Welcome to the Reign of Winter campaign! please dot and delete in the gameplay thread, and use this thread to discuss the opening of the game.
Pre-Game
Take a moment to discuss your characters and find their place in the village of Heldren. For the purposes of this campaign, it is assumed that each of the PCs is a resident of Heldren. Whether that means you grew up in this small town, or if you have only lived here a few weeks on your way to other places is up to you.
Please discuss any pre-existing connections, relationships, or knowledge of each other your characters might have. remember that you have all lived in the same little town for some amount of time, but I don't expect you all to have big interwoven stories.
Posting rules
Please plan on posting AT LEAST 5 times a week. I would love to keep a fast pace on this game, because PbP is a slower medium by its nature. I will try to post at least once a day. if everyone has made a post since my last GM post I will do something to move the action forward. if we are waiting on a few posts, I will give reactions or answer questions but give time for everyone to have their say.
Once all but one PC has posted, that final PC has 24 hours to post or I will bot them. If we are in combat rounds, the botted action default will be to make an attack with the last weapon used. I will never bot a player to use any per day ability or other limited resources. If we are not in combat, your botted action will essentially be a variation of "Durian the Wanderer smiles and nods".
If you are going to miss posting due to any real life situation, that is perfectly ok. Real life issues happen. I'm sure I will have them come up as well over the course of the game. Please give us as much warning as you can, and I will happily bot you during your absence and will have your PC do anything you ask me to have them do.
Missing posts
If you do not post anything for a week without letting us know that you will be missing, I will consider your character gone. I will write them out in a suitably spectacular manner and we will move on. There were 27 applications for 10 spots in this game, so replacing a missing PC will not be a problem. I apologize if this sounds harsh, but many of the players in this game have said that in the past they have tried to play this AP and it fell apart. I would love to play this one for a good long time, and will try to keep things moving.
Game Style
In the end, I want you all to have fun. Please please please give me feedback on how things are going. I want to make this a rewarding and fun AP, but I know there are many ways to run a game.
Normally I am a very by-the-book GM. I like to stick to RAW as much as possible, and will play my creatures and NPCs by the rules as much as possible, and abide by what the dice roll.
I do like to tweak encounters as we go, either up or down in difficulty to match the party. if you feel like things have gotten too easy, let me know and I will try to keep things engaging and challenging.
This AP is fairly linear, as all APs tend to be. I am going to be taking steps to adjust the AP as written to avoid some of the worst of that, but it will still be there. I am happy to roll with the punches if you guys try unexpected solutions.
I would like to highly encourage interaction between PCs. talk in character, learn about each other, let your PC personalities show through. I have found this aspect lacking in some of my PbP, which is sad. this medium is awesome for RP if you want it to be. don't feel like you have to just post once a day and wait for a GM post before posting again. have conversations, come up with plans, try to figure out the back stories, etc.
Hopefully we will all have fun with this! I love this AP and am so excited to run it.
Sounds great GM! And I understand you deciding to run two tables, I did the same thing a couple of months ago when I decided to jump into GMing pbps as well - there were just too many great character ideas to accept only five.
Bazikian is by nature a wanderer, so he will have only arrived in town a couple of weeks ago. If there are any other wandering PCs who have just arrived, I'd be way up for creating a friendship there - Bazikian is on his big quest (of which he knows nothing about, and in fact may have just been the fantasy of a Harrow reader), and he is happy to follow the whims of Desna, so he could have latched on to any interesting traveller given the chance.
I'm riffing slightly off the kender idea with Bazikian, albeit not in the annoying ways - he's not a pickpocket, and he's not an idiot man-child, but he is somewhat childlike in his naivete. He's a sweetheart, basically. He also seems whimsical and slightly odd to most regular people. I'm very conscious that such a character could come across as annoying, and that is something I really don't want, so I'll be focusing on not doing anything silly "because that's what my character would do". It's a character quirk rather than his defining feature.
I really enjoy lots of RP, and I like fast games too. If you notice sometimes that I'm making rather short posts, it'll be because I'm on the road (I'm a musician), and don't have a lot of time, but I pretty much never disappear for any length of time, I just don't post with as much detail when I'm out of town.
I know pretty much nothing about this AP apart from general non-spoilers, but I did read somewhere recently that it's very tough early on. That's cool, I've had PCs die before, so I'm prepared for the possibility of that, but I'm also very open to suggestions from other players about how to maximise my usefulness. I normally don't run clerics, and I want Bazikian to be a real support/buffing caster, so if you have good ideas about how to do that better, I'd appreciate constructive comments. Basically, I'm here to make your character look good, so you probably know better than I do how I can do that :)
Really excited to play this; as I mentioned on the recruitment page this is Bazikian's second start at RoW, with the first being very short-lived some years ago.
Hi all and thanks for the spot. Understand all the rules and expectations and shouldn't have a problem meeting them. My personal goal is 3 posts in 2 days so we will see if I can make that.
I got in with a concept but no alias so it will take me a day or so to get everything sorted and up to date. No problem with RP and introduction posts in the meantime but understand I'm still putting some polish on this alias.
Nyalis is a bit of a wanderer sort of like Bazikian; happy to have them know each other if they arrived in Heldren a few days or weeks ago. He's always looking for new or interesting alchemical items so that could be a hook as well.
Grim is also a wanderer, exploring and seeking a place he could settle long-term, as he believes he is unwelcome back home.
Again, I am open to archetype swapping to fill a specific party need, or just tweaking skill selection if needed.
Also. I am at Summer Camp with my BSA troop. Posting will be weird, and rules access poor until next week.
I have added a loot sheet and a Google Slides link to the campaign description. The map slides can also be accessed from the link in my GM header to make it easier to jump to during the game.
Also in the slides, I have added a section to track relevant stats. I have the forum codes to do perception, initiative and saves listed out. I have started these with the stats found in each of your aliases, but it will be up to you to make sure that they are up to date if your stats change.
I'll remind you all when it is time to level up, but I'll ask each of you to update your own numbers on that slide as part of your level up process.
Sounds great GM :)
Nyalis and Grimgisli, perhaps we have all travelled to Heldren together. Our characters all seem pretty compatible, from alignments to general personalities. We may have met in the capital, and have since made our way down to this village for various reasons... Not that Bazikian needs a reason, he would tag along just because he liked you.
I've also added a post to the gameplay thread with some of the info from the module relating to the town of Heldren. if you want more info about the starting location, this has info about locations and NPCs in town. You can use that to craft your connections to the area
Hello everybody. Thank you for adding me to the game Bright Morning!
Looks like we have quite a strong and interesting party.
Bazikian, I certainly won't mind if we get in a pinch for what seemed natural for your character to do, so from what I'm concerned: go wild!
Anyway, three of the characters are chaotic.
I've finally managed to create an alias and with this move, I've also taken off the mule and all its baggage from my back. A small mistake on my part :)
So I'll be making some changes to the Google sheet, thanks GM for setting it up!
Although Easlis has a nomadic life as well he is very focused on his journey and did not plan to stay long in Heldren.
I'm really excited for this! Thanks for including!
I'm going to go ahead and throw out that this is my first pbp so I'll do my best not to screw up too much.
I'm really excited for this! Thanks for including!
I'm going to go ahead and throw out that this is my first pbp so I'll do my best not to screw up too much.
Don't worry, we all had to start somewhere! As long as you post regularly, it will all work out all right.
Be sure to check out some of the guides available as pinned posts on formatting your posts if you haven't already.
Take a look at some of the other headers that players have set up in this game. it is handy to have your relevant stats put into your header, makes it way easier for everyone to see what your stats and status are.
Brominate is an odd mix of chaotic, but patient. (He can wait to do what no one expects? idk, sure why not!)
He came to Heldren due to a lead on his own personal quest, and he's been here maybe a month. Long enough that he has probably become friends with Tessaraea, who saw an all too recognizable look in his eyes, as well as Menander and Kale. "Tessa" had pity on him and lent him a cold-weather outfit, because he was a little unprepared for the climate, which was apparently colder than usual. The Stoat owners allow travelers to sleep on the floor of their tavern, until the sun's up. Luckily, Brom has always been an early riser, so they've had no problem with him taking the rocking chair near the hearth.
He spent his days learning the town, meeting people, helping someone in need, silently listening in the Stoat to all the gossip, even spent a day assisting the butcher in exchange for some meats.
Whenever he could seek out a person with knowledge of magic or magical artifacts, or someone who knew everyone, he would spend as much time as was welcome with them, asking questions. If something (or someone) strange was going on in this town, he wanted to know.
I'm sure he's come across a few of the other PC's. (some might have even mistaken Brominate for a long-time resident at first).
Well, it looks like we have all five players accounted for, so let's get this show on the road!
Feel free to continue hashing out your ties to each other and the area, either in this thread or in gameplay.
Two more things to mention before we kick off.
1. I will be using milestone experience for this campaign. I have found that it works much better for APs than tracking exp, as it allows for solving problems in more creative ways without worrying about missing out on combat exp and also avoids the need to throw in more random encounters to get level-ups in the right place.
2. I will likely use a lot of spoiler tags in my posts. if it is meant for you it will have your character name in the spoiler title, or will have a knowledge/perception check DC listed. Obviously this is on the honor system. I will also abide by that if you all want to use spoilers. Feel free to discuss things with each other in spoilers, and either add or omit "GM" to let me know if you want me reading it or not.
I think that should be enough to get us started
So looks like four out of the five of us may have travelled to Heldren together, while Brominate was already here a few weeks before that? Works nicely.
Bazikian would have gravitated to the temple of Erastil, and would have been delighted to discover that it's a multi-denominational church. Although he's a cleric, his knowledge of religion in general is poor, and so he'd be quite interested to hear from Natharen and Zaarida about their gods. He'd quite like that while the couples' gods are LG and NG, his is CG, kind of completing the spectrum of good alignments, and while he's no scholar, he would share what he knows (and feels) about Desna.
While hanging out at the temple, Bazikian may have met Brominate, if he's looking for people with magical knowledge. He would have almost certainly run into him at the Stoat.
I'd think that Bazikian is splitting his time mostly between the clerics at the temple, and Tengezil Frimbocket, the local gnome woodworker. He would also be hanging out with the other party members, interested in what they're getting up to. He's likely bedding down at the gnome's house, even if only on the floor in a room with space. He would help the gnome with whatever physical work needed to be done, such as carrying/collecting wood, or even just cleaning.
Alias is all finished up as far as I can tell, will get into the gameplay thread.
GM - my AC and perception changed compared to what you have in the info sheet. Can you update to new values?
So looks like four out of the five of us may have travelled to Heldren together, while Brominate was already here a few weeks before that? Works nicely.
...
While hanging out at the temple, Bazikian may have met Brominate, if he's looking for people with magical knowledge. He would have almost certainly run into him at the Stoat.
...
I'd think that Bazikian is splitting his time mostly between the clerics at the temple, and Tengezil Frimbocket, the local gnome woodworker. He would also be hanging out with the other party members, interested in what they're getting up to.
Absolutely. Brominate would have been interested in what Bazikian knows regarding precious gemstones imbibed with magic. In any case, Brom probably feels partial to Bazikian, especially if he's occasionally charmingly naive. He might feel protective of him, as though he were a child (that can hold his own after many many ales!)
Great :) What sort of vibe does Bazikian get from Brominate? What are his apparent personality traits? Is he serious or silly, warm or aloof, that sort of thing?
For his part, Bazikian is, as you say, often charmingly naive. He is also very talkative, open about his experiences on the road, and excited about his Very Important Quest*. He enjoys helping people a lot.
*May not include actual details.
Bazikian probably gets that Brom is serious, but warm. Caring, you could put it. And not much of a talker, more of a listener. Which probably suits them both just fine. I think Bazikian is one of very few who can get Brominate to grin, even chuckle. He also notices that every time it happens, Brominate either changes the subject, or stops talking altogether for a bit. As if he felt guilty for laughing.
But, all in all, he very much became Bazikian's friend (which surprised Brominate).
Grim's a bit hard and cold as perceived by most people. It is emotional armor.
He would be spending some of his time trying to support the cleric and his church, so connections are assured at that point.
At no point during their visit in this village has Grim given any indication he is comfortable here.
Brom, sounds great, and yep, was thinking it's pronounced Bə-ZEE-kiən, so Zeke works :)
Grim, Bazikian probably feels a bit of pity for you, given that you seem all clammed up emotionally, but he won't press you on it. He would generally try to be helpful and kind to you. I can see him being kind of like an annoyingly nice younger brother to Grim, although they haven't known each other all that long.
Bazikian -
Here is what I was trying to show with using bluff on another player. The goal isn't to cause conflict, rather than to give information.
Nyalis can be a bit of an over-reactor and notices a lot of unusual events. When he saw Bazikian and the other person moving quickly through the crowd, it set off his sense of danger/something being weird here. So, he finished the transaction with the vendor and then approached Bazikian to see what is going on. Nyalis realized during the conversation that he was probably coming on a bit strong and tried to soften his approach during the conversation in order to not alarm anybody too much.
The intent of the bluff was for Nyalis to try to act normally and not give off a sense that he's concerned about something. He did poorly at that and I'd expect that Bazikian would notice that Nyalis is acting oddly or that he's much concerned than would be warrented given the current situation.
So, yeah it is unusual to use bluff between us but the intent was good. Want me to handle it differently in the future?
No, not at all, I think bluffs and sense motives between players are great :)
@GM/@Easlis: A question for you both: how much of the conversation between Easlis and Dansby did Brominate hear?
Easlis, you can read Brom's most recent gameplay post for context.
If you headed over after hearing the yelled portion, you would likely arrive just in time to hear the younger Dansby apologizing for his father, and then Easlis' response
If you headed over after hearing the yelled portion, you would likely arrive just in time to hear the younger Dansby apologizing for his father, and then Easlis' response
(Potentially dumb) Follow-up question: Do we always need to wait for your next post if we want to react to a situation at hand?
No you don't have to only post once between every GM post. if things go too fast I can always catch things up to where the players are, but usually it's not a problem. If you want to spend a few posts interacting between PCs I encourage it and will stand back until there is reason to answer a question, resolve a roll or have an NPC react
I'm curious what everyone thinks, but it's ultimately up to our GM:
If we roll a nat 1 for anything, would you prefer us to immediately post and let you, or the party, decide what the fumble is? Or do you want us to create our own for the situation?
Essentially, how do you want to treat critical fails?
Critical fails are not actually a thing per the rules, but I don't think any GM would have a problem with us deciding to interpret them as such on occasion.
One thing to remember is that a 1 is not an auto-fail on anything but an attack roll or a saving throw; similarly, a 20 is not an auto-success on anything but an attack roll or saving throw either. With skills, for example, if the DC is 10 and I have a +9 to that skill, a 1 will succeed. I'm just too skilled at that thing to possibly fail in that particular instance. Likewise, if the DC is 30 and I have +5, I can never succeed at that thing, it's just too difficult for me.
For those reasons, I'm wary of locking us into critical fails (and similarly, critical successes) on skill checks. But I think occasionally using them voluntarily as players can create funny, interesting, and memorable moments. Given that, my vote would be to leave them as optional to the player for the most part, with the GM throwing them in occasionally too, if that rolled 1 would not have been a success anyway (as in the example above).
As you say, it's ultimately up to the GM, and while my preference is not to make it a concrete rule, I'm not going to argue the toss if the GM adopts crit fails/successes.
Fair enough. I agree.
With skill checks it would most definitely be a few and far in-between thing. When I rolled a 1 (+1=2) for the DC16 heal check, since it was to try recall information and I failed by...a lot, I figured he would interpret/conclude something really bizarre.
Every campaign is different, and so is every group, so I figured I'd ask anyway.
Yeah, I agree, critical fails can be fun. I thought your interpretation of your heal check was funny and appropriate, and that kind of stuff is definitely good for the game :)
And the story with the capybara is hilarious :)
the whole concept of 1s and 20s is a holdover from older versions of D&D. A lot of people enjoy them, but I have never used them in a game.
I do enjoy the flavor that can be added in for failing by a lot, whether it was for a natural 1 or not. I will often throw in some flavor descriptions of a really botched roll as well. but i won't be counting it as an automatic failure or really dramatizing it if a natural 1 only made you miss a roll by 1 or 2. I also won't allow a success if your stats aren't high enough to succeed even with a 20.
In the realm of false info, I'm happy to let you provide your own false positives on a failure. On some checks, I will roll for you in secret and you won't know if the info is correct or not. That will usually be for linguistics, appraise, bluff, and perception checks rather than knowledge checks though. slows the game down too much to do all knowledge checks in secret.
While I do agree on most of the points you guys made, the way I see skill checks is how close you are to your potential for success or failure.
Meaning that even a roll of 2 or 3 could have dire consequences depending on the risks of your action and on the skill of the person doing the action.
Also, I think all men are prone to making mistakes, regardless of how skilled they are, this is what makes us humans and not an artificial construct. So what I suggest is not to rely solely on the mechanical simplicity given by the system which favors success and status quo and instead add flavor, and go with what feels natural.
It occurred to me just now as I was writing my last gameplay post that some people might be finding Bazikian annoying already... I intend him to be odd and a little silly, but please let me know if I'm overdoing it, and I'll tone him down!
From my perspective, things have been hilarious so far. We failed terribly at figuring out what was wrong with Yulin, had several slapstick moments, and then started a debate about how much we should get paid for performing a rescue.
No changes required from my perspective. Let's keep things moving and see how it turns out.
During my week in the Arkansas Ozarks, my t-shirts weighed something akin to 25# from the sweat soaking through them. Every day, the "feels like" temperature exceeded 105.
The boys had a lot of fun and made a huge positive impression, so I'm really happy with how things went overall.
Remember cold iron will double the base price of the weapon, and will add 2000 to the cost to add your first +1 enchantment to the weapon
Just to clarify:
Dagger: 2 gpCold Iron Dagger: 2004 gp
(2*2)+2000
Is that right?
Wellllllll, I got 10. So maybe not.
No, the weapon itself just costs double. so a simple cold iron dagger is 4gp. if you want to turn that into a +1 cold iron dagger, the cost goes all the way up to 4304gp
Depends if you also wish to add extra enchantments or a +1. In that case it would be more expensive than that. Just cold iron is 4gb from what I understood
I updated the loot sheet for Nyalis.
Does anybody want the cold iron longsword from Yulin? I can use it but want to get it in the hands of somebody who will melee better if it helps the group.
I will be in business trip in Paris for the next two days. I'll be reading the gameplay messages but I don't expect to have a high posting rate during these days.
Oh look, a butterfly!
XD Bazikian 2020!
The surprise round is just a move OR standard action, isn't it? We've never had one come up in play before (or the GM just didn't want to use them), so I'm a little rusty on those rules.
Surprise round allows for a partial action. You are allowed only 1 standard action (which can be swapped for a move, and can include as many free actions as the judge allows). You must be restricted to a partial action to take a partial charge . . ..
Just to clarify, we're not in the surprise round any more... The zombies acted in the surprise round, not us, and they used a single move action to exit the carriage.
Are you sure the surprise round isn't the one we're at now, triggered by the zombies exiting the carriage? We've all expected something bad to pop out from the carriage but they had no clue of our whereabouts.
Well, no, one can never be 100% sure, but it does say "Surprise round, 3 zombies move out of the carriage." I imagine that means just what it says, but I could be wrong. The zombies can't get out of the carriage without moving during one round or another. Given that they've moved, then initiative was rolled, then we're all told to act (I assume because we're above the zombies in init order)... If this is the surprise round, and we're acting first, the zombies should still be in the carriage, shouldn't they?
Anyway, in all likelihood the GM will post up saying I'm entirely wrong :) But that's what I'm assuming and why, until told differently. All I've done is channel and 5' step anyhow, so it doesn't make much difference to me.
The only reason I cared at all is because I could have sneak attacked that first zombie, but I only moved because I thought it was the surprise round. But I'm sure it'll be fine. (Again, famous last words)
The surprise round was the zombies moving. I know i took some liberty with that since you all at least suspected something bad coming. in this case I needed to do something to unpack the zombies. there were multiple creatures taking up a single 5 foot square inside the carriage.
I felt that a surprise round move did a good job of representing that they were pushing on the door trying to get out, and as soon as the door gave way they all came spilling out. then combat starts.
The surprise round was the zombies moving. I know i took some liberty with that since you all at least suspected something bad coming. in this case I needed to do something to unpack the zombies. there were multiple creatures taking up a single 5 foot square inside the carriage.
I felt that a surprise round move did a good job of representing that they were pushing on the door trying to get out, and as soon as the door gave way they all came spilling out. then combat starts.
I don't suppose I can retroactively attack the zombie nearest me? I would have attacked had I done a better job reading words. (Rule to live by: words are hard.)
"No" is an acceptable answer, of course. However, "Yes" is a very acceptable answer.
Yes, I'm fine with you adding in an attack from last round, just split the next post up into round 1 and round 2 actions.
I will try to be more clear about what round it is in future posts.
The zombies will not be counted as flat-footed for your round 1 attack though, since they moved in the surprise round.
Okay. Thanks. Since I had already posted for Round 2, I didn't change it. (except that the numbers for my original round 2 post became the numbers for my round 1 post.)