Café de Nuit

My arguments against the Nocturnal Seas as the next topic:

1)We're looking for a topic for a gazetteer, describing a land (or island), its people and customs, not merely a book of adventure hooks. The nocturnal seas as a body of water doesn't offer that option, and Graben Island has yet to receive a vote here. As Undead Cabbage pointed out earlier, the thread for this domain was very quiet.

2)In using Souragne, we've already broken the mold in terms of what should come next.

3) Pirates may be cool but where do they come from? Many places they'd originate from haven't been described yet. If we don't know enough about the islands connected to the seas, we're going to lose a huge source of inspiration.

Undead Cabbage also suggested returning to this later, and I agree. Come back when we know all the lands and islands that could be affected, or else we're again going to be focusing on the Core. Let's move on, people!

Llana wrote:3) Pirates may be cool but where do they come from? Many places they'd originate from haven't been described yet. If we don't know enough about the islands connected to the seas, we're going to lose a huge source of inspiration.

Yeah why worry about Pirates when you can do Ninja!

Ninja > Pirates. All the time, everybody knows that.

Everybody.

But I also have reservations about Shining Bay and messing with canon in huge ways.

Oh god, Coan, PLEASE don't start the Ninja/Pirates debate!

brothersale wrote:My vote goes for the Amber Wastes, followed by the shadowborn cluster.

I personally don't think the "Shining Bay" needs a greater look at this time, due to the two adventure that detail paridon and timor quite well, and I don't think we should tinker with its official configuration (i.e. Paridon and Timor without nosos), as the overall hope of these books is to expand the official without interfering with it to the extent where it becomes useless, after all that’s why the shining bay is a called an alternate version just like Verbrek from QtR1 not an offical version.

I agree, let's just focus on canon stuff and not alternate versions. I like the old "configuration" better.

BTW It's great to see that the Amber Wastes are so popular ...

Llana wrote:Oh god, Coan, PLEASE don't start the Ninja/Pirates debate!

Actually, this gives a good reason to consider The Wildlands as the next place: Monkeys trump 'em both.

Monkeys do indeed rule the school.

I'd like to see Paridon or the Shadowborn Cluster dealt with next myself.

I would like to see Paridon, followed by the Frozen Reaches or the Amber Wastes.

Alright, I'll put in a vote for the Shadowborn cluster. Or the Verdurous Lands. Or, actually, I wouldn't have thought of it myself, but Liffe would be kind of neat, though waiting a bit to do that one might be a good idea. And another vote against Paridon; there are plenty of domains out there that have only one adventure based in them (or no adventures based there) and really, really need more information to be even usable, while Paridon already has two adventures set there and a decent amount of information floating around about it. The difference, as I see it, is that Gazetteers make it easier to run a campaign in a place, rather than simply running an adventure there, and judging by the number of people who have/are already running campaigns in and around Paridon it's not a huge priority. Plus a lot of people have very disparate visions of the place, which will make doing the Gazetteer pretty tricky.

Llana wrote:My arguments against the Nocturnal Seas as the next topic:

1)We're looking for a topic for a gazetteer, describing a land (or island), its people and customs, not merely a book of adventure hooks. The nocturnal seas as a body of water doesn't offer that option, and Graben Island has yet to receive a vote here. As Undead Cabbage pointed out earlier, the thread for this domain was very quiet.

2)In using Souragne, we've already broken the mold in terms of what should come next.

3) Pirates may be cool but where do they come from? Many places they'd originate from haven't been described yet. If we don't know enough about the islands connected to the seas, we're going to lose a huge source of inspiration.

Undead Cabbage also suggested returning to this later, and I agree. Come back when we know all the lands and islands that could be affected, or else we're again going to be focusing on the Core. Let's move on, people!

To be fair, when I say the seas I also mean all of the domains contained within. That means Ghastria, Liffe, Markovia, Graben, Heinfroth's Asylum, and all of the rest. So it's far from "Just Pirates".

We have to do them eventually, and I would rather get them done with quickly before we leave a western (The Core and Sourgane) tradition before moving to something more exotic like the Frozen Reaches, the Amber Wastes.

Also, I don't believe that there is any point in doing pocket domains like the House of Lament, because they don't lend themselves to much other than single shot adventures.

Edit: Sorry I got a little carried away. Won't happen again.

Brandi wrote:

Llana wrote:Oh god, Coan, PLEASE don't start the Ninja/Pirates debate!

Actually, this gives a good reason to consider The Wildlands as the next place: Monkeys trump 'em both.

Then the surely the Seas beat them both. Penguins beat anything.

Fixed.

Drinnik Shoehorn wrote:
Then the surely the Seas beat them both. Penguins beak anything.

I couldn't help myself.

Anyway perhaps the Nightmare lands is worth considering?

Tobias Blackburn wrote:Also, I don't believe that there is any point in doing pocket domains like the House of Lament, because they don't lend themselves to much other than single shot adventures.

I think it'd be better if the pocket domains had a netbook of their own, a la the old "Book of Crypts" and "Darklords" 2E supplements. That way, we could tackle the 'floaters' (which don't really belong in a Gaz, since they're mobile), along with giving 'fixed' pocket domains a more thorough write-up. We could even toss Richten Haus's oubliette into such a netbook as a "Dread Possibility".

This wouldn't be something to postpone the major domain's Gazetteer write-ups, mind you, just a sideline project we might consider. Certainly the "pockets" deserve some treatment eventually, but if we commit to giving them their own book in future, we won't have to worry about squeezing them into other domains' write-ups (like the Isle of Agony's cameo in Gaz II).

My vote goes for the Nocturnal Sea. You can include in this the reason that the Nocturnal Sea has no sky, and the islands of Liffe, Vechor, Graben, Todstein, L'ile de la Tempete, and the Isle of Ravens. There's TONS of material there.

You can make links with the Nocturnal Sea to the Nightmare Lands, the fact that the the first appearance of the Nocturnal Sea was around that island of terror, not the Core.

I don't think you should do the Shining Bay. Admittedly I haven't read the write-up yet, but IMO, Paridon, Timor, and Nosos aren't broken. They work just fine.

The neat thing about the Kargatane, was that their writing created tons of new ideas, all inside the established material. They didn't create any new clusters or domains, they simply worked with what they had and created great new ideas that could be used by anyone using the default setting.

Ok, I've got the tally (Whew!). I did not include Anti-votes because otherwise things would just get messing between those supporting Paridon and those supporting the seas. I have categorized each into fairly even clusters/seas so as to keep things perhaps more in perspective. Here we go:

Amber Wastes: 10 votes
Shadowlands: 15 votes
Verdurous Lands: 8 votes
Zherisia+Nosos: 6 votes
Seas+domains therein: 12 votes
(Let it be noted that there are 3 votes that specifically mention using Liffe)
Bluetspur: 4 votes
House of Lament: 2 votes
Frozen Reaches: 8 votes
Rokushima Taiyoo: 2 votes
Nightmare Lands: 1 vote
Supreme Realm of the Undead Cabbage: 0

Please, feel free to re-count and correct me here.

Shadowlands are currently in the lead. Followed by fleshing out the seas, then the amber wastes, then a tie between the Verdurous lands and the frozen reaches. If this remains as is, then it looks like a Shadowy minority (sort of like Canada's government, huh?).