Solomon Knox's page

And so our story begins...

Welcome everybody to our very own discussion thread. It's useful for out of character discussion or just general tomfoolery. (Didn't think I'd be using that word today.)

Please post here once you've seen your character's been chosen and lets get started.

So, here we are then. Welcome, one and all, to my recruitment thread for my rendition of Paizo's Reign of Winter Adventure Path, so titled...

Only the Cold Remains

Yes, with that size 16 font, what could be more dramatic?

About Me
Here's a little bit about myself. I've been roleplaying for about the last four years or so... so I'm a little bit of newbie compared to some of you hardcore, grizzled vets. My group was organized by my brother to play Call of Cthulhu. We eventually branched off into Pathfinder and it has since become my group's go-to game (to my everlasting admonishment, I might add). It's always good to branch off and try different things.

That being said, I like this system and I like what it offers. I'm not a new hand at GMing, but I'm certainly not over-experienced. I've spent about a year GMing Pathfinder and about a year GMing other systems. I've been trying out for and playing PbPs on this forum essentially since I first discovered it, but I this will be the first game I've run in this style.

I'm a full time college student currently looking for a job. I can only promise I can post once per day. I ask all my players to be able to post at least once per weekday and once on the weekend.

Speaking of style, I'm afraid I have this condition wherein I sometimes don't really know when it's a good time to stop writing, as you can probably already tell. If it's up to me, I'd rather make one highly detailed post once a day than several spread throughout. Given my time allotment and just the natural course of discourse provided by the PbP format, I think it'll all be rather agreeable.I want to try my hand at GMing a PbP and I can only hope it goes well. I've had this itch lately to play in a game set in a feral kind of winter setting, and what could be more fitting than the Reign of Winter adventure path?

My philosophy for gaming is that story trumps substance every time. This is your guys' story, and given the linear nature of an adventure path, it is inevitable the story will branch off. Stories aren't statted out beforehand. They evolve organically with the players choices. I'm going to put my own spin on the story, so if you're looking for a vanilla take, I think it'll be best to look elsewhere. We'll start out fairly normal, however, in the small town of Helden in the nation of Taldor. I tend to like to run certain small combats as "pseudo-combats" in story time and I don't use experience. It's an abstraction that adds nothing to the experience. I'll dole out levels at certain story segments and as for good-roleplaying rewards, those will be much more substantial.

About What I Want
Anyway, I'm looking for 4-6 players to play in this RP. You peoples can post your characters here, I'll take a look at them and I'll see which ones I'd like to run a game with. Right now I'm looking for character bios, personality archetypes and a display of an ability to play well with others. I'm not looking for a fully blocked out glorified spreadsheet yet. If you want to make one, by all means. Just keep in mind it won't affect my decision one way or the other.

Fluff wise, I'm going to say now that everybody in the party will have lived in Helden for at least a few years now and are considered a part of the community. What you did beforehand can be entirely up to you. I don't think it's a secret to anybody that you're going to wind up in Irrisen, so a link to that place could very well work, but, however you wind up to Helden is your choice.

Character wise, I'm allowing no evil alignments. I've played evil characters before. I found them not a bit of fun to play and all they tended to do was mess with the party's stuff before they were rightly executed. And in a town as idyllic as Helden, a bastard like that would have been run out of town long ago. Moral ambiguity is rife in the games I run, however, so shades of gray will be all over the place. The game will also be darker than the original AP intended, so keep that in mind.

So what I want to see is in each of your character bios is as follows.

• An explanation of your background prior to arriving in Helden. I wouldn't recommend being as long winded as I'm being right now, but give your character enough breadth. Make them interesting and unique. I don't like seeing the good old cookie cutter holy trinity of party composition (spells, skills and swords.) That's just boring.
• A short description of what kind of life your character has in Helden and how he or she contributes to the community. If you want to link your story to some of the more important NPCs in the area, be my guest. I gave a background rundown of Helden on the obsidian portal wiki. Also don't be afraid to insert your own characters into Helden. I like seeing players interact with the setting.
• I want a description of your character's personality and beliefs. I want to know what drives him or her. What's her motivation? Would he or she be willing to risk their life and their livelihood to save others? (There is no right or wrong answer to these questions, by the way.)

Players, once selected, will be asked to at least create a character on the obsidian portal wiki I created for this campaign. The link's Here

Here's a list of my requirements as far as crunch go, just to get them down now.

• All Paizo published materials are accepted. That means no 3.5 and no 3rd party published material. I can't really be bothered to sift through all that.
• I'm doing a 15 point buy for this one. I know, people like their 20 and 25 point buys. I don't. I find they tend to cheapen some combats.
• You get two traits. Both can be anything that fits your character and one can, but doesn't have to be from the player's guide. I'm allowing 1 drawback as well.
• One of your skill points upon creation needs to go into a profession, craft, or perform skill which represents your ability to make a living in Helden.
• Everybody gets 300 starting gold.
• Players get max HP for their hit die first level and get average HP + 1 every level thereafter.

I'll be ending recruitment on Sunday, the second of March. I'll be lenient with the exact time though. Assuming I get a bunch of entries, I'll announce my choices sometime during the week. The max amount of players I'll allow is 6. I don't have the time to run two groups.

If you guys have any questions, ask them here. I'll make sure to get back to every one. I'll be able for comment most nights and at times during the day. If I miss your post, feel free to send me a private message. Good luck, everybody.

Why hello there ladies and gentlemen. Today I'm not feeling to great. It's a worm eating away at my core, a problem nagging at the back of my head since my group's previous session last friday.

I'm an amateur DM and my players are all novices as well. I can forgive them for their inexperience with the rules, the desire to forgo the story sometimes and just kill things, but that's not what I'm talking about.

I've had difficulty getting my players to at least act their characters. I have one player who takes no pretense and tells me that he doesn't want to have to deal with a personality. He's a rogue, and is content in writing for his personality archetype, "I'm a rogue." I'm content in letting him just be the butt-monkey of the party and leaving it at that. Two of my other players have difficulty following their characters personality archetypes, but their learning and I hope they'll eventually grow into their roles, designing their characters as they see fit.

Two of my other players, however, truly sicken me, and I'm not sure exactly how to handle it. One of them is a Monk, but acts the exact opposite of lawful. At first that was what he had on his character sheet, but straight off the bat in the first scenario he preceded to first intimidate the town sheriff and then go grave robbing looking for clues. After the game, I told him he is not lawful at all, but we settled on true neutral. He's actively petty, greedy and cruel, but I'll get to the cruel part in a bit.

The other PC was a guy who was busy so he didn't start with us initially. When some of the other PC's were having difficulty writing their stories, I let them know that I would write their backstories for them. He gave me a personality archetype and I rolled with it, a Chaotic Good character who spent his entire life sequestered in a hermitage in the desert, who escaped and seeks to travel the world and develop his powers within the Sorcerer's draconic bloodline. I thought up a fun way of being introduced to the group, having him fall down the stairs in his smallclothes, being kicked in a humorous fashion by one of the established NPC's. After this happened, he proceeded to attack her, using acid splash, as if he were actively trying to kill her.

The PC's then got into a fight with a bunch of bandits who, in an ironic turn of events, were stealing dead bodies from the local cemetary. A fight ensues and one of the bandits starts to run away. Obviously, it's the monk who goes after him and he eventually manages to pin him to the ground. All well and good.

Then he starts to torture him for information. He runs a knife across his knuckles, a dramatic play on words for the bandit's company name the Bloody Knuckles. Then the sorcerer gets over there. He holds fire in his hand and begins to singe his ear. They easily extract the information, but it all left a bad taste in my mouth. The town's guard shows up, led by the sheriff the Monk tortured in the beginning, telling him to let him go. They refused. The two wanted to torture him. The monk's player later told me that he felt it time sensitive, impertinent that he find out the information. I argued with him, telling him that torture cannot be justified like that and is an evil action with consequences.

I talked to the Sorcerer's player as well, and he told me that he felt he wanted to change his alignment to CN, and that his character has no problem with torture, actively seeking to use it to get what he wants. I'm unsure at this point if we even have a lawful player in our party, and all of the other characters simply stood by and watched as they did this.

Sorry for the block of text, but I want to know other's opinions about this. Is torture acceptable? How well must a character stick to their archetype? Torture is a serious thing, and I'm afraid eventually I'm going to be forced to run the PC's out of town if they are actively malicious.

Wow, okay, this forum has a lot of subforums. Truth be told, I did look all over so I hope this is the right place to form this issue. The help subforum seemed to refer only to purchases on this site, so that's no help to me either.

Anyway, has anyone else had had any issue with the spine's binding of the Core Rulebook. A couple of my friends whom I have talked to have said they've had similar circumstances, where the spine seems for lack of a better term loose. It's able to move from side to side all too easily and I fear for both the quality and general survivablility of the product.

I'm just curious if anybody has noticed the same issue, and if they have any suggestions for repairing the spine so it stays more put.

It's all there in the title, fellas. I'm new to being a GM, as I'm new to Pathfinder, as I'm new to tabletop gaming in general. Suffice it to say I have very, very little experience with things thus far and I'm looking for some advice from experienced gms.

So far I have run three things for my group, consisting of five people who show up relatively consistently and two players who always have something come up and are fickle at the best of times.(our previous games consisted solely of Call of Cthulhu) These players are becoming increasingly difficult to manage.

Their main problem stems from the fact that they really, really have no idea how to roleplay. I've asked each player to come up with a name and a short backstory. I've been led to believe this is standard stuff, right? But they seem utterly incapable of it. I spent a good ten minutes trying to get two of the guys to come up with names for their characters. Only two of the players thus far, one being my brother, a fellow writer, have even written down a one sentence motivation for their character. I've really pleaded with them to at least use one of the last vestigial remains of imagination left in their bodies to come up with one, but to no avail. Keep in mind this has gone on for three weeks and I've pretty much gotten nothing. I know there's got to be a way to get them invested in the story, but since we've only just completed two relatively short campaigns thus far, it's kind of difficult.

They're just not motivated, and I feel as if it's totally my fault. I've got one guy who wants to completely forgo the dialogue sections altogether, wanting instead to just get to the fighting all the time. I really don't want to pander to him, but it feels like the lack of proper roleplay (in terms of people talking to the NPCs in character) stems from this desire. The aforementioned two guys are the only guys yet to actually attempt this. The one guy, a relatively shy person all things considered, got into a kind of interesting conversation with the innkeeper totally in character, and I loved him for it. But people were getting antsy during the conversation, and when I asked the dwarf character what his motivation was (in the character of the npc) he got peevish and asked, "do I really have to?"

I've got other woes, but I feel like this wall of text has gone on long enough, and I really don't want to seem like a whiny little puissant. Please, I just need to know if anyone else has gone through the same experience, and if they have any advice for a guy like me.