Blackwald Command

Social blog for the Blackwald Command, a Wyrmrest Accord-US roleplaying guild based around intelligence gathering and espionage.

[blackwald-blog1]

\\The future of the Blackwald Command\\

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. ♥

If you have any questions or concerns, please bring them up in the new #questions channel in the Discord and someone will answer you as soon as possible! More changes are coming soon.

[blackwald-blog1]

(( SRP Update 2! ))

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.

I hope these changes make sense! In a future post I'd like to talk about a new system I developed called the "Skill Encounter", which makes heavy use of people's secondary skills and was a wonderful success during my last event.

[blackwald-blog1]

(( SRP Document Showcase and Notes! ))

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.

And finally, please be aware that these documents were not fully complete - at the end of the day I said 'fuck it' and moved on without a fully realized plan and used a lot of improvisation.

[blackwald-blog1]

(( SRP Update! ))

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.

The next update will hopefully finish the Network page! Thank you all for your input. ♥

[blackwald-blog1]

Regarding the Legion

Associates and informants of the Blackwald,

It is with a heavy hand that I draft this letter to you all. The Burning Legion has come - returned - to Azeroth, and assaults all corners of our free lands with terrifying fel magicks meant to conquer and subjugate us, turning our world into one of countless others that have fallen to their might.

There is no silver lining in this: we are at the disadvantage, a severe one. Our enemy is capable of arriving at any location in the blink of an eye, and they have sleeper agents embedded within all castes of society - from the beggars on the streets, guards in the keep, nobles in the mansion, demonic cells have been found from them all, and more.

The majority of Stormwind has fallen, but heroes are fighting to retake its streets as we speak. If you wish to join them, neither I nor any officer of the Blackwald will hold you back; we are in the midst of crisis, and will be responding to events all over the whole of Azeroth.

I will not pretend that there is hope. We are not fighting some distant enemy that we can ignore; they are here, in our streets, in our very homes. We are fighting not for ideals or glory or territory. We are fighting for our very survival. That should be the only motivation you need: survive. Live to send the Legion back, and Light willing, end them for good.

The following is everything I am allowed to tell you and know, along with our role to play in the upcoming battle for Azeroth.

Master Mathias Shaw of Stormwind Intelligence has called an emergency security council, to which I have been sequestered for the better part of two days. We met in an undisclosed location, where I and the heads of other organizations in contract with SI:7 spoke of our enemy, their weaknesses, and came up with a working strategy to fight back.

Our primary role will be in that of domestic surveillance - in a way, nothing will change, but now the focus of the Blackwald will be on finding demonic cells as opposed to criminal elements. Our network must continue to be grown and curated, to keep as many eyes and ears out there as possible in the search for Legion sympathizers.

The Alliance is preparing for one, great push to the Broken Isles. The planned date is classified, but it will be soon. If you wish to avail yourselves of this, speak with Alliance Command currently stationed at the Stormwind Harbour.. but the Blackwald will need all the manpower we can get our hands on. Our jobs in the future will be dirty, but it will save many lives.

Signed,

Fauxpaw

Director of the Blackwald Command

(( Any comments made in response to this must be In Character. ))

[blackwald-blog1]

(( The Blackwald Relaunch ))

Finally, after much delaying and procrastinating, the Blackwald Command website is prepared and fit for consumption. I hope you take the time, guildmember or not, to look it over and provide feedback; a good deal of work was put into it, and I hope to continue putting in a whole bunch more! ♥

With it, however, is a coming relaunch of the Blackwald Command. The guild grew stale and unfocused with recent changes made to it, and some of those changes will be sunsetted:

Branches are being suspended until a point where they can be introduced in a more sane and organized fashion. The duties those branches provided will now be disseminated to qualified individuals.

Advocacy is being temporarily suspended following a discussion of the officers on whether to reintroduce it, alter it, or shutter it.

Further discussions will be had regarding the structuring of the Blackwald.

However, the biggest change is coming in the form of a refocus of strategy. Another news post will be made regarding it, but the jist is that the Command will be laser-focused on the creation, curation, and maintenance of an intelligence network. This does not mean we are abandoning our themes of being a paramilitary intelligence agency, however; we will still be expected to perform some combat duties (mostly delegated to special op missions).

Thank you for your time. I look forward to the future of the guild.

Fauxpaw