Aubrey's Eberron campaign. (Inactive)

Game Master Aubrey the Malformed

Well, a couple of years ago my 4e campaign ground to a halt once we finally achieved level 30. We were all a bit burnt out after the experience, so we haven't attempted anything on that scale since. But we did have quite good fun playing Pathfinder (for the first time with this group, and the first time for me face-to-face) and running through The Dragon's Demand - that finished a couple of months ago. That was interesting - as a scenario it was relatively easy, although we had a fatality at the end with the ultimate draconic smackdown. But right now we are having a board game phase - thirty levels of 4e is still causing trauma.

Wow, level 30. Does 4e top out there, or could you have kept going had you wanted (ie, do the rules support play past that level)? I can appreciate that you might have been somewhat burnt out after that. Have you (or your group) checked out 5e (that's a thing now right?) or do you think you'll stick with 4th or Pathfinder in the future?

The Dragon's Demand, that's one of the new look, new heft super Pathfinder modules right? I get the impression they are more like mini campaigns (or at least campaign arcs) than single adventures. I've heard good things about that one, may need to check it out at some point.

What board games are you playing? I've historically not been a huge fan of board or card games, but my group pulls them out from time to time when we can't get the numbers (or the motivation) for Pathfinder. I've quite enjoyed Dead of Winter on the board game front and Race for the Galaxy as far as card games go.

No, level 30 is the cap. I've looked at 5e - I've got the three core books - but wasn't really inspired. It's not a bad system but feels a bit bland. I quite liked 4e and it gave all the characters something interesting to do. 5e is a sort of blend of 3e and 4e, and is similar enough to PF for me to not be especially interested in trying it.

The Dragon's demand went from level 1 to about level 7, so yes, a mini-campaign is a better way to look at it. I'm thinking maybe we could use the same characters for the Horror on Hook Street.

As for board games, I just play what I'm given. Some of the guys have quite extensive collections but I don't have a thing. We played some samurai thing last time - the guy who won didn't fight a single war and just built temples. The wimp. I came third out of four but at least I beat the guy who kept attacking me.

Lately IRL i havent had any games, san diego seems to have little in the way of open groups, the many game stores mostly cater to cash cows: Warhammer and Magic the Gathering. Meetup.com and actual cork-board postings have done little good.

I have been reading into Eclipse Phase and i think i might run a game on the boards here, once i read through the system a few times. The setting has me fascinated.

I used to be a big-time board gamer (went to wargaming cons, had the complete Squad Leader/Advanced Squad Leader lineup, was a fairly successful ASL tournament player etc.), but it all fell by the wayside when I moved and couldn't find partners. ASL isn't the easiest system, and the fights take a while, and it doesn't help that it is out of print. Eventually, I sold my gaming set and, quite seriously, bought a car with the money.

So these days, it's all RPGing; currently, I only play at the Paizo website. If I get the time and money I'd love to build and paint a Warhammer 40K army. We'll see.

Lately IRL i havent had any games, san diego seems to have little in the way of open groups, the many game stores mostly cater to cash cows: Warhammer and Magic the Gathering. Meetup.com and actual cork-board postings have done little good.

I have been reading into Eclipse Phase and i think i might run a game on the boards here, once i read through the system a few times. The setting has me fascinated.

Yeah, most of the gaming stores in my area are similar. Actually, you'd probably be lucky to even get Magic these days, most people I see seem to be playing Pokemon or some obscure card games I've never heard of.

I've heard of Eclipse Phase, the setting sounds cool, though I'm completely unfamiliar with the rules set. I've never really played or run a sci-fi RPG that got off the ground in a big way. Years ago my group played a few sessions of Phase World (more fantasy in space than scifi really), until we decided we weren't huge fans of the Rifts/Palladium ruleset. I tried to run a StarDrive (Alternity rules) game that only lasted a session or two, and recently our group began a Rogue Trader game (during a brief hiatus from Pathfinder), we played about two sessions of that too and it now appears to be dead in the water.

I used to be a big-time board gamer (went to wargaming cons, had the complete Squad Leader/Advanced Squad Leader lineup, was a fairly successful ASL tournament player etc.), but it all fell by the wayside when I moved and couldn't find partners. ASL isn't the easiest system, and the fights take a while, and it doesn't help that it is out of print. Eventually, I sold my gaming set and, quite seriously, bought a car with the money.

So these days, it's all RPGing; currently, I only play at the Paizo website. If I get the time and money I'd love to build and paint a Warhammer 40K army. We'll see.

I like the figures for Warhammer and 40K, but I find it really tedious to paint and play big army games like that. Many years ago I had Tyranid and later Dark Eldar armies for 40K, but no longer own more than a few odd figures.

I prefer smaller skirmish games - Necromunda and Mordheim were both great I thought, but long out of print and hard to find players. I have recently begun collecting Malifaux figures - beautiful models (well, beautiful in a grotesque sort of way for the most part), but fiendishly difficult to glue together, and I haven't managed a good paint job on any of them yet. Also haven't managed to play a game with them.

We played Arkham Horror about a month ago with a table full of people. First time I'd played with more than just me and Mrs Ith.

I have Dragon's Demand and have toyed with the idea of running through a VTT at some point, but my schedule remains too unpredictable for making those kind of plans. It looks good though. I did find a huge gaming cafe in the center of Athens recently, but they are focused mostly on various card games with different events per day. Monday evening is 5e, but I haven't been inspired enough to check it out yet. Pathfinder is not distributed in Greece, so no luck there. Tenro- I like the setting of Eclipse Phase a lot, but didn't read enough to figure out the system in detail. It seems difficult from a story telling perspective to work around appropriate memory loss when a body dies and you reboot in another with no idea what went wrong. Btw- if you haven't seen it there is an episode of Dark Matter that specifically has something like this. You can buy a 2 day clone body for galaxy spanning vacation time while your real body remains in stasis. Also unrelated- but if you guys haven't seen The Expanse and you like sci fi shows, take some time to check it out.

Also, Tenro I thought you were still in South Korea. I haven't been paying attention apparently :)

yeah, i havent even gotten to the point in the book where they explain the rules, i am reading the timeline and setting info first. i think it is d10/d100 so i imagine it wont be the smoothest thing ever, but the setting has me hooked.

growing up i was an insatiable reader and my dad let me read any of his books i wanted, and they were all sci-fi, which got me into the genre, though the prevalence of swords-and-sorcery style fantasy supplanted that for quite some time.

I've heard of Eclipse Phase, the setting sounds cool, though I'm completely unfamiliar with the rules set. I've never really played or run a sci-fi RPG that got off the ground in a big way. Years ago my group played a few sessions of Phase World (more fantasy in space than scifi really), until we decided we weren't huge fans of the Rifts/Palladium ruleset. I tried to run a StarDrive (Alternity rules) game that only lasted a session or two, and recently our group began a Rogue Trader game (during a brief hiatus from Pathfinder), we played about two sessions of that too and it now appears to be dead in the water.

My favorite sci fi game has always been White Wolf's Aeon Trinity. I haven't really even looked at any others except Eclipse Phase which I picked up while travelling out of curiosity.

Sadly, I don't even recognize most of the games you are talking about, so I can't even share an opinion. I have picked up some sci fi recently via Kickstarter or Bundle of Holding, but have not even looked at any of them yet. *sigh*

Trinity has been out of print for about 16 years so you'll get a pass on that one ;)

I picked up the old-school Traveler, so age doesn't really necessarily let one off the hook these days.

Arkham Horror is the game that my group always seems to pull out when I’m the one that can’t make the session, so I’ve not played it yet but heard good things.

I haven’t heard of Dark Matter or Eclipse – both sound like shows I should try to check out.

Aeon Trinity was another game that never got off the ground. I think we got as far as character creation (I was going to play a Ministry Telepath) before the guy who had the books left to go to uni in another state.

Eclipse Phase pdfs available for free here, and of course if you like it you are encouraged to buy it

i probably will soon, once i pay off a few things.

Yes, like AG I don't recognize the names of most of these games. We used to play Traveller quite a lot back in school but not really since then.

I know the names, but I don’t play much apart from Pathfinder. I am currently running Carrion Crown for my group, we have gotten quite bogged down in Book 5 for various reasons. I am running a very sporadic Skull and Shackles game for my brothers and some other occasional attendees. And then running various things (some Pathfinder, some Beginner Box, some free form roleplaying) for kids – my own, my nephews, the kids of some of the other guys from the main gaming group.

I played a lot of Traveller way back when as well. Lots of fond memories of that system. We also played GURPS, Runequest and RoleMaster; GURPS might still be around, but I think the latter two are long-defunct.

Funnily enough there was a Kickstarter from some guys who wanted to republish all of the old RuneQuest books in facsimile. They did pretty well so they should reappear in a few months. I played loads of RQ and RoleMaster too (I didn't actually play a lot of D&D back in the old days). RM, of course, had all of the Middle Earth stuff and we played lots of that. My favorite character was Fubb the Half-Troll who (due to a mishap on a fumble chart) bit off his own tongue and swallowed it during a moment of great excitement. Talking of Middle Earth, you can try the Gandhi v Gandalf Quiz, below:

Quiz - safe for work.

I believe RM is still fitfully kicking somewhere and has received one or more updates since the eighties. That was a fun system - just reading the critical and fumble charts was quite fun due to the twisted sense of humour of the designers (Fubb's mishap provides an example).

RoleMaster and SpaceMaster were both great (math and tables don't scare me). But, man, the character creation and level gain took forever. Once all that was set up, the game itself was pretty fast-paced and fun. And, yes, somebody put a lot of thought and effort into the crit tables. Fear the 66!

Talking of Middle Earth, you can try the Gandhi v Gandalf Quiz, below:

Quiz - safe for work.

Ooh, only 7 out of 9 for me.

dang, i got 6/9

7 of 9. My Gandalf-fu is slipping.

As of tonight my group has officially finished Book 5 of Carrion Crown! I guess I better get re-reading book 6, which I haven't read properly since before we began the campaign 3 or 4 years ago if I am to do it any justice in running it next fortnight ...

I played in a Carrion Crown pbp. We promptly TPK'd in our first foray into the underground portion of the jail and the game ended there. We were playing full horror mode apparently.

This is the trailer for show The Expanse I mentioned before.

And another

I played in a Carrion Crown pbp. We promptly TPK'd in our first foray into the underground portion of the jail and the game ended there. We were playing full horror mode apparently.

Yep, the dungeon level of Harrowstone is pretty deadly, had we not been using hero points I’m pretty sure we would have lost a few PCs. So far we’ve had three PCs die in the campaign (funnily enough all played by the same player).

Yep, the dungeon level of Harrowstone is pretty deadly, had we not been using hero points I’m pretty sure we would have lost a few PCs. So far we’ve had three PCs die in the campaign (funnily enough all played by the same player).

Always amusing when that happens, as long as the player was fine with it. one IRL group i was in for awhile, we all sat around a big table, i forget how many of us there were (it fluctuated) but it was my second-biggest group. It was weird how it worked out, but just about every session someone would die. And it usually went around the table in order (or sometimes it would skip a person, but never more than one person), but in between each of these deaths, the same guy's character would die. The worst part is he wasn't good at picking names, much less so when he had to pick a new name every other week or so. So he had characters with names like

Fi Tor
Hee Lor
Rain Jor
Mage-Or

RL has me tied up. Please bot me as necessary and I will return in a day or two.

OK, Haladon is now in the house, so I'm going to need to see some stats for him. Also, what does he want to do next as his personal goals?

I forget, did we kill Istrinis or did she escape?

He escaped.

RL has me tied up. Please bot me as necessary and I will return in a day or two.

Well, missed that estimate - the week just got busier as it went. I have knocked out all but one assignment with spring break immediately ahead of me, and the project at work was completed successfully, so I think my participation level should return to normal quickly.

OK, Haladon is now in the house, so I'm going to need to see some stats for him. Also, what does he want to do next as his personal goals?

Redemption, seek a way to remove his mark, and recover his weapon, Exardes.

Stats are up. Turning in the bone armor, sword, and ring of force shield. All total - 44,765 gp.

He escaped.

i will include that in my report

So is the plan that Mothers keeps playing Rod? Or is that just a placeholder until his real PC shows up?

Well I’d like to bring LB back in some capacity at some point, but in discussion with Aubrey it probably doesn’t make sense to do so at this time – possibly ‘soon’ in game time, but maybe a long way off in real time. I did think about bringing in a completely new character, but there’s been quite a bit of turn-over of characters in the group ‘recently’ (game time, if not real time), so I thought it might make more sense to play an established character for the time being. I don’t think Aubrey had necessarily planned to park Rod in Sharn, so we agreed that it made sense for me to play him until either Heath returns, we get to a point where I can bring in a PC, or it gets to a more logical point in the game for Rod to go on hiatus. I’m not sure how far away any of those things might be.

That's broadly it, but the timing is tricky - "soon" in game time is a bit meaningless as the last three of four days of game time took just under three years to play through.

Indeed. Obviously these games ebb and flow as real life impacts to a greater or lesser extent, but 'dungeon' environments always seem to slow things too. Doors and multiple choice passageways always seem to impact things in a face to face game, but in pbp each closed door can potentially add a week! Not to mention that high level combats also tend to run quite slowly.

Got it. And, yeah, even though LB has been gone for several years now in real time, he's only been away for a month, maybe, in game time - probably not enough to even make his way back to Sharn.

Also, if you are playing Rod for a while, you might perhaps want to change his last feat (Divine Intervention). I chose it mostly on a whim and have never used it; if you want something more suited to your vision of Rod, go right ahead.

this reminds me of a comic book where the hero persists but the writer changes

Also, if you are playing Rod for a while, you might perhaps want to change his last feat (Divine Intervention). I chose it mostly on a whim and have never used it; if you want something more suited to your vision of Rod, go right ahead.

I'm not familiar with that particular feat (or playing mid-high level clerics in general), so I'll need to check it out. I'll keep it in mind.

this reminds me of a comic book where the hero persists but the writer changes

Ha! Yes, something like that. I don't know if I can do Heath's vision of Rod complete justice, we'll see how it goes.

I dunno, you seem to have his slightly off-kilter deliver reasonably well.

Sorry about the general lack of posting - the house is being redecorated so I can't get to the computer at home, and while I can post at work I'm a bit busy.

What are you getting done at the house?

Nothing much, but the house décor basically hasn't been touched since we moved in ten years ago. So we are having the whole inside of the house repainted - this is the final week, and it has reached the computer room/study. So everything is under dust sheets and I've had to unplug the wifi (the wife isn't pleased with that as she can't watch stuff on her tablet, but I really could be arsed to unwind all of the wires to move the wireless box and plug it in somewhere else in the house for a couple of days). We will be having the kitchen done in a few months (it's taken us months to find someone we like, but we've done that now so it's a final look at work surfaces and taps and then getting it scheduled for a few months time) but while that will massively disrupt life in general it will hopefully not disrupt the games to the same extent (I'll probably be hiding in the study from the mess rather than avoiding it like I am now).

I'm sure it will all be worth it once it's done, but living amongst renovations can certainly be a pain.

So what happened to this sword?

The Order of the Onyx Skull took it for the one they gave him, Caedes. Rolund was calling it Tarrnish while he was a bone knight. It's original name was Exardes.

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