I've been in a dry spell creatively lately, but I just had an idea. How about a barn raising?
At first it seems like just another event like the dance, but we could all work together to make it fit with a larger plot. Maybe it's part of Elias's plan to buy up land, and he (or his muscle he's hired) thinks burning down someone's barn could scare them into selling. Or maybe there's a new family/farm/ranch in town. Or something else that works.
However we set it up, it'd be a nice time to bring everyone together and maybe spin some plots from there between characters. And of course, Alders Lumber will supply the lumber (depending on the events that led to the need for a barn raising and who owns the barn, the lumber might be donated for free!).
I also like the idea of some sort of inclement weather. Depending on the scale of the tornado/storm/whatever it is, Matt and the town council could get involved in the cleanup and aftermath, and it might even leave the town and surrounding areas more vulnerable to Elias's schemes or railroad business.
Lots of ideas and discussion, cool. Now though comes the key part - we've done the discussion part many times before and then there is no follow up, no IC threads.
So now let's see whether any of these are actually written as opposed to just OOC talk.
Having been in a few games over 20 years of rping, it's my experience murder mysteries are extremely hard to pull off and do right. Good luck if it can be done. I've never seen one work yet.
Not saying it can't be tried.
Barn raising could work as an idea. Whose barn though? Just suddenly create a farmer no one knows since hes a brand new NPC and no vested interest in the guy? I guess.
Maybe Aurelian's barn is burnt down, he is an established char and a farmer outside of town too. I know for a long time the idea was discussed to have some Evergreen thugs attack the Redmond farm. I always said YES, I'm all for it. But as with most of our discussions, nothing happens.
I'm up for actual, factual writing in this story. Aurelian would be a good person, I agree, good one Wayfie. Do any of us actually know how to raise a barn? I bet there's some videos about it on YouTube - I'm willing to do homework on this one!
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." - Groucho Marx
All I know about barn raising is what I've seen on TV and movies. The one I remember most is in the film "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"...somehow I don't dancing on that scale at this barn raising.
I think we should have more musical numbers in the game. I can just see Marshal Guyer singing "I was born under a wandering star" (in fact, maybe that's why he was shot!)
I've Got Two Guns, One For Each Of You!
What I had seriously considered was asking the question, "What is it you, or your character(s) want out of the game?" Meaning, you joined to write in a Western, just what drew you to the game, and what didn't happen for you? Question 2 has to be, how do we fix that? How do we attempt to ensure everyone gets involved in the storylines where at all possible, and everyone gets what they are after? Action, romance, even comedy...
I completely agree with Bongo, I have no desire to join another group, or create another character just to have the investment cast aside because the group fails. Done too much of that over the last year on Tapatalk. I don't believe that our Kalispell is any bigger than the original drawing Stomy posted at the start, and it need not be, not for years to come.
But we all have to want to give this a shot at growing again.
I've Got Two Guns, One For Each Of You!
Sorry about the pic, smallest I have at the moment...but that is the size of the town as I see it.
Well I don't think the picture does our town justice to be honest. If you look at the many places mentioned in the threads they are not present on this town pic. Don't get me wrong, it's a cool pic. But our town doesn't actually look like that, we have a LOT more places than what it shows. I'm not blaming Stormie, cuz that was early in the game, how could she have known?
In the end though I think we have proved you don't actually need a map or picture of the town, it's nice but it's fluff compared to IC threads.
As for barn raising, I talked to some real live breathing Amish, a man and his son, about that very thing. They had just finished doing one about a week before we arrived (we were on vacation and dropped by a friends place, he lived next door to this Amish family). The man told me the Amish got together the menfolk and put it up in two days. He claimed it was quite easy and no way would they ever hire a construction firm to do it.
So I'm guessing two days tops - that is if we have enough men working on it.
Before we do this barn raising, let me point out the old one has to be burnt down in a thread of it's own. Aurelian isn't setting fire to his own barn.
The Dealer had a knife and the dog had a gun and the cat had a shot of Rye.
Good thread and good discussion.
First, my humble apologies. RPGs tend to die when the owner goes MIA like I've done more than once. I used to deal with real life crises piling up better than I do these days.
Now, I'd have to think long and hard about starting a whole new game. If we can find a way to revive Sagas, that would be my preference. However, I have not been hit with the lightning bolt of great ideas yet.
Flip asked a really good question - What goals did we have for our characters (paraphrasing)? I think we need to think on that because I know I've kinda lost the focus I had in mind for Shade.
As far as our threads being more inclusive - some can be, but it would be hard to make "all" of them open for everyone to join in. The two rather overreaching plots that could affect more folks (the range war and the railroad) are intimidating me at the moment, but don't wanna toss them aside either. And not discounting the murder mystery idea from Julie...we might could do something, but it'd be more town focused.
Town size - the map that Flip put up is the original and I need to hit my drawing tablet and try to do us an updated one, but right now I won't commit to that as drawing takes focus and our living space is in total disarray until they get our carport and storage buildings finished (rain and heat have slowed that down).
Julie, I think you mentioned how isolated Kalispell is, the railroad would fix some of that and maybe we could add a small, fixational gold rush to our plots?
So, not much help. Let's see if we can blow some life back into the game and if we can, I'll finally do some advertising.
Oh, the cleverness of me!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZL7TqSeDus
Build off-site and move it?
We can also burn the Millegan Stage barn, if you'd like, so long as no horses or cats are killed in the burning...it's in town, so many characters could help fight the fire, of keep adjacent buildings from going up...