The Dealer had a knife and the dog had a gun and the cat had a shot of Rye.
Flip asked me an excellent question a couple of weeks ago in Discord.
"What do you see as the premise of the story going forward?"
At the time, I did not have a good answer for him. I was completely overwhelmed with getting things moved off the old site and was unable to think beyond that.
Well, now that we have all of the active IC threads moved and I have time to think while I move the old archived threads, I still don't know! LOL. Would love some input from everyone else.
I am going to start a post for Shade soon that gets him back to the ranch and caught up on the shenanigans from Quentin's point of view. From there, I know we need to discuss if we're going to open things up into an actual range war and how to play it out without totally losing one side or the other. I don't mind having Shade a little worse for wear, but really do not want to kill off my main character and do not want to lose Lost Lake Ranch... or rather, do not want the Thorntons to lose it.
So that's one thing....
The other plot I would like to start developing that can involve various characters off and on is the new railroad coming into Kalispell. This should open us up to lots of intrigue and action.
Thanks for any and all feedback!
IMHO, there has been too much build up to NOT do the range war. It's a collision course sort of situation. Most range wars did not end in sweeping victories for one side or the other - other than in Hollywood movies. Also don't have some huge climactic battle (again so beloved in movies) but have it ongoing skirmishes - ambushes, raids, brawls in town, etc. The law of course trying to keep the peace. Now historically when things got too rough the powers that be would literally request the federal government to bring in the troops for temporary martial law to settle things down.
My point is this - we can do a range war without wiping one side out. If we want.
The coming of the railroad should be good for various plots too.
I also think we need another community barn dance or town festival etc. Mingle all sorts of together in a social way. I thought at least that the last barn dance was a great thread - lots of chars participating, posts, etc.
While I know some here abhor time jumps, normally I am one of them but I really would like us to time jump over the worst of the winter months - December-February. Realistically heavy snowfalls (remember no snowplows clearing roads back then) shut down most travel, people were cooped up in their ranches, farms, etc. And there was more snow back then too. Given their utter lack of little more than shovels compared to all the equipment we currently have, I cannot imagine how hard it must have been for even a town to cope with say 20-30 inches of snow often accompanied by drifting.
Example: Read about the Great Blizzard of 1887 in that part of the country - it literally caught whole herds of cattle out in the open and buried or froze them, killing massive numbers of the poor animals that the ranchers/cattlemen were helpless to even get it. It almost destroyed the cattle industry the next few years.
I have no desire to play out a winter.
Anyhow that's some of my views, for what they are worth.
The Dealer had a knife and the dog had a gun and the cat had a shot of Rye.
I really loathe Time Jumps too, however, it is logical to skip the worst of winter because people mainly stayed indoors except for the no-choice chores, etc.
A time jump is also a good "time" to implement a new time management system for the RPG that will let us utilize the site's auto-Timeline feature better. I'll post more on that in another OOC in a bit.
The range war can easily be an ongoing background storyline. I do think we need to have it come to a head at some point then maybe it continues as a background thing? I don't see it actually ending unless we get a bigger menace moving into the Flathead.
The railroad should also bring lots of fun with it and open up Kalispell once it's done to have more "trouble" come to town.
As I also commented, I do think not everything has to be about trouble and drama. Towns had a lot of social events back then. No TV or radio entertainment, people organized dances, town fairs, etc. I do think we need more of those.
For my Two Penn'oth:
Range war: when I joined the game, this was just about to kick off (!) and I felt too late to the party to join in, so I've never had characters directly involved in either of the ranches, so I'm totally neutral on this.
Time jumps: I love 'em so much I did one to 1910 and put Arabella in it, so you can imagine I'm all in favour of that. Anything we had to skip [e.g. Clara giving birth to triplets - Arabella, Sumter, and 'Arry] we can revisit retrospectively.
Working my dream job, slave to my cat, & RPing as often as I can..... Yep! That's my life in a nutshell.
I like the idea of the townwide events. Something that James can watch from the sidelines cause he's shy that way.
Oh oh - Arabella's told the whole town that James is going to do a song, dance and then a selection of impersonations of prominent townsfolk, including a number of gunfighters.
Working my dream job, slave to my cat, & RPing as often as I can..... Yep! That's my life in a nutshell.
James: *cries and runs away*
Working my dream job, slave to my cat, & RPing as often as I can..... Yep! That's my life in a nutshell.
Major time