Poll: Third VS Fourth Age

[Winddancer]

Haha! I know what you mean as I do genealogy and of course the priests werent helpful and put actual dates, no they would do stuff like 18 post trinitatis, blargh! :P Luckily I have a book to find the actual dates lol. We need a plaza calendar! :P

[Arnyn]

Alright so TA 3021 = FA 1. Let's just say it starts with spring aye?

What Galastel said surprised me too - I forgot also. LOL According to Tolkien Gateway (yup, not ashamed to say I didn't consult the books atm), it was TA 3019 when Sauron fell and Aragorn "took the sceptre".
So FA 1 is already two years after the fall of Sauron and Aragorn becoming King. So the question is how much time would we like to have passed since the fall and coronation. I feel the voices saying that for all those Third Age characters it might be a good thing not to have it be 10 years ago that Sauron was destoyed.

What do you all think about Fourth Age 2? Three years after the fall of Sauron and Aragorn becoming King. Not too recent, not too long.

For those people who DO want to keep their old Third Age plaza characters in the "correct timeline", that means going from TA 3014 to FA 2 = 8 years have passed and need to be added to the character's age.
Personally I am not doing that with Kaylin and I'm gonna make it work differently haha. Be vague about her timeline and that will be that. She'll still have been a soldier and she'll still have trained and gone on campaigns - oen of them will just have been the war of the ring (fun!).

For those people who want to keep their even older Fourth Age plaza characters in the "correct timeline", that will be impossible since we used to be in FA 7 or something (ERC days). So everyone will have to be vague and fib there. hahahaha. But taking FA 2 will give people who want to be specific and following an exact timeline with their old characters 3 years of official ERC time (Aragorn would have created the ERC shortly after taking the kingship). If that would work for people?

[Winddancer]

Ok now I am confused.. Sauron was defeated in october 3019, right?? And FA 1 was 25 march 3019, right?

So how can FA 2 be 3 years after Saurons death?? Surely it would be a year ago? I dont get how you say FA 1 is 2 years after Saurons fall??

[Arnyn]

FA 1 was 25 march 3021, which is two years after march 3019 when the One Ring was destroyed (again, according to Tolkien Gateway XD).

So FA 2 would be three years after Sauron kicks the bucket.

[Winddancer]

Ok, so three years since the war. I am just going to say that :P (or whatever age is picked, just tell me how long it is after the war :P)

[Arnyn]

Haha, Windy XD Yes my suggestion is three years after the war, then ;) But it's still just a suggestion! If most people prefer more time to have passed, that's cool too.

[Nessa Saelind]

We are all going to turn into uncle Albert from Only Fools and Horses by the end of this, and just keep saying "During the War..."

[Galastel]

FA 2 sounds perfect.

ERC being formed right after Aragorn ascends the throne, as Arnyn suggests, sort of contradicts the current ranger RPG's first post (the one that talks about the army being dismantled and the ERC being formed). But that could be easily retconed: first the ERC is formed, then the rest of the army is dismantled, with some soldiers discharged and others merged into the ERC's ranks. Could have been the plan right from the beginning, on Aragorn's part - build the new force, then dismantle the old one, so there's no power vacuum. Makes sense?

[Karis Ziranphel]

Wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff. Works for me. Half of y'all have characters that came into existence after the war. Half before. I can't keep any of my characters by former timelines, as my main joined the ERC as a brand new tween after the war, and yet was captain for several years before after the reset. We are coming up with something new that blends all of the above. If you want to pick a date or throw a dart at the board and say time is now, great.
But it gets complicated when folks always ask for specifics. Time progresses, and yet we are writing story and can fudge timelines. If it takes three months to write an RP that would have lasted a month, what year is it now? Or you have the same character in three different threads at the same time. Which happened first?
It is easier to be vague but logical rather than specific and completely illogical.
But all that said, I can make FA2 work for this year.

[Turin Ringhûn]

If I go with being specific, I can make everything before the ERC work for me. ERC and beyond become difficult as I originally had Turin in the Rangers for 5 years (join at 22, Sergeant at 24, and resign as captain at 27), and then the current rangers being 5 years later. I'll have to do some interesting thinking to get it to work.

[Winddancer]

Or retroactively edit it, seeing as anything we did on the original plaza seems to be gone forever :(

[Red Daghul]

So just a few thoughts, this may seem extreme, but might be a option:

As I am reading and listening what I am hearing is us trying to take two ideas and force them to work together well.

Idea 1 being that we want the old history of plaza to work and to still exist, using everything that happened as a spring board for where we are at this moment.

Idea 2 being that we want to use the same character molds, but want to change a whole lot of history with them so that they can work in the world, which means changing a lot of what happened back in the old plaza.

I may be kinda making the simple, but that is what I am seeing/reading.

These two ideas clash a lot because it means changing things about the old world, for some it is easier (like me) and for others it sounds like it makes it harder. The balance on what makes sense and doesn't is very hard to do. We try in the military thread make a army that functions like a real military would, but then we look at the time line and I wonder if three years would equal what we had made in the old plaza?

A solution that jumps out at me to merge the two with out it being a unbalanced mess between characters, and letting us rewrite history might be a reboot. Instead of using the old ERC and plaza Gondor world we might suggest cleaning the slate and remaking the whole thing. Say we start at 3 years later, and we wipe out the old ERC as if it never happened, and the shutting down of the army was just that, and what is being made is the ERC. This would allow for us to recreate things, and play with these characters as they were setup to do. We can still use the idea that we all played apart in history, but that history being the war of the ring.

This would make it even across the line because everyone would need to change a few things, the timeline would still make sense, and we can forge ahead with out trying to figure out little details.

A outline of this for my character would be like this:
Normal
Red started out in the ERC worked up the ranks till he made officer, served for a few years and then when the plaza stopped I let his story be he resigned and fixed things with his family.
Reboot
Red started in the gondorain army, served in the war of the ring and worked his way up the ranks till officer (this is a call back to all the things I wrote on the old plaza), and then after the war he left and fixed things with his family. Because of his work in the war of the ring he has been called back to help make up the new rangers (the rebooted ERC).

It means I get to still use everything I wrote just moved back the time line, it all still makes sense. I know that mine is simpler to use, but my point is trying to use the plaza timeline, and the middle earth timeline is hard and just mushing them together does make it hard for people, and so does stretching it out.

Soooo just a thought, figured I would think out side the box a bit. please feel free to tweak the idea, or anything. I am good with pretty much anything, just wanted to try and see if this would make it easier for people.

Edit: As far as a plaza calendar I have Roleplayed on a site that had a good system for time, and timestamps to know when stories were happening so that the greater story made sense, if we are remaking things it might not be a bad idea to try using one.

[Finduilas Faelivrin]

This hurts my brain!!!

[Ercassie]

At the risk of having things thrown at me, can I put forward that we might be complicating matters unnecessarily. After all, when was the last time that any of us have been in an RP situation in the pub here or the market etc which could not have happened exactly the same in year 1 of the Fourth Age as it would have done in year 10 of the fourth age, for eg ? Going about your every day life does not call for a reckoning of how many hours it happens after the Start of the Fourth Age. Pie fights in the pub, market day in the second circle, life after the Return of the King would surely be fairly similar for several years.

We manage to suspend our disbelief enough to RP in multiple threads at once with the same character and, as others have said, there have been seasonal events before with no care for proper clarification of the year. I thought, to be honest, that more than half the reason we wanted to RP in the fourth age at all, was so that we would not be restricted by canon events/the specifics of what was happening in a particular Tolkien-chronicled year ? That we could be more flexible ?

I understand that people have biographies that might be messed up dependent on the year. But simply disregarding the year itself from the matter surely resolved the dilemma. If we’re not actually ever stating whether it’s Year 5 or 17 FA, then we’re not disregarding anybody’s IC details.

Would it really be so difficult to simply say we are early fourth age/after the Return of the King ? RP your character as whatever age you want your character to be because it’s not as though a census taker is following us all around IC demanding to know exactly what year people were born etc.

The only place where I can imagine the year would be an issue is the Ranger RPG where Aragorn is effectively restructuring the kingdom and getting to grips with his rule. Most everywhere else is Free RP and that has always allowed for flashbacks and flash forwards anyway ! So just count everything since our return here as having happened since your character returned here, and we should be fine, no ?

[Winddancer]

I agree that the free threads you can do whatever you want as time doesnt really get mentioned, though it would be nice if there could be some agreement of sorta what year it was as in some ways it does matter when it is. Like is my character old enough to have lived through the war? Or are they a post war baby? Not saying set it in stone mind you, just whether its early 4t age or further in.

[Red Daghul]

I mean I agree that it shouldn’t make to much of a difference, I mean we are talking about around ten years difference it sounds like.

Basically my point was is it worth training to keep everything or is it worth starting things over and not worrying about it as much. We could set a date and if you want to keep the old history it all happened in the war of the ring instead of the dates we had it set at.

But on the same token you could just say it happened, but I agree it would be nice to just choose a about date for reference. We might just need to do a poll like what was suggested and go with it

[Galastel]

When was the last time that any of us have been in an RP situation in the pub here or the market etc which could not have happened exactly the same in year 1 of the Fourth Age as it would have done in year 10 of the fourth age, for eg ? Going about your every day life does not call for a reckoning of how many hours it happens after the Start of the Fourth Age. Pie fights in the pub, market day in the second circle, life after the Return of the King would surely be fairly similar for several years.

One of my characters lost an arm in the War of the Ring. The psychological impact of that two years from the war is quite different from how he'd be ten years from the war - by the time ten years have past, he has dealt with it. Two years, he is still very much in the throes of dealing with it.
Turin's character, on the other hand, is a war orphan. An orphan of the same war. For him too it very much matters how much time has passed.
For both characters, the war has deeply and profoundly affected them. How much time has passed since that war matters.

War is a profoundly life-changing event. There's a "before the war" and "after the war" that affects a generation, even if one personally came back home and with all limbs intact. Consider, for example, the "lost generation" post WWI. For our characters, their world has been overturned. How they are affected, how they adjust - the distance from the war matters deeply.

Here's the thing, as I see it: Around 2FA is the best time to explore the impact of the war on our characters. By 7FA we've got adults who have been children during the war. In 15FA we're exploring the impact on the next generation.

[Ercassie]

@Winddancer Why not decide yourself if you would prefer to RP the character as having lived through the war, or having born afterwards ? I sincerely doubt that anybody is going to police you either way. The important thing is to cater to the community as a whole being able to RP the character they wish. That is why we’re here. We don’t need a year.

[Winddancer]

I agree it doesnt matter if I am roleplaying alone, but any time I am rp'ing with others there is a chance of them bringing it up, like Oh do you remember when there was a food shortage a few years ago after the war and so on. Interacting with others time will come up, as we are bound to share memories and events that happened.

[Ercassie]

I can see your points although I am not sure that any sort of decision on a certain year is going to satisfy both such established characters who are so apparently fixed as in immediate aftermath state AND also a war orphan who is now a grown adult respectively. Since as you say, they may find themselves interacting. Is it fair to ask either one to compromise the character they want to RP though ?

[Galastel]

is about the best description of it.

[Winddancer]

I dont think one is more entitled than the other, but surely you would have to compromise in some way? That or never mention the past, which honestly will be even harder as that is what makes them who they are.

[Turin Ringhûn]

Galastel is right, per the time of the plaza back in 2005, the history I came up with for my character to fit in year 7 (He was 22) of the fourth age, Turin essentially became an orphan in the war.

With the new timing, to have my character the age I want him to be, I’ve shifted my history to coincide with the new year, so Turin becomes an orphan in 3002. So I’m retconning dad and brother dying in the war to dying helping eomund in emyn muil. Mom still dies to an illness.

But like what Red said in his post, It appears the problem people are having is taking the history from the old plaza and making it work with what we’re doing now.
The ways I see to fix it are to convert the old erc service to army service like Red has suggested, or convert the erc to a special unit that coincided with the army retconning Denethor as the leader instead of Aragorn or have us starting later in the 4th age and have at least 5 years of Rangers starting in 3019 when Aragorn was crowned king, then a couple year break for this new thing to start.

For what it’s worth, I’m more partial to 5-7 FA than 2. But that goes into having a poll like a few people have suggested.

[Galastel]

The ways I see to fix it are to convert the old erc service to army service like Red has suggested, or convert the erc to a special unit that coincided with the army retconning Denethor as the leader instead of Aragorn.

The ERC could have been Boromir's special unit. It makes sense with the old plaza, as we never really saw Boromir and what he was doing. And Aragorn would be honouring Boromir's memory this way - it's fitting for him to do that.

Regarding the year, it looks like our choices are freeform around discrepancies as Arnyn suggested, or have a poll?

[Turin Ringhûn]

I’m liking the poll idea. It appears most are in agreement with an early 4th age, just when exactly.

[Pele Alarion]

Early would be fine. Though I don't see why there is a need to be so worked up over a particular year, when the characters are in our own keeping, and might require tweeking in one way or another anyway. I've dragged mine from the 4th Age to the 3rd and back, and then might have trouble with Pele's previous ranks, background, etc, so had to adapt quite a bit to fit in any given setting. Besides, don't think anyone will suddenly start counting years ever so carefully, as people tend to RP flashbacks and what not, and then have the same events (like Midwinter Balls - how many of those did we have in one 'year'? lol) without aging the characters, etc.

[Arnyn]

I love you guys, but personally I feel this is getting a little nitpicky?

Somehow this discussion went from picking a year to completely rethinking the former ERC? Haha! Whyyyy!?
I'm with Ercassie, really. RP is this kind of setting always calls for flexibility...

Picking a year is one thing... but actually laying a canon for past plaza is taking it one step too far... You can say Gondor likes its rules, and so do I, but not to this extent. People should be able to decide themselves what they want to keep for their characters and what they want to throw into the dustbin - within the realm of "fib"-able reason.

And do consider this: the more specific you make this, the more global 'rules' / canon you add in (like "ERC never happened, or we're calling it this and that" etc), the more you'll have situations like people joining and getting it all wrong... and then feeling bad about getting it all wrong. And then not really playing anymore, or not playing as they might have played...

[Winddancer]

Never meant for it to get crazy! My point was merely there is a difference between say FA 2 and FA 17. I don't need a specific year, at all, but would be nice to know if it is 2-10 or 10+ as that changes what I am doing with my character. I am totally not advocating changing the rangers!

[Nessa Saelind]

First of all sorry for giving you a headache Findy *brings tea and cake*

Secondly, can I just say that I do like that we're talking and debating which year are we in? I know that which year Gondor is in right now is not hugely important for us, or our characters and we should just be enjoying RP-ing around regardless of the year. Realistically most of us can adjust or fiddle with the character bios if we feel we want/need to to fit whatever year or span of years in F.A. we settle on in the end.

On the other hand it's helpful to have some sort of guidelines when writing, like Galastel mentioned the War of the Ring was a defining moment and it's not the same to write about characters experiencing the impact of the war 2 years after it finished or 10 years after. And it doesn't just affect the characters who were in the ERC, depending how close or far on the time scale we are from the end of the war it affects Minas Tirith itself, how the city looks and what it became, the economy and people living in it. Is Minas Tirith still covered in scaffolding because houses and buildings are being actively repaired because of the bombardment damage? Are the Dwarfs still fixing the main gate and entrance to the city or not? Did the prices of food, material and workers wages go up or down? Are Aragorn and Faramir tired of listening to people complain that they can't move their carts around the city because of the scaffolding and are actively rethinking their life choices? Just kidding.

I know this is all background noise and probably not necessary, but we are thinking and talking about some of these things e.g. food prices in the OOC threads so I suppose it does mater somewhat. And it does affect some of the choices we make when we decide what kind of situations we would want to create for our characters. So some guidelines would be good, but the year doesn't have to be set in stone on the main gate of the city a vague span of years say 2-5 years after the war is fine by me. I don't want this to become some mayor issue and that people get the feeling that they need to spend days retconing and editing the bejesus out of their character(s)' bios, but guidelines would be nice. Not mandatory, but nice. (How many times have I typed guidelines in this text? Can I do a few more before this rambling text gets even more confusing?)

[Ercassie]

@Winddancer .. since Turin Ringhûn has very generously adapted his character’s timeline so that he was made orphan during a different battle, I would say the arguments for our general RP to be set as further into the Fourth Age have less cause now. Thankyou @Turin Ringhûn

Seriously, can we not just assume then, that this is the very early years of the Fourth Age and get back to having fun ?

[Arnyn]

I second that. Like 3 to 5 years after the war-ish? So FA 2-4?

[Turin Ringhûn]

Sounds good to me Arnyn.

No problem Ercassie. Now I’ve been working on getting the final details worked out to edit my bio.

[Winddancer]

@Ercassie We can surely do both, discuss AND have fun :P
@Nessa Saelind You said it more eloquently and intelligently than me <3

And 2-4 works for my grocer, though might have to semi reajust it a bit as the prices would likely still be a bit higher and there is bound to be stuff that isnt available. Will edit my post later as she hasnt had any visits yet anyways :)

[Burnt Toast]

Just caught up, and I'm glad we've gone through the discussion and come back to flexibility and a general range. FA 2-4 works for me!

[Arnyn]

I was here to find an egg. Found it!But I suppose a reminder of how Gondor came to be set "somewhere" in the first years of the FA wouldn't be too bad. Basically, it was a "the people have spoken" kind of thing.