Also, you know IC that the name "Ancalagon" is a popular name for giant evil fictional monsters in-universe.
Considering the Tolkien connection, I'm very curious about the actual history involved with that name.
I remember having a lot of Speculation about Dragons, but I don't recall you ever specifically mentioning information regarding Dragons.
Despite bringing it up, I'm happy just remaining The Forest, even if Wallis' goals do give off some eldritch horror vibes to me, just a bit.
That is very fair!
We've shown with our Magnitude, Special Trees, Conncected Plants, and Player Trees that there is actually a lot of variability regarding the actual intelligence of Plantlife Connected to The Forest, and our Unusual Lumber Tree (
@Robinton any thoughts on what the Elder and Ancients variants will be called? Maybe the "Rare/Very Rare Lumber Tree"
?) shows that it is entirely possible for us to, more than just let go of loose branches and limbs without pain, actively Grow wood for Two Leg consumption, meaning Connect Plantlife can still continue to take the place it had and has in the ecosystem. We'd just also be able to leverage Local Forest Resources through it
But yeah, The Green, The Red, The Blue, The Grey and the rest of the Weird Color Things that DC has can get real Eldritchy, and while I hope we get there one day I rather suspect any amount of Global Forestry will be at most an Epilog.
Finally, for doing write-ins, are there any restrictions or such? Well, beyond the fact that your dice is going to that vs anything else.
Not really, besides the fact that actually accomplishing anything is not guaranteed when attempting complicated tasks.
And poking dangerous stuff might cost Resoures for regenerating.
Razzocnor has most of it, but there's another aspect there as well.
Pattern of Behavior.
Technically, it is possible, with the basic rules as written, for someone to jump in, select a Root Tree, and cast Fire/Ice upon the town of Newton.
However, Robinton has stated/ruled that such an action would be out of character for the Forest as it is now and that such actions would at best be initially veto'd and the player asked their intentions.
If the Forest as a whole suddenly decided to kill Newton, that's one thing, but there's a QM enforced gentletrees' agreement to not be assholes and completely upset and dosrupt the current state of play by doing
deliberate actions to ruin things.
Now, granted, with our Movement Magic if a Player who wanted to do things very differently decided to
leave The Forest and become a murder hobo, that would probably be okay? But at the same time the Forest would likely try to curtail that Tree to avoid giving the Forest a bad name.
On the contrary, if we'd started the quest and gone full Murder Forest, then random players dropping in to Murder Things would be entirely in character for the Forest and would likely have become a thread meme that the first action of a new player is to try to murder something, all of that representing a very different Pattern of Behavior.
As things stand, you likely won't need to worry about any write ins you make, beyond "Mad Science with Magic has a chance of Bad Things", but as long as you're not a deliberate asshole then everything should be fine and things talked out.
We're all doing our best to be reasonable shrubbery after all!
