Laithoron's page

You can find the player's guide for Serpent's Skull here:
http://paizo.com/products/btpy8g6d?Pathfinder-Adventure-Path-Serpents-Skull -Players-Guide.

As a GM who has been running this, I would advise you that this is not a nautical adventure but rather one chiefly based around exploration and wilderness survival. Unlike some other APs you will spend very little time at all within an urban environment, so you might want to consider that if you are thinking about character classes that require frequent shopping trips.

Lastly, realize that more than any other AP, this one requires a LOT of work by your GM to flesh out. In some cases, it actually requires more work than simply running a homebrew. Therefore be kind to your GM. If they happen to get stuck or frustrated, direct them to these forums because there is a wealth of information here on how they can adapt the AP to suit your group's play-style.

Have fun!

I've FINALLY finished The Neverending Spreadsheet™!

I haven't uploaded it anywhere yet because I still want to put it thru its paces but the import/export function is working and I've finished the first draft of documentation/annotation for it. Anyway, now that this is done I can finally get to work on fleshing out Port Eldarion.

With that in mind, I may decide to put the game on hold (i.e. leaving us sailing) for about a week just so that I have time to make some headway with mapping and such. In any event, I'm always on gTalk and you can always text me so I'll let you know.

I've had this happen a few times in Chrome, but I'm unable to reproduce it right now.

Short of the long: errors happen, no matter how much editing you do.

Yep, hence why customers should point out errors so that later reprints and future revisions can benefit from several 100 proof-readers.

Yeah, and then people rate books 1/5 due to "zillions of errors" and bash companies for poor editing. Figures.

If that was directed at me, I'd suggest you check my review tab and note the rating I gave the Jon Brazer book back when I bought it.

If you guys do release a book with revised kingdom building rules, PLEASE factor in how a GM is supposed to keep track of all the number crunching without going insane.

I've spent close to 2 weeks now laboring over a spreadsheet/calculator to keep track of all the Kingmaker variables over a continuous span of time rather than just summing everything at a fixed point in time. It's absolutely ridiculous — particularly the way Unrest gets recalculated so many times during the course of a turn. At least with Sim City, a computer is able to handle all the crunch, but the default assumption here is that a person does it by hand on paper. Keep in mind, this criticism is coming from someone who has worked on some pretty damn advanced spreadsheets in his day.

Also, if you redo the exploration part, for the love of all that is holy, double-check your math for hex sizes! :P

I realize that JJ's intent was for the "12 miles" to be the distance it takes to travel from one hex to another (i.e. middle to middle), but instead of an inner-radius (center to mid-point of side) of 6 miles, someone botched and made the sides 6 miles long. To complicate matters, John Brazer's book used a side length of 12 miles which completely throws the travel times out of whack.

Just in case you need a helping hand... ;)
Polygon Calculator

Another thing that would be nice to see is the incorporation of the Overland Round. Laurefindel has a version that's been quite popular for moving over large areas (i.e. cross-country movment), and I've got a derivative version I created for use on Smuggler's Shiv (i.e. hourly movement).

Hmm, that idea sounds like it could bear fruit. I'll have to bone-up on my layer masks I guess. Thanks!

Is it in your opinion cheating for a player in the game to pick up the module or adventure path being run by the GM and actively read ahead?

Some time ago, when one of my current players was thinking about joining my PbP, something happened that gave me a rather strong opinion on this matter. Someone who had been lurking in the thread went and emailed said potential player 'warning' him about how I was deviating from the plot and encounters as written. Smuggler's Shiv with a gestalt party that was already level 4 instead of level 1... gee ya think? The REAL irony was that this same person was actively trying to get into other Serpent's Skull PbPs here on Paizo!

As much as I try to tailor the writing and formatting style we use to make it easy for other to follow the story, I was pretty damn well offended.

So maybe I'm a bit jaded by that experience, but I'm hard pressed to thin of any good justification for a player to expressly go out and "browsing" the same module the GM is already running OR that they are hoping to play in the near future. There are player's guides for a reason: check those or talk with your GM about what to expect.

So yes, I would find that sort of behavior to be reprehensible.

How about if someone has read most of the adventure paths and modules as his subscriptions deliver them because he enjoy's them? would he be cheating?

Now if it's a case where you already read an AP a couple years prior because you subscribe to that line or you were planning to run it yourself and the group fell apart then that's another matter. The difference is that in your first scenario someone set out with a [more likely than not] unscrupulous intent. That intent is the difference.

In this scenario, I would expect that person to be an adult and keep their metagame knowledge to themselves. Furthermore, if they were one of my players I'd expect them to apprise me of this before hand rather than letting me discover it later. In fact, I'd recommend anyone in this scenario inform the GM beforehand as a courtesy. It would help to preempt any accusations of cheating and bad will should the group's opinion on the matter differ from your own.

*relinquishes the soap box

Yep, Joana has it right. On both my desktop and laptop keyboards (both US), that key is the one directly above the main Enter key. If it's missing on your keyboard I suppose you could always copy/paste it into a shortkeys macro. ;)

BTW, I like the idea of changing out quotes in the header like that — it's a nice personal touch.

Gary, is there any chance you could increase the length of a PbP Campaign's "Short Description" field from the current 250-character limit up to around 1 or 2K characters?

I would really like to be able to maintain a short menu bar linking to the campaign's table of contents, wiki, and the character of the current party members, but the shortness of this field prevents the inclusion of any URLs.

[ Table of Contents | Wiki | Party: Alis | Amhranai | Darvesch | Isaac | Lureene | Tyralor ]

[ Table of Contents | Wiki | Party: Alis |

As a result of this limitation, I've simply be adding a more fluff-based header, but it really would be nice if I could add something with a bit more crunch.

People have this idea that "roleplaying is what you do in the city, ROLLplaying is what you do in combat".

Not that I'm sure there aren't some people who believe that, but it just seems like an odd outlook to me. Of course, it could be that my group is just odd I suppose. However our "roleplaying" isn't merely restricted to your traditional social encounters. We have plenty of character development, dialog, internal monologue, and the like take place in combat and whilst trekking thru dungeons and the wilderness — all phases of gameplay that could just as easily be handled with only character stats, a map, and a fistful of dice.

Likewise, you could have social encounters reduced to nothing but rolls if your players tried to get by with only rolling Diplomacy, Sense Motive, etc. without putting forth any effort into actual narration. Mind you, that would fly with me about as well as a player posting rolls for their greataxe without any accompanying verbiage, but then some GMs prefer all narration be left to them so that can differ by group.

Personally I'd say it's a better reason to avoid labeling oneself as a "roleplayer" to avoid the elitist connotation that seems to be developing due to the... [false? forced?] dichotomy between roll- vs role-play.

Just to avoid confusion over the term...

What you're asking for isn't a 'whiteboard' per se (i.e. a shared drawing application) but rather a [shared] memo field that can be edited at any point like on a wiki or a Google site, correct?

Now PbP campaigns do have some functionality like this. The main campaign page can be edited by the GM at any point, and there's also header text that appears at the top of every page that the GM can edit. Would expanding that out to other forums and extending it's functionality be closer to what you're asking for?

FWIW, I could see this being very handy in threads regarding community-made resources like the various Kingdom-building spreadsheets, or advice threads in which the OP wants to form a Table of Contents linking to particularly useful replies.

Incidentally, I'd like to see the character limit on the PbP header increased so I can actually fit a menu bar of my own in there. Currently it's not long enough for more than one or two URLs.

That's a gracious offer that I might just take you up on someday. Right now though, I had a question about a technique I've used in 3D mapping that I've not been able to duplicate in Photoshop...

At the moment, I've been working on use the techniques in this tutorial to create the gently the land area beneath where I intend to plunk-down the city that I'm working on.

While the bottom-most layer is the height map, for the adjustment layer I created my own gradient map that is more tailored to representing shallow coastal waters, sandy beaches, mud and low hills (as opposed to tall mountains). While using 16-bit color channels for the PNG eliminates the issue of color-banding, what I'd really like to do is create a gradient that fades not between colors but between seamless, panning texture maps like I'd apply to a terrain heightmap in 3ds max or Unreal Engine.

Any ideas on how to go about doing this? I'm using CS3 (PC) if it makes a difference.

Oh, glad to hear that ended up being helpful. Thanks for letting me know. :)

Thanks so much for elaborating more on cities. I'm currently trying to map out a new city for my campaign and I've felt like I've been spinning my tires in the mud. This should help quite a bit. :)

.... and this is why I fear calling myself a roleplayer.

Does nobody in your party play rangers, barbarians and druids?

I can think of maybe two characters out of all the people I've played over the past ten years who might go along with that stuff, but they'd be much more likely to lament their inability to bring their massive libraries with them :)

Shopping, fashion, worrying about etiquette --- that's boring enough IRL, do I need to RP it too?

Haha! Actually we've really enjoyed it for the most part. The PCs who are high-rollers enjoy the chance to live up to their social status while the RP from those whose characters would feel out-of-place in at a ball or fancy dinner RP that awkwardness well. Also, there have been many late nights where the PCs have talked privately to one another about the pains of their pasts, coming to grips with their own spirituality, and discussing their worries and hopes for the future. I couldn't be more proud of them.

Anyway, since you asked about rangers, druids, and barbarians, here's the party breakdown prior to getting shipwrecked looked like this:

As for shopping being boring? Well, unless you're independently wealth or have rich friends, their days around town are generally just a wee bit more exciting than a trip to Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and the local maul. ;) The funny thing is, the princess has something of a reputation for finding [as opposed to getting into] trouble, so trips to boutiques and fine restaurants are generally met with more apprehension of disaster than setting foot into ghoul-filled caverns. After all, when a blackguard kicks in the door, you pretty much know what's going to happen. When rubbing elbows with conniving nobles however... it's more like navigating a social minefield — there's no telling what adventure hooks or wicked plots may spring forth from such dealings.

Now this isn't to say that I haven't had any player turn-over due to differences in expectations. Mal and Priyya's players opted out eventually, although that was long after all the high-class shopping trips were concluded. We were already neck-deep in on Smuggler's Shiv by 1000 and 3000 posts respectively when the Ben and Justin took their leave. Was finally able to retired their NPC'd characters just yesterday now that we've gotten off the island.

That said, the newer characters that have joined seem to enjoy all the RP that goes on. In fact, at least one of them was expressly designed by the player to woo the princess.

Now as in-depth as our roleplaying goes (I daresay we have more RP and emotion in our combat scenarios than I've seen in any local game I've played it), our combats are generally quite demanding too. Surviving requires lots of tactics and teamwork, and the ability to adapt to shifting battlefields: underwater battles, waves of reinforcements, multi-level battlefields, timed encounters, urban infiltrations, escort missions, rescue missions, chases thru sprawling castles, and fights where the party is basically unarmed and unarmored, etc.

Lastly, a lot of character development has actually been brought about by injuries and close-calls. The NPC deaths that have occurred have also touched the characters sparking discussions on duty and morality, and genuine heartache.

Anyway, I'm probably rambling at this point, but I just had to give props to my players (current and former) for being what I would consider exceptional roleplayers. You guys rock! :)

Glad you made it OK! Oh and no worries, I've been rather busy myself so it's all good.

Give Vic a hug for me when you see her! :)

For my local games (which are more beer & pretzels), I don't worry about involved backgrounds too much. Typically a short background is just fine. Even so, it's not uncommon for all of the players to work out a group background together including ensuring all party roles are covered.

For PbPs though, the backgrounds for PC and NPCs are generally much more involved since that has a more tangible effect over how I develop the ensuing plot lines. In these cases I like to know family ties, motivations, goals, etc.

For my current game, I consider myself exceptionally fortunate where PC backgrounds are concerned. Nearly all of the main PCs (and the NPC who hired them) were existing PCs who met in a GM-less 'RP Tavern'. Thus a good deal of their background and intra-party connections were actually roleplayed prior to revealing the actual campaign hook.

Just a heads-up, I'm still getting things prepped for the next phase of the campaign. I've been trying to get Port Eldarion fully fleshed out but the Kingmaker rules for kingdom building are completely kicking my ass. Been working on them for most of my vacation now and I still have a good bit of work left to do. I'll try to get some replies up tomorrow, but my brain is just fried right now from this crap. >.>

Heh, I actually keep a list of all the different outfits I have described my characters wearing. We've also had shopping trips to various boutiques, attended plays and dined with the cast, performed numerous musical numbers, enjoyed 12-course dinners, and lamented over going without scented baths and perfumes while shipwrecked on a tropical island. Characters have given one another lessons how how to properly apply their make-up, worried over which fork to use at dinner, sponsored fellow party members at atonement ceremonies, and even performed at the opera. There have also been in-character romances, break-ups, and the like.

So yeah, I guess my group engages in the ROLEplaying side of RPGs. :)

Let's try to ignore the player's conclusions on the wizard class for a moment. I think our tendency to argue over that might blind us to the real issue...

Has our gaming become so influenced by video games, that a player would quit a character just based on game mechanics? Are we completely split as a gaming community? I never thought mechanics were more important than personality and story.

Have a look at what one of my players has said about his PFRPG L13 wizard. Has ROLL-playing replaced ROLE-playing for good?

Seems to me that you are asking the wrong question if you are focused on whether this is a matter of ROLL- vs ROLE-playing. You didn't overlook their points because of the analogy in which they couched their complaints, did you?

The point the player is making is that they were not having fun. The reason this this is because their character was simply not relevant most of the time. Their complaint could just as easily have come from the player of a min-maxed warrior type who later finds that they are largely irrelevant and bored in a political intrigue style campaign.

Even if people might disagree with the player's assessment that a Pathfinder wizard is under-powered, that still doesn't change the fact that they felt the crunch was holding them back from being able to support the fluff. To that end, I suppose you could shape it into a Roll vs Role issue: by getting out-rollplayed, the of game mechanics (or the player's understanding of them) shoehorned them into roleplaying what they felt was a Red Shirt™ rather than getting to roleplay a hero.

Not surprisingly, that's not much fun.

Hmm, my group strictly uses the large text field since otherwise the predefined fields make the text-wrapping ugly. Otherwise a thoughtful addition for those who make use of such fields.

Both links appear to be dead. The first states that the file was removed for copyright infringement, the second that it was deleted. :(

TL: Haha, yes me and my stealth-elf powers. ;)

Also, I was just reminded of a 3rd feature that is useful for this:

Focus/Defocus: Just to the left of the Search box is a link entitled "Focus". When you click this, it will show you any threads you've looked at or replied to that contain new posts since the last time you checked them. :)

FWIW, I personally use the RSS feed only to keep track of my PbP. For everything else, I use either Lists of Focus.

As a side note: is there a way to get notification when your posts are being replied to? Can't find it (hence, answering back 12 days later...).

Fred

I know the sort of "notify me of replies" email option you're talking about but these boards don't have any such functionality. You've basically got 2 options up in the upper-right corner of the page just above the Search box:

Recent Posts: This is the RSS feed for the thread. It basically sends updates any updates to your RSS Reader. This allows you to either read replies in an external program (like Google Reader or the one built into FireFox), or get a notification so you know to check the forum.

List This Thread: This adds the thread to one of your Lists so that you can keep track of posts of interest in one place. Whenever there are new replies, you'll see it noted in parenthesis just like if you were scrolling thru the main index.

Mind you, this will require you to get in the habit of maintaining and then checking that list regularly.

Hope this helps.

Darvesch stood for a time looking out over the Zephrys from the curved balcony outside the hallway leading to the ready room. The ship was anchored perhaps a few hundred yards west of the lighthouse where he could just make out a lone lookout from the Lancer keeping watch.

Looking north, he could make out the receding running lights of the Harrier, Avenger, and Falcata. While the shallow draft of the lightly-built elven corvette and the galley could safely pass thru the channel south of Reaver's Shiv, that was not a risk either Captain Fingel or Lieutenant Aldarien were going to risk with the heavily armed human warship.

Yeah, populating the initial list could be a chore alright — sounds like a job for SuperIntern™ to me. ;)

Perhaps harvesting popular search terms from the site itself, or even starting with basics like creature types (animal, human, outsider), class types (melee, ranged, arcane, divine, expert), gender, hair color, skin tones would be a good start. At the very worst, a web development article on the blog soliciting feedback and the 150 ensuing posts would give a good idea on what people are after (though I suspect you have a decent idea already).

Tag "soup" might actually be the better term since "cloud" has so many other uses in IT these days. I'm still longing for the day when the file system on mainstream computers becomes label/tag based instead of folder-based. That was such a wonderful paradigm shift going from a traditional email system to GMail. For me it ranked right up there with the concept of making links to pages and categories that don't yet exist in a wiki.

At any rate, just figured I'd toss the feedback out there since I know that development/feedback is an iterative process. In case it's of interest, I had some recommendations for a fellow poster on how to leverage lists to manage information in a PbP campaign here.

I'm thinking that I might come up with a list of my own tags/keywords for the purposes of greater consistency just using Ctrl+F on such a Table of Contents.

Well by Paizo-managed tags, I meant mostly only Paizo can create the tags. You would still want to leverage crowd-sourcing for the actual tagging of images however. This handles consistency so that you don't have: "Dwarf", "Dwarfs", and "Dwarves" all as different tags for the same thing — Paizo creates one tag called "dwarf" and predictive text auto-populates that as someone types (or there's just a drop-down list of labels like in GMail).

In order to get around people applying ridiculous tags, a threshold of 2 or 3 tags with the same label before a crowd-sourced tag is displayed/applied should eliminate most of the random noise. And hey, if enough people think a dwarf looks like a halfling or a deity, then that tells you something too.

If the tag choices themselves are managed by Paizo then that's a non-issue. But yes, I actually just made a post yesterday asking for tag/label support to be added to the message boards for this very reason: crowd-sourcing would be a powerful way to transform the boards from being only a social arena to an actual information store.

IMO part of the reason we'd want Paizo to manage the tag list so that it is only possible to tag/label for positive or useful reasons. That way someone who is unpopular can just end up with dissenters labeling them and their posts as creepy, trolling, etc.

When I play male characters I tend to see them more as an avatar of myself and usually fall prey to handling situations as I myself would (or as I wish I was able to).

When I play female characters however, since I am not female, it actually requires me to engage in the roleplaying aspect of the game more fully since they can't very well be an avatar of my male self.

Maybe it's a personal failing on my part, but I just find that I'm able to breathe life into the character as a separate being more naturally when they are not the same gender as me.

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Lureene's Chest:

• 1 Large Fancy Dark Bluish-Violet Diamond resting in a now-moldy white velvet pillow
  
• a hastily scribbled note noting rumors of the mine where it was discovered
  
• 1 set of masterwork jeweler's tools
  
• 1 monocle functions a a Lens of Detection
  
• Several handfuls of coins, smaller gems, and a bejewled damascus dagger with a blade now black from dried blood
  
• 2 gold watches
  
• 1 empty gold locket
  
• 6 empty gold settings
  
• 2 matching platinums bands sized for a man and a woman
  
• 5 gold fob chains
  
• 5 trade bars of pure gold (125gp each)
  
• 1 trade bar of pure platinum (100pp)
  
• 1 crystal flask half-full of 55-year old single malt Rhime whiskey

Priyya's Chest:

• 8 gold bricks (1250gp each)
  
• 20 gold trade bars (125gp each)
  
• 10 platinum trade bars (100pp each)
  
• 9 bags of gold coins (250gp each, one bag appears to be missing)
  
• An old, certificate validating the sum and weight of 15,000gp and 1,000pp. It was notarized in Colottina some 40 years ago and appears to have been intended for a recipient in Razor's Edge. While the coins have various stamps upon them, all of the bullion was minted in Malatesta.

Sasha's Chest:

• 5 strands of pearls
  
• 7 gold bangles
  
• 1 moonstone circlet
  
• 1 cast silver skull chalice
  
• 5 masterwork silk coin belts (now moldy)
  
• 9 sets of finger cymbals
  
• 1 set of tortoise-shell brushes and combs
  
• 1 large jade collar
  
• 4 garnet-studded halter tops
  
• 1 moonstone-studded halter top
  
• 1 cloth-of-gold shawl interwoven with images of intertwining cats and roses
  
• 1 figurine of a primitive cat goddess
  
• 1 broken silver hand glass
  
• 2 electrum half-masks: one of a cat sized for a woman, one of a woman's face seemingly made to fit a large feline
  
• 7 gold hoop earrings
  
• 3 bags of powdered silver
  
• 1 tarnished silver bell with a rotted ribbon laced thru it
  
• several cones of incense and other assorted herbs now black with mildew
  
• 124cp
  
• 341sp
  
• 59gp
  
• 2pp

Personally I've found the NPC appendix and other supplemental articles in Souls for the Smuggler's Shiv to be essential and very worthwhile. Also, the corresponding high-resolution large-area map of the island really helped out my game a lot compared to battle maps of areas that the party might only visit a single time.

IMO, that should be the key factor that determines whether a locale is included in a Map Folio: if it's a location that will see repeated use then print it, otherwise I'd rather not spend money on a collection of generic 1-shot areas that I could easily make myself in MapTool or draw on a Flip-Mat.

While posting in the "Maybe OT: PBP Campaign Thread Help?" thread, I had a thought on something that might improve the utility of the messageboards as an information resource. Since Gary mentioned wanting to revisit the List functionality at some point soon, I thought it might be worth mentioning.

Lists are great for personal use, but have limited utility outside of those who know about a particular person list. Right now they function somewhat like file folders. While it's true that you can add a single post or thread to multiple lists, it's time-consuming and doesn't address the searchability issue.

What about adding the ability for board members to add GMail-style labels to threads or even individual posts?

On a site-wide scale, this would allow individuals to flag posts not merely for inclusion in a FAQ or for violations, but also to help categorize useful contributions. Forums that might be particularly well-served by the ability to tag posts/thread with multiple descriptive labels would be those concerning the various Adventure Paths, and the House-/Rules forums.

On a smaller scale, adding the ability for a GM and their players to label posts in their own campaign would make indexing the story, and noting posts with important information, new NPCs, and treasure vastly easier.

Naturally some support would need be be added to the search parameters, but with the ability to compose a tag/label-based search, it should help to filter results by categories and to know that these are posts other people have separated from the background noise.

In relevant forums, adding a tag-cloud for the currently viewed forum/thread would also help to give a high-level overview.

In terms of implementation, I'd say that a managed list of labels would be best. However, since it's impossible to think of everything up-front, the ability for people to suggest labels, and the ability to return an appropriate label when someone types a related keyword in their tag box would be ideal. Naturally in the PbP Campaigns, it might be desirable to allow the GM to control label creation and modification for their campaign threads only.

So what do you think? Too developer or CPU-intensive to implement? Would further elaboration or use cases be helpful?

By all means, feel free. :) If it interests you, one thing I've started doing lately is compiling an Advice List of posts that I've found (or in some cases made) that I think/hope might be useful to other GMs. For instance there's a great thread down in GamerTalk right now where a cartographer is sharing their mapping tutorials on Facebook and Google+.

Today's Dork Tower strip is about Pathfinder RPG, thought I'd share the link. :)

Dork Tower: Thursday, January 26th, 2012

Even a solution whereby I can "bookmark" important posts in a campaign would help with some of the organizational stuff...

Actually there is a way. For my game (which just passed 8000 in a single thread), I use the "List" function to bookmark important or memorable posts. Then, in the description field for that entry, I add keywords that would be relevant for if I wanted to do a simple Ctrl+F style search right from within my web browser.

Rumble in the Jungle Table of Contents

The other trick I use is at the start of each day, and at various points throughout the day (in-world time, not real time), I will add a notation of what the date, time, and moon phase are. I keep the current day/phase marked with asterisks so I don't forget where we are. Check out the shortkeys links in my profile for how to implement something like this easily.

Raw Scripts: (quote to see formatting)
LK Calendar: Uniens 18, 4210 — Alsday Daegsday Lakusday Rosday Lansday *Starsday* (day 14)
Time: :00db md et nf (daybreak morning midday afternoon eventide evening nightfall night, :00)
Darkshoal: New Moon - Waxing Crescent - First Quarter - Waxing Gibbous - Full Moon - *Waning Gibbous* - Waning Crescent - Last Quarter

The good thing about this is that it then allows me to search them game thread itself by including the year and month name.

Let me know if you need more info on how this works, the Table of Contents list alone will REALLY help, trust me! Just make sure you update it about once every week or two. :)

The Zephrys: Just because I thought it would be cool, I went ahead and mapped out the area of the Zephrys we're in today. The large aft room is the Ready Room. It is dominated by a large table around which are placed 12 very comfortable chairs upholstered with red leather (currently pushed out of the way). In the center of the forward bulkhead is a cabinet containing maps, bottles of spirits, crystal tumblers, and silverware. In the lower half, two doors open up revealing a dumb-waiter that leads down to the galley below.

Large bedroom just forward of it on the port side is Tyralor's room. On the starboard side of the hallway, are Nimniel's room and a private washroom. Apparently even though Nimniel is fastidious about how she handles her post, she leaves both the bath and her own room kind of messy.

Access to this level is gained from the outside. There are is a set of stairs up from the main deck to a small deck overlooking the ship. At the back of that deck is a door leaving to the executive cabins. From the small overlook deck, another set of stairs leads up to the poop deck which is directly over the executive cabins.

MAP: The Zephrys - Executive Cabins, (0:45et)

Oh this is definitely going in my advice list! :)

Hi Fillllup, since that's a pretty common question, I actually wrote up an overview of what PbPs are all about that you might find useful. Hope it helps!

Play by Post: How does it work?

LK Calendar: Uniens 18, 4210 — Starsday (day 14)
Time: 5:30md (midday, 5:30pm)

It takes some time to coordinate the logistics of temporarily accommodating another 56 Zucks and 29 pirates aboard the three seaworthy vessels. All the while, Ieana works with Aerys and the ships' engineers to rebuild and repair masts, and rigging damaged during the battle. All the while, Lureene, Sasha, Darvesch, and Gelik lead a few teams of eager volunteers help to retrieve your group's belonging from the Lighthouse and its out-buildings. The winged-wizardess' ability to shrink more massive objects comes in particularly handy when it comes time to move the massive statue of Daedelhach, and the trunk you found in Klorak's former chambers.

Sadly, while the chest aboard the Falcata was indeed filled with coin, even the modest year's wages of an unskill laborer (5sp per week, 70 weeks in a year) becomes significant when dealing with nearly 60 of them. By the time the princess has made good on her promise, the coffer is nearly empty leaving only a few small trade bars for yourselves (+200gp added to inventory). Still, anticipation of whatever Lureene's group might have pulled from Quellig's stash keeps you hopeful.

Cool, thanks Dela!

Works for me. Since Tyralor didn't arrive until well after Captain Beard was dead (and since he's also loaded), I don't see any issues with that arrangement.

If you guys wanted to RP giving the NPCs or each other anything in particular (i.e. Isaac giving Aerys the cutlass, or Darv giving Lureene/Sasha the amulet) then feel free. I figure I'll have everyone reconnoiter about the Zephrys here shortly...

Well no need to worry over items for Alis. She'd most likely balk at wearing the bracers of a dead pirate captain... "Are those naked mermaids cavorting with... Oh my..." ;)

Of course Sasha, Gelik, and Aerys might appreciate gifts of some sort, even if it's hand-me-downs or non-magical bling.

BTW, while it doesn't list what gear the NPCs have, you may wish to consult the party matrix for who has what items and of what types thus far:

Link: Magic Item Slots

No one in my party used firearms. However if they did, there are plenty of shipwrecks all around the island where I could have added stores of either ammo or the supplies for crafting it. Perhaps one of the chests in Quellig's stash is even a set of masterwork dueling pistols with a case full of high-grade ammo. :)

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Treasure:

• Amulet of Natural Armor +3
  
• Belt of Physical Perfection +2
  
• Bracers of Armor +4
  
• Ring of Protection +3
  
• +2 keen cutlass (scimitar)
  
• Non-Magical Loot: 5× rings, bloody pants, bloody shirt, tricorn hat, 2× silver beard spirals, bronze hair spiral, 3× gold earrings, and 3× gold chains

Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves what to do with it. Naturally Jason gets first say since he's the bad-ass who took out The Beard.

Personally I always felt Dundjinni was clunky (and this is coming from someone who is quite at home with Photoshop and 3d studio max). Nowadays, I find that I'm able to do most of what I need for mapping purposes via MapTools — even the creation of brand new maps from scratch.

While I think the only viable route for Paizo to go here would be to license the rights to another company (as they've done for the MMO), it would have to have serious improvements in the ease-of-use AND functionality departments to make sense to me as a consumer.

Dela, these are great! Once you are done would you mind sharing the MapTools save itself that contains all of these maps?

There is a FAQ that you will want to read on TWF without the feats located here:

http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9onf

Let us know if you still have any questions after giving that a look as it might very well address them for you.

Lureene looks around the slave hold and finds several magical auras amongst the Zucks:

• Faint Transmutation: A necklace being worn by one man.
  
• Strong Transmutation: A belt that another is currently wearing like a sash because it is too big for his waist.
  
• Faint Abjuration: A gold ring worn a third man.
  
• Moderate Conjuration: This aura is split in two, and you notice that two different men are each wearing one half of a pair of bracers.

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XP Breakdown
9600 Captain Beard
9600 Crew of the Falcata
9600 Eleventy-Eight

Sub-Total 9600 + 9600 + 9600 = 28800 ÷ 5 shares = 5760

25600 Ozyrankhus

Sub-Total 25600 = 25600 ÷ 8 shares

Total 5760 + 3200 = 8960

XP: + each (53922 + 8960 = 62882/77,000)