True I have not really kicked them off, my next post will, sorry for the delay folks. Doing some extra shifts and struggling a touch - lost a large post while knackered and cannot pass the will save to do it again pre sleep.
I'll be on spotty WiFi tonight so I will try to do many shorter posts.
True I have not really kicked them off, my next post will, sorry for the delay folks. Doing some extra shifts and struggling a touch - lost a large post while knackered and cannot pass the will save to do it again pre sleep.
I'll be on spotty WiFi tonight so I will try to do many shorter posts.
Don't worry about it. I can't speak for everyone, but I'm having a good time so far. This campaign appears to have a LOT to deal with at the outset as GM, especially in a PbP where everyone can do their own thing. Take as much time as you need.
@All apologies, won't bother with excuses, I just overextended myself a bit, full service should resume now, but please give me a couple of hours to catch up and get my ducks in a row :)
@Tangle-foot that is true to an extent, but to be honest its more my fault for over extending myself at work, given my normal schedule it ought to be fine - I hope.
Should be good to go. In all honesty I had missed the line up bit, its relatively short and the AP seems to require you to jump all over the place rather than being strictly linear. It does not seem to cause any major problems though, and serves nicely to gather the group - which makes my life easier for a bit :)
So I've actually rarely had an opportunity to use Bluff to pass secret messages. I feel like the vast majority of campaigns it just doesn't come up but I believe if I understood it right as long as the message was simple I needed to beat a DC 15 Bluff check [which I did, its a miracle]. And then to intercept it the woman would have to beat the roll on my Bluff with a Sense Motive? If I understood that right then my allies should definitely understand but she'd get a role to realize I was commenting on something clandestine.
Only thing I guess Im not sure on is simple vs complex message. I feel like trying to hint that someone has scales by using the word scales is a simple message to hide. But if the DM rules otherwise then its DC 20 for a complex message which I wouldn't pass so the message wouldn't be understood by my allies without them passing the DC 19 Sense Motive.
DC 19 seems fine, I would imagine it would come across as something like them understanding that there was a reason you were emphasizing scales in association with her and that you were specifying the different meaning of scales as in animal scales through the inflection or some such. Let's say anyone who makes the check gets an opportunity to make another spot check with a +4 bonus.
FYI it is going to seem like I am rolling checks with massive bonuses, these are either from the book or conservative estimates based on character levels and professions. A great number of NPCs at this Gala are well into double digit levels.
How many of these social rounds will there be, do we know?
Sorry if I've missed something, but if we're going to influence an area what skill do we use for the roll?
No very much me that missed something Amandine, apologies. In the case of The Arcade of Triumphs influence skills are as follows.
Appraise, Knowledge (history or nobility), Perception, Spellcraft, or Use Magic Device.
Feel free to make up items to comment on there are only a few specified other than the theft targets, but presumably there are a few hundred on display.
I will add the influence skills to the Senate Locations shortly for better reference.
@Tangle-foot not really, you would probably expect the Gala to continue for 4-8 hours, heading into the smaller hours of the morning, but with many leaving earlier.
Okay, thanks. I added a quickie post with rolls.
Two suggestions/questions Mr. PoD:
- Could you put some kind of identifier on your posts to show which character they're for? With so many things happening in parallel, its getting challenging to follow along.
- I'm not really sure what can and/or should be accomplished in one social round. For example: Chana just tried to influence an area, but it seems she didn't get anything relevant to her mission out of it. Does that mean she can or should go to another area and try again during the first round? Or is the intention that we resolve everyone else's actions first?
@Chana, sure I can do that, just something simple like an OOC @PC name, or possibly @location.
As for the influencing an area thing its a point total with tiered rewards. You get a point for every point you exceed the DC of the check, but tier 1 rewards only kick in at 10-15 pointed depending on the location, 15 for the Courtyard. Each round is fifteen minutes, which I am not wild about, so I am probably looking at close to a weeks play per round my hope is to get everyone engaged in something interesting, but I know I have yet to give Chana anything to bite on.
I confess I saw your post just before hitting the hay and gave a quick response meaning to go back to it and forgot to do so. I will rectify this, but probably will not have time to do so before work, first port of call when I check back in.
I have been considering simply giving out the DCs, but it seems unpleasantly meta and I would prefer to play things out more through RP than rolls as much as possible. Generally speaking the tiered rewards do give helpful bonuses, but nobody has earned one yet.
Thanks PoD! I agree that having the DCs will be a bit too meta. Heck, knowing the skills to influence an area already kind of feels meta (especially when the skills don't seem to make a whole lot of sense for the situation). (Having said that though, I'm glad we have the skill list, otherwise I'd feel totally lost :>)
One thing I'm kinda curious about after your recent post is how Taldorans would view a princess using an Elixir of Sex Shifting to become eligible to inherit/succeed the throne. Are there explicit rules about this/banning this loophole?
I did wonder the same thing myself, truth be told I have no idea, but my take would be that Eutropia is too ingrained in public perception as a female. Plus wanting to inherit and wanting to be man for the rest of your life are in truth two very different things, the majority of people probably would not feel comfortable living their lives as a different gender. And while some of Eutropia's behaviors in the past could fairly be construed as tom boyish in a blatantly sexist place like Taldor that does not necessarily add up to what I am having the guests suggest.
That is an interesting question to think about. I feel like Taldor might legally allow something like that to happen but from what this AP is trying to say about Eutropia she doesn't seem like someone who would do that just to inherit. Standing up for who and what you are and that being enough seems to be the general feel for this AP. But yeah magic always makes for interesting social issues. haha
If I named Countess Pace's companion before I cannot seem to find it, so apologies if she has acquired a double identity. Sorry for the delay, still in a bit of a catch up mode in life in general and nursing a bit of man flu :p
I will end the social round with my next set of responses, which does not mean conversations need to end, etc., just that 15 minutes are up, and in this case that Princess Eutropia's speech will begin in 5 minutes.
Is there any way to gauge our influence over the target currently? Like could we roll a Sense Motive to see if the person we are talking to is taking what we're saying to heart or anything like that? Or is it largely just based on text based context clues?
I'm checking in to see how things are going?
Oooh, me too. I'm good :>
I am a little worried that the absurd degree of complexity in the first part of WftC is making it hard for PoD to pull together time to update.
This party scene just has so much going on.
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Honestly, I expect I'd spend 2 weeks straight prepping, getting characters all sorted out, adding visuals, etc.
And then one of my players would attack the first nobleman who insulted him.
Still here...
Honestly, I expect I'd spend 2 weeks straight prepping, getting characters all sorted out, adding visuals, etc.
And then one of my players would attack the first nobleman who insulted him.
I hear you, Chana. We must game in the same circles :)
I'm (reasonably) sanguine - it's only been a week, and the weekend just gone was a public holiday in several countries. Plus PaizoCon, of course.
Hey Saul. Unfortunately I dont believe any of us have heard from him since his last post here, unless he privately communicated otherwise to someone. I know that he seemed to be a bit stressed/under the weather recently? If he's in the States then perhaps he used Memorial Day as a chance to get some relaxation and rest. Hopefully we all hear from him soon.
It was a holiday weekend and there was the CON, and the GM had been pretty busy he mentioned last week. But I am getting a little concerned now...
Sanguinity level: falling
Yeah, same here. It seems PoD may have fallen afoul of a combination of poor health, significant daytime workload, and too much PbP load.
I'll be hanging out here to keep an eye on things regardless.
Hrm (as Damrak would say).
If our esteemed GM doesn't return, what are our options? I'm really enjoying gaming with you all and I think these characters have a story to tell. It would be a shame to let it drop.
Yeah, I'd like to keep it going too. I'd say the only alternative is to try recruiting a new GM. I've been in campaigns that have tried it before under similar circumstances, but never successfully. It does happen sometimes though.
I'm not sure what the etiquette is for doing such a thing. It's been three weeks now with no word. I think if Placeholder was coming back we'd have had an update on what's happening by now.
How many people would like to try to find a replacement GM? Is it still too soon?
I think the tricky thing here is that War for the Crown is a GM-prep-heavy RP-heavy (read: writing heavy) AP, especially in this opening scene. It's not just that we'd want a GM, but one that was passionate enough to put the frankly huge amount of time it would take to do the long RP scenes justice. Usually the GMs who are passionate enough to make that happen are ones who devote a lot of energy to already existing games.
I'm in to continue, but if PoD isn't able to continue, I think our chances of finding a good replacement are very slim.
That's all true, although I'm not opposed to trying to find a new GM. If you don't ask, you don't get after all.
I'd offer to 'retire' Damrak and take over, but I haven't actually got this AP: I wanted to try playing through an AP where I would be genuinely surprised at whatever happened...
There is one other possibility, assuming we can't find a GM - just after the Ultimate Intrigue rules came out, I ran a tabletop Kingmaker/UI mashup which went really well, until some of the players decided they were bored with the kingdom-building part. Made it difficult to continue, so it stopped. I'd really like to try it again, with players who are truly invested in the kingdom building part of Kingmaker; and who are also into using the Intrigue rules.
I'm currently running a module on these boards, but once that's done I'll dust off my old notes and put up a recruitment thread, if I decide I will have time to run it. If that interests any of you, send me a PM and I'll send you a link once it's up. (It would be open recruitment, but you'd be heavily considered cos I've actually gamed with you and I really like your characters.)
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It's not bad form if the game isn't running =P
I really don't want to GM this game. I GM enough as it is, and just want to be a player. Also, I don't own this AP.
I'd much prefer to find a new GM for this game, even if that's difficult. Should that fail, I'd be interested in playing in Damrak's Kingmaker.
Yeah, I'm in the same boat as Damrak. I specifically requested that GM Placeholder of Doom run this in our trade-off deal because I knew little to nothing about it (beyond the theme, location, and other stuff that could be gleaned from the Player's Guide), as opposed to most adventure paths, where I've done some combination of reading, running, or playing them.
If our GM doesn't return, and we are unable to find a replacement, I'd possibly be interested in your Kingmaker game. I could certainly retool Tanglefoot such that he decided to flee Galt for Brevoy or the River Kingdoms, instead of Taldor.
Right now most of my GMing is being done in person and that takes a lot of my time/focus since oddly its a custom Kingmaker game. I would prefer to find a GM to replace ours but if not I could be interested in a more political style of Kingmaker as a player I suppose.
Thanks for offerring to GM an alternate game Damrak! Nothing wrong with recruiting here as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately, I'm currently playing Kingmaker in one of my F2F games, so I'll probably be leaving you guys to it if that's what you want to do.
As for this game, I considered GM-ing this one myself, but I really don't have the bandwidth for it. (I GM a F2F game, one campaign through PbP and am currently also GMing two Starfinder Society games in PbP)
Ok, it sounds like we have consensus on (1) not being able to take over GMing this ourselves and (2) trying to find a replacement GM.
How long should we wait?
Yeah, I'm GM for one campaign now and my experience with doing it is very thin. I wouldn't want to try taking on something as complicated as this one seems to be.
I dunno, maybe give it until the end of this week then post for a replacement?
@Damrak: Thank you for telling us about the possible Kingmaker game. Is there anything you could say about how you're changing it to include Ultimate Intrigue?
End of this week sounds reasonable.
As for the changes: mechanically I will use the influence rules. If you want someone to help you, you'll have to form a connection with them: a scholar of antiquities might be influenced using knowledge (history) or Appraise; an aristocrat might be influenced using knowledge (nobility), or maybe Ride if they're a horsey, outdoors type; a huntsman might be influenced using Survival or Craft (traps); the town gossip might require knowledge (local)...you get the idea. You can always try to 'brute force' it using Diplomacy, but the DC will be higher because most people are more interested in making a connection than being schmoozed. Of course there will be times when Diplomacy is the right skill for the task - you might want to bribe/charm/flatter/seduce someone. But there's a lot more 'what does this person/group want' than 'I roll Diplomacy until they agree to my demands'.
I'm also using the rules for verbal duels. Those of you familiar with Kingmaker will have at least one idea where a verbal duel is required!
Flavor-wise, there's a LOT more politics. Brevoy is divided and unstable, and the forces that send you into the Stolen Lands want different things from you. Managing the various sides is going to be critical as the game develops. Everyone other than your fellow players has their own agenda, which might align with yours but also might conflict. Within the Stolen Lands themselves, the fey are factionalized and you will have to tread carefully to avoid antagonising the wrong faction.
Hope that gives you an idea, there's obviously a lot more!
Yep, end of the week sounds good.
Those UI based changes sound great Damrak! The game I'm running through right now (we're on Book 2) is very cut and dry, with a lot of wilderness and a lot of combat, and very little social stuff. The place where we could have used a verbal duel ruleset (in book 2) we kinda skimmed over without much detail.
@Chana - thanks. F2F/tabletop gaming is hugely about giving your players what they want, and it sounds like yours are happy with the wilderness exploration and combat, which is also a lot of fun! In my case, the players were all avid Game of Thrones watchers, so I modelled the campaign on that (minus the rapey bits!). Unfortunately it turned out that half of them lost interest in the kingdom building bit, while the other half loved it. I ended up improvising an ending with book 2 (basically, their realm joined Mivon up with Rostland, forming a check on Issia's power and forcing the Surtovas to resign the regency) and we moved on to the next campaign.
Hopefully, PbP recruitment is self selecting so only people genuinely interested in the kingdom building and intrigue will apply.
I'll post a link to the recruitment thread once I open it (will be 2-3 weeks at least before I finish the module I'm currently running).
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Sounds pretty cool to me. I don't know much about Kingmaker, so it'd be fun to give it a shot. I really enjoy politics in these games. Oh and lore. Politics and lore.
I have heard that Kingmaker's big bad doesn't really feel like a villain, more of a general monster, and that the rules for kingdom building can be a hassle (especially on forums). Is any of that true?
I think it's a case of YMMV.
In my view, the problem is that from the player perspective, the big bad comes straight out of left field in book 6 of the AP, having never been previously encountered. There's no instructions in the AP as-written as to how to introduce any foreshadowing, despite the fact that the GM is told about the big bad right from book 1 of the AP.
Luckily, the Paizo community have fixed that and there's a huge amount of suggestions on the forums about how to do it better.
As for kingdom-building: I love it. That said, the version in the AP doesn't work very well. The rules from Ultimate Campaign (available here) work better, although they can still be 'broken' in much the same way you can super-optimise e.g. a wizard character by dropping Str, Wis and Cha to 7 and maxxing out Int and Dex: it's perfectly within the rules, but it's a bit... well, you get the idea.
If you want, you can build a kingdom that's basically unstoppable, with enough regiments to re-enact the Normandy landings. But, if you want, you can also have a kingdom that is fun to build while still needing significant heroic efforts from the PCs in order to survive in a hostile world. I'm hoping for players who prefer the second option.
That said, I've never run the kingdom rules on PbP. But it looks like a number of campaigns are doing so and they appear to be working OK.
So... any volunteers to go hunting for a GM?
I'm thinking something like:
GM wanted. Must be willing to read and prepare insane amounts of written material in order to pick up part-way through the first part of the War for the Crown AP. Reading into PC backgrounds advisable, but not essential for now. Negative renumeration (will drain your time, your energy levels and - at times - your will to live).
Yep, this marks 1 month of PoD being absent.
I might be able to go fishing for a GM, but I'm currently a bit overloaded with other games and other real-life stuff, so that'll have to be in a couple of days. I have to admit though, I'm quite pessimistic about securing a good GM for this, so I don't think I'm the right person to advertise :>