhile [spoiler]

Congratulations, Maimara. Player of Maimara, I hope that the mandatory barrage of OOC threats, insults, demands, and other such nonsense does not detract from your own enjoyment of your character's find.

For those interested, here's what I remember of the timeline of the events in this chapter:

Beginning late November/early Decemberish:

• Ulstram senses that the third shard is east! People go east. How far east is determined roughly after the quillions are found--somewhere at least at the line of the Dragonspone or beyond it.
• Morvule tells the DA supporters that the shard is somewhere near Ta'Illistim.

• Battle at Shadowguard. So much for the Illistim army..
• Harith claims Ta'Illistim for her own. People laugh. Heads explode. (Or is it "Heads explode. People laugh."?)
• The elven armies are pitted continually against the Alliance's army. Slowly, the elves push the Alliance back. Nice distraction!

• An Illistim soldier POW is recovered, carrying information about Harith's safehold. The Resistance gets the information and the DA supporters do not--despite some scattered attempts to do so. Instead, they kill him after he repeatedly attacks one of their own ranks. So much for any more info from him.
• The Hawks successfully kill Harith despite the DA supporters' attempts to finish securing an escape route for her. Judging from a few posts, I don't think that even the GMs anticipated this.

• Harith is revived as a banshee.

• Shrines are destroyed. Apparently not all of them. (Hey V, is the place that is frequented pretty much daily by the DA supporters the shrine that was missed? Or is there some shrine that wasn't searched out?)

• Morvule reaffirms what was told months prior--that the shard is either within the walls of Ta'Illistim or very near by. Apparently it had fallen deep within the Dragonspine, melting through the rock with its high speed. Dwarves then mined it out of the mountains. Believing it to be an interesting stone (remember--the pommel is comprised of many, not just one stone), the dwarves send it on a caravan to Ta'Illistim for sale. After all, elves like pretty and interesting things and have silvers. The caravan is attacked by V'tullians, killing most. Elves come to their aid too late. The shard is either left behind after the scuffle or taken by someone present without realizing what it is. The upcoming siege would pose a distraction so that a search could be mounted for the shard unhindered.
• Judging what my character was told--directly and indirectly in-game--by Resistance members, they knew something similar. Or at least that the shard had been recovered, then lost, but was somewhere near Ta'Illistim and that (most likely) a person carried it unknowingly.

• The anticipated distraction comes and Ta'Illistim is besieged.
• Morvule tells DA members that further information was relayed by the V'tullian scouts. One of the elven soldiers who attempted to aid the dwarvan caravan found the shard and kept it as an interesting bauble. Disillusioned by the war, he deserted. He was known (or expected) to be within the Illistim walls, in hiding and now a begger. A further distraction is planned to draw him out so that he--and the shard--can be searched for and found.
• Interestingly enough, my character is told a very similar account by a Resistance member. The shard is hed by someone after it was mined from the Dragonspine. That someone does not realize he has it. He might be taking it to Ta'Vaalor soon to sell.
• My character is told by a Resistance member of some monster called a Miscere'Golab expected to appear the following evening, and of shadows that will fall over the city. Reservations are expressed about the real implications of the beast's appearance, as well as whether or not the Resistance will be able to best it. If that is all that is thrown at them.
• Maimara cries wolf, claiming that she has found the shard. Really, she just paid an Illistim elf to pretend that he lost it to her.

• The fateful day(night) comes. Morvule instructs the DA supporters to prepare for a search; all travel alone in the city and begin to comb it strategically even before the distraction is produced. (Just as they have been searching the city and its environs for the past few months.)
• Mister Glob comes to say hi and oozes on things.
• Ulstram instructs the Resistance to combat it. He seems painfully oblivious to a number of obvious aspects of the beast's apperance, many of which are raised and summarily dismissed by him. Oh well--he IS blind.
• The DA supporters continue to search, running around the city like chickens with their heads cut off.
• About twenty five minutes into the 'Glob's apperance, Maimara alerts her comrades that she has found the elf in the catacombs. Three rush to her side, where she is already deep in conversation with the squatter and proposing a trade so he can purchase a ticket out of the city.
• The elf agrees to a deal, takes the offered half and then does not offer his end of the bargain. He is then killed for being a lying bastard by Maimara, and the bag he holds is retrieved by another present.
• DA supporters go into sanctuary to confirm that it is in fact the shard and not just a peculiar rock. After Naamit sings to it, some concerns are alleviated.
• A few DA supporters go Ulstram hunting. Some of them drop blatant hints to him and those gathered about the shard--but the elf does not sense it, so focused on what his vision told him.
• Mister Glob dies. The Resistance rejoice.
• Morvule confirms that the shard is real.

Interesting progression, at least to me. And, looking back, while the DA did get the shard in the end, they suffered many setbacks along the way--and have paid a great price to obtain it.

Perhaps more will be revealed soon in game.

- EK

Comments on the Storyline's Progression

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Author: GM Voraviel
Date: 08/19/2005
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Oo! A thread about the neverending quest! Wanna know why it's so goddamn long?! Then keep reading...

When I first started it up with GM Lothwyn, we were fairly new to GMhood. I'd already gotten a taste for events by running the first half of the vishmiir saga (the parts with all the stunted '...raaah...I'm...spooky...' speech and bloody messes if you said the wrong word, not the the world-stopping Illistim mages part) so I was asked to run another. I was basically given free reign to do anything I wanted. Since there had been very, very little active Arkati sagas in the past few years when I was a player (seriously, it seemed like everyone was actively avoiding Arkati quests), we decided to bring the cliched little battle between good and evil back.

Back then, we had a lot of time. A whole lot. More time than people should spend working on a quest, anyway. It was also, more or less, the main thing we got to work on. So things were intense, and they moved quickly, and they got very big. People liked what we were doing for the most part, and the quest was open-ended. It stayed this way until shortly after the EN portion of the quest.

That was when it was decided that the quest would be more of a side-project for us than our main work. We weren't new anymore, and we were both familiar with alot of GM stuff that made us useful for more than just running one quest, so we were utilized for other projects and whatnot. Mainly WoN, at the time. I got to do a whole crapload of backbone support for Hochstib in terms of creatures, invasions, Mandis Crystals, other coding, event-running, etc, etc under the direction of GM Mikos and various ancillary coding backup for the entire team with all their various subplots.

Obviously, I underestimated the workload for WoN, otherwise I wouldn't have said GSS wouldn't be affected by it. It was, maybe not immediately, but afterwards. After WoN, GSS was still on side project status, so it would wane in the face of larger projects that had deadlines. Then it would start up again, then it would wane, then it would start up again. We still plugged away at it, of course, but factor in moving across the country, college, work and all the other things life inevitably throws at you along with the scope of projects we now had to do, and you find yourself reeeeal short on time eventually. So those months where you were working on something big for eventual release started to stack up, and here we are today!

This isn't placing blame on anyone, tho -- obviously, my time is my own and I was hired to meet certain expectations. It's mainly been one long road of attrition with the end result being more gaps in between the spurts of action.

As for some of the things discussed in this thread, I can say that the ending of the quest was player-driven up to a point. That point was when the third piece was found, and the ending had been completely open-ended until then. Players shaped how the end was going to turn out, and without some situations that players solely did on their own, certain NPCs would not be the way they are, hell, certain NPCs wouldn't even exist without things players have done. Whole subplots would've never happened. I really think that's the best way to go with quests, allowing players alot of malleability in terms of where the storyline goes up to a point, as you do need to plan things development-wise. If it was solely up to the players all the time, you'd pretty much end up with an automated quest, or a much smaller quest, of which GSS is neither.

So, that's why it's been as long as it has been. I do try to make it as entertaining as possible when it does start up and try to maximize the amount of interactability and fun. I was a graduate of the Thurfel quest myself with my PC, so I'm painfully aware of how much it sucks to have cliffhangers and just plain zero activity, so when the activity does restart, I try to make up for it with fun things for people to do -- there've been countless 'mini-missions' throughout this quest in hopes of making things more entertaining and give people a unique experience instead of just invade/break/invade. That's not to say there won't be invasions.

Regardless, though, once this ends, I severely doubt you'll see any other quest this long. What you will see is the same kind of attention to detail and interaction since we've got alot of cool new GMs and there's been plans to bring smaller-scope/local quests into cities.

As for overpoweredness -- some things are just more powerful than even a really strong adventurer. The High Priests are one of them. If you don't enjoy that, don't muss with 'em. Seriously. When they're walking around in invasions, they're mainly there for an 'oh shit!' moment, like a roaming void in the Rift, a sort of chaotic random thing that could possibly kill you. Otherwise, they're not really going to hunt any odd person down. If you're actively screwing with them, though, then maybe you might get something nasty thrown your way. We've certainly thrown out alot of smackable NPCs and gave players a chance at the High Priests - again, malleability.

At this point, though, it's moot if you hate it as there's not going to be much time left to convince you otherwise. It's in its final stages (why else would I be invading with frickin' demons with frickin' lasers on their heads). Rejoice, and whatnot, or just scoff and declare that it shall go on forever!

Because it will! Bwahaha.

Kidding.

Maybe.

~ V

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Author: GM Voraviel
Date: 08/19/2005
Subject:

Being a hero of GS doesn't really matter how high your level is or how strong your attacks are. Yeah, sure, you can go smack the biggest critter out there and go wrangle with demons, and rightly you should. Real 'heros' are defined and built by facing overwhelming odds.

Quite frankly, PvP combat at the higher levels is boring anyway and is mainly about getting the first shot in. And if you're going to go with the whole 'they should be like players' logic, NPCs would never die permanently anyway. So the point of offing them to stop them is moot. The ones I make are, as mentioned above, for an element of random chaos, and the occasional organized chaos. They're the adversary that a hero cuts their teeth on through many and varied encounters.

Quests are about pushing and pulling on both the sides of the player and the GM. If every quest was player-driven in the sense that you could put it to a grinding halt by offing some central NPC, then there wouldn't be very many quests around. I've never quite understood the fierce opposition to GMs actually having some modicum of control in the direction of a quest, rather leaving everything and anything in the hands of the players. The best kind of quest, in my opinion, is a collaboration between the staff running it and the players participating in it to create a story with multiple paths. Characters should be able to spin off whole new sub-chapters with their roleplay and influence a storyline's direction. Thus far, that's what I've tried to do.

The fact that you can't suddenly go 'Nyeh, screw this quest. *boom* *end*' shouldn't really be considered a detriment to a storyline.

So I'd guess our definitions on player-driven differ.

Meh, I have to get up at 6am. Be back on Monday. :P

~ V

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Author: GM Voraviel
Date: 08/22/2005
Subject:

Wee. Back from Daytona with lotsa new snaaaakes.

>For example, if Morvule can summon epic legions of dangerous creatures, why does he have to entrust finding something so important as the a sword fragment to such weak little mortals? Why can't he just go *POP* teleport himself to the location and take it? Or send one of these immense 800 AS/DS/CS/TD critters to find it?

Well, we've always had that whole 'holy crap they're not full of uber-power anymore!' thing going on since Ulstram and Morvule blew up the sword way back when. It's essentially like trying to find fist-sized rock in the Himalayas. You may have a whole bunch of evil henchmen at your disposal and an atom bomb up your sleeve, but a-bombs don't help you finding that rock. Henchmen do, and in essence the entire 'army' of the DA has been looking for it since day one -- in the background. We'd often make mention of it with other NPCs -- saying the DA was looking for it and reports of their forces were in the vicinity of <blah>, far to the <direction> of <blah>. I suppose we could've done more, such as news items, etc, but going for that much effort to inform the populace of something they couldn't really participate in or see directly didn't seem like a good idea.

We once mussed around with the idea of having quiet invasions in far-out hunting areas or travel paths, but that usually doesn't work unless you have all day to hang around and maintain it and hope someone notices.

It just so happens that when major powers clash in an effort to fight over it, it keeps them very busy, thus letting the players that aren't in those massive armies of good and evil get a chance at it. Yeah, that seems very unlikely, and yeah, I'd like to, you know, tweak mechanics so you *could* wage sieges and be in opposing armies and whatnot, but that's a rant for another day.

As for their seemingly uber power, we have shown their limits. Draezir was unable to personally show up and kick ass in Solhaven for a while due to maintaining shadowy evil critters and stealthy Sheruvian ninja-magic that kept his HQ in Solhaven hidden. All four of the priests went out of commission (Zerroth almost died) for a while after summoning the big honkin' FF Boss critter ripoff complete with bastardized angelic name. Zerroth was smackable by PCs when he went into fits of rage. Eryael was hittable, too, but he doesn't count since he's a little pansy that lurves the whippins. 2 out of 4 priests are dormant due to efforts on part of the players. It would've been 3 if they had succeeded in the last mission. So, the precedents of their fallibility are there, they're just really big, difficult precedents.

As for the merchant question, I don't know, really. It's a personal preference, and as such, the reasons will vary widely. I off people all the time with Raziras because it's funny and fits the irreverant nature of the character and what he does. He does it purely with acts, tho. I'm guessing most of the time it's just 'I don't want to deal with PvP. *crank stats*'. That's what it was when I started out as a GM, the 'fun' of the cranked stats thing gets old pretty quick, though, and I generally just mellowed out to having a sanct in the room and normal stats. The two that do still have high stats are not-retired warriors/assassins that have a Martha Stewart/Jimmy the Tulip complex going on, so they merchant on the side and rarely show up because of their more interesting day jobs.

They just don't bake turkey suppositories or raise cute little chickens.

That's my experience with merchants, tho, I can't speak for anyone else on the matter.

~ V

Comments on the Storyline's End

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Author: GM Voraviel
Date: 09/09/2005
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Heeey, lookie. Issa nother long post from meee. I can't sleep! Blame insomnia and caffeeeeine!

>I'm sure that this will be the stuff that dark elven sorcerer dreams are made of, but I get grouchy when the same old tired we must obliterate the light vs dark stuff gets trotted out and the GMs get their rocks off watching mass destruction.

We don't, really. I don't want to piss off players.

>That is why Gemstone storylines are a joke. Roleplay is about how your character would react to any given situation, and the effects and reactions your actions generate, responding to those reactions, etc. When your actions in those situations literally mean nothing, the fun is lost, and people play games to have fun.

Sometimes, characters don't have control. If characters had control of every possible angle in a storyline, it'd essentially be an automated quest, or at the very least, not something as epic as the quest under discussion.

GSS was very fluid in its inception, so fluid that I didn't even write a script, I just had a concept and ran with it. Characters have influenced multiple plot points and just plain regular portions of the quest where I didn't expect a specific type of reaction from them and I just ran along with them. As a GM, it's one of the most exhilarating (and sometimes extremely stressful and nail-biting) moments when you hand your entire storyline over to a player and let them take it wherever they will. I imagine it's even more fun for the players.

As things progress, however, you do need to concentrate on things that have developed and things kind of get set in stone as the end approaches. That's just how things go. I do not think that's a bad thing, personally.

I obviously can't speak for other GMs on the points you've made regarding character actions and GM intent -- it is true that they *can* do things that take no note of player's actions or goals. I'm just trying to remind you that there are GMs that do watch, and do take such actions into account, and it's not just me.

>If Gosaena really did become involved in any way, I'm going to be extremely upset. If the GMs had some random non-Gosaenan angel show up, in complete disregard for all previous theological documentation, I'll only be mildly upset.

Huh. I went into this mildly on the other boards, but I might as well go into it here as well.

There's no one more concerned about Gosaena's image in game than I am, and no theologies were violated when creating this character. There was one person who really had Gosaena pegged, concept-wise, over any other GM I've known, and that was Aelsidhe. She was the one who wrote most of what's in the Gods doc about Gosaena with editing by Varevice. She was, eventually, going to write some form of detailed history and make a very large temple (not the one in Solhaven, which she helped build).

She and I talked over aaaalot of concepts regarding her theology and her followers, and that's where the seed of that concept began. It was a discussion about an old item -- those auction wings, and the fact that one of her angels *spoke* (they're supposed to be nasty silent death-reaper things, and you'll often see them depicted as faceless in temples she or I built), so she explained alot of fun stuff that made her much more interesting in terms of mortal followers.

So when things seemed to be turning towards an ending where the bad guys would win, the angel concept was introduced into a side-storyline that made perfect sense for it -- the original side storyline came from people trying to contact an NPC elf in the Ta'Illistim portion of the quest, and Maluverre was born -- he was decidedly neutral in his stance. Since his history and mannerisms were fairly subtle and there was a push for more 'neutral' NPCs, I kept him around, and then Volierre got tossed into the mix for people who wanted some mysterious crap and some backstory to deduce within all the fighting. The two had enough subtlety in their personalities to bring a Gosaenan angle to the quest, although you never really knew that they were Gosaenans until near the end. Which is really how it should be.

Frankly, I never intended it to end this way. I was expecting the good guys to win. They didn't. So neutrality stepped in and did what neutrality does -- restore things to order. I think I did a fairly good job in portraying that neutrality through subtle buildup and clues dotted throughout the storyline. I don't do horribly dramatic things without a solid reason. I wouldn't just pull an angel out of my ass, y'know?

~ V

Category:
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Author: GM Voraviel
Date: 09/09/2005
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>Now I remember them saying WoN and GSS would be no Thurfels, in regards to length or exclusion or a whole host of other problems that Thurfels' suffered. It seems they fell in the same trap. And I'm not suprised. When you're having your butt kicked 24/7 I'd see no reason to change what I'm doing either.

I don't think I ever personally stated that. The only thing I ever said was GSS wouldn't be affected by WoN, and it was in the end. As for it dragging on too long, it's not like it inconvenienced people who didn't care about it in the first place. If I dropped down a persistant invasion and just sort of left it there, then maybe it would've sucked hardcore.

Getting my butt kicked 24/7? I seriously doubt that was a factor in it dragging on so long, if anything, it'd make me want to speed things up and do horrible illegal things for the kickers! :P I've already explained the reason for its length in other threads.

>From the play.net, "In manner, [Gosaena] is silent and impartial." Impartial to me would suggest that if she even deigned to look upon the current goings-on, she would have no reaction. She certainly wouldn't gift one of her followers with enough power to hugely alter current events.

She probably didn't much care about what was going on. Remember that prophecy is a tricky thing, even for someone who sees the death of all things. Perhaps it was simply that particular item's time to die, and the only way to achieve that was to stick some angel out there that happened to have free will centuries before that item ever came into existence. Fate is funny like that. In the end, I don't think she did anything in regards to helping the good guys directly.

>IMO it's lack of planning. A quest should be planned beginning to end before it's begun with timeframes for each component. It doesn't sound hard, but then you have to take into account free will and that plan (for the things to go the opposite of your ideal), yet still keep the quest on track.

You wanna know how much WoN was planned out? Heh, we had entire, deliciously detailed outlines written up by the Uber-Bradach. Wanna know how much of that stuff saw the light of day? Noooot alot, as I recall. Hardcore planning doesn't work real well (for me, personally) for the beginning of quests because you need to let players get a grip on what you're introducing and mess with it a little to put their own spin on things, THEN you start plotting out how it's going to go. I find running with an idea is just peachy for a while, but obviously you do need a plan. Even still, plans aren't going to help when life throws stuff at you, which is alot of the main reasons GSS got delayed. I'm really talking extended sagas here -- planning works fine for alot of other events.

As for the complaints of people centered in the events, it's mainly player perception. Alot of people have come and gone, especially on the good side of things, during the entire saga. I'm going through lists of names in my head, and they're pretty long. On the dark side of things, it's obviously going to be smaller since they're just a smaller group altogether. And, frankly, the 'core' people aren't slathered with GM attention. As an example, Mekthros' one on one personal GM interaction boiled down to: 1. Getting one of those DA pendants. 2. Pissing off Draezir and summarily getting killed by him.

That's it, as far as I can remember. Everything else he's done on his own. It's like that with *alot* of the people who've come and gone out of the limelight in quests. It's all perception. If you can step up and be bold among your fellow players, and if you can keep going with the quest, then you're likely going to get noticed at one point or another by a GM. Even if you're not, you're already in the minds of alot of players. Jolena's post on the subject is pretty good at explaining it.

>After having read V's post, it makes me think about trying to get involved the next time around. I don't know if this is practical, but is there a place where the recent "happenings" of an event get chronicled so people can get a grip on what is transpiring?

We used to have semi-regular updates in the news section:

http://www.play.net/gs4/news/events/home.asp

It used to get posted on the front page every time we updated. But I don't really remember that happened with that. I think Melissa forgot to pester me and I forgot to pester her, so the GSS updates didn't get posted and I stopped writing them. GS4 News was a great place until it went dormant, I think? I remember intentionally sending them some stuff a while back.

Also, boards work, sometimes. Sometimes you get people that document things in a completely freaky fashion and other times you get nothing but crickets. There were several times I just wanted to go: 'Here, look! Look! Stuff's happening, but no one's posting!' on the boards with an accompanying log of said happening.

~ V