Minas Tirith City Hall (OOC)

[Ercassie]

Thanks @Moriel

[Pele Alarion]

*drops by* Well, I might even be lured to participate in such a memorial thread... *goes to fix lunch and to return to work*

[Nessa Saelind]

@Nessa Saelind honestly I am so excited by your idea and so keen to see the memorial concept appear in RP, that I am very close to channelling a certain Dragon and shout ‘Just do it ! Start it ! What are you waiting for ?’ And I call myself Gondorian/synonymous with talking every detail to death at times !

Alright, alright I get the message, I'll work on it on the weekend, along with my post list. I need to clear HoH, Tower Guard and Buccaneers in Gondor And there's a public holiday on Tuesday in Croatia, so if I don't make it on the weekend I can have a whole day to work on the OP. Now if someone could find a nice map of Gondor so I don't have to scan the one in my copy of LotR... That would be lovely...

Re summer pub, @Pele Alarion you have any preferences for the drinks/food menu? I have a few medieval cookbooks around I can pull something from them if you want something fancy (there's an awesome medieval recipe for drowned fish in wine) or if you want something more low key and summery? I can type up something by Sunday and you can open the summer pub season.

[Pele Alarion]

Well, @Nessa Saelind, I figure a little bit of everything can be put on the table, so folks can choose according to the bulkiness of their coin purse.

There, writing a Rangers post should help me get back into the swing of things...

[Nessa Saelind]

Alrighty @Pele Alarion I'll stick to summer food/drinks and create a menu that would be believable for a pub in the Gondorian summer.

[Ercassie]

@Nessa Saelind i am the very last person to be able to tell you to hurry up, at least not without my being a very silly hypocrite. It was an expression of excitement, not a demand for immediate results. You have your RL work, the Arpys, the new admin learning .. plus other posts. Honestly, don’t let me pressure you. I meant to wholeheartedly encourage is all. And to that end if there’s anyway I can help out, do let me know.

Now, where did I put my own to do list ? Maybe time to put this enthusiasm to work before it wanders away.

[Nessa Saelind]

@Ercassie - oh hush you! I know you were just enthusiastic and I'm really glad to know that somebody is sharing my enthusiasm over this And honestly sometimes it's easier for me to figure out and write an outline for a thread, than write a post You will definitely be consulted frequently for this project. Your pay shall be chocolate bars

[Baphởmet]

Before the conversation gets too far ahead of me, I would like to make a note saying that @Tarawen and I are planning on writing up an OP for an Arnor centric Free RP thread within the next few days (if my brain can be convinced to pay attention for a span of 20 minutes) that could potentially be used for a lot of the kinds of stories @Nessa Saelind and @Ercassie are thinking about. Not that I'm saying there shouldn't be a million new threads created for a hundred different purposes, just wanted to throw that particular hat into the ring.

[Nessa Saelind]

@Prometherion - that's awesome! And adding an Arnor thread here will certainly enliven the Kingdom, and not to mention the possibilities of connecting stories from each thread! A story from the prompt thread could grow and be transferred to a Free RP of choice if the poster feels like it grew the parameters of the thread. I love all the possibilities. And also if someone posts in the Free RPs and a good prompt idea springs from it, bring it to the prompt thread which needs a name that is not The Gondoriad

[Ercassie]

Honestly the fact that we have chosen to make this a fourth age Gondor forum on NuPlaza has definitely highlighted the fact that we were missing an Arnorien element. Which was a significant part of the reason @Nessa Saelind’s idea caught my attention. Gondor as a geographic location/cultural identity fluctuated constantly as they seized and lost colonies over the course of a couple ages. While traditionally we based RP on old plaza to be very Minas Tirith based, it’s been expanding since day one; to include neighbouring fiefs and more distant time settings etc. So yes, recognising all the different Gondorian/Arnorien/Numenorean character possibilities is going to be a wonderful opportunity to write and to read.

It sounds like you’re talking about a Free RP thread @Prometherion, whereas @Nessa Saelind had that prompt element to her plan, which would set the two albeit similar settings apart from a different angle. But I agree. There’s no reason why a prompt in the one thread could not lead to an expansion on the responding post, in a regular Free RP thread. While it’s rather silly to replicate things exactly in more than one place, I don’t believe the two propositions here are doing that. In fact, why not throw in a Numenor specific thread as well ?!

[Nessa Saelind]

Actually, I'd be game for a Numenor Free RP thread in here! Why shouldn't we have one! A significant portion of the population of the Reunited Kingdom has Numenorean ancestors, the nobility certainly does. So why shouldn't we have a Numenor specific thread in this Kingdom so we could explore that side of the family history?

It could also be used as an exploration of how customs changed when Numenoreans formed their colonies in ME again... And the changes the society underwent. I love me a contrast.

[Marceline]

NUMENOR!!!

[Moriel]

Just popping by to say I’ve been ruminating on a Numenor free RP for a while Glad to see there is interest! Anybody object if I charge ahead on that?

[Nessa Saelind]

Just popping by to say I’ve been ruminating on a Numenor free RP for a while Glad to see there is interest! Anybody object if I charge ahead on that?

Do the thread!

[Ercassie]

Now how did it go again … ah yes …

‘Just do it ! Start it ! What are you waiting for ?!’

@Moriel

[Marceline]

Do it!

[Lailyn]

I love all these thread ideas but I'd like to echo Tara's NUMENOR!!!!

[Baphởmet]

Dew eet!

[Nessa Saelind]

Love how we've all just pilled in here and screamied offer our full support and neverending enthusiastic encouragement to @Moriel to open the thread

[Moriel]

IT SHALL BE SO!!!

[Winddancer]

What the heck.. This is not Gondor! The Gondor I know spent at least a few months deliberating and then another few months writing out the OP! What is going on here, what are these shenanigans!?

[Marceline]

[Nessa Saelind]

What the heck.. This is not Gondor! The Gondor I know spent at least a few months deliberating and then another few months writing out the OP! What is going on here, what are these shenanigans!?

See this is what you get when you vote in a Gondorian for an admin Suddenly everything starts running smoothly, the ayes have it and we're all eager beavers

[Ercassie]

Yay @Nessa Saelind !!

[Winddancer]

What the heck.. This is not Gondor! The Gondor I know spent at least a few months deliberating and then another few months writing out the OP! What is going on here, what are these shenanigans!?

See this is what you get when you vote in a Gondorian for an admin Suddenly everything starts running smoothly, the ayes have it and we're all eager beavers

No.. no.. even with Gondorians as R/As, it took ages! Wait.. it is taking ages.. Hmm.. nevermind, carry on..

[Nessa Saelind]

See, @Winddancer all is right with the world

[Marceline]

For any and all interested parties - we have an Arnor free RP thread now, friends!

[Baphởmet]

[Moriel]

And a Númenor Free RP! The OP of which may undergo further revision after I sleep and look at it again tomorrow but it is substantially complete

[Winddancer]

See, @Winddancer all is right with the world

It will be when all accept Sauron as their Lord and Master..

[Nessa Saelind]

@Winddancer - you can't always get what you want

Huge thanks, hugs, ice creams and drinks of choice from me to @Tarawen & @Prometherion for all their hard work on The Lands of Arnor Free RP The thread looks amazing and the map you found is goals And thank you for reminding me how utterly Frankish Arnor was

Huge thanks, hugs ice creams and drinks to @Moriel for creating Anadûnê - Númenor Free RP. I love how much detail you put in the OP (by the by you have a big message on Discord from me regarding typos that I hope will help you ) and the images and maps are A++! I also very much approve of this formulation

Canon Characters: All canon characters are open to everyone. If it happens that two people want to write the same canon character, they are free to do so; all duplicates will be considered as existing in different universes and not interfering with each other, unless otherwise agreed upon by the players.

I shall steal borrow this for future threads.

If you awesome people don't mind, I'd like to put forth a suggestion regarding the OOC comments. Both threads mention that short OOC comments should be whited out. When we were making the rules for the ARPY party thread @Sillionaire pointed out how difficult is to read whited-out text on mobile phones, which I noticed because I do a lot of reading in transit to work on my phone. It's not a huge thing and you don't have to change it, but maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to say that instead of putting a short OOC comment in white (and at the bottom of the post) it could be coloured in gey (Ash Grey #666362 looks like an OK colour or Grey #736F6E that I tend to use when I put reference notes at the bottom of my posts)? That way the OOC comment doesn't distract from the text, it's marked clearly and the sad sods on mobile can read them

[Winddancer]

I know! *fumes*

Btw in regards to OOC, why not just put the ooc's in the ooc threads? Keeps everything pretty! With the @ thing, you can use that to get their attention in said thread so that you dont even have to put OOC in the post at all :)

[Nessa Saelind]

I use OOCs as reference notes or author's notes (historian training ), where I just write what I quoted or pharaphrased from other works. The apologies for late replies or anything else that I need to tell to other RP-ers I move in the OOC thread or I go annoy people on Discord

[Ercassie]

I agree with @Winddancer on this one actually. Unnecessary OOC can really bog down the reading of an IC thread. I always white out the source of where I’ve quoted song lyrics from, etc, in my post because honestly it’s not a lengthy inclusion. And I can see how your reference notes might be much longer but in that respect, does the average reader need to see the reference notes in order to enjoy the post ? Because if they are interested in the source etc then they can easily wait til they have access to a laptop/computer/non-mobile in order to read the whited out info.

Adding a lot of visible ooc notes to the bottom of IC posts will undoubtedly take away from the aesthetic of the post itself and break up the flow of the story. It works for GM and the rare TR announcements for this very reason. Because it grabs your attention. Whereas the average message or question can, as you say, be managed in an actual OOC thread. That’s why we have them. Just my opinion.

[Nessa Saelind]

@Ercassie both you and @Winddancer make good points. And you're right, Cassie, if someone is interested in quotes/sources/lyrics used in the post they can always look it up later. Or if I want to natter on about what I used in the post and why I think it's important I can always write all that author's note info in the OOC thread or you know I can collect my ramblings in a cottage thread where I (unnecessarily) ramble about my process or writing I'm just so used to academic writing where you have to insert reference notes for everything! that I just automatically move that practice to creative writing.

So, upon further reflection, yeah I think there's no need to change anything re short OOCs in the posts Maybe encourage that everything of that nature should go to the corresponding OOC thread *thinking face*

[Baphởmet]

@Nessa Saelind have you considered using your wonderful CoLP thread as a place to compile footnotes and historical references? I'm not sure if that's something you intended for that thread but I think, given all the hard work you put into making things accurate it's a great place to say "look at where all that came from, I worked hard on this shire yo!"

[Ercassie]

@Nessa Saelind, now that @Prometherion says that, I am reminded of @The Elf Imperishable hosting something similar in COLP. If that is any help as an example/another option ?

His thread linked here - (admittedly you have to go down a few posts from the start to where it actually 'starts' in there)
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=379

[Nessa Saelind]

@Prometherion that's not a bad idea I envisioned Hezār Afsān as a repository of various posts and that people could use it as an archive of their own character posts. It would make sense to use it as a place where people could talk about their writing process. However, now that @Ercassie linked Rivvy's thread I think I'm going to open a separate thread for writing process ramblings, ideas etc. and make it open for everyone. So if anyone other than me wants to talk about ideas and research behind their posts do share urbi et orbi. A balcony will be provided.

[Nessa Saelind]

Friends, Gondorians, countrymen... I need name ideas!

Ha! Ya thought this was going to be another "In this essay, I shall..." I am planning to do a Middle-earth version of the VOC in Numenror and in Pelargir. I am aware of the complex and not so nice legacy (to put it nicely) of the Company (and I am planning to deal with that in future writings), however for now I'm just looking for a name. How would one call a Middle-earth version of a charter company formed with the sole purpose of trading goods such as spices, silk, metals, coffee, porcelain, indigo dye, tea, etc.? Throw some suggestions here. For the moment I'm just calling the thing The Company - tres original I know And don't come for me with this is not a medieval concept! I know!

[Afird Splitax]

Just to clarify, @Jwaein and @Lailyn what word are you using in your WS post? Thanks girls!

[Marceline]

@Afird Splitax - from the quote Lail provided, we're using "ata again", bolded below.

Quote:
ATA-. father. PQ * atu, * atar: Q atar, pl. atari; hypocoristic atto. N
adar, pl. edeir, eder; ada. Cf. Iluv-atar. Ilk. adar, pl. edrin; adda.
AT(AT)- again, back. Q ata again, ata-, at- back, again, re-; N ad. Cf
- Part III The Etymologies, HoME Vol 5, The Lost Road and Other Writings

Does this help?

[Afird Splitax]

Yes it does! Thank you!

[Marceline]

Yay! And of course!

[Afird Splitax]

@Jwaein and @Lailyn - I have adjusted your score.

Team Tara and Lail play:

ATA vertically on the A in NUPA (starting at the TW tile)
1+1+1 = 3(*3) = 9 + 10(ME word) = 19

ATA vertically on the A in NUPA (starting at the TW tile)
1+1+1=3 +10(ME word) = 13 x3 = 39

EDIT: @Fuin Elda and Moriel and @Tarawen and Lailyn and @ Pele Alarion and Prometherion : I clarified the rules on how the game ends. I edited it into the rules. Thanks!

[Marceline]

Math strikes again! Thanks for fixing the score, @Afird Splitax! And noted re: end of game rules.

[Lailyn]

ah! omg I'm so sorry, Drifa and Tara! don't trust me with numbers or apparently words, either.

[Lailyn]

@Afird Splitax, thank you for a lovely game of WS!

[Marceline]

Agreed, thank you for hosting such a fun twist on Word Sleuth, @Afird Splitax!

[Moriel]

Thank you for the game, @Afird Splitax!! I fell off the wagon partway through but enjoyed it nonetheless

[Raisins]

It was a fantastic came @Afird Splitax I must apologize for falling off the wagon as well and missing a few deadlines (I ACTUALLY had a play for our tiles but legit I have the WORST time blindness right now thanks to a covid shutdown. It's either now or never is swear. Hopefully will do better next game