FB: TFW the guy you rely on for optimistic talk is fresh out and you’re not sure whether to try cheering him up or just say “yeah, man, you’re right, everything’s one big suckhole”

Including Keeper Kepfer here presented some challenges. The scene wouldn’t work without him: the only one who can address Reynolds’ crisis is someone who speaks for the common people of Gnometown. And by definition, Bandit and her gang of odd cogs don’t. “No gnome in Gnometown would fault you” just doesn’t have the same weight if it comes from a gang of former exiles, you know? Also, the group is going to need Kepfer’s communal authority to help set certain plans into motion on page 3.

But the last time we saw Kepfer, he stated that criminals had no place in Gnometown. That belief and his position as a local leader were his defining traits. Bandit and most or all of her team are criminals, pardoned or not. Kepfer is not going to make an issue of that here, but we don’t have time to investigate how he feels about it. Is he changing his views, or just keeping quiet about them? He’s standing well apart from the others, but that doesn’t tell us much. Ultimately we had to just power on past this issue, because no one in the room is unprofessional enough to derail this meeting over it. We maybe could’ve addressed it in Kepfer’s next scene, though.