Claimed!
Glad it is just busy and exhaustion keeping you away. Thanks for checking in.
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Our boy loves his new school and we live literally two blocks away so that has been really nice. He is nearly 6 and in the houses right around us there are other boys who are 7, 8 and 9.
I'm just checking in with the perception checks tonight because it got too late on me, but I'll expand in the morning and back on track going forward.
Okay, I ended up being out a week longer than expected, and I'm back to my first full day at work. I need to catch up on all my games, and will do my best to post something within the next 24 hrs.
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Mothy, at some point a while back I was flipping through the player's guide to this AP again and noticed that the Rift Warden Orphan campaign trait mentions that those who take it should be siblings. I had forgotten that when you brought it up before. I could revise Hannik's age upward to early twenty something to make that possible. Say if Hannik were 22 and Kaygan 28? Young enough to have been orphaned with Kaygan at 6 and Hannik at a year or less. Young enough to not recognise or really remember each other now. Thoughts?
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Mothy, at some point a while back I was flipping through the player's guide to this AP again and noticed that the Rift Warden Orphan campaign trait mentions that those who take it should be siblings. I had forgotten that when you brought it up before. I could revise Hannik's age upward to early twenty something to make that possible. Say if Hannik were 22 and Kaygan 28? Young enough to have been orphaned with Kaygan at 6 and Hannik at a year or less. Young enough to not recognise or really remember each other now. Thoughts?
The age gap sounds about right, but it's already been established in-game that Hannik is a teenager, whereas I've been a lot more vague with Kaygan's age; how about Hannik 19, Kaygan 25 if it works for you? Hannik gets to stay a teenager and Kaygan is still old enough to have undertaken a wizarding apprenticeship.
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A bit like last time, I'm not sure this will work for non-UK listeners, but here's the Radio 2 tribute to John Williams.
Hey, Aubrey, back to a question I had spoilered a while back. While using Terendelev's scale to alter self, does Sol need bits of the creature impersonated? Can he mimic specific people?
School transmutation (polymorph); Level bard 2, sorcerer/wizard 2
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, M (a piece of the creature whose form you plan to assume)
Range personal
Target you
Duration 1 min./level (D)
When you cast this spell, you can assume the form of any Small or Medium creature of the humanoid type. If the form you assume has any of the following abilities, you gain the listed ability: darkvision 60 feet, low-light vision, scent, and swim 30 feet.
Small creature: If the form you take is that of a Small humanoid, you gain a +2 size bonus to your Dexterity.
Medium creature: If the form you take is that of a Medium humanoid, you gain a +2 size bonus to your Strength.
Minor Artifact
SLOT none CL 19th WEIGHT —
AURA strong (varies)These palm-sized silver dragon scales are unique items—essentially minor artifacts resulting from Terendelev’s death on the Storm King’s blade. Disguise: Three times per day as a standard action, a scale can be used to cast alter self. While disguised, the target gains a +4 bonus on all Bluff checks made against evil creatures.
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And I'm back. Baby Aleksander was born on Monday morning; he's clocking in at a healthy 8 pounds 12 ounces, and both he and his mom are doing well. We got home last night and are currently juggling catching up on sleep and getting his healthcare paperwork in order. Thank FSM I have next week off, as it is Phoenix' HS spring break.
Congratulations, papa!
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So I'm thinking - is there an AP you guys would like to play, but haven't?
Plenty of them, but Iron Gods quite interests me (though maybe at this point you just wait for Starfinder to play a sci-fi / fantasy mix). Shattered Star and Mummys Mask look quite good, but are very dungeon heavy, and dungeon crawls can drag in pbp. Hells Rebels seems quite good. I'm interested in Strange Aeons - vaguely considering running it at some point if time permits.
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I'm thinking about kicking off a gritty Eberron Inquisitives in Sharn game soon if that appeals to any of you guys. I'm going to string together mostly 3rd party short adventures squeezing in a few that ran toward the end of Dungeon magazine. Same general idea from the first pbp I ran nine years ago, but a different story line and with the advantage of having run a few successfully in the meantime.
It might be hard to have a group of veteran players who hadn't read or played Curse of the Crimson Throne, but it did just get the hardback treatment. How well did PF handle Cthulhu style with Strange Aeons? I was interested in that one, but haven't actually read it. Hell's Rebels might be good too. I do like the ones where PCs have a base of operations and a recurring cast of npc and organizations.
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By the way, just wanted to say: Aleksander - good choice.
It is - and we spelled it right, too. ;P
As for APs - Second Darkness, Council of Thieves, Jade Regent, Skull and Shackles and Carrion Crown[i] have their moments, but are mostly meh. I like [i]Kingmaker, but we've tried that one already. Shattered Star has some amazing sequences, but is too dungeon heavy for PbP. I really, really wanted to like Reign of Winter, but it is merely OK.
I thought Legacy of Fire and Serpents Skull were the best of the bunch, though the latter is marred by the slapdash jungle city; I also have huge issues with the serpentfolk concept. Change them to less-degenerate troglodytes or something similar, and that AP becomes more or less perfect. Curse of the Crimson Throne is also good, but not quite up to the level of the other two.
So I'm thinking - is there an AP you guys would like to play, but haven't?
That's a long list for me. I have seen the opening of several, but I don't think six have gotten past the first few scenes. I have resisted reading my copies, so I'm up for anything this table has in mind.
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What I've seen of Iron Gods (which isn't much) looks cool. I haven't seen anything in the newer APs.
Having said that - if Aubrey has a hankering to GM some more, what I'd like would be to restart one of his other defunct Eberron campaigns. They seemed very cool to me, and deserved better than to fizz out.
Iron Gods does look cool. Aubreay has another Eberron game going today. What I have gathered of the plot as a fly on the wall is blowing me away. Excellent story arc, as always.
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Yes, I've got another Eberron game going for a while now with another group. Though the PCs are touchy - they seem ready to blow it with their biggest potential allies as they feel 'disrespected'. And the paladin makes me laugh - keeps reading deceit and evil into people's motivations, yet hasn't actually bothered to try and Detect Evil.
On the potential campaign front, I did moot an orc campaign, so that's still a possibility. I have developed that a bit more in my mind, so we can probably go with that now. I'm slightly reluctant as it would require me to do more than just read it in a book, but I'm probably persuadable if people want it.
I found Iron Gods a bit... I dunno, in the end it sort-of failed to move me in the way it should have done.
Strange Aeons has a really good opening scenario and premise, and is very atmospheric. It's not quite true to its Lovecraftian origins, in that you rarely get to whack alien horror with a battleaxe in a Lovecraft story, though Paizo admit that. But it's quite interesting, nonetheless.
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As much as I complained about Book 3 in Serpent's Skull a while back in the other thread, generally it is a good AP with a full on epic ending. I also really enjoyed that (later in the series) it has a tie-in to the original series of short fiction that ran in the first 12 or 18 issues of the adventure path. It does need work though. I had altered it, but the end run of Book 1 was crazy good. I had been following Navior's excellent pbp of the same AP just enjoying how well he handled the massive gang of npcs but unfortunately it faded out just as they were starting to explore Book 3.
That said, Aubrey I think everyone would agree that your original campaigns just have a level of consistency and quality that it would be hard for any AP to match with 6 different authors and an unknown party.
At one point I was reading up on the other Eberron game, but at the time it was a little drama with a PC who used the only healing resources of the party to heal his dog rather than any other PC. Hehe. I laughed a lot at that one.
Oh, also just wanted to say that I would be down for just about any AP Aubs runs. Though, the city-building portion of Kingmaker seems like it would be a hassle over PbP (as it was a hassle at the TT).
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I haven't really got a current idea for an Eberron campaign - I'm running two and although there was an abortive one a few years ago I effectively cannibalised the seed from that for the second one.
I do have some ideas for Golarion-based campaigns. One is the aforementioned orc campaign in Belkzen. The other is one set around the Andoran banking system, although it has to be said the ideas need working on (or thinking about in more detail, anyway).
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I'm thinking about kicking off a gritty Eberron Inquisitives in Sharn game soon if that appeals to any of you guys. I'm going to string together mostly 3rd party short adventures squeezing in a few that ran toward the end of Dungeon magazine. Same general idea from the first pbp I ran nine years ago, but a different story line and with the advantage of having run a few successfully in the meantime.
That sounds cool. I’ve probably read all the Dungeon Eberron modules but not since … whenever they stopped printing Dungeon. I recall there being a couple of good Nic Logue murder mystery style games set in Sharn.
It might be hard to have a group of veteran players who hadn't read or played Curse of the Crimson Throne, but it did just get the hardback treatment. How well did PF handle Cthulhu style with Strange Aeons? I was interested in that one, but haven't actually read it. Hell's Rebels might be good too. I do like the ones where PCs have a base of operations and a recurring cast of npc and organizations.
I played Crimson Throne a few years back with my RL group, but we went far, far off the rails – by the second book or so I think what we were playing only very vaguely resembled the adventure as written. It was good … it wouldn’t be my first choice to replay one of the few APs I’ve actually finished, but it may be worth it to see how the AP is actually supposed to go.
As far as I can see, Crimson Throne, Council of Thieves and Hells Rebels all have a lot of similarities, and I suspect Paizo came pretty close to perfecting it with the last – given the choice of the three I’d probably go with that one.
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By the way, just wanted to say: Aleksander - good choice.It is - and we spelled it right, too. ;P
As for APs - Second Darkness, Council of Thieves, Jade Regent, Skull and Shackles and Carrion Crown[i] have their moments, but are mostly meh. I like [i]Kingmaker, but we've tried that one already. Shattered Star has some amazing sequences, but is too dungeon heavy for PbP. I really, really wanted to like Reign of Winter, but it is merely OK.
I thought Legacy of Fire and Serpents Skull were the best of the bunch, though the latter is marred by the slapdash jungle city; I also have huge issues with the serpentfolk concept. Change them to less-degenerate troglodytes or something similar, and that AP becomes more or less perfect. Curse of the Crimson Throne is also good, but not quite up to the level of the other two.
I started running Legacy of Fire as a pbp years back, but the game fell apart after a couple of months due to lack of player commitment. I don’t know, I thought it was quite a good campaign, maybe I didn’t do it justice. I found Serpents Skull a bit hit and miss, but the good parts seemed very good. I don’t mind the serpent folk, especially now that they are quite entwined in Golarion ‘history’.
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Strange Aeons has a really good opening scenario and premise, and is very atmospheric. It's not quite true to its Lovecraftian origins, in that you rarely get to whack alien horror with a battleaxe in a Lovecraft story, though Paizo admit that. But it's quite interesting, nonetheless.
I liked playing Call of Cthulhu back in the day – it was such an achievement to stop the summoning ritual, defeat the ghouls (or what have you) even if your character ended up dead or mad by the end of the session … but, while it’s not true to Lovecraft, I also like the idea of whacking a horror from beyond space with a batteaxe …
I’ve only flicked through the first part of the AP, but it looks VERY atmospheric and quite true to the genre. I’m not sure how it will go at higher levels, where the PCs actually are very capable at killing tentacled horrors without breaking much of a sweat. I ran Wake of the Watcher (the ‘Lovecraftian one’ in Carrion Crown) and the Carrion Hill module for my RL group. There were definitely some good creepy, horror, WTF moments, but in the end it didn’t play out terribly different to a standard PF game.
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I haven't really got a current idea for an Eberron campaign - I'm runni The other is one set around the Andoran banking system, although it has to be said the ideas need working on (or thinking about in more detail, anyway).
Actually … that sounds quite interesting. I’m sure you have enough inside knowledge to do the concept justice, and I imagine it would be a very different sort of campaign to the typical ‘go around and kill monsters, loot their corpses’ (though hopefully there would be a bit of that too from time to time).
Did you ever read the ‘Chronicles of an Age of Darkness’ by Hugh Cook? In that series, there is a world spanning confederation of banks and financial institutions that wield a lot of power and influence in this otherwise quite medieval world setting – the Partnership Banks have the power to start or end wars and influence the running of kingdoms. Each bank is an extremely well defended fortress. They sort of play very much in the background for most of the series, but there is one book where one of the main characters is a Banker (and also a knight in a viking-like society … and a werewolf. It’s that kind of series), and they explore a bit more of the inner workings of the banks and how they actually got into a position to wield the power they do.
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I just find the serpentfolk to be massively overpowered. Everyone has SR, wild stat bonuses and telepathy, and after a few levels, they can cast Dominate person and Teleport. I actually like the disguise ability (very Conan-esque), but the other stuff is just too much.
The other is one set around the Andoran banking system, although it has to be said the ideas need working on (or thinking about in more detail, anyway).
Who's manipulating Golarion's LIBOR rate? Why is Galt's currency exchange rate always so favourable? Seeking answers, the PCs get tasked with obtaining spreadsheets long thought lost...
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Who's manipulating Golarion's LIBOR rate? Why is Galt's currency exchange rate always so favourable? Seeking answers, the PCs get tasked with obtaining spreadsheets long thought lost...
I wouldn't be a million miles away from that, although long lost spreadsheets of yore might be a step too far. That said, you could be tasked with finding end user applications that have gone rogue...
Oooh, I've only ever heard of how much people enjoy the old school ones. Or how PK Age of Worms is. I would like a chance to play any of those three.
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I ran Shackled City for many, many years with one of my groups. I think we made it to about part 8 or so after about a decade before abandoning it. I like the campaign, though it was a bit messy at times, and it was a very long slog (not that we played on anything like a regular basis).
I started running Age of Worms as a pbp here on the boards (Ithers played in that one) – we made it to about half way through part 2 before I abandoned the boards and the campaign. Another good one and a lot more of a coherent storyline than SC.
I’ve never played or run Savage Tide. The group I currently play with played about a third to half way through it before giving up. I remember thinking the campaign looked good, but they had issues with it, mainly around a Deus Ex Machina written into the campaign that gets the group from the end of one part to the start of another.
Having said that I wouldn’t mind playing any of them really!
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Shackled City reflects that it was a first run. It isn't as clearly linked or coherent as the later APs.
Absolutely. There may have been some rectification of this in the hardcover (I never got it), and there was certainly a lot of good material on the messageboards on how to make things more coherent (if you can still find it).
I have seen parts of all three and just completed the Savage Tide as the GM -- but it's been ten years since I saw the first part of that one, so it would bother me not at all to take another run at it.