ZEITGEIST Siberys' Zeitgeist Story Hour

[Siberys]

Well, I'm already a fair bit of the way into the first adventure, but I now have a site up with a story hour for my Zeitgeist game. A new game is tomorrow, so I anticipate another entry here soon.

The Constables
Here I describe each PC, as well as provide their stat blocks and contacts.

The Story So Far
Here I give a very quick rundown of the events to this point in the adventure.

Future installments will be meatier and more specific on both the in-game events side and the meta commentary side. With the events being both fresher in my mind and covering less ground, I'll be able to cover the sessions in greater detail.

 

[RangerWickett]

Cool. Thanks for the heads up.

I dig the party, especially the names. What are the etymology of the weird ones, like Dhuiyetegheyilk? Fantasy original, or something out of Scandinavia?

 

[Siberys]

Ierichon Zachariya was supposed to be a Russiany sounding Jericho Zacharia.

Ekin Aoifei I believe is based on some Turkish words.

With Dhuiyetegheyilk, the player wanted to name the companion "Dwight" which didn't seem fey enough, so I suggested Dwight be a nickname based on a fuller, more complex name. I came up with that because it looks Gaelic, and I associate Gaelic with fey stuff. Only later did I find that dh in Irish Gaelic, when next to a u, is pronounced like a raspy "gh".


For names in general, I tend to suggest the player come up with a few words that describe their character or tie closely to it, then use an online translator to get a list of words in a thematic language. Combine and mold to taste.

 

[Siberys]

Finally, an update! Storywise, not much has happened, but there's a lot of content on the site now!

Huerfeno del'Morte
This PC has been in the game since the start, but the player had trouble with his schedule, so I thought I was going to have to drop him. I've since found that to be in error, so I've put this PC up.

The Dreadnought
The PCs spent a session pursuing Asrabey through the fort, among other incidentals. Here's a description of last session's action!

Zeitgeist Character Dossier
I'm putting this up as a running NPC list for the players. Hopefully, that will help them to keep the plot straight. I'm considering making a running timeline, too, but I haven't decided yet.

NOTES
I decided that I wanted Aodhan and Ethelyn to have a last name for the dossier, so I came up with the following. Feel free to use it for your game, if it's to your liking;

When a new king is crowned, as part of the rituals of investiture, he and his immediate family (spouse, parents, children, and siblings, as applicable) are all granted the surname An Tiarn, the ancient family name of King Kelland. As such, Duchess Ethelyn's full name is Duchess Ethelyn An Tiarn, and King Aodhan is King Aodhan An Tiarn.

An Tiarn (pronounced like "On Tea-Yarn", unless I'm wildly off-base) comes from the Irish Gaelic phrase "An Tiarna", which unless the Internet is lying to me means "The Sovereign" or "The Lord". I cut the A off because I thought it sounded better.

[MENTION=63]RangerWickett[/MENTION] - something I'd like to see for future installments is a bit more consistency with the NPC sidebars; for one, they should all be past tense - Marseine's in the first book kinda waffled a bit on tense. Second, and much less pedantic, I'd like to see them be "player safe", so I can show those to the players, with a "DM only" note below that, where applicable. It wasn't too bad in the first adventure - what I've gone through for the dossier - but the later descriptions I had to redact, and I had to completely drop the one for Asrabey. Way too many spoilers.

 

[RangerWickett]

In each adventure we included player handouts with NPCs the party would be familiar with, and those have player friendly text. The sidebars throughout the book are intended to give the GM all the info he needs.

I suppose we could try something like "here's a paragraph of physical description, here's the secret stuff about his background and personality." I'll give it a shot and see if it messes with the writing's flow. Seems reasonable, though.

I really like how one of the PCs is married to a political aspirant. That could lead to some odd promotions later in the adventures.

 

[Siberys]

The problem is that the Dramatis Personae only include characters the PCs already know about that will be important to the adventure... Not quite what I'm looking for. They are helpful, though, as reminders.

As for Jack's wife, yeah. I gotta figure a way to leverage that.