So, about that Valenwood...

TL;DR: Living where we do (in the Valenwood) could be a great source for plot hooks, unless you've all Been There and Done That before my time.

This will be a long post; way too long for Discord. It's about a subject which I started thinking about as soon as I began imagining Jaz and his role in the tavern. It took on a different light last week when we had a discussion in Discord about the need to generate more plot hooks. And then along came the caravan to Cormount, and a whole bunch of things became either clearer, or muddier... but mostly more urgent. (To me, anyway.) So I'm kind of lightly trying to tie the discussion I hope this will generate to the discussion of whether to move to Cormount. It's not likely to change anyone's mind about Cormount, it's more a matter of, if we're going to change anything in response to this discussion, the disruptive move would be the IC excuse for changing things.

So.

The Valenwood is, according to lore, one of the most trackless, hard to traverse areas of Tamriel. Someone was pointing out recently that ESO makes the place way too civilized. The lore suggests there shouldn't even be paving-stone paths here, much less roads that a cart could reasonably be expected to travel. Its IRL equivalents are what some have referred to as "The Green Hell".

As I traveled the zones as my main Sandira Hearthglow before I met you folks, it really felt that way too. The road to Elden Root was eye-opening. And then just as I got used to how rough the terrain in Grahtwood could be, and was surprised at how open southern Greenshade was, *bam* -- I headed east from Velyn Harbor and the path almost disappeared before my eyes, and there were senche ten feet on my right, and stranglers in pairs ten to my left, and... I was in a trackless, deadly wilderness.

Sandira literally walked right by Vulkwasten without even realizing it existed. I played her in first person, exploring based only on what I could see, and she saw no sign of the place except for the wayshrine itself. It wasn't until she got the side-quest to Gathwen (? - female bosmer in the tavern) that she even found the town hub. To this day there are still places outside of Vulkwasten that can get me turned around and instantly lost, until I open up my map screen. Me, I think ESO did a pretty good job on capturing the feel of the Valenwood... given that you want casual players to be able to traverse the zone without giving up in frustration.

So when I dreamed up Jaz, I had no problem picturing the lore. I had him getting to Vulkwasten on foot. I had the journey from Rawl'kha taking several stages, at least a day for each stage, with the final one being from Baandari Post and resulting in the death of a traveling companion and the loss of his possessions, all down the gullet of a strangler, despite having a Bosmer guide. Welcome to The Green Hell, Jaz.

And then I walked him into Vulkwasten and, bit by bit, started to realize that BSR doesn't really live in that Valenwood at all. Jaz was intended to come in and be dismayed by the limited offerings of this grand but isolated tavern in a tree. Instead, every drink a customer ever asked for, Lucia was assumed to have procured. Dangerous surroundings? Ashi casually suggested he bathe in the river (you know, the one with, in-game, hoarvers every five feet). Travel to other places? Afer just casually had a mage open a portal to go buy Kinae's replacement book in Woodhearth. Siirdan was going to bless Varr's new house in Rawl'kha, "this afternoon". We essentially treat Vulkwasten as just as easy to access as the wayshrines actually make it in-game. People do pay lip service to the idea that a portal is expensive and beyond the reach of the average citizen, but that didn't stop Afer of the cash-crunched Fighter's Guild from being able to afford one on a whim... to purchase a single book.

Now, I get why people do this sort of "hand-waving" and ignore the supposed "realities" of life in the Green Hell:

- I happen to be a logistics guy, and that sort of thinking interests me. Most of you presumably are not.
- Hacking endless trails through trackless jungles might be an interesting RP story, if told well -- once or twice. But not the dozenth, ever-so-realistic time. (And there may have been a time in BSR's history where such stories were told, and became Been There Done That...?)
- If the story you're RPing is about the book, a big journey to get the book is nothing but a distraction.
- Nobody in the guild made a decision to move to The Town In The Green Hell With All Its Logistical Problems. They decided to move to the place with a good layout, no crowding, and only minor phasing issues.

I have no problem with "hand-waving" in a good cause, and these are all good causes.

But what if we're missing an opportunity here?

Even before the Discord discussion of plot hooks happened, I had realized that one possible route for Jaz to provide some was by trying to expand the offerings of the Tall Tree. Hunting could be role-played, not because the hunting was important as a game activity but because it would be a new stage for RP. He was also going to go fishing and need a companion, because... hoarvers. And stranglers. And all that.

The Discord discussion suggested more possibilities. New food components could be brought in from far-away places, whether that meant a dangerous trip, a negotiation at the destination, or just a stage to be randomly interrupted by some colorful event. The moonsugar supply could run low. And none of this needed to be planned events -- it could just be an excuse for characters A and B to go on a trip and get creative.

That was what originally prompted me to decide I was going to write this post, in fact.

But unfortunately (perhaps), the move to Cormount beat me to it. And what I saw on that trip merely emphasized the whole subject. The entire town of Vulkwasten fell apart in a matter of hours -- effectively a natural (or unnatural!) disaster -- and yet it was hand-waved that every important possession except Afer's lute was loaded onto a cart. NOBODY had to walk. No tough decisions about what to leave behind. No logistics problems along the way. And then we got to Cormount, and not only were we simply shifting all of Vulkwasten into newer quarters, but I even found out that Lucia has been importing fresh vegetables the whole time Jaz has worked there, and they had made their way to Cormount along with all the other never-ending bounty of Vulkwasten.

Welcome to the Green Palace. :)

So. Perhaps you all like it there. Perhaps you see no advantage to changing. And if so, that's fine; I hope you at least enjoyed the read.

But if we want more plot hooks, some version or other of The Green Hell that is the lore-based Valenwood could still be right around the corner. We'd just need to discuss what we'd want that to mean.

Hi there!

You have a lot of really good points and honestly, I think that rping the Valenwood how it's described in lore would be fantastic....for a small group of people. If this were a smaller guild, or just a little group of friends, this change wouldn't be that dire and there are a few people I know that RP the Valenwood as this terrifying jungle. But with a large group like this, you have to change a few things and make some shortcuts.

We are a town-based Guild, so we look for places that actually look like and feel like a real town. The game makes the Valenwood look very civilized, so we do use that to our advantage. We have many different races in our guild and not all of them would stay in the Valenwood if it were a wild jungle. Could you see a dunmer tooting along to the river with leaves and dirt all over him? Or a snobby Altmer? Though it's a funny image, it just doesn't work well with our type of rp because we don't want to limit people on what race they play. We could easily be a Guild of just bosmer but I honestly like the diversity.

As for danger being around every corner, again, we are a town-based guild. We want to give the feeling that the town is pretty safe. Which isn't too far fetched, if you think about it. Even if this were a jungle, a group of this size would be able to make traps, set up fences, and guard the area to keep wild animals out. And after a while, they would eventually stay away from the town. At least the one's that realize the town is dangerous to them. So, to me, I assume that the people who founded the town (not the people of BSR) did all of that and eventually made it safe for people to live. While there a lot of people that enjoy rping danger and combat, there are some that enjoy just hanging out in the tavern and getting to know everyone. If we RPed the place like you described, we'd be in combat rp almost 24/7. That's a lot of work for me. I enjoy more laid back type of rp most of the time. And I don't know if you've ever been to one of our big combat events, but with a group of this size, combat rp can take -hours-. I am usually a zombie by the end and don't want to rp again for a few days! lol But, I do agree with you that the places around the town should probably be rped more as dangerous. I will throw in random encounters with wild senche and sometimes the occasional pissed off mammoth chasing my dumb character away. That can be a fun story to tell.

Now I -really- agree with you about the portals. Honestly, it used to be a LOT worse. There were people opening portals every day to get to thier banks in Riften or to visit their children in Velyn Harbor for the day. It was getting pretty ridiculous. I don't like to use of portals for very casual things. I feel like they should be more difficult to conjure or very expensive. Now, for events, it can be different. Sometimes we travel on events, to give people a different scene to rp in and we, of course, need a portal for that. For the Fighter's Guild, I have a portal mage. But, she has limits. For one, she can't send you to a place she's never been or heard of. And it completely drains of her magicka, making any spells she does for the next twenty minutes of so, be very weak. I'm also gonna have her ask for extra pay every time she opens one cause it's very tiring for her. So yes, the portals should definitely be a bit more difficult to come by.

And there are people that RP traveling for a few days. When Keys stayed back in Elden Root, she didn't RP that character in Vulk for a few days because it wouldn't make sense for her to be back so soon. So, you have a mix of different type of RPer's here. Some RP having portal stones, scrolls or just a portal at the wave of a hand. And other's will be gone for days (and sometimes even weeks) while traveling. We're not too hard on this because we don't want to limit people's rp or tell them how to rp. Some people will even make the off hand comment of everyone having a portal in their pocket but that's just not true. There are some people that like to RP out traveling. But for events, we have to speed up that process because before when we had people walk the entire way to a spot, a lot of people complained that it was too boring. And sometimes we do have things stop them on the road, but I assume on this trip, everyone just wanted to get to town because that was the whole point of the event: to rp in this town and see if it's going to be our new home or not. It really comes down to what the majority wants. If we do a poll and more than half want to just use horses and get to the area, then that's what we do. If people vote for using a portal rather than traveling by foot cause it will take too much time out of the event, then we do that. Remember, our events are aimed to be at around 2 hours. That is the time limit that most people enjoy because it's not too short and it doesn't feel drawn out either. 2 hours may sound like a long time but with a Guild event, it can go by very fast, especially if there's a lot of people.

And about your suggestion on the tree and how rushed that felt, I can understand that. Perhaps it should have been RPed out more that the trees were getting sick. And maybe some attempts to heal them should have been made, though failed attempts would have had to happen to push the move. I agree that it felt a bit rushed, like the trees were dying overnight so suddenly but I suppose they wanted to rp in this town right away and that was the reason to push everyone to leave town. Before, when we rped in other towns, a small group of people stayed in Vulk and made excuses not to go and try out other spots, so I suppose this was the only way to really give the whole town that push to join everyone and leave no one behind. I'm sure that if we decide to stay in Vulk, the Officer team will be more than happy to take suggestions on how to fix the trees and include everyone in it.

I hope I discussed all your points. If I left something out, I'm sorry! Also, I'm not an Officer and I don't speak for the Officers, but I've been a member since almost Launch and I've been an Officer many times, so I know what it's like to run events, but I also know what it's like to just be a participant of them so I think I can see both sides of the argument pretty well. Or at least, I try to. I also didn't mean for this to be very long. I just couldn't stop myself. But I hope this clears up a few things!

Thanks for the response, Lucrezia!

I want to just make clear that I'm not really complaining about or criticizing how the move event went down. I understand the two-hour time limit, I understand that the goal of the event was not to spend all two hours on the travel, and I get a bunch of the other behind-the-scenes thinking... and I also know that I don't have the experience people like you and the leaders do, as to how all these things are going to work out when one goes from theory to practice. The event as a whole was very well run.

OTOH, Kashya (the character) walked into the Cormount tavern today and ICly expressed surprise that we'd supposedly tossed every last drink from the Vulkwasten tavern into the carts, and I don't have any idea whether Kashya (the player) had read this thread before hand. So it might be that Kashya himself expected different results from the chaos of the move and we players mucked with "the script" (as we always do!), or it might be that he was granting me the player agency to create shortages if I wanted to... or it might just have been coincidence. :)

But either way, I'm pretty sure, and this is why I posted all this publicly instead of to the officers-only suggestions sub-forum, that if we players do want to create shortages and hook off them, the officers won't have a problem with it... unless it runs afoul of some of the considerations you laid out. They do want more player-created hooks. And I certainly expect them to say so if they think it would be a bad idea.

I don't want to try to get us to all adopt the same RP style. This is more like setting down the rules for how Vamps/WW work in BSR, in the sense that it ensures we're all RPing from the same "fact-sheet". And I'm happy to keep that fact sheet very simple, maybe even a single polling question.

I just want to get people thinking about it, and talking about it. Thanks for your thoughts and views!

Oh I didn't think that at all! It's good to point out stuff and lay out your own views and feedback. It's why they ask for feedback after every event in discord.

I think it may just be habit to some to say "Yes, I have that" when someone asks for it. I've even done it! When I first played my merchant, someone asked for snake oil and I said "Sure, I have one last bottle" and gave it to them for free for helping my merchant fix her cart. Then they mentioned that it was supposed to be really rare and I had to come up with a story on the spot of how I came up with it and why I'd give it away for free! lol I don't know a lot about ingredients or most rare items, so I'm still learning as I RP.