[ACG] [OutPost I] Cartmanbeck's Season of the Runelords Adventure 1: Dark Waters Rising (Inactive)

Game Master cartmanbeck

Choice 1-Blessing B: 1d1000 ⇒ 937

Let's see if I've got this figured out right?

Choice 2-Spell 1: 1d1000 ⇒ 467

Choice 3-Blessing B: 1d1000 ⇒ 141

For power, being kind of boring and plain...

'Proficient with: Light Armors [x] Weapons'

So that leaves us with:

Adowyn - Spell 1
Rivani - Spell 1
Oloch - Blessing B
Maznar - Blessing B

Rivani will swap out Telempathic Projection for Inflict Pain

Adowyn will use the Spell 1 to change Call Animal into Aspect of the Falcon.

Just missing Oloch's reward choice. I'll set up the next scenario now.

Ah crap I thought I did. I took another Blessing (B). Trading two BoTG for two BoTS (Samurai).

Is it too late to say "Y'know what, y'all's a buncha ungrateful f@$#^#$, we outties"? :P

Another blessing? Did we get two deck upgrades?

Oh no I misread the reward. It is just the one Blessing of The Samurai.

Hadn't updated deck, Maznar is going to take some faith-based butt-kicking training from Oloch. ie, Blessing of Gorum, swapping out a Blessing of the Gods for it.

Sorry for the slow updating today, but the game is underway! Maznar is up first.

I'll be a bit more pro-active next turn, sorry for the weak start.

No problem. I was wondering why you discarded your armor after failing to pick up the Acid Arrow spell? There's no penalty for not acquiring a boon other than it being banished.

Glassworks
At This Location: If you fail a check, discard the top card of your deck.

I failed the check to acquire. I discarded the top card of my deck. Was that an incorrect read of the location rule?

Oof, that's a painful effect. Especially for the 2 allies that are there and will be particularly difficult to acquire for the scenario. At least you have the ability to heal yourself, but if it happens too many times we could send someone else there to help explore and spread out the risk.

To make sure we're all on the same page, I do want to point out that having no henchmen or villain means that to close a location we need to get it empty. In order to win, we need to deal with every single card, one way or another - either by acquiring, or banishing, or defeating.

It also means that we don't need to temp close anything. Any of us could help at any location, without needing to worry about suddenly having to make a closing check, and you have some control over when you reach the bottom and need to make a check, or banish a card, or whatever it takes to close. We'll all be able to see it coming.

I'm guessing time will not be on our side, but that depends on a lot of things so who knows at this point. Just something to keep in mind. :)

Yep, you read that correctly, Wei Ji. And yeah, this scenario can be a little rough, so it's important to make the most of your explorations!

Eeesh, go to a convention for a weekend, unleash a skeletal horde on fellow players.

Back, and sorry about that.

Haha, they'll survive (probably)!

"I think I speak for our whole team there. Let's let Nature reclaim this forsaken hamlet!"

Any requests for location before I take my turn?

Hm, I predict we'll have trouble with the Rusty Dragon since none of us are particularly charismatic types. If you can be there with an animal for the bonus d4 it would help for the closing check, and maybe also our chances to collect allies there.

Any of the locations with a bunch of cards left would probably be fine though.

I had another thought- maybe one of us could help Rivani at the Town Square, since she keeps avoiding cards she doesn’t want to deal with. Is that longsword still in there somewhere? hehe

Weekends are retail hell.

Still trying to figure out where to go.

I'm afraid to pick 'the wrong place' and mess everything up, because it's going to be very tight unless we get really, really lucky.

Ok, how about this: don't go to the Town Square, the Glassworks, or the Temple. Any of the other three would be fine. We don't know what will happen, or what cards are there, so there is no absolute right choice. We'll all do our best to support each other in whatever ways we can. Seeing things play out and realizing after the fact 'Oh, I could have helped more by doing such and such' is honestly the best way to learn.

If things don't go well, we might run out of time and lose the scenario. But even that is not that bad - we can learn from it and try a different strategy next time. It'll be ok. :)

Dead.

Go team.

Good luck.

Also, I'm not wasting turns now.

Hopefully that helps at least a little bit?

P.S.: Don't forget to burn this miserable place to the ground to bring it back to Nature!

I'm sorry you died, Maznar! The team, as long as they're willing, can use three die bumps as a group at the end to bring you back to life.

For what it's worth, I don't think you wasted turns, you've been a great player, and it'll be sad to not have you for the rest of the scenario!

I am *not* going to insist or even request people spend their hard-earned character advancement on recovering my character.

That's not fair to them.

In fact, going so far as to request folks do NOT use their advancements to do that.

Please.

I'd much rather see everyone else something neat than deprive everyone else of something neat because I didn't do all that great.

And it would really kill any fun I have/had.

Build your characters, make them awesome, and

That all aside, it had to happen sometime to someone for it to be a valid play experience, I guess. Is that a 0/0/0 chronicle? How does it work? Do I delete the character from my characters?

You'll still get the chronicle sheet, it'll just say "Died" on that scenario. The character will unfortunately not be able to play anymore if he isn't revived, though.

Well, there's not much cure for that and I don't want to cripple other characters and their advancement.

It's not like there's any Boons of note, right?

EDIT: That also renders a third of my Druid deck useless, right?

Someone else talked to me.

Make whatever choice you're going to make provided the table gets to that point.

Hoping you all can pull it off. Will keep watching and cheerleading from the sidelines!

Good luck!

Oh no! Dwarf down! (Admittedly it is useful to see how character death is handled in organized play.) Personally I think I'd save a die bump for the purpose of resurrecting a character anyway, since it seems much more powerful than adding or subtracting 1 from a roll, unless I'm missing something.

And yeah - Sandpoint is really not coming off very well in this scenario, haha.

Oh no, you can re-use all of those cards for other characters. They're not "Locked" into a single character or anything. You could even create a new version of Maznar and play him through the exact same scenarios, if you wanted to. We don't have any restrictions on replays in the ACG. :)

Would it be extraordinarily gamey to wait to see what the chronicle is like before making that decision?

Nope, it's fine. :)

It takes 3 die bumps (which can be throughout the whole table) to revive a dead character at the end of a scenario.

Yeah, Rivani is happy to look at the die bump option assuming she survives the scenario herself, and particularly if we're considering playing on with this group.

Sandpoint is not being kind! I think we have 20 cards left to explore and only about 13 more turns. Rivani doesn't have more than about 1 or two extra explores left in her whole deck and would have to use up all her cards to even get to those, I think. Not sure about everyone else.

After moving to the Water I realize that was a terrible idea. That location effect is crappy for me.

And even so you managed to take out one of the two remaining monsters. :D

Don't forget that allies everywhere are 5 more difficult to acquire though.

If you can get out before closing, Adowyn, and losing a card won't hurt Oloch, that may be the best option. That way you can already be in position at another location at the start of your next turn, and blessings can be used anywhere, right, along with some hands?

I'd say move?

Makes sense to me. I'll do that.

Sorry for a late post. Had nothing good coming up for my hand this turn but please take the blessing if needed. And my last turn I can grab some more blessings.

So, today is OFFICIALLY the last day of OutPost! I think overall it's gone very well!

I plan to continue to run the last two scenarios of this adventure for you guys, if you're up for them.

For some reason, it really didn't occur to me that none of your characters HAVE any die bumps yet, since this was the first adventure for all of you. So, unfortunately, Maznar's death will have to be permanent for the moment (as three die bumps, collectively, are required to resurrect him). However, if Wei Ji would like to build a new character to continue in the last two scenarios with the group, he's more than welcome to.

I'll be reporting these scenarios as part of OutPost, so I will try to get chronicle sheets to you all sometime in the next week or so. For those of you continuing on, I'll then edit those chronicle sheets to add the next two scenarios as you complete them.

If you have any feedback at all about how OutPost was run, how these scenarios worked for you, or on my own box-running, please let me know (or if you're uncomfortable giving me direct feedback, you can let Jesse know at ironhelixx@orgplayonline.com)

It'd be pointless to even take a chronicle or build another character if the chronicle is going to be dead, right?

EDIT:
First and most important feedback.

This is the first chronicle I'd be getting (it's not my first character in ACG, unfortunately Gronk was first.) and it's going to be for a dead character. It's a waste, not only of time, but of effort on all parts.

This is not a good way to build desire to play in the campaign.

There needs to be some sort of mitigator for this sort of thing at the start of any new player's play, because right now I've gone from "Oh, hey, this was kind of a neat positive thing that I even went out and got another Deck for (Monk)" to "Should I even bother playing this anymore if this is the sort of thing that happens?"

Trying to build the campaign needs something in there for new folks.

I don't need it myself, as I said, I'm still on the fence, but someone who took this up at a convention or the like would walk away and not look back... and why should they?

Apologies if that comes off bitter.

Ironically, the monk deck came in mail today.

I totally understand your frustration, Wei-Ji. Trust me, many of us have had the same frustration at losing a character to death in the first few scenarios of his/her first adventure. This is actually one of the major reasons the "die bumps" system was created... if you can only make it through that first adventure, and if you've got at least 3 people in your group, you can resurrect a character who died.

This format obviously also doesn't lend itself to group discussion on the best way to take a turn, and likely led to some of your turns being less fruitful than they could have been. The turn in which Maznar died, for example, there were several blessings available around the table, and if we'd been sitting at a physical table, someone may have been able to say "hey wait, don't roll 1d8+1 on that combat 13, let me give you a blessing to give you better odds, otherwise you might die!"

I hope this hasn't swayed you away from PACG, as I personally think you were an excellent player in the game and would love to see you play at more of my tables.

I just say if you come up with a 'Welcome to PACG' you call it 'Maznar's Regret' :P

I can't help anyone by playing more, unfortuantely, because it'd be a DEAD chronicle and any character I brought in would ALSO be DEAD.

...there has to be a better way.

EDIT
The problem with the format is that if I had *waited* for 'table talk' or suggestions, it could have conceivably been *another week* before I actually took my turn, and I felt INCREDIBLE pressure to try and 'hurry things up' because I had taken too long on my turn.

If there's some way to mitigate that pressure, that might help, too.

The other really, really rotten feeling was because I felt rushed, I may have screwed the entire team.

Sorry about that.

I'm not sure what you mean, Wei Ji? You could make a new character (even a Maznar identical to the one you started the first scenario with, or a Monk that you were excited to try) and begin the next one. Theoretically, we could all create brand new tier 1 characters for the next scenario. Each scenario is independent, and you could later go back to play the first couple ones with the new character as well. We could also go back to replay the first scenarios with you on our current characters, though we'd be forced to go up a tier at some point.

Not that I'm proposing any of those things specifically, but I think the card game organized play is actually quite forgiving in that respect, compared to the RPG.

I also don't feel like we've been screwed by any of your actions or inactions. I've been having fun, and don't consider any of it a waste of time. If I contributed to your feeling of being rushed, I apologize. I want you to have a good time too. :(

On a side note, when I was first learning to play (with a base set, not OP) I killed off a good four or five characters before I started to figure out what I was doing. I think it just took some time and practice to get a good sense of what's in my deck, when to explore or push and went to hold back. I think my record was Alahazra who died on her second turn in the first scenario I tried to use her in. =.=

Also thinking about what Wei Ji says about being hard on new people, it's actually a little surprising that the PACG doesn't have something like the Welcome boons from Pathfinder RPG and Starfinder: something you can only use once, on your first registered character, to stay alive in a game you're not used to. If a rez would be too strong, maybe at least something like a free reroll. Has that ever been considered in the past?

Sorry for the long post, just venting some thoughts I guess. :)

P.S. I also meant to say, I would like to play the final two scenarios, if others are up for continuing. Why are the goblins all sick? Where is the dragon now? Will Sandpoint actually be burned to the ground?! The suspense!

I couldn't put things any better than Elinnea did, so just want to echo some of those sentiments here as well, particularly with regards to enjoying the game, not feeling screwed by your actions Wei Ji, and genuinely hoping that I didn't contribute in any way to feelings of being rushed.

Keen to continue on with this group (including hopefully a new druid or monk from Wei Ji?)

Welcome boon for a single resurrection. That's a fantastic idea. I'm going to make that a thing.

As I said, I'm happy to finish out this adventure with ALL of you, and I do hope that Wei Ji joins us.

...has heard whispers on the wind of a community that needs to be looted of shiny distractions from Enlightenment...