Black Sands(Intrigue Rpg, info/interest check)

Oh, cool! Pretty much the whole gang's here then.

Yeah, that's basically the idea of it. It's a fictional setting, based on it, but contains fantasy elements like magic and stuff so it doesn't contain a historical rendition of events based on the timeline of earth. Like while the Thiatan's are basically an Egyptian empire, they aren't THE Egyptian empire that contained Cleopatra or Anubis. The fantasy Europe does exist as someone their at war with....but the world they live in is far from based on the history of events that took place on earth, if that makes sense.

 

Question: Should we include details about our character's family, such as "they own large farms along some river", or "they control a mine", or "their home is a heavily-fortified castle near the border of the Empire", etc., or should we leave that for later and reveal it during the game?

 

Hmm. It’s probably fine to include details like that, but if you want to share them early on or not is up to you.

Some people will have things known about them that’s more common knowledge. Like the princess is obviously a princess and it’s hard not to notice for most people within her own kingdom, but foreigners probably won’t immediately know that and commoners aren’t likely to recognize her on sight unlike Thiatin nobles who would deal with her regularly.

So who knows what about who is most likely a case by case basis, but some secrets are going to be more well hidden, but some characters likely at least have some public information about them depending on the source.

 

Sorry, I will have to pass on this one - working on two already, and I still have work.

 

That’s fine. Don’t stress about work stuff too much though

 

I was kind of going to leave it to players to decide what factions they are a part of, but would it help if I gave a few building blocks to go off?

The standard ones would be Thiata and it’s royal family, the Protectorate which fights their expansionist ways. A knight’s templar group that’s not really serving any specific country, but enforcing their ideals against what they see as heresy. Secret societies of assassins and thieves, merchants who have no stake other than keeping profit and a pseudo holy roman empire that has a loose alliance and is looking for an excuse and justification to conquer their allies countries if the opportunity presents itself.

Not necessarily just those. Only ideas. Factions could be big groups or even small ones that are something as simple as slaves and servants planning to escape.

On another note, given the culture and timeline this would be in, I wonder if incset should be legal in the country since that’s how it was back in the era or kept taboo to modern standards.

 

My suggestion for assassin's and thiefs, players should add to their backstory some "fake" jobs what they do public and the real work will be visible only for game master.

 

That's sort of what I was thinking...although...a good way to trip people up may be to have a servant character whose secret is....they're a servant character. I still can't be sure how effective this approach of keeping some information about characters a secret will be until the game actually starts, so it's either going to make things fun or frustratingly complicated. We'll just have to see. I have something of an overarching plan brewing in my head, but I need to wait until I see more of other people's characters before I have an idea where to properly take things.

 

I'm legally required to take part in anything Ancient Egyptian themed sooo.....

 

Ah, okay. Hopefully the empire one will continue on too. I really wanted to see where that was going.

On another note, I thought more of on some general cultural rules:

Like how Egypt(Arabia on a larger scale) would be for it's time, slaves exist, but it's not a status you're born into unlike the western kingdoms. Slaves are either criminals or prisoners of wars from other countries or people who cannot pay their debts.

Since it has a pharaoh, it's basically the New Kingdom period equivalent and the general belief structure of it's nobles was they were gods chosen people, but expected to rule for the happiness of the entire population and their luxuries are deserved as a reward for their service(This doesn't stop tyrannical Egyptian royalty from existing any better than one in the West)

Oddly, women actually do possess almost equal rights in Ancient Egypt, able to own land and businesses, exceedingly rare for an old age civilization and would still be far from the norm for a bunch of eras coming after it.

This is all true, by the way. Google it. So Thiata has those things in common, but is still likely to vary quite a lot compared to it's real world equivalent, still being a magical fictional empire fighting vampires. So it can't be all the same.

 

I do plan on continuing it. Don't worry.

 

Weird I didn’t get a message that anyone posted today on this thread. I normally when following get something.

 

Oh, that happens every now and then. Been happening to me a lot lately too on some threads, but not others...it's weird. Message me if you need help hammering out any details with things though

 

It worked with your response. Puzzling

 

I’ll likely choose an Ethiopian slave with a rough past.

 

I'm not sure what would be like Ethiopa or that region in this world. Like a fictional equivalent to it. Whatever you come up with will be fine. Let me know when you got something.

 

If we're using Ancient Egypt as a template, The southern regions in what would be now known as Ethiopia would have been held by the Kushites I think.

 

Yes, that’s the name I was thinking of! A kush slave with skills in pyramids and large scale statues.

 

Well, the design and structural engineering was actually taken care of by paid for Egyptian Contractors. The slaves were used to build materials and haul limestone, but didn't really take an active role in the planning or the building other than moving blocks and any architectural roles were filled by high ranking officials. Unless maybe like the slave in question is actually brilliant at these things, but someone is just taking credit for their work or something.

 

Look at the 25 dynasty in Egypt. I would say the Egyptians and the Kush treated each other as equals, so there is a very good chance he as a slave would indeed have some talent, and could have had a misfortunate event in his past that brought him to slavery. If you want to get all true historical on a fictional porn story.