The Ancestor thread

"This is also an original encourager for the finding and playing of SGrub for our trolls, in case you guys forgot - a lot of our trolls are coming of age and will be moved off planet, so this game is kind of seen as a last ditch effort to reconnect with old friends, rebuild burned bridges, and cherish each others' company one last time. "

YES. I like this entire idea, but especially this statement.
I should state right off that bat that, just as last time this idea reared its head, I am completely in favor of this. I'm kind of a sucker for complexity in storytelling, both necessary and needless. And honestly, I think we can do a better job of making this idea work, now that we know what exactly the mechanics of the Scratch are.
Now, some huge points that need to be addressed are these:

-Do our ancestors still exist in the "scratched universe?" (Roles similar to the canon ancestors post-scratch, as figures of legend gone by)

-Does the whatever-we're-calling-this still involve petitioning Skaia to switch around its portals, changing where ancestors/descendants end up to create the A2 universe?

-Does Morgan still take care of ectobiology? This one is actually very, very, VERY important, because if she does, then our entire session has a glitch similar to the canon trolls'. You know, the glitch that summoned Lord English. Basically, for a bit of explanation, in normal sessions, the ectobiology happens in the first successful (pre-scratch) session to occur. In a glitched session, the ectobiology happens post-scratch. This glitch is the mentioned "calling card" of Lord English. Now, as we are using something else instead of the Scratch as a reset mechanism, the circumstances might change a bit, but that doesn't change the fact that ectobiology happening post-reset is an unnatural occurance.

Okay, I'm just gonna speak from where I'm standing in all of this, but if anybody has better ideas, then by all means...

- Yes, I'd say the A2 ancestors are there. They're probably at the same level of awareness as the canoncestors are - little to not at all. Their relevance is only significant as far as we want them to be, see: any sort of movement to shift the adult trolls off-planet, or higher-blood trolls having a deeper connection with their ancestors.

- I would think it would switch up the Skaia portals, so that way the Reckoning gives more time to the A2 trolls to defeat the Black King on the battle field. As for their exact location, that would be determined by each person and where they want their A2 Troll and Ancestor to end up, post-reset.

- Oh man, you make a really good point here. I actually failed to make the connection that the calling card of Lord English was the lack of successful ectobiology in the A1 session, though I was under the impression that he comes to consume the universe that brought forth the new Genesis Frog, regardless of the turn-out of the session. If what you say is the case, then I'd say Morgan would still be the ectobiologist. Since we're not quite doing the Scratch, I think it would change things, but I'm not sure how. If it's easier for the successful ectobiology to have occurred pre-reset, that's fine too. THOUGH maybe the biggest glitch of all about the SBoard RP is that the glitched session our trolls are participating in succeeds in creating a healthy Genesis Frog, and therefore a healthy universe, and are able to move onward at the conclusion of the game, despite all of the evidence pointing towards ultimate failure on the A2 trolls' part!!!

I'm of a mixed mind with regards to this idea. What I mostly want from this is a relatively game-focused and normal session. While the use of a scratch has always been implied (at least that's how I read it) to be a rare absolute emergency-only situation (I like to think of it in terms of one of them big red self-destruct buttons) it is a mechanism provided by the game itself, and so I guess I'm tentatively 0k with it as far as that goes. Especially since the end goal it would set up for us (getting the ancestor kids in) is a rather neat one that adds nicely to the goal set for us by the game itself. However, adding that outside of our particular instance motivation requires a similarly outside of our particular instance antagonist to oppose it, which would require very careful crafting with relationship to the game for me to be 0k with it. Basically I think whatever we do should be as closely associated with the process and endgame goal of creating a healthy universe as possible. The ancestor kids thing works fine in this respect from my point of view, but the antagonist that would require needs to function equally well with the pre-existing plotline for me to support it.

As for the Alternian history thing, I'm rather heavily against changing the history that canon gives us for an interrelated set of reasons stemming from two basic ones: first of all that I would rather work with what's already there, and second that my instincts as a moderate consumer of fan-produced material scream at me to avoid such dangerous modifications like the plague. We already have a perfectly good plot of ancestor relations and events. I do not support doing away with not only that, but the (imo) absolutely stellar pre-existing history provided to us by canon which is the fundamental historical basis for the world we have already based the personalities and backstories of our player characters on.

Also, you players who haven't been talking need to show up and discuss this. We really shouldn't be deciding stuff like this based on the discussion of three or four people out of fourteen.

Snuffleheim wrote:

As for the Alternian history thing, I'm rather heavily against changing the history that canon gives us for an interrelated set of reasons stemming from two basic ones: first of all that I would rather work with what's already there, and second that my instincts as a moderate consumer of fan-produced material scream at me to avoid such dangerous modifications like the plague. We already have a perfectly good plot of ancestor relations and events. I do not support doing away with not only that, but the (imo) absolutely stellar pre-existing history provided to us by canon which is the fundamental historical basis for the world we have already based the personalities and backstories of our player characters on.

That's the problem I'm having, though. How would we even get Alternia as we know it without a scratch of some kind? Not to mention, having the Sufferer be completely unrelated to the session itself changes his story somewhat. As I've mentioned above, the Demoness/Handmaid played a huge role with Doc Scratch and Lord English in influencing (or alternating wink wink) the trollverse to make it as we're using it in Sboard. The Handmaid wouldn't be found by Scratch, or rather Doc Net in this case since the canon ancestors would only be born on Alternia and not created and sent back via meteor.

To keep Alternia the Alternia we know without a scratch or equivalent reboot in our session, we'd have to assume Doc Net was there from the very start altering things himself, or that troll society just was always the way it is. Either way, the Sboard Ancestors would have no ties to the session and no reason to be mentioned, other than a side story for characters who know a lot about their ancestor and aspire to be like them or something. Even then, in the end, they'd just be characters with no connection to the medium and little influence on the plot. Which is okay, I guess, but I was thinking everyone wanted something more with the amount of detail being put into some and how Ancestor was a default slot on all our character sheets.

That and I'm just not a huge fan of keeping the canon ancestors in since by doing away with the canon troll session, we do away with a lot of their significance. As far as I can tell, and please correct me if I'm wrong, the only canon ancestors that influenced troll society to where it is now is the Summoner (and any rebellion can do, if we don't just pretend making Alternia a children's planet was an idea that didn't need any provocation in the first place) and the Demoness, who I'm unsure how she would travel through time sewing discord without Aradia being in our session. Though I guess keeping all but the Demoness/Handmaid intact in is not a big problem since it's unnecessary to even really mention them.

Edit: And I don't mean to say that the Sufferer didn't have an impact on troll society, but having his history pretty much be stricken from the record and his followers keeping their beliefs secret didn't really reshape the world.

To be clear, I'm perfectly fine with however much or little we have our ancestors affect our plot (whether that be governed by the player or decided by us as a whole), provided there is as minimal affect on the setting as it already exists as possible.

As for the canoncestors, their significance is that troll history as we know it is defined solely by them. They aren't particularly significant beyond that, but then, they're not supposed to be, since we're dealing with our characters and not them or their descendants. So why make an effort to explain the inconsistencies with their backstories? Why not just remain totally silent on the issue and let the beholder decide themselves? As you point out, the Demoness, aside from the Sufferer, is the only one whose inconsistencies are any manner of significant. However, there's no reason we can't just leave hers unexplained either. Her impact, though implied to be large, is ephemeral, and thus relegated entirely to the realm of headcanon anyway.

I didn't mean we should explain the inconsistencies with their background, simply that the inconsistencies with some bothered me. Though remaining silent on them is pretty much the same as not having them in the first place, and that's fine with me. My problem with the Demoness, however, isn't how her canon backstory no longer works, it's that I don't know how Alternia's would without a universal reset. And not to keep arguing with you Snuffle, please don't think this anything personal, I just disagree, but I don't see how the canon ancestors defined troll history and are necessary beyond the two that I mentioned. Still, I'm not completely opposed to having them still exist, and like I said before, it's hardly an issue since there's little reason to even mention them. I just don't think they're required at all to keep Alternia the way that we know it, with so many alternative explanations for while adults leave the planet and us needing a new explanation on how Alternia became altered from what ever world it was before.

But that's just it! Nobody has any idea how much she affected troll development. It's entirely a matter of headcanon, which it would be in ours anyway.

ambiguousZero wrote:

Though remaining silent on them is pretty much the same as not having them in the first place, and that's fine with me.

Well, technically not, since as it is many of us are fitting our ancestors around history as they created it (although it would be entirely possible to make one that has not been direct affected by anything done by any of them excepting how the Condesce runs things) but yeah, it makes things fairly easy all the way around. Making that more possible is the fact that we're sort of discouraging any prolonged interaction with canon characters at all, as discussed earlier in the thread.

http://www.mspaintadventures.com/scratch.php?s=6&p=005969

"While I am his weapon of subtlety and precision, the Handmaid is strictly an apparatus of terror and suffering. We have both paved the road to his arrival, I in my way and she in hers. She would be present during every watershed moment in her civilization's development. Her recurrance in history would earn her the reputation of a demoness, more feared than even her master, a man though dreadful rarely makes himself seen. She stirred up class warfare and intensified bigotry in whatever era she haunted. She made sure the descendents would enter a world which prepared them well for the game, and took measures to see that they would play as they did. "

While kind of ambiguous, this paragraph is why I thought she was perhaps the main cause of the difference between Alternia and what ever it was Pre-Scratch, as well as being the one primarily responsible for the hemospectrum being as important as it is.

Regardless of whether the canon ancestors are in or not, which really isn't that big of a deal to me despite it probably looking like I'm complaining a lot, I'm mainly wondering if we're going to pretend Alternia was always Alternia, or if there was a reset or not.