TheRadicalX!!R0ATSvZGp3 2010/01/13(Wed)17:34 No. 9029 ID: 498ebc
File 126343284586.jpg - (544.79KB , 1650x1950 , map_rtk.jpg )

Also, because it might come in handy, here's the map of China I'm working off of, courtesy of Kongming's Archives.

First off, you're awesome for doing a Romance of the Three Kingdoms quest.

Second, how closely will you be sticking to the established canon/historical account? Do we have room to affect the outcome of events or is it rigidly strict? We all know Wei ends up winning under the command of Sima Yi, but I'd hate to be forced to choose between canon good ending or tragic end for all other options.

The Three Kingdoms period is possibly one of my favorite things ever, so any opportunity to do anything regarding it is something I'll leap at.

As for historical accuracy, my view of it is that the actual, hard history can be found in the books, the games, and elsewhere. So long as it makes sense and you have the resources to do it, I'm cool with it. If this means the ascent of Emperor Guandi at the end of the wars, then so be it - that's your victory, enjoy. That's a long way off, though.

Besides which, my actual KNOWLEDGE of the period is somewhat limited in scope. I haven't had to opportunity to actually read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms yet, so I'll inevitably slip up somewhere or other.

Actually, I'm hoping this thread can help people call me on screw ups like that, as long as it's still relevant.

Furthermore, something I didn't realize until I wikicrawled a bit and which might help other people who just have the games to go on...

There are currently two Yellow Turban factions operating in China, both having sprung up after the original under Zhang Jiao was utterly crushed. Both are unrelated to the other. The first actually sprung up in 185 in the south-west, in Sichuan province, and in this particular retelling they have spread as far East as the Kul pass, which you just came through.

The other group of Yellow Turbans controls the north-east coast, the provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hebei, and Liaoning. Basically, they control the area on the map all the way around that northern bay, and stretching down into China about to Xu Chang.

Meanwhile, the Han Imperial forces are centered around Luo Yang, and are currently leading offensives towards the northern Turbans.

Yong An takes on a bit of strategic importance, therefore. Either force could march on the other by skipping it and moving north, but it would serve as a convenient "stopping point" to rest and re-supply, whether you were campaigning north or south.

Man, I'd love a version in chinese. I cannot do pinyin for my life.

>.>

Anyways, I still think we should join Liu Bei. He has all the heroes. And I really want to save Guan Yu from getting killed by Wu. First time I read that as a child I cried. Yeah, yeah, I know.

Alternatively, we learn ninja skills, assassinate Dong Zhuo before the whole Xanatos Gambit with Lu Bu and the love-triangle, and become popular with the oppressed people.

>>318833
It's going to be hard not to use OOC knowledge to gain an unfair advantage, isn't it?

I'm actually for creating an entirely non-canon faction out of original characters DO NOT STEEL so as to avoid that sort of metagaming... although the fact that this does deviate from the canon history means that our knowledge of the events can be a double-edged sword.

Apart from that, I totally support joining Liu Bei. He was so close to succeeding at so many points, it really would take just a mere nudge to make things turn out far differently.


But yeah, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Have to start off small and work our way up. Which leads me to my next point: we should try to recruit QQ if possible. Having a skilled archer would be a definite boon, and she seems adept at infiltrating crowds, a good foil to our martial prowess.

>>318837
We could emphasize minor characters. Like all those XiaHou-whatevers that were under Sima Yi's command. Maybe make up random warriors and stuff.

Also, I'd join Liu Bei if only so that the DM can't do asspulls and just say 'oh lol Zhuge Liang is so smart he saw your move coming lol' and own us. I'm just that distrustful as a metagamer.

Keep in mind, the very fact that Pu Si exists is a deviation from how things happened, and that the more you change history, the less effective your knowledge of the canon is.

Anyway, I should probably update.

>>318842
Zhuge Liang saw that coming.

>>318842

Zhuge Liang is a dangerous enemy, BUT I don't intend him to be Liu Bei's GODMODE BUTTON from the moment he joins Shu, if that's how things play out.

If you come up against him, he'll be a dangerous enemy, but every enemy is eventually surmountable.

>>318842
I think that depends on the DM, and Radical seems pretty cool.

>>318845
Yup, that's what I was thinking. Still, the temptation will be there.

>>318847
Hmm, that might actually be pretty exciting to match wits against Zhuge Liang in a tactical face off...

>>318848

Well, honestly, I'm not even discouraging the use of foreknowledge. You, as the Orb, DO know how the original Three Kingdoms played out, and you can provide that information to Pu if you so choose. It's something I kept in mind.

It's just if you give him too much foreknowledge, such that he, say... stops Dong Zhuo from kidnapping the new Emperor, then you've effectively re-written the face of the entire era.

However, that's a good ways off. I'm looking forward to what paths this takes.

Just to clarify, there's no real magic in this quest right? Because magic would totally kill the realism-history factor here.

>>318852

No real magic, no. Maybe a sort of folk sorcery Zhuge Liang uses, but that isn't actual magic - that's being an amateur meteorologist, predicting which way the wind will blow, and then burning incense and chanting to make yourself seem mystical.

Convincing to those who see it, but not inherently magical.

I still think we should ally with Cao Cao. Yes I know he's the villain.

Or we could try to ally with Sima Ji and make him a more powerful independant player. Actually I like that one even more than joining in with Cao Cao. With our current plan to get into the good graces of the merchant houses of Yong An we can probably score some connections that would let us get in touch with the Sima clan.

We can join whoever we feel like as long as we don't join as a lowly footsoldier. Nobody notices them and they die by the thousands at the hands of badasses like Guan Yu and Zhao Yun.

Try and meet whoever we're going for, and preferably save them from bandits to get on their good side. :P

>>318872
Sima Yi is brilliant, but he lacks the charisma and ambition that made Cao Cao so dangerous. I doubt he'd be able to raise the same level of troops on his own.

Let's hold off on any faction decisions until they're actually more relevant. Although that does run the risk of making a hasty decision if we haven't decided anything before hand. But at least we won't be arguing over purely hypothetical choices that may or may not even be relevant.

>>318874
Well Pu Si might bring what's needed for Sima Yi to succed.

But you're probably right that it's a bit early to align ourselves completly with one of the big players yet. We could try to make a name for ourselves so that they seak us out instead.

I suppose I should mention that besides joining up with one of the other powers, it WOULD be possible to create your own Kingdom, if you so chose.

Just in case you didn't think the possibility was there.

But ultimately, things depend on what direction you want to take them. There's a vast array of possibilities that will begin to crop up in about a year, game time.

So, just wondering, but is the speed I'm updating at working for you guys?

I'm sick as fuck right now, so it's not going to get much better until my cold finally realizes it has overstayed its welcome, but if you want more than one update a day, I'll just have to make certain to come back to the computer more often and check to see if an update is needed.

>>318976
For normal operating procedures, one update a day is really slow for a text quest. When you're sick, on the other hand, you can take as long as you want, as no one is going to demand anything of you, even if we do want more updates. Just get to it when you can and when you're feeling up to it.

But I'd recommend at least two updates a day normally. Really as much as you can manage without getting burned out would be awesome. =)

>>318977

Normally, I'd like to keep to the update style I started out with, so I'd be responding whenever I think I'm not cutting off the opportunity for more suggestions.

Normally I'm glued to the computer chair, but this desk is rather constricting of sitting posture, and at the moment everything is sore, so I've re-addicted myself to Disgaea 2.

Hopefully in the future I'll be able to do shorter updates for things like conversations, so there's more ability for the players to control the direction it takes.

Good god. Normally I self-edit for redundancy better. Christ.

>>318979
What part of 'don't worry about it when you're sick' didn't you get? =P

You have your ideal goal you can shoot for whenever you have time and concentration, and that's great, but on the flip side one post a day is better than absolutely nothing, and if you feel like crap or are totally swamped that one post may be all you can manage. So just go at whatever pace suits you, because the readers will always want more posts and faster responses. ;)

>>318976
I would like more but if you have a cold then it's fine. I have been through far worse update schedules, waiting 3 months for an update of Zebragirl puts things in perspective when it comes to updates.

But I do love the quest. I love 3 kingdoms period and I just generally love things set in ancient or not so ancient China.

>>318980

Well, I've been sick before and still managed to avoid starting two sentences back to back with the same word. =P

Oh, also. I found a Chinese dictionary online and plugged in our protagonist's name, just out of curiosity. End result:

Pu (universal) Si (four) Guan(official, public servant)di(number)

So, editing for what's actually meaningful, we have:
Pu Si (four) Guandi (number).

Which suggests that our hero was born fourth in his family, that he does not come from a particularly wealthy background, and that despite not understanding styles completely when I picked Guandi, and not speaking Mandarin at all... I managed to pick a style that follows traditional guidelines regarding styles.

Awesome.

(Given that there are numerous different characters that can represent Pu, Si, Guan and di, I picked the best fits.)

Pu Si?

普思 Means something like "All Thought" or something. Could be a buddhist name.

Pu Si isn't a classic Chinese 2-character name, and most chinese people have 2 or 3 character names. 4 character names are mostly Japanese people.

So yeah. Makes no sense to me, but I'm a native chinese speaker so obviously I have to come dissect your name. Maybe I'll make other variations when my chinese font isn't acting up on me.

I don't speak a lick of Chinese. I just happened to be using a character look-up dictionary for some other things, and decided to plug in Pu and Si.

I assumed that Pu and Si would be separate characters, for surname and given name. I'm mostly just going on an essay from Kongming's archives explaining Chinese naming during the era, so I'm way far off from being an authority.

So. Y'know, sorry for the lack of updates for a while there. Civ 4 has a way of swallowing you up, even when you exceed the processing power of your computer such that any given turn takes 3-4 minutes to process.

>>319399
It's worth the wait~

TheRadicalX!!R0ATSvZGp3 2010/02/08(Mon)23:31 No. 10409 ID: 498ebc
File 126570068057.jpg - (354.47KB , 2479x3395 , PuSiGuandi.jpg )

I'm not going to be updating tonight, prolly tomorrow. Sorry for the slow update pace, I really don't have an excuse at the moment except that I've been sucked into a few games.

Oh, right, and they're computer games and this computer can't handle both browser and a game running at the same time, so I have to close the browser. Which makes alt-tab updating rather difficult. Will get better around the 15th, though, when my new computer arrives.

In the meantime, have a quick drawing of our protagonist. The hair is crap at the moment, but I couldn't decide what to do with it.

>>320209

Woah, holy crap, I forgot to resize. DO NOT MAXIMIZE THIS, IT IS STUPID HUGE.

>>320209
New computers are always awesome. I know what it's like to not be able to run multiple applications at the same time, and I'm glad those days are behind me.

Sweet drawing, too! Gigantic... but very well done. :P

And here I figured you couldn't draw. Why not include occasional pictures in updates, like Rosque does with BloodQuest?

>>320288

I'm typing this from my new, souped up, runs Dragon Age at full graphics quality flawlessly computer.

I love it.

And I wanted to. It's just that if I did, I'd rather have things I could, well... mess with easily. Pencil doesn't work that way.

However, as soon as I get CS3 installed on this monster machine, I think I'll try and start injecting at least a bit of art into the stuff I do. =D

>>320288

Herp derp, forgot to say, thanks! Nice to hear that you managed to throw the lines on the paper in a manner approaching pleasing.

For those who might see it here first: I fail and forgot to update for way too long, but Romance Quest is not abandoned.