Beyond the World's Edge: A Frontier Campaign (Inactive)

Game Master vayelan

To keep everyone updated, I've been in touch with Dorick's player. He has been dealing with some nasty health issues for a while, but thankfully its not COVID. After some doctor's visits, he hopes to recover and rejoin us when he's feeling better.

In the meantime, I will bot Dorick.

Glad he is okay (ish) and hope he recovers well.

Hope he gets to feeling better.

That is good to hear. Now about goblins and fortifications :(

if possible, it would be nice to get Sir Dorick's player's opinion. I know it may not be possible, but even just a simple "leave" "raid" or "trade" would be nice. I hope they are doing better.

I'd love to have him weigh in if that was at all possible.

same!

I've sent Sir Dorick a message asking for his input on the situation. Hopefully he will be able to respond soon.

I have not yet received a reply from Sir Dorick's player.

Do you guys want to wait a bit longer, or do you want to decide upon a course of action?

I'm feeling bad for stirring up the question in the first place. By way of explanation, and to invite perhaps some OOC planning/discussion where we are at an impasse IC due to a missing player (whose PC has often been the party's moral compass):

1) I both IC and OOC noted we have generally aimed for diplomacy before fighting even with various savage races before. It's taken an obvious threat--someone stealing our food or turn us into compost for their planty undead evilness, etc., for us to attack. When this was an explore, cooperate, report (to coin a phrase) sort of request it made sense to keep going forward. But having encountered other intelligent races again, even if they are "monstrous" races, they have not attacked us directly, only laid traps and tried to hinder us from exploring the ruins, it doesn't seem within our band's MO to charge forward and attack non-belligerent creatures, regardless of what they look like.

2) Kalig is aligned neutral. She doesn't have a moral or ethical quandary about attacking the ogres more than she has a tactical problem with it. She is bearing in their ultimate mission is to stop citizen Borjan; their plan to weaken Borjan is to have enough food to entice his soldiers over to their side, and the specific purpose of searching the ruins is to find trade goods to get enough food from Kelesh such that their plan could possibly succeed. All of her concerns relate to whether assaulting the ruins at this point are going to help actually them deal with Borjan.
There are two problems here:
a) Given how deeply entrenched the ogres/goblins seem to be in the ruins, her cost/benefit analysis is that trying to find something in the ruins to help them find goods to trade with Kelesh is not worth overcoming the ogres' defenses--given it's an ogre's home, they are probably not going to find much worth trading (it would have been looted/wrecked long ago) and even if they did it's too much of a risk of their own lives to bother (she doesn't want to die here and leave Haven undefended).
b) She can see these creatures are intelligent and just want to be left alone and are putting up a massive defense to keep us out. If someone convinces her to murder the ogres she will help murder the ogres without losing sleep over it, but she WILL lose sleep if that angers the swamp dwellers who have heretofore left us alone and behaved defensively and attack us. Especially if they attack us while Citizen Borjan also attacks us--that will basically spell the doom of the town, and the campaign will be over.

My/Kalig's analysis is almost assuredly imperfect and could be outright wrong. It might be worth the risk. It might even be in character for us to do. But what I don't know is an acceptable option, especially as no one has proposed an alternate plan even just for getting past the spiky trees.

I feel like we set off on what seemed to be a minor sidequest as a route for resolving one storyline, and instead we've triggered some other massive storyline that is beyond our capacity to resolve adequately to boot--and meanwhile the other massive storyline that involves a huge threat to our town still also needs solving. At this point I'm honestly regretting we decided to head in this direction at all and should have just stayed in town and planned to have a big bloody fight with Borjan and his rebels, whatever happens. This is not a video game, however, and we can't reload from a prior save point. We have to figure out what to do from here. Even if the group ignores Kalig, which is fine, we still need a plan of approach to even get into the ruins (I have no idea WTF to do there, but I suspect I am either overthinking things or missing something obvious).

So: what is the most efficient course of action that helps us achieve our primary goal of dealing with Borjan's army without unduly putting the town at further risk?

I'm going on a break for the next 4-5 days. I may check in if I can but if you need a response and I am unable to reply, please feel free to bot me. Happy Yule, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to you all.

Well, Mia would rather deal with this potential threat, peacefully or aggressively. Preferably peacefully, though she doesn't think it likely.

That said, if we can negotiate, we may be able to direct the ogres and goblins against Borjans army.

Francoix's only issue with trying to resolve things diplomatically is language. He would personally love to find a way to sick ogres on Citazen Borjan just not sure how to do it. After all, Haven's already got a stout group of normally considered "bad" races in it helping in its defense. What's an ogre or three? Like some of y'all just afraid that leaving now without some sort of resolution might just make them try to follow us.

I dont think your line of thinking is off at all Kalig *nods*

Seems sensible.

Dargys is 'the new guy' and is pretty sure he's got to prove himself a bit before the others give his ideas the same weight, which he totally understands. I'm seeing him as having a somewhat academic curiosity about all this

@Kalig: first, I am impressed by the depth of your analysis. Kudos!

Second, you raise a good point about this quest potentially distracting from protecting Haven from Borjan. When I crafted this side quest, I had not thought of it as being too large, but my perspective may have been skewed.

To help you along, while I won't provide all the details, I will tip my hand and reveal that these ogres and goblins are servants of a master that is not currently present and will not return for a very long time. With their master absent, they are susceptible to coercion or persuasion.

Sir Dorick's player just messaged me with his input:

Dorick is pretty headstrong. Unless he sees evidence that the locals are trustworthy, he'd counsel attack.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Still not clear here. I'm hoping to catch up in the new year.

A message for all my games:

My apartment's internet connection went out two days ago, and it will not be fixed until Sunday at the earliest.
(I am borrowing a friend's WIFI to post this).

I will resume posting updates once my connection is repaired, but in the meantime, I will be out of contact.

My apologies for the inconvenience. Thank you for your patience.

A belated note--Dorick, hope you continue to improve.

GM, hope your technical difficulties are resolved soon.

Now that my technical issues are resolved, I can also wish further recovery for our dear cavalier, Sir Dorick.

I haven't made a post yet since it seems like the party is still debating how to approach the situation.

If you find yourselves at an impasse, though, I can have the ogres take action to move things along a little. Of course, that does not mean they will outright attack, at least not immediately...

I don't know what the f*~$ to do, so I'll follow y'all's lead.

Family emergency. May not be able to post for awhile. Will update when I can.

oh no! I hope everything works out the best it can.

Better days to you and yours

Family emergency. May not be able to post for awhile. Will update when I can.

Take all the time you need, Kalig. Our thoughts will be with you.

...

Also, did anyone want to try to Aid Another Kalig's Diplomacy roll?
I haven't posted an update yet because I was waiting to see if anyone else wanted to help.

without speaking the language wasnt sure how i could. I will try to come up with a post about it though

Hi folks, I am coming back, but will be slow. Given this is a slow game hopefully that won't be much of an issue. Thanks for your patience.

Folks, how are things going? I am worried we are dying. And if a fight starts at this point, I am afraid getting tied up in combat would just bog us down more if someone doesn't show up to post.

I apologize for stalling things with Kalig's initial objection awhile back; at the same time I am trying not to be the one pushing all of the decisions here. If folks really are here and want to be moving, can we figure out a path forward and go?

Not trying to be negative. This has been an awesome game and hopefully we can find our momentum. If folks aren't engaged though we may need to talk about that and see what is realistic about how to close things down with some satisfaction.

Well, I'm the 'new guy' so I just started with Dargys, now I worry I've jinxed you guys :(

I'm here. Its one of those things where Mia isn't the assertive sort. As a player, I'm for the brawl. We are at our peak strength (missing players aside) And I don't feel comfortable just leaving them here without either making a deal. Or removing them.

If we can make a show of strength we may be able to force them into a deal. They are already subservient to someone. Also, OOC the player in me sees treasure and experience points.

Definitely not you Dargys. This game was fairly slow when you joined; it used to be a lot more active but a lot of the players have gotten busier over the years.

I'm down with a fight, I just have seen slow games fully stall if a fight starts and someone doesn't show up to post, so I want to see who's still here first.

Did we lose Dorick for good?

Im here as well, ready to roll with what ever ogre punches come are way :)

I think opening up with an entangle may be good.

Okay. Since no one else is jumping to act in character I'll start it.

But I encourage y'all to to push things forward as we continue.

Thank you all for sticking with me.

My hope has been to at least resolve the coming conflict with Borjan. If this story of ours is coming to an end sooner rather than later, I wanted it to be at a satisfactory stopping point.

And now I hit my head and have a mild concussion. I need to limit my screen time. I will be slow, but do plan to post when I can. I'm sorry for any delay.

Oh dear! Please take care of yourself and recover properly, Kalig. That's more far important. Take your time and rest.

Yeah, concussions are no joke

oh man guys, as a player my desired course of action can ONLY lead to fun.

I see several potentials out of character-

one, and the unlikely one for our group, attempt to go evil(ish) route and try to work with the blue dragon for a time. Get him to maybe kill off a certain problem... Then eventually we can deal with him as needs demand.

two, and this is my(player not necessarily entirely the characters) thoughts is to just ransack the place, take the dragonling with us, and hope(in vain likely) that our disturbance goes unnoticed for a while. We could also ransack, then pin the blame on our "problem" if it is discovered sooner than later.

three, leave and don't come back for a long time. The likely "smartest" choice... the one I'm most against.

And I do hope you are doing Okay Kalig.

I am doing much better having had lots of rest, thanks.

Kalig has made her suggestion, which is similar to your first one, though is less about allying with the dragon and more simply fooling it.

Option two is fine if we are sure the dragon is not present since we were planning to ransack the place anyway. But I think Sargon's opinion might be consulted.

I definitely think we should try to ally with Sargon.

As some of you may already know, I just completed a recruitment drive for one of my Kingmaker games.

The idea has been proposed that we invite one of those characters not selected to our game. This would help the party out with the absence of Sir Dorick.

I can provide links for some of the submissions if you would like more information about a potential character.

Please send me a PM with your thoughts.

I'll try to send you a PM soon
But I maybe a bit sluggish. I'm maybe coming down with a stomach virus

do you have a link to the recruitment?

Here is a link to a post in the recruitment that lists the submitted characters.

Katrine Thalian, Pelipe Lightdriver, and Antonín Niccolò Surtova were the characters that were recruited, so they should not be considered for this game.

...

@Dargys: Very sorry to hear that. I hope you feel better soon.

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, I wanted to discuss the future of this game.

First off, I have contacted Ivan the Blackshield's player about joining our game. He was very excited by the prospect. We discussed backstory and introduction, and he decided that Ivan would be an exile from Iobaria who traveled south and eventually finds Haven.

Secondly, now that the party has met Sargon and learned of Barthazar, and you are preparing to deal with Borjan's imminent arrival, I've been thinking about the game's next phase after that.

Thus, I want to gauge everyone's interest in transitioning to a full kingdom building game.

While using the downtime rules to track progress in building homesteads, shops, and other parts of Haven was an interesting experiment, I found it to be too cumbersome - perhaps because I was extrapolating it to a scale beyond the rules' original intent, building a whole town instead of just a single building or business.

Anyhow, I wanted to suggest that our next phase entail a sort of Casmaron Kingmaker, where the party constructs a new nation on the shores of the Castrovin Sea. Depending on the choices the party soon makes, your patron/investor could either be Barthazar, envoys from the Empire of Kelesh, or even someone else.

I have much more experience with the kingdom building rules, so I anticipate this would be easier to manage. Also, to avoid diminishing the value of what you have already built up in Haven, I was going to translate the initial homes and sites you've constructed into discounts on upgrading them into full-size buildings and assets.

Depending on the choices the party soon makes, your patron/investor could either be Barthazar, envoys from the Empire of Kelesh, or even someone else.

Why not all three?! haha. Though dealing with a dragon, even the "good" aligned ones, is a dangerous prospect.

As for the transition... I'm fully on board with this, though I wouldn't be terribly miffed if other were not. Basically I'm fine either way. I can already smell the garden temple haha.

I haven't really been involved in the building phase with this group yet so whatever is easiest for the GM works fine by me. Does Dargys dream of his his own wizard tower? Of course he does! But he'll be just fine in a hut or whatever as the town grows :)

As for Patron, I think my wizard would be a bit nervous about working for a blue dragon, but then, he's also nervous about challenging a blue dragon :)

EDIT: Oh, and Welcome to Ivan Blackshield!

Welcome to Ivan!

Speaking in theory, I think the idea of this transitioning to Kingdom-building makes sense and feels like a natural evolution of how this story started. From caravan to small homesteads to broader community with laws and officers. I support the idea.

The reason I am speaking in theory is, as I informed the DM via PM some time ago, I am strongly considering resigning from this game once we come to the close of this story arc with Borjan. Foremost, we've gone a long time and my energy is petering. As the campaign progresses, Kalig is ability-wise completely redundant and increasingly less and less the personality type to do well in the party. I could adapt and deal with the latter were it not for the former--at the end of the day I'm burning out and need to move on.

I'm not leaving yet--again I plan to see through to the end of the story arc--but since we're talking about the future of the game. Kalig's shrine and garden by the spring dedicated to Gozreh will always be there for the town.

I all for continuing the game with any sort of building rules you can come up with, after all I havent made the most famous inn in all the lands yet. :)

Welcome Ivan, always good to have new players join, also :( when the time comes it will be sad to see you go Kalig.

I am glad to see the both the support for the kingdom-building evolution as well as the excitement for Ivan's introduction.

Conversely, Kalig's departure leaves me quite saddened. I understand you need to do what you think is best, and I support your decision, but you will be sorely missed.