This dynasty may be a bit too much story-driven. If we’d focus more on the basic mechanics, we’d have the freedom we need to write decent proposals. As it is, I find it’s difficult to write proposals that fit this narrow theme.

Technical difficulties.

RE the theme, go ahead and write whatever proposals you like—we’re playing a group game, and I’m not very particular about where things go.

If we end up finishing the game and the theme doesn’t involve anything that we started with, that’s fine by me, as long as it was enjoyable enough for all.

A successful story-based Dynasty must have two things:
A) The Emperor must give the general direction of the plot.
B) Players must be able to fill in the little details.

For example, in AG’s first Dynasty, the Emperor did give out the general direction of the plot (The Caine being stuck in non-Euclidean space), and the players were able to fill in the other things, such as machinery, and space madness.

In 75th Trombone’s Dynasty, the players were all willing to tell parts of the story, but without the Emperor’s guidance, it felt disjointed and eventually collasped.

Whereas over here we have the opposite problem. AG is definetely participating, but as he is the only one who knows the entire plot,  the players cannot fill in the details.

I like the idea of the theme, but so far there isn’t actually anything to do.  There’s no rules in place for taking meaningful actions, and I don’t really know what meaningful actions we could have, making proposing them hard.

We have a map, ways to move on the map, stats for players and ways to change those stats. We then have nothing that actually uses these.

Could someone propose this:

Create a new rule entitled “Monk Code of Honor” with the following text:

The restrictions in this rule may be broken at the cost of Integrity, enforced by Monks other than the one who broke it.  If no integrity cost is listed, assume 2 Integrity.

No Monk besides the [Assistant] Librarian may enter the library. (costs 4 Integrity only if the monk is still in the library when this is enforced)

No Monk may be involved in a fight with another Monk. (costs 4 for whoever starts it and 1 for the other one)

No Monk may consume more than one food ration per day.  (1 per extra food ration)

Aside from this one, references to the Apocrypha are heresy and will not be tolerated!

Hopefully, this will kick-start a few proposals.

I agree with the above comments, and I feel at a loss with this theme. I am renting ‘The Name of the Rose’ to get some inspiration.

Eheh, Smith, as a professional film critic I must say that the movie might leave something to be desired in some cinematic sense. In any case I had merely wanted to take the setting, and less of the plot. ;)

The book is fantastic, though.

What can monks do in real life?

-Pray
-Eat
-Sleep
-Talk
-Not talk
-Chant
-Invent… inventions
-Grow things
-Ferment liquor
-Fight (but not very monkish)
-Play “Rock, Paper, Scissors”
-Walk
-Wear a hood
-Take their hoods off
-Read the bible
-Labor by building wooden items
-Build a treehouse
-Fantasize about not being a monk
-Chant in a barbershop quartet
-Shave their heads
-Accidentally slip the razor when shaving someone’s head
-Handwrite a copy of the Bible
-Use a printing press to make copies of the Bible

Other than that, I have no real ideas… some of these might drift slightly from the theme, however, to use understatement.

Hmm. If you think the theme is dull, I can let you run the rest of the game. ;)

Write up a proposal if you like.

AG: We might get more involved if you made the Story Posts more dependant on the GNDT state, perhaps even using GNDT comments like (Examining the Altar) or (waiting to ambush Hix).