[ACG][CaG][Season of the Shackles: Adv. 1: Lost at Sea](Table 2) (Inactive)

Game Master cartmanbeck

This is the discussion thread for Table 2 of my Season of the Shackles games for Cards Against Gnomanity!

Hi, I'll be playing Valendron the a sorcerer. Since it seems our party gets 2 sorcerers! Making us at least twice as cool as any other party around.

I was introduced to PACG organized play at the online event a few months ago, and have been having such a fantastic time with PbP that I had to keep going! I do own and have played through S&S.

I'm in Central-US, although often post from my phone at all times during the day. I'll include in my posts which of my cards can be used without asking, and which I'd prefer to be asked about first. (Although more often than not I'll usually say yes.) I'll try to also include any moving-with-the-ship instructions there if it's relevant.

For my own enjoyment, I like to include in-character flavor in my posts. No pressure on anyone else- use as much or as little flavor as you like.

Can't wait to begin playing with the rest of you!

I KEEP forgetting the Discussion tab is a thing. (I played many PBPs in the PACG Playtest forum, where we conflated ALL manner of discussion into a single Gameplay thread.)

Anyone relatively new to PBP:
I urge you to ctrl-C your entire post BEFORE clicking the button to Submit Post. You never know when a snafu will eat your post (but I guarantee it will be one of the longest, most involved posts you've written.)
PLEASE include the difficulty of your check in the description of your rolls:
Like this:
Combat 23: 2d12 + 3d8 + 5 ⇒ (4, 9) + (2, 2, 5) + 5 = 27
not this:
Perception: 2d10 + 2d4 ⇒ (7, 9) + (1, 1) = 18
Thanks!

NOTE: I'm elcoderdude on the boards (as you can obviously tell by hovering over my alias). Thanks Danny/empTyger for the keen alias idea. I'm bummed Celeste isn't an available, avatar though.

Here's the party stat breakdown I emailed out, having forgotten about the Discussion tab:

CAVEAT: Mavaro's stats may be incorrect.
ANALYSIS:
We've a small-stat party: No big die, unless you count Lini's Bear/Shark form; only 3 d10s. That said, we kinda-sorta have all base skills covered.
No true martial. All four characters are a caster of some kind.
We've got 1 1/2 Divine characters, and 2 1/2 Arcane, counting Mavaro as 1/2 of each.
Potentially two healers (Mavaro and Lini).
Nice racial & gender balance.
We can fight ships, but we can't fix them.
Celeste brings an un-S&S level of scouting. (Which she needs, as she's a super-weak in Combat w/out a spell.)

THE PARTY IS:
Celeste: Fierce and Beautiful Female Naga Sorcerer
elcoderdude (Robert)
Str d4
Dex d8
Con d6
Int d8 Knowledge: Int+2 Survival:Int+3
Wis d6
Chr d10 Arcane: Chr+d2

S&S Lini: Female Gnome Druid
Elinnea (Eleanor)
Str d4 (discard/recharge for d12)
Dex d6 (discard/recharge for d12)
Con d8 Fortitude: Con+2
Int d6
Wis d10 Divine:Wis+2 Survival:Wis+2
Chr d8

Valendron: Male Elf Sorcerer
EmpTyger (Danny)
Str d6
Dex d8 Stealth: Dex+2
Con d4
Int d6
Wis d8
Chr d10 Arcane: Chr+2

Mavaro: Male Human Occultist
Calthaer
Str d6
Dex d6
Con d8
Int d8 Knowledge: Int+1
Wis d8 Perception: Wis+2
Chr d6 Diplomacy: Chr+1

Tyler, probably you are all over this, but including a spoiler for the Plunder Table in some readily accessible way would be very helpful. Thanks.

Good analysis. I guess that means I can expect to be shark-ing out on a regular basis. I've played S&S (obviously I own it, since I'm playing the box set version of Lini) but haven't seen the Season of the Shackles before, so I don't know exactly what to expect.

I'll put my deck list here:

Quarterstaff
Cure
Fireblade
Burst Bonds
Frigid Blast
Hide Armor
Conch Shell
Crow
Frilled Lizard
Frog
Dog
Blessing of the Gods 1
Blessing of the Gods 2
Blessing of the Gods 3
Blessing of the Gods 4

I have the texts for all my cards under spoiler tags in this alias profile, if you ever need to refer to what they do.

BTW Belatedly I realized S&S Alahazra is a scouter par excellence, of course. But otherwise scouting is really limited in S&S normally (with no native Augury or Scrying).

We'll need to maximize healing: three out of four characters may often discard a card for Combat checks.

Aha! Plunder table spoiler incoming!

Also, mateys: I was really dense in my first full-fledged non-playtest PBP, and it took me forever to do the following, even after Parody clued me in point-blank:
When you bookmark the game, bookmark the Campaign Info tab (like this:
http://paizo.com/campaigns/ACGCaGSeasonOfTheShacklesAdv1LostAtSeaTable2
)
not the Gameplay tab (which is what I was doing, like this:
http://paizo.com/campaigns/ACGCaGSeasonOfTheShacklesAdv1LostAtSeaTable2/gam eplay&page=last
)
If you bookmark the Campaign Info tab, then when you pull up the page you'll be told right there which tabs have new posts.
Clicking on the new post indicator brings you right to those posts.
(Apologies if this is old hat to all y'all.)

Valuable information, Robert! :)

We had a question about how ships work at the other table, so I figured I'd just post this here as well for those who might not be familiar:

Plunder is basically a treasure mechanic which gives you a random card of the rolled type, usually when you defeat a ship. This card is "stashed" under the ship you're currently commanding, and if you win the scenario, you get the whole pile. This pile will be represented in our game by a "Scenario Deck" where I'll move cards to as you stash them.
Ship combat works similar to combat with a monster, except that you roll against the ship's listed check to Defeat which is normally NOT a Combat check.

Here's the information for the ship that your party is currently commanding:

As you can see, the checks to defeat are Wisdom or Perception. Since you're commanding this ship, it also gives you the added benefit of letting you discard a card from the blessings deck to choose the plunder card that is stashed instead of rolling.

If you fail the check to defeat a ship, your ship takes Structural damage in the amount you failed by. Structural damage can be reduced by 1 by any character in the game simply by discarding a card. If you can't reduce the Structural damage your ship takes to 0, your ship is wrecked, and you flip it over:

As you can see, the When Commanding power becomes something negative when you're commanding a wrecked ship. You also can't stash more plunder under a wrecked ship. In addition, at the start of your move step, you have the chance to attempt to repair the ship with the To Repair check listed above. At the end of any turn when your ship is wrecked, you lose one random plunder card from under the ship.

One other fun rule about ships: When the commander moves, anyone at their location can choose to move along with them. (Unless the ship is anchored or wrecked.)
Which can be particularly useful for working together on locations with detrimental start-of-turn effects.

Ellinea:
Clever! For reference, I have the card text in a column on the 2nd tab of my deck handler. But I'll try to add relevant information into my notes when it comes up.

elcoderdude:
You can use either "EmpTyger" or "Valendron". I'll respond to either :) I'll use player (EmpTyger) in the Discussion thread, character (Valendron) in the Gameplay thread, but that's to keep myself organized.

Additional info for those new to S&S/reminders for old deck hands:

During a scenario which does not tell you that the ship is anchored:
When it is your turn, you are commanding the ship. You and every one at your location is on the ship.
When you move, you move the ship; anyone at your location has the option to move with you (unless your ship is already wrecked).

During a scenario which tells you the ship is anchored at a particular location:
The ship never moves.
All characters begin the scenario at the location where the ship is anchored.*
If you are at the location where the ship is anchored, you are on the ship. If you are not at that location, you are not on the ship. (Corollary: you are only commanding the ship while you at the ship's anchor location AND it is your turn.)

Rule for all scenarios:
If you are not commanding the ship, you cannot encounter another ship. Banish any ship you would encounter.

*I cannot tell you HOW many times my playing groups overlooked this.

EDIT: EmpTyger ninja'd me, I just left this as-is.

Note: feel free to call me Robert on any thread, but Celeste on the gameplay thread is fine too.

Note: I am assuming cis pronouns for the entire party. Please do let me know if you prefer something else (I have a child who does, so I'm sympathetic).

EDIT: EmpTyger ninja'd me, I just left this as-is.

Making use of that Stealth +2 :)

Also, I have no opinion about turn order. (I typically just decide randomly in real-life.)

I don't mind sticking to this thread for our discussion, especially if Robert won't be able to access another method. I'll try to leave good notes about which of my cards are available for other players, and I also plan to check the board on a regular basis.

I also have no preference for turn order.

P.S. If anybody wants to inject pirate-y flavor into their posts, but, like me, barely knows anything about ships or pirates, you might want to take a look at this website.

Calthaer -- you've really chosen "Mavario" (with an "i") as your alias while playing Mavaro? (I'm *really* hoping no one in this group is OCD.) I started this post to helpfully point out your typo to you before you hit the 10-post point of no return -- then it dawned on me you probably actually meant to do this.

(Gotta admit, at this point what crossed my mind in regard to being in this party is a remark a college friend made to a large group of us after asking that we sit in his section in the restaurant where he worked as a waiter: "I can already tell this was a mistake.")

(j/k -- looking forward to it)

The game has officially started!!

Holy Stone's not an arcane attack spell, but it is a Spell 1. And we could hand it off to Lini. Although, I'm not familiar with Steal Book- does it even work on non-arcane spells?
In any case, I have a d8, so I could just try rolling for it, but figured it was worth asking about first.

Also, we're missing 10 blessings from the blessings deck?

Ah, okay. Never hurts to check.
(And you're doing great for flavor with Celeste! Though, if you decide you prefer to post out-of-character, or only want to use flavor sometimes, I won't mind. Really, whatever is most fun for you!)

Unfortunately, looking at the locations, there aren't many spells in the scenario as a whole, for Celeste to hope to grab. All that's left is one at the sea caves (I'm planning to go there next), one at the rocky cliff (Celeste is already there) and one on the raker shoals (which looks like a really unpleasant place to be).

Hey, something's better than nothing. (For both spells and flavor.) :)

Quite true! I certainly like the idea of auto-acquiring anything at all, especially if it's a spell I wouldn't be able to use myself. I wish I had something similar for that turn that happened just now. ;)

Anyone have a 20 on Calthaer?

I know he said he'd have to use his phone to post during the workday, which is a major hassle IMHO. Might not see him online till this evening.

Ooh, I wouldn't mind getting that Ruby of Charisma for use this scenario. If it's still there on Valendron's turn, I'd even spend a blessing to acquire it.
Though I suspect Robert would like it too?

Naw, go for it.

I do think Mavaro can use the Planchette on someone else's turn, so you could automatically pick it up, and then Valendron could come and get it next time, to use for the scenario.

I'm still going to move to the sea caves and hopefully get through a card or two there, so I'll leave the ruby up to you two.

Hi y'all:
It would be helpful to post what time zone you are on and what hours you will usually be active.
I'll have several different schedules:

today-July 26 (pretty much)
EDT (Boston, MA)
I am up by 5 AM without fail.
I sleep about 9 or 9:30 PM most days.
During workdays I can intermittently check on the game if work allows, which will always be uncertain.

July 27-July 28
Traveling to Khartoum, Sudan. Probably offline.

July 29-Aug 17
GMT+2 (Khartoum, Sudan)
I'll only be online when in my hotel (which has wifi), but that will be a common thing (it's wicked hot there, for one, and the hotel has AC).
Probably hours (approximate):
8 AM local time (2 AM EDT) to
11 PM local time (5 PM EDT)

Thanks
Robert

Khartoum is one of those city names that I feel like just has such an epic sound to it.

KHARTOOOOOOOUM!!!

:-D

I often post via phone, so I'll be active throughout the day, albeit without any real pattern. I'm Central US (GMT-6).

I'm also Central US, and post sporadically throughout the day, from around 7am to 11pm.

As for the raker shoals - it helps a lot that the henchman is right on top, so I guess we should go close it sooner than later, before something happens to cause it to be shuffled.

My understanding is that any character can discard to reduce the structural damage. It makes sense to split it up among us if we can. I'm about to cure myself so I can afford to discard one.

I agree about closing the Raker Shoals, and about splitting up the structural damage among all of us.

Yep. This'll sound pedantic because I was posting it in the Gameplay thread before Elinnea pointed out the discussion was here:
To close Raker Shoals, we must absorb 4 Structural Damage to our ship without the ship taking any damage (because that would wreck it).
We have no way to reduce Structural Damage except to discard cards.
*Anyone* can discard these cards. Mavaro doesn't have to discard anything.
AFTER Raker Shoals closes, the location will force Mavaro to discard a card. (If he didn't have any cards in hand, that would be fine; he'd ignore the impossible instruction.)

I can discard Steal Book. *sigh*

I ask to not discard because:
-- the 2-check immune-to-poison villain could handwipe me
-- losing Steal Book loses me 2 cards
-- otherwise I am holding 2 blessings 2 attack spells and a boon for my own close.

If need be I can discard Chain Mail. But if others can Cure their losses I'd ask that to be done first.

Sorry but I'll be offline for awhile...

Oh, that's what the fifth discard was about. My bad, I missed the permanent close power. What a harsh location.

I’ll discard Valendron’s Blast Stone for 1 structural damage, but everything else in my hand recharges, so I’d rather hang on to the rest.

I didn't even see this Discussion tab...and it doesn't even work when browsing via mobile - it cuts off the right hand of the page and you can't "scroll" over. Wish I had seen this tab on Sunday...and yes, I did call my alias "Mavario." It is not a typo. My Mavaro wears a red hat, red pants, and blue shirt, and says "It's a me, Mavario!"

Total PITA to try to use this forum on mobile. I don't think there's any chance of me using anything but mobile during the workday, but I'll see. Might try Firefox or something, but it's awful...the typing has a significant lag, cutting & pasting is terrible...it's the worst.

Now to take my turn...I only really needed one card, since I need to have Cure + a card to discard to get another card top-decked that has the Divine skill to do anything but banish the Cure when I then cure myself of all the damage I'm about to take...

So no way to do damage in my hand and very few cards in my deck...I suppose Stalking Armor might save me from one fatal blow, but that's it. I'm going to be playing it very safely until and unless I get a Cure...probably hanging out at Fog Bank and / or Rocky Cliff for the rest of the scenario. But Raker Shoals is closed. Hope we at least get enough cards for us to each get one deck upgrade.

That's odd that the site isn't working for you. I routinely come here using Chrome on my iPad, and I don't have any problems.

(Brief forum search later) Ah, it seems to be an Android thing; a bunch of people are reporting the problem here. For now I'll try to remember to post in gameplay if I need you to see something urgently.

That turn though, oof. If it comes up again in the future, I'd think it would make more sense to hand your Cure to Lini and have her heal you and try to recharge it, than to discard an extra card just to get access to the Divine skill. A 1d8+1 only has a 25% chance to recharge, anyway.

Are we open to retconning?

The argument is: if all four of us were sitting around a table playing the game (as is the intention), we would be more involved in each player's turn, offering suggestions before the player makes a risky maneuver.

Here the situation is:
If Mavario, down to a few cards, rolls a 1 on a Cure roll that he really needed to be a 4, would we have offered a blessing for the Cure recharge?

Celeste is holding a Blessing of the Ancients. Mavario's blessing was Gods, so the BoA recharges on his turn. If we were sitting around the table, I'm certain I would have said "Let me recharge my BoA on your Cure recharge check", especially since this helps Mavario more than most any other character, since he can move the Cure from the bottom to the top of his deck.

I move that Celeste recharged her BoA on Mavario's Cure recharge check. All in favor say Aye. If this passes, Calthaer should roll another d8. Only a 50-50 shot that'll work, but worth the attempt.

But we aren't around a table, we're typing posts on a forum. I move we just play it. If we fail, we fail. The issue isn't as much that the cure didn't recharge as it is that I spent a whole hand of six cards and could only get two back.

At least we might get some deck upgrades to get a better shot next time. If I even get the Rum Bottle that would turn into a Staff of Minor Healing, which would change everything. We don't have to win every time...just make some progress. Deck upgrades are progress.

Hm, I’m inclined to just play it as-is. (Or letting it be the box-runner’s decision.)

I’m a little leery about using a retcon here, because if Mavaro had rolled better, I don’t think we’d even be talking about whether Celeste should go back and use the blessing.

(In general, my philosophy on retcons is that I’ll only redo something that I’d have done regardless of the outcome. Like, if I rolled a d10 instead of a d12, I’d redo the roll, regardless of whether the d12 succeeded. That type of thing.)

My point is: the objective is to have fun. We aren't in a tournament.

This is meant to be an interactive, cooperative game, with each of us looking out for the experience of the others. PBP by its nature acts against that: with often wildly different schedules, stopping frequently to check with the other players would slow our play quite considerably.

Most people tend to not want to use the resources of the other players, and so "go it alone" when taking their turn far more than the game ever intended.

I'm offering that an antidote to this is that when a player hits such misfortune, especially early in the scenario, that the rest of the scenario is likely to be a bleak experience for them, re-doing part of their turn as a more cooperative endeavor is OK. In fact, it's entirely in the spirit of the game.

Let's put the question to Tyler: can I retroactively recharge a BoA to add a d8 to Calthaer's Cure recharge?

Let's say for this time, yes. That said, I'm going to try to define my retcon policy right now for future reference.

The nature of play-by-post definitely can make it more difficult to share help around the table. If you are taking your turn and feel that, if you were at a physical table, you might ask for more help than has been explicitly offered already, definitely pause and ask.
Here are the situations where I think a retcon is generally warranted, with the caveat that the person posting missed something or didn't know or understand the powers of players or boons available around the table:
1) the whole party would take damage or suffer in some way upon failure
2) the failure would cause a major bane (villain or henchman or something) to become "lost" (shuffled in) when it was known
3) a character would die
4) the failure would directly cause a loss of the scenario

Does that make sense for everyone?

Side-thing: I was also having trouble with this thread being cut off to the right, but if you put something in the post box and hit preview, you can see everything correctly. :)

Thanks Tyler.

Thanks also for posting the retcon policy.
One question: what qualifies as "missed something"? Does "another player could have helped substantially without much cost to them" qualify as "missed something"? Or does it have to be more of the nature of "I didn't know that card or power applied here" or "I didn't realize you had that card"?

Basically, I'm asking the person who took the turn to think about it and say "Was I aware that such help was available?" whether that be because they didn't understand the powers or they didn't know the card was on the table. If the answer in your mind is "No, I wasn't aware, for whatever reason, when I posted, and that other player could have said to me 'hey, I can help in X way, don't roll yet!'" then I am willing to consider a retcon.

Cool?

The retcon policy sounds ok to me. In general, I agree with Calthaer that even if we don't win it's good to get some card upgrades and try it again. We just need to make sure we can keep Mavaro (and the rest of us) alive long enough to enjoy the fruits of our toil, whether it's a win or a loss. :)

My thoughts exactly. I have an armor in hand that gives me at least one save. Recharging this Cure is not a big deal; if it was make or break, I would have asked, and I don't think it is. It was an expensive location close but that was always going to be the case; I really wish we could chase the villain there but that's not how the cards fell out. With almost a third of our turns gone and no locations closed we just had to bite the bullet and take some risks.

Let's just play our hands and see what we get. I don't care about minmaxing or even winning every scenario as long as there is loot at the end of the day. These first few are going to be painful no matter what we do because we have the worst boons in our decks and no powers or skill feats...I know that getting just a single power feat so that Mavaro can recharge a card to topdeck something will change his life. Let's just plough through as fast as we can, maybe failing along the way, until we eventually dig out of the newbie suckiness.

Also - I installed Firefox on my phone and it works OK on mobile - I can see the entire Discussion page and can actually type ( significant lag on Chrome). So no need to use gameplay page for it. I will still be pretty limited in what I can do during the workday but this is much better.