beepbobit
New member
So, I already put this apology on the "RP of the Century" post but here it is in a separate post so that more people will be able to find it.
Look.
The reason I didn't let those people back out, is because I wanted to have a fun battle.
With the numbers you showed, look how easily tim would've lost! It wouldn't even have been a fight.
I just wanted to have some fun, I didn't want this to count for anything, just like the old RP quests didn't count for anything
But, everyone took it so serious. They pulled out their troops because they didn't want to lose their power or their people.
Thu in particular took it so seriously, that he pulled every string he could to keep his men alive, though I don't blame him since he thought his rulership hung in the balance.
The lesson learned here is three part
1. We can't expect to have big, fun RP events on EW. it's just not possible. Even I or Thu know too little about the Lore to write troop counts without them being biased, at least in someone's opinion. Also, a lot of things in LOTR are too good to be realistically RPed around (for example the gate of Erebor being invincible, the dwarf-make or elf-make weapons being overly powerful.) This tell us to, in the future, keep things to a smaller scale: small conversations or quests, country negotiations and interactions on a small scale, so we don't have to rely on everyone participating
2. We can't trust the people of EW to RP realistically. One has to remember that, when RPing, you don't just play a part, talk differently, pretend you're a dwarf king. You have to act like the character too.
I was expecting people like Dimitri and MD, who technically should've sided with Tim, to side with tim, but instead the remained neutral or sided with Thu. Other groups which would've loved a war instead sat out of the war.
Also, we are so inexperienced at RP as a group that power gaming, metagaming, every type of gaming except the one we wanted. I am not saying that only other people did this, I did this too.
This tell us that we need to, again, practice on a smaller scale, get to know our characters, before attempting a full-scale war.
3. We can't expect personal biases not to come into play. This is largely my fault. I really wanted tim to stand a fight, to stick it to Thu for taking control of all the dwarves, after all the work I did to keep it fair, have multiple leaders. It seems, to me, as an American, unfair for a single person to rule an entire race. You may notice that no one is King of the Elves, King of the Hobbits, King of Men, because that's too much power for a single person. While my main goal here was to have some fun RPing out a war, my secondary goal was to put Thu out of power so that we would have multiple leaders of the dwarves. I realize now that this goal shouldn't have been present, especially not in my role as DM.
I hope that Thu does spread power to the other dwarven kings, that he simply controls the Erebor dwarves and rules the others ceremonially, but my methods for getting him to do this were flawed.
I apologize for my failures. I will not be hosting a 'rematch' of this war, and I hope that no one does, for the reasons stated above. However, I really want to get RP back in the system. Whenever I can I will hold small-scale RP groups on siege, heading to locations to have conversations and develop our characters. We could run smaller scale things on forums, perhaps conversations leveling out their relationships, even perhaps more RP quests, but no more wars.
Sorry again,
Beepbobit the (not so today) Wise
Look.
The reason I didn't let those people back out, is because I wanted to have a fun battle.
With the numbers you showed, look how easily tim would've lost! It wouldn't even have been a fight.
I just wanted to have some fun, I didn't want this to count for anything, just like the old RP quests didn't count for anything
But, everyone took it so serious. They pulled out their troops because they didn't want to lose their power or their people.
Thu in particular took it so seriously, that he pulled every string he could to keep his men alive, though I don't blame him since he thought his rulership hung in the balance.
The lesson learned here is three part
1. We can't expect to have big, fun RP events on EW. it's just not possible. Even I or Thu know too little about the Lore to write troop counts without them being biased, at least in someone's opinion. Also, a lot of things in LOTR are too good to be realistically RPed around (for example the gate of Erebor being invincible, the dwarf-make or elf-make weapons being overly powerful.) This tell us to, in the future, keep things to a smaller scale: small conversations or quests, country negotiations and interactions on a small scale, so we don't have to rely on everyone participating
2. We can't trust the people of EW to RP realistically. One has to remember that, when RPing, you don't just play a part, talk differently, pretend you're a dwarf king. You have to act like the character too.
I was expecting people like Dimitri and MD, who technically should've sided with Tim, to side with tim, but instead the remained neutral or sided with Thu. Other groups which would've loved a war instead sat out of the war.
Also, we are so inexperienced at RP as a group that power gaming, metagaming, every type of gaming except the one we wanted. I am not saying that only other people did this, I did this too.
This tell us that we need to, again, practice on a smaller scale, get to know our characters, before attempting a full-scale war.
3. We can't expect personal biases not to come into play. This is largely my fault. I really wanted tim to stand a fight, to stick it to Thu for taking control of all the dwarves, after all the work I did to keep it fair, have multiple leaders. It seems, to me, as an American, unfair for a single person to rule an entire race. You may notice that no one is King of the Elves, King of the Hobbits, King of Men, because that's too much power for a single person. While my main goal here was to have some fun RPing out a war, my secondary goal was to put Thu out of power so that we would have multiple leaders of the dwarves. I realize now that this goal shouldn't have been present, especially not in my role as DM.
I hope that Thu does spread power to the other dwarven kings, that he simply controls the Erebor dwarves and rules the others ceremonially, but my methods for getting him to do this were flawed.
I apologize for my failures. I will not be hosting a 'rematch' of this war, and I hope that no one does, for the reasons stated above. However, I really want to get RP back in the system. Whenever I can I will hold small-scale RP groups on siege, heading to locations to have conversations and develop our characters. We could run smaller scale things on forums, perhaps conversations leveling out their relationships, even perhaps more RP quests, but no more wars.
Sorry again,
Beepbobit the (not so today) Wise
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