Cavemen: OOC

[nikohl]

Ugh, you guys, knock it off.

All I see when I come in here is people whinging about how other people's words and actions spoil their fun.

Do you think it's fun for me to have to mediate this shit? I'm trying to run a game that everyone can enjoy, but having to deal with a different complaint every single day is draining my willpower. I am not going to want to put the time and effort into this game if it's constantly a source of bloody bickering. Stop it please. OOC is for discussion about the game, planning, feedback and chatter - not pages and pages of arguing.

--
Q&A time!

Re the burial question, Nerre - Hitto isn't going to be expected to do the burial, it will be a whole-tribe thing. At the minute, all he's been asked to do is scout the cave, since he found it. I think given the level of planning that's going into scouting the burial cave, it seems likely that the tribe is going to go with the original plan of using the stand-alone cave as a tomb, and sealing the entrance until it's needed again. If I'm not mistaken, that was even your idea.

The reason this is being somewhat GM-driven rather than just "there's a dead girl spend points on whatever you want haha" is that it's a Quest. It even says so in the updates. These quests are ways for the GMs to push the story along in specific ways. I'm not saying you can't theorise about different burial methods in-character, propose something for next time, try something out etc - I'm just saying, the burial rites are already underway for the Quest.

If we hadn't set a Quest, Ril would just be quietly decomposing in the village's only source of salt, after all.

As for the tribe's name, Elto said he was going to decide by the next full moon, so there's a long time yet before a name will be selected. A few suggestions have been made in-character, all of which are available to read in the thread (I'm not going through 15 pages to check, lol)

[Nerre]

@Nikohl: Well, Badge and my last post did sound to me like we already sorted it out, it was a missunderstanding.

The seeling was one of my ideas when we found clay, yes. I only posted the other one cause I also liked it.
I just remembered a movie I saw about 2 month ago. About cave mummies. The used a cave close to their settlement and put in the dead, building little walls around them to seal their bodies so no animals would get them. Over time more and more were added, until a cave was too full, then they used the next one. What you think about this?

[Jacon]

Ugh, you guys, knock it off.

All I see when I come in here is people whinging about how other people's words and actions spoil their fun.

Do you think it's fun for me to have to mediate this shit? I'm trying to run a game that everyone can enjoy, but having to deal with a different complaint every single day is draining my willpower. I am not going to want to put the time and effort into this game if it's constantly a source of bloody bickering. Stop it please. OOC is for discussion about the game, planning, feedback and chatter - not pages and pages of arguing.

Lol welcome to game mastering. It's a bietch

[BadgeAddict]

Nerre..did you just ignore what nikohl wrote.

I'm not saying that ideas are bad, I'm saying that your burial question/ideas have been answered, repeatedly asking/telling us ways in which to do burial is not helping.

[nikohl]

I figure that's basically what the tribe are intending to do, only on a lower-tech level than the second picture (they have just found a small amount of clay, I doubt they would waste it on making a little wall around a body when they might need it to survive) They are presumably hoping that no one else will die for a while, but when more people do die, the first will have become only bones, at which point the bones can be made into a small pile. There will be quite a lot of space in that cave for such a small tribe's dead members.

Anyway, let's see what happens in-game with the burial. There's lots of work to do before Ril can be put in there after all, and it needs to happen pretty quickly. Once the cave is scouted, lots of hustle and bustle will undoubtedly happen.

[Nerre]

I missunderstoof her post.
Now I understand (hopefully), I got confused what you meant with "the burial rites are already underway for the Quest."
I only posted pictures of sealing dead in a cave cause I thought about this initially. I had a wall in mind, but one with a gate/hole. Sorry. You meant sealing the whole grave by a large wall without any hole, not only surrounding the dead with a little wall. It's getting late maybe I am to tired.

[nikohl]

Yeah, that's what I meant. I assumed the general idea would be to block off the actual entrance to the mini-cave with piled rocks. That's not to say that IC suggestions won't be taken though, when everyone gathers to take Ril to the cave for her funeral. If a character has input to give, they can give it.

[Nerre]

You are right, large rocks as one big wall are easier as we don't need clay, mud or something to hold them together. Their weight will do if done properly.
We just have to make sure to build it so we can collapse a part without somebody getting squished by a rock.

[BadgeAddict]

The other option would be to find a sizable enough rock to place in front of the entrance that 1 or 2 strong men could move. Then build up the smaller stones with some clay to cover what the larger stone cannot.

[nikohl]

As mentioned, here are Boro's items. In the same way as Durang, he will not just give his items away, but he can make use of them himself and will lend them to people if necessary.

Hello Borys,

Here are the items your character has at the start of the game.

-Basic Clothing (that you are wearing) - this is mostly going to be furs and hides tied on with sinews or roughly sewn. You can make it how you want appearance-wise, but it is very basic.

*A finely made saw, carved out of a large jawbone. (about arms length - it is extremely good quality and quite old)
*A small stone hatchet
*A small stone hammer

+waterskin, +backpack

[nikohl]

Hi all,

Sadly I have to report that Mereneth is currently homeless and therefore internet-less, what little access he can get will obviously be used for job hunting, apartment hunting etc, so he's probably going to be AWOL for a while. Hopefully it won't be too long, but it's basically an unknown length of time.

He has said that Muck could go on auto-pilot in his role as Hunter in his absence rather than just sort of merge into the background - I don't mind this. If people want that to be the case, what I think we'd do is make it so that he no longer earns points, but that each GM update will also feature a Muck update: He turns up with something that he's found, and most of rest of the time he's out of the cave. (Perhaps tied in with his need to get away from things for a while, after his encounter with Min? idk what you guys had in mind there!)

Otherwise if people would prefer that he just exists in the tribe and is not focused on too much until Mere gets back (like Boro and Durang were, until they went full NPC,) that's also OK by me. Please let me know what you guys think.

[GathersIngredients]

That is awful! Mereneth, if you're reading this, I want to you to know that I really hope you'll be able to find a place to stay and a new job asap. Keeping you in my thoughts and my fingers crossed for you. I wish there was something, anything I could do to help. I'd offer you to PM me about anything you can think of, or just to rant, but with you having no/limited Internet access, that would probably be a foolish thing to suggest.
Still, I wish you all the best and hang in there!



@Cavemen:
Well, the very dawn of this day (in game), after Min tried to sort out the whole issue from running away after his proposal, Muck told Min to go about her duties and gather any people to be taught by him how to fight today (=in game today). I have let her act accordingly, asking Yala & Vera if they wanted to join her, Min, and told the ones who had time & interest to meet her at the cracked egg rock. Then she planned to find Muck (like he told her she should, after she finished whatever duties she had that morning), and lead him to the other 'recruits', so it's a bit more inconspicuous than the whole lot of them leaving the cave/camp together.
From PMs with Mereneth, I know that he wanted Muck to prepare some sort of training area and then meet Min (and anyone she would have brought with her) and bring them there for the lesson.

I'm not sure how to resolve this. Whether you (GMs) just want Muck to do the stuff Mereneth had planned for him (in this case preparing the training ground and give the first lesson on fighting to Min, Vera and [tribe member] on 'auto-pilot' - which would allow the game to continue without much 'hiccups', but also rob Mereneth and me of any RP possibilities that would have come up during this first lesson (or any or the lessons you want Muck to hold until Mereneth comes back) - or if you want me to find and RP an alternate solution. E.g. Min can't find Muck (because he is still busy with preparing the training area, or maybe he ran into some nice, hunt-able game and figured that something to eat and keep us warm was a bit more important, or ... - that's something that Mereneth could decide whenever he comes back) and she figures that maybe, this is already part of the first lesson. That she has to prove her determination to learn something about this, even if there are unexpected difficulties.

So, what do you (GMs) think, how do you want to handle this?




About Muck going on auto-pilot (earning no more points), and getting his own updates (possibly avoiding Min/allowing her the time/space she need to grow accustomed to the idea of being someone's mate someday): If that's what Mereneth wanted for him, I'm fine with that.
I'm sure we can work something out to explain what happened between Min/Muck on the RP level, when Mereneth comes back.

[nikohl]

As you're the main person affected in-game by Mere's absence, Gathers, I would like you to tell me which you prefer and we'll try and work that out. If you want to have the training put on hold then that's fine, we'll make that work in-game (Funeral gets in the way, Muck starts tracking a creature, whatever) but if you want to say some kind of preliminary session happens, eg Muck finding out what people already know and hope to learn, getting a basic lesson in etc, then I as GM can pilot Muck for that and people can move on with the day/week/etc and the next lesson can come when Mere is back.

[BadgeAddict]

or, we let the Boe vs. Muck rivalry for the hand of Min begin..

Bwhahahaha

[GathersIngredients]

Well, I think that Mereneth should get a say in this, too, because Muck's his char, and he has do deal with anything ... unexplainable that happened with Muck while he was away. But barring this being feasible at this time, I'd suggest that we pick a route and, maybe, if it's not too much effort, change that (or parts of that) retro-actively, when Mereneth comes back and doesn't like what we have been doing. Would that be alright with you (GMs)?

Now, about what I would prefer. I am not adamant on this, so I'm just going to throw about some initial thoughts I have on this:
Personally, I would really like to RP out (with Mereneth) the first fighting lesson Muck gives Min. Therefore I think I would prefer just having Min meet the others, tell them that maybe she misunderstood what Muck said and try to get her own lesson together with the gracious help of Vera and tribe member. See what they can do/achieve on their own.
That would leave Mereneth in need to explain why Muck wasn't there, even though he 'promised'.
On the other hand, Muck leaving her 'hanging' might offer reasonable cause why Min doesn't pursue much contact with Muck until Mereneth comes back. She could be disappointed, or under the impression that he isn't over her running from his proposal, no matter what he said, while he is trying to give her the time & space she needs (in his opinion).

If we did the preliminary lesson with Muck on auto-pilot, then we'd need some reason to have him 'stop' his training all of a sudden. And for Min not trying to make things right between her and Muck.



In any case, from what I picked up in his posts/PMs, I think Mereneth really wanted Muck to be a driving power in the breaking of traditions, as in: teaching women how to fight and/or how to make weapons and all that. So I am inclined to halt any progress on that (Min wouldn't know how to work the tusk segment into a knife, anyways), for a while, ideally until Mereneth returns, but I dunno what the rest of you guys (GMs and players!) have planned.
I think Fengo might have mentioned/thought that he wanted ALL of the tribe members to learn how to fight, no matter their gender (correct me, if I'm wrong).
Vera seems very inclined to change the way women are seen & treated in this tribe, too.

I'm not saying change can't/shouldn't be done at all, but I would prefer to wait with any of this a bit (a few days in game, maybe? that ought to give us a few weeks, maybe even months of real life time) to allow Mereneth/Muck a chance to participate in this, too. If everyone else is okay with this. If any of you (GMs & player) have an issue with this, please speak up, I don't want to go over anyone's head(s)!

or, we let the Boe vs. Muck rivalry for the hand of Min begin..

Bwhahahaha

Well, I'm pretty sure Mereneth would like to play that out, too, if it comes to this.

[nikohl]

Alright, that's fine by me as long as no one else objects - Vera and the tribewoman she brought with her will turn up to meet Min, but Muck won't make it, and roleplaying can later ensue as to why etc. That way no active player is on hold/waiting around, and no real retconning will have to happen.

As days take quite a while IRL it might well be that Mere is back before too much time has passed, if so then good. If not, I will move him into GM pilot mode, where he'll be off doing something ultimately useful but not particularly focused on, so as to cause minimal future upset with reintegration. Probably hunting, scouting, etc, as Mere indicated he'd be ok with that in his message to me about being away for a while.

[BadgeAddict]

.....boys promise a lot of things... we're like that...

[Mereneth]

Just have a moment, but wanted to say sorry, mostly to gathers, to put anyone in this situation as to be hung up on waiting on me/putting off rp. I want to make things happen in this rp so bad, but stuff like this[kicked out, etc] keeps getting in the way and ruining anything we plan or have in mind. I suggested the hunting thing on the fly as I wasn't sure how to handle being unable to RP Muck's offered lessons.

[BadgeAddict]

Mere, i don't think you need to apologize for anything..honestly, I'm just glad you were having fun. I'm hoping that the best for you comes quicker than you think.

[GathersIngredients]

► Show Spoiler

Mereneth, really, you shouldn't worry about this. You have enough on your plate as it is.

And, like I said already in some of our previous PMs when you had 'just' unemployment to worry about but still had a place to stay: You don't need to be sorry for not having the time/opportunity/motivation to come up with posts. AT ALL.

Yes, I have been enjoying the RP between our characters immensely and I would be lying if I said that I didn't look forward to whenever we can continue this, but it can WAIT. Seriously. Take the time you need to try and get your real life sorted out. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you that this will happen sooner than later.

But - barring any catastrophe in my life - I'm going to be here still, and happy to RP with you whenever you arrive at that place in your life when you don't have such big problems to worry about, first.
[I can't promise that Min will not get swept off her feet by Boe (depending on what Theis2 manages to come up with... ) in the meantime, but she will still be there and she will still want to spend time with and learn stuff from Muck, in any case.]

So please. Don't fret/fuss about this 'silly' little game and not being able to participate at the moment. (No offense, nikohl & Badge & co-players, I think it's an awesome game and I have a lot of fun playing it. But it's still 'only' a game and shouldn't take priority over RL problems. That's all I wanted to express.)
I agree with you that it kind of sucks, but it's not like you're causing it willfully, so you shouldn't apologize.

And allow me to reiterate: If there is anything I can do to help, please let me know (if you can).
In the meantime thank you for the heads up on your unfortunate unavailability. I appreciate it very much. Hug?

Okay, so I am going to wait until tomorrow for my next in game post to give people more time to speak up if they have a problem with any of this, and then I hope the game can continue mostly 'undisturbed'.


@badge & promises: I seriously hope you're only speaking for yourself.

[BadgeAddict]

Nooo way, im totally a promise keeper


boys also lie alot...did i mention that....

[Theis2]

@ Badge + Gathers: Boys lying in order to get close to a girl? Now I've never heard anything as outragous as that! Becoming a cripple on the other hand is something every guy do to get close to a girl! (Or did I totally fail at understanding men and women while rp'ing this? )

[I can't promise that Min will not get swept off her feet by Boe (depending on what Theis2 manages to come up with... ) in the meantime, but she will still be there and she will still want to spend time with and learn stuff from Muck, in any case.]

No pressure there though..


I should be able to post a bit more again now that my exams are almost over. (or maybe less since I can't really procrastinate after the last one on monday.)

Also sorry to hear about your situation Mereneth, hopefully it will get sorted out sooner rather than later

[GathersIngredients]

[I can't promise that Min will not get swept off her feet by Boe (depending on what Theis2 manages to come up with... ) in the meantime, but she will still be there and she will still want to spend time with and learn stuff from Muck, in any case.]

No pressure there though..

Look, all I'm saying is that while she doesn't yet know what to make of that, Min is at least aware of the fact that Muck is interested in her. To a point where he wants her to be his mate. He drove that point home pretty well.
With Boe, Min doesn't even have the slightest idea yet that he's interested in her, so yeah, if he wants that to change, if he wants to have a shot with her, he is going to have to pull off one thing or another to let her at least know.
Just him thinking about it, suspecting she wants to be his mate and wishing it to happen won't get him anywhere, not with how clueless Min is about relationships in general, and not with her not even being completely sure if she would want one for herself.

@ Badge + Gathers: Boys lying in order to get close to a girl? Now I've never heard anything as outragous as that! Becoming a cripple on the other hand is something every guy do to get close to a girl! (Or did I totally fail at understanding men and women while rp'ing this? )

But seriously, about promises and lying and whatnot: I wish you guys wouldn't try to put words into Muck's mouth or whatever you are hinting at. Only Mereneth can decide how serious Muck meant any of that.

► Show Spoiler

And just for the record: In real live making promises and not keeping them, as well as lying may not be the best way to start it off (or continue) with someone you want to spend the rest of your life with. Girls (and boys, too!) aren't stupid and many have very long memories when it comes to (broken) promises and such.
If you're just looking for a one night stand or something else short lived, I guess it wouldn't really matter (to you) if you made promises you didn't intend to keep or tell her (or him, as the case may be) you were an Astronaut or whatever, even if you weren't. Wouldn't make you a very decent person, though. Just saying.
And now I'll stop wagging the moral index finger, it's not my place to lecture you about that, after all.

[Nerre]

I currently have trouble catching up with all those posts. So many. I already felt it is much with much time at hand, but with less time I now see how huge the game is and how many and long posts are posted here. Wow. My little post about the grave cave felt sqeezed in with almost all posts being made 1-2 days before being about the other story arc back at the home cave.

Poor Min, now already the center of attraction of two guys. XD

[Arch Lich Burns]

Okay, how in the hell did Hitto find out about Muck training Min and Yala? I am assuming it was something kept secret.