Setting I wasn't able to say it in the first comment (what a way to find out that DW has a comment character limit...) and had to cut out a lot of stuff, but I had intended for a river from the mountains to feed into a lake the city is at the edge of, and for a river to flow from the lake into the ocean. In the kingdom's past, the capital had actually been on the coast (that was actually one of the other towns I had drafts for), but a devastating naval battle on the coastline had caused them to relocate it. Now, the old capital is actually a center of trade!
I'd intended for the new capital to be where it is because it's more easily defensible (travel upriver would be difficult, and a large naval force wouldn't be able to easily get up there as they'd have to go one at a time since the river wouldn't be wide enough, and ground forces would be more easily spotted) and because the lake is convenient for trade along the river - it allows for enough room for maneuverability once boats/ferries/etc get through the checkpoint where the river and lake connect; there are docks at the city and outgoing ships can loop around the other side of the lake to give incoming ships a chance to get in. That being said, an additional element - there being some sort of historical or religious significance to the site - could definitely have lent weight to it, and I'll think about that while I'm finalizing things!
I do like the idea of the capital and the harbor city competing for dominance! Since I'd intended for the harbor city to be the old capital, maybe descendants of the nobility that used to live there are trying to reclaim their ancestors' glory by making the city prominent again... since there would be a pretty significant amount of history in that town, it could be easy enough to work something in.
Pacing The more I think about that kind of pacing, the more I like it, to be totally honest. And I would definitely be willing to keep a running timeline of posts to help keep the chronology straight! I hadn't thought about doing that (my idea was to have people tag their posts with which day of the week they're set on, so that people could find them easily that way), but it's a great idea.
AC and Rewards I think that's a good idea, actually. A handwaved conclusion could definitely earn them points - as long as it's posted in the thread to end it on. My concern here would be that players who do backtag would be unhappy because people are getting the same rewards for less effort; does it sound fair to have handwaved threads earn fewer reward points than fully backtagged threads, but still earn some? Or in the case that one half of a pair wants to backtag and the other is unwilling, the half that was willing to tag to completion earns full points and the one that cooperated to allow for the handwave earns half (or maybe 3/4) points?
As far as finishing a thread in a given month - I definitely didn't mean it to sound that way! The AC requirement would only be comments; completed threads could be submitted for rewards at any point once they're completed, even if it's a different AC period than the one they were started in. Finishing a thread wouldn't have any bearing on whether or not someone passed AC (though a completed thread would probably have the minimum AC requirement as far as tag count goes); they'd just be rewarded in the month that they completed it as a thank-you for doing so.
OP
I wasn't able to say it in the first comment (what a way to find out that DW has a comment character limit...) and had to cut out a lot of stuff, but I had intended for a river from the mountains to feed into a lake the city is at the edge of, and for a river to flow from the lake into the ocean. In the kingdom's past, the capital had actually been on the coast (that was actually one of the other towns I had drafts for), but a devastating naval battle on the coastline had caused them to relocate it. Now, the old capital is actually a center of trade!
I'd intended for the new capital to be where it is because it's more easily defensible (travel upriver would be difficult, and a large naval force wouldn't be able to easily get up there as they'd have to go one at a time since the river wouldn't be wide enough, and ground forces would be more easily spotted) and because the lake is convenient for trade along the river - it allows for enough room for maneuverability once boats/ferries/etc get through the checkpoint where the river and lake connect; there are docks at the city and outgoing ships can loop around the other side of the lake to give incoming ships a chance to get in. That being said, an additional element - there being some sort of historical or religious significance to the site - could definitely have lent weight to it, and I'll think about that while I'm finalizing things!
I do like the idea of the capital and the harbor city competing for dominance! Since I'd intended for the harbor city to be the old capital, maybe descendants of the nobility that used to live there are trying to reclaim their ancestors' glory by making the city prominent again... since there would be a pretty significant amount of history in that town, it could be easy enough to work something in.
Pacing
The more I think about that kind of pacing, the more I like it, to be totally honest. And I would definitely be willing to keep a running timeline of posts to help keep the chronology straight! I hadn't thought about doing that (my idea was to have people tag their posts with which day of the week they're set on, so that people could find them easily that way), but it's a great idea.
AC and Rewards
I think that's a good idea, actually. A handwaved conclusion could definitely earn them points - as long as it's posted in the thread to end it on. My concern here would be that players who do backtag would be unhappy because people are getting the same rewards for less effort; does it sound fair to have handwaved threads earn fewer reward points than fully backtagged threads, but still earn some? Or in the case that one half of a pair wants to backtag and the other is unwilling, the half that was willing to tag to completion earns full points and the one that cooperated to allow for the handwave earns half (or maybe 3/4) points?
As far as finishing a thread in a given month - I definitely didn't mean it to sound that way! The AC requirement would only be comments; completed threads could be submitted for rewards at any point once they're completed, even if it's a different AC period than the one they were started in. Finishing a thread wouldn't have any bearing on whether or not someone passed AC (though a completed thread would probably have the minimum AC requirement as far as tag count goes); they'd just be rewarded in the month that they completed it as a thank-you for doing so.