Hi guys!

The very first time I've been reading through "making a hero" chapter, I've been amazed how many ideas for a hero I had. I wasn't a fan of swashbucklers and this genre was quite new for me, but after reading that chapter, my head was full of all that cool ideas. I'd love to see a place, where people could share theirs.

I'm a web developer. I'm thinking about creating a website, where you could:

I thought a thread just on this one question would be too limited to get much discussion, so I'm hoping its open to broader discussion about other characters too.  That said, I was just pondering - what are the political points against a marriage between Elaine and James?  Obviously Elaine has her own love life, but that generally isn't a barrier for a monarch making a political alliance.  Her real life counterpart never married because a man would be automatically superior to her in rulership, but that isn't necessarily the case in Theah.

I'm tinkering with the idea of revising the Vesten to bring them closer to the 17th Century.  It would mean breaking it into at least three countries not unlike the Glamour Isles.

- Vendel would be the based on the Dutch Republic, carved out of the north of Eisen.  An overwhelmingly Objectionist region that threw off its Vaticine nobility under bougeoise leadership that wasn't interested in new Objectionist nobility.  The trade power of the league obviously extends far beyond its borders, particularly to...

I sat down last night to read the Avalon and Montaigne sections of the "Nations of Theah" preview in detail.

I came away feeling a bit...depressed?

I like details such as the city descriptions, dueling customs and legendary creatures. But the description of the political situation of both nations comes across as a lot gloomier and less, well...fun...than in 1e.

So I had a weird thought while I was reading the "Nations of Theah Vol. 1" preview the other day: 2nd edition Vesten reminds me strangely of Meiji-era Japan. You've got an ancient warrior nation that has modernized and adopted customs of other nations suddenly and at a very rapid rate, and is a mish-mash of ancient cultural practices and modern ones.

(Just FYI: If you're not familiar with the Meiji era in Japan, some fictional examples include the film, "The Last Samurai" and the anime and manga series "Ruroni Kenshin.")

I realized something the politics of Avalon seemed to be missing - a claimant for the Vaticine to support as the rightful heir to the throne.

I was thinking this character could by the lynchpin of an exploration of dynastic marriage politics (at the moment that's the main thing I've thought out, I've left her personality undefined as I thought a player might be interested in actually taking on the role themselves and fleshing her out if they wanted to deal with all the baggage her situation brings).

I just noticed on the map that there is a large island between northern Castille and Vodacce.  What do you guys think?  Genoa based?  Or more Sardinia divided between the Vodacce princes rather than its own Republic?  Or hell with how the map is scrambled compared to Europe it could be Sicily-based (which I believe was Spanish claimed in the 17th century)!

I'd suggest Corsica, but I think it's too removed from Montaigne for that to work.

Ok, Pösen is Prussia, Hainzl is Bavaria, and Heilgrund is Austria.  Do the other four have correspondences that are less obvious to me?  I guess Freiburg could be Prauge, but that means none of the others can fit as Bohemia.  Any thoughts?

I've been tinkering with the timeline (which so far as been far more open ended and less detailed than in first edition) and wrestling with whether Avalon should have a "Realist Protectorate" in its recent history.  Obviously Cromwell's Protectorate was well after Queen Elizabeth, but it was before the 1660s - in fact its the regime that the "Restoration" was a "restoration" from.