Why set it in a time when the Dragon is around? Maybe in this turn of the wheel, this reflection, the Dragon isn't even a /thing/ yet but it doesn't mean other stuff cannot happen.
Same thing with the Forsaken, they don't have to be loose yet to have darkfriends.
Avoiding a Dragon, whether Rand or a mirror-version, would best be done with a historical/future setting. Seems like the Dragon is only a thing at the very end of each Age. 
Would also work for having Darkfriends but not Forsaken.
@yyrqun You could even have Forsaken but as a distant rumor, the boogiemen no one wants to admit are real.
It's also a good way to deescalate the PC power levels; they aren't fighting against Shai'tan - so there's no need for super potent channelers around - but against his servants, and more specifically against his servants' strongest henchmen.
So yeah, if you meet with Aginor you are just fucking toast. But you won't, as far as you are aware he's just a legend, and trying to stay in one piece against some kind of monster Trolloc/Myrdraal hybrid something has unleashed into the world.
The above is why I am very much leaning towards the setting of Whitecloak War into Aiel War. That's quite a bit of time, quite a bit of story, even though it loses out on Seanchan, Asha'man and a lot of Aiel stuff until we actually get into the Aiel War.
Time can be compressed a bit too.. who's to say that the Hailene can't land early?
Male channellers would be allowed, but I think put into a situation similar to what someone had said another MU had done. They need to understand that they are temporary. Madness will happen, they will be hated and hunted by most people and even their own family might poison their food once they realized what they are.
Having an "X days til you go mad" limit on male channelers would probably work in that case, then - Especially if it's in the decades before the main setting where there are more false Dragons proclaiming themselves, etc.
Though again I wonder if it would be a bit unfulfilling, even if there are canon conflicts to work with. At the end of the Aiel war Gitara would die, but nobody except Siuan and Moiraine could work to track down the Dragon, etc. So perhaps just a few centuries before where all the nations are in place but a lot of scope for conflict... the Andor/Cairhien border disputes, the fall of Hardan, the Tairen conquests of Mayene, a particularly bad incursion of Trollocs into the Borderlands one year, the Andoran Wars of Succession, room for non-canon nation-nation conflicts etc.
Plus since Aes Sedai tend to live for several centuries most canon characters wouldn't be born yet, while, say, Verin would already be over 100 in a Whitecloak War game. Also, the Aiel being able to trade with the Cairhienin is just as good as a hook for having at least a few of them as the war stuff, and if people want to play "exotic/cool" nations, well, the Malkieri would be available at this time.
@yyrqun I - personally - prefer cutting the timeline cleanly from the books (which I believe is better achieved at placing the start past the point the books end) than on what-ifs or even the recent past.
The reason for this is that, no matter what, you run into conflicts with the source material. The more agency your PCs have the least likely it is events from the books will play out they way they ought to, which then casts Prophecies into doubt or brings out the Forsaken to play decades before they were supposed to.
Either way it's a problem because you now have to deal with this.
My vote still goes to the Fourth Age. By way who is actually thinking of putting all this into motion past this thread?
@arkandel said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):
My vote still goes to the Fourth Age. By way who is actually thinking of putting all this into motion past this thread?
Me
@wildbaboons I mean I could put a copy of Ares or whatever and run it on a port... but a better step still would probably be to start talking about things a more more seriously outside a thread.
For me it really is between going with the Fourth Age or the Whitecloak->Aiel War and beyond.
Setting it before the books the game really likely isn't going to get into the area of the books, just set that expectation up to start. There is a lot of stuff that can be done without worrying about that and if a game survives that long.. deal with it then.
The Fourth Age one is intriguing, but as the problem of the ridiculous power level differences. Quick and dirty solution I can come up with is that Rand and Co. activities to seal away the Dark One again severely hampered the One Power. Basically put a hard cap on how much one person can use that can't be undone.
Oh, and cannons.
@arkandel Oh, agreed - my vote is for a post-book timeline, too - just discussing how other things could work.
Having a port to connect to someplace would be cool..
@wildbaboons I would LOVE the Whitecloak/Aiel War setting. The 4th Age one, a bit less. But clearly there are folks who prefer the opposite, and I'd probably at least give a 4th Age game a try, even if I would sincerely worry that it wouldn't feel like WoT to me.
I also think that the worries about sticking to a canon timeline are lessened a) when you're set in a less-well-known era 20 years before the books start, and b) if you flat-out state from the start that things will go differently.
And there is nothing to say that big villains can't arise in the 4th Age.
Slap some homages to The Black Company in there and come up with some new Forsaken-lite types who draw their power from a tainted Ter'angreal or skipped over from a mirror world or something.
A The Black Company MU* would be fun, but I am not sure how it would work with the company constantly moving.
For what it is worth, post book time line: with both White & Black towers ( or some new combined towers?)
I think having Rand & Co. Adventures be over is a great thing.
Or just state things have gone very differently in this world.
@songtress unless it's a mirror world I think there would be separate White and Black Towers. Second Age was a time of male and female Aes Sedai; then the Third Age only female; in the fourth age Aes Sedai and Asha'man will be separate.
It'd be so interesting to see these changes to the White Tower, too -- hopefully they wouldn't break the WoT feel but imagine having married Asha'man Soldiers bonded to their wives, grandmother age Novices, and, oh yeah, a legitimate reason to have loooads of Two Rivers PCs in the White and Black Towers after Verin discovering the old blood of Manetheren led to more potential channelers
So! some progress.
I've stood up a VPS server that has about 4-5 months worth of time to run before I'll need to top it off with more, decided on a name and even registered a domain.
Name!: Patterns of an Age
Server!: poaamush.win (yes, .win. Was $0.66 for a year! If this gets legs I'll spring for a .net or .pizza)
At the moment it is just a basic install of Evennia with postgresql. The server is up on port 4000 if anyone actually wants to login, but I won't promise that the server will actually be up when you try or that it will stay up once connected or that you'll even be able to do anything once you connect.
I may see if I can't install Ares on the same box and compare the two.
And I think I may have settled on theme (for the moment). Fourth Age, shortly after the Last Battle. Instead of basing it in an existing city, a new city is being formed somewhere or another from all the nations involved as a sort of nexus/UN deal with plenty of opportunity for world building for folks that like to do that, politicking for those sorts, and the more adventurous stuff as well
@wildbaboons Trying to connect, but alas, host not found -- it is a baby server after all! 
Theme sounds very fun! A new city could perhaps be Taralan -- the city in the Chronicle from the Fourth Age at the end of TDR. Perhaps located on Caralain Grass, as it sounds like a corruption of that (maybe it's called Caralain now and then Taralan later in the Age?) and Hawkwing wanted to build his capital there as it's the centre of the Westlands. Sorry, gone on a worldbuilding tangent -- So excited for this game!
@yyrqun said in Wheel of Time MU(SH|X):
@wildbaboons Trying to connect, but alas, host not found -- it is a baby server after all!
Yeah, DNS may take some time to propagate through everywhere but it should work eventually.
Edit; well it would have if I didn't break it. Like i said! No promises of being functional!
@wildbaboons Ah, I can log on now. Wonderful
It's literally just the default install, but it's there. I'll probably throw Ares up too tonight or tomorrow.
I've got some basic server config to do still on the VPS to make my sysadmin self happy, but in the next couple of weeks some actual stuff may happen.
Why set it in a time when the Dragon is around? Maybe in this turn of the wheel, this reflection, the Dragon isn't even a /thing/ yet but it doesn't mean other stuff cannot happen.
Same thing with the Forsaken, they don't have to be loose yet to have darkfriends.
