#fauxpaw

Pondering pet pals.

Pawndering Peoples!

Bet on the positive.

Hello, everyone. This will be an important and lengthy topic to discuss, so I will start with the announcements:

The guild as an in-game entity will be going on hiatus

However, we will be organising as an in-character entity through our Discord going forwards.

IMPLICATIONS

The In Character implications are rather clear cut, and as characters of the Blackwald, you will be informed of the following..

The Blackwald Command possesses a Letter of Marque and Reprisal, brokered on their behalf by Stormwind Intelligence to the Crown of Stormwind. This allows us to act as a legal, independent entity within the territories of the Alliance as a military intelligence agency.

Fauxpaw has been dealing with a lawsuit targeted at her for the actions of the Blackwald Command during a specific incident, where the Command attacked the Westbrook Garrison and knocked out and crippled many Stormwind City Guards. We were justified, as the Blackwald was assisting a clandestine organization to remove a powerful demonic threat from Stormwind.

The upcoming results of this trial have been made known to Fauxpaw early, thanks to her eyes and ears in the court system: The legal council that oversees the trial will announce that Fauxpaw will lose the Letter of Marque, and it will transfer to someone of their choosing, with input from the Stormwind City Guard. In short, they are going to install a new Director to replace Fauxpaw.

Clearly, the current Director does not agree with this. Fauxpaw's plan is to legally dissolve all the assets of the Blackwald Command that she can manage, both physical and networked. That means in addition to the intelligence gathered, gold in the coffers and supplies acquired, she wants to take as many associates as possible with her to remake the Blackwald.

The Out of Character implications are different, however, and have a multitude of reasons attached to them.. 

To be quite frank? I am exceptionally burnt out, and I was finding myself in a constant spiral of apathy towards the Blackwald Command. I would log in and repeatedly find people doing a whole bunch of nothing, and I was feeling increasingly guilty because I had nothing to offer you all.

However, this idea came into my head, as an evolution of one I've had before - to really push us as a proper network that supersedes the guilds we are in. It is essentially a massive expansion of our 'informant' system, such that everyone is now an associate.

I need to take this 'travel time' to gain contacts in other guilds, because it's what I enjoy doing. I enjoy being an influential administrator of a network, and it's what I've always wanted the Blackwald to become in a way, but I was always having trouble actually accomplishing this. This is exciting to me, and the more excited I am, the better content I can bring to you all.

EXPECTATIONS

The In Character expectations for characters in the Blackwald Command are as follows:

Each associate of the Blackwald will be offered a choice, that they must make: 1) Do they follow the Oath and sever their contract with the "Blackwald Command"? If they do this, they will no longer be considered military personnel, and will now be civilians, but Fauxpaw will compensate their pay. 2) Do they remain in the "Blackwald Command" and continue to operate under the new Director, whomever that may be? By doing this, they are impinging upon their Oath to the Blackwald. Or 3) Leave entirely for greener pastures.

All choices are acceptable to Fauxpaw. (OOCly, I prefer the first option!)

If they follow the Director, the ranking structure will come with them, and they will possess the ranks they had in this new organization, which is yet to be named. The officership is still unsure if we will just continue to call ourselves the Blackwald Command, the Blackwald Syndicate, or another entirely new name.

Instead of focusing on the military side of the Blackwald Command, this new entity is entirely dedicated to being an information network and intelligence agency. We need people of multiple skill sets and perspectives to accomplish these goals.. bruisers to keep people safe and respond to threats, spies to observe and report, social butterflies to swindle and seduce, and so many more.

The Out of Character expectations are a little different:

The <Blackwald Command> guild is going on hiatus, not being disbanded and removed entirely. We are trying something new, and as such, you may choose to remain in that guild to idle if you so wish, or you may move to Janice's new temporary guild she is making, or you may leave the <Blackwald Command> and integrate with a new guild. The choice is yours, and I want to give you all as many options as possible. I don't want to hold anyone hostage while I experiment with these changes.

However, since we will all be connected by the Discord server, I'd like to ask each and every one of you to continue to participate in the Blackwald as a network. I want to grow us and integrate us into the wider server, to create intrigue and engage in espionage and spycraft. As such, all informants are now considered associates.

So please, feel free to spread your wings and try out other guilds, but try to do so viewing them through the lens of the Blackwald. You are an associate Blackwald no matter where you go, and most of you have sworn to the Oath - tell others that you trust of our mission and our goals, to protect the weak, the impoverished, and anyone who stands to suffer under corruption.

CONCLUSIONS

I understand that there are risks and challenges associated with these changes, and a lot of work on my end will need to be done - changing the website a great deal, clarifying a bunch of changes, deciding on things to do, but more importantly, keeping you all engaged.

However, I am tentatively excited to meet these challenges. It's what I enjoy doing, administrating and responding and reacting. But I will still need your help more than ever, and I hope I can count on it with this new chapter of the Blackwald. ♥

Syndicate Roleplay, as shown on our Combat page, has received a few important changes to balance and simplifying certain abilities. They have been active for some time, but I promised to make a post with all the changes so they're clearer to people, and here it is!

ROLE - AUXILIARY: Instead of granting a character a guaranteed success on their next role, Auxilary characters now grant them a +5 bonus on their next roll. The reason for this change is that I'm trying to focus less on guaranteed successes, as they seem to happen too frequently and are too strong.

ROLE - CHAMPION: Instead of combining the damage totals both the Champion and the target received, then reducing it to 1, the Champion instead simply prevents all damage dealt to the target. They receive full damage if any was dealt to them, and the ability may not be used on themselves.  The reason for this change is that the former description was simply too confusing. While this may be seen as a nerf, it can still be plenty powerful - besides, Champions weren't taking enough damage anyways!

ROLE - SPECIALIST: Instead of being able to autusucceed on any roll, Specialists now have a cap on succeeding any DR (difficulty roll) of 15 or lower. Specialists were simply autosucceeding a large portion of their rolls, and needed to be looked at.

Fauxpaw here! Over the past two weeks I've put together some events that some might say were highly successful, and I just wanted to share the documents I used to organize them. Linked below are the documents for..

Operation Coinpurse and Operation Iron Blood

This is just to give people an inspiration for how to organize their own events in the future. A few notes:

As you can tell, I organize these with far more detail than is probably necessary. I've seen people put together very good, elaborate events and only use a few lines of text to denote the overall structure. Do not feel pressured to go to the same lengths that I do.

Even with all the planning, there is still a lot of improvisation involved. You should be saying 'Yes!' a lot to people's questions and prompts, so long as they are within reason.

What people remember most from these events tends to be unique combat encounters. So be creative, think of interesting mechanics, enemies incidents, and/or abilities and throw them at the team. A good buildup is always welcomed.

Be careful of over-writing the encounter prompts; you should leave what happens in the imagination of your participants as much as possible for two reasons: 1) What the enemy does rarely lives up to the imagination of the players, and 2) It can slow things down dramatically.

Encounters with very specific numbers are very difficult to manage - especially if those enemies are human sized. Consider using certain minion types of an indeterminate number, followed up with an elite character in the midst of it, so that everyone gets a chance to do something cool..

.. because otherwise, people end up swinging at a dude repeatedly, and it feels unrealistic.

This post is an update regarding changes made to the Syndicate Roleplay System! There are some very important, extensive alterations made that will be detailed in this post. They are already submitted to www.blackwald.com/combat

HEALTH & DAMAGE: Everyone’s health has been increased to 20 (25 for Champions), and the general damage output of encounters has doubled (base damage dealt is now 2 unless otherwise specified). The reason for this is to make recovery time feel more impactful and realistic.

GEAR & KIT: Characters now choose their kit. They may change this before an event starts at whim, and if roleplayed properly, may even change it during an event (such as discarding platemail). The choices are light, medium, and heavy, and they each have different pros (and cons!).

SELF-HEALING: Every character now has a self-heal. Once per event, they can restore 2 points of health to themselves using a method of their choice; a potion, psyching themselves up, a second wind, a rallying cry, etc.