[AP] Curse of the Crimson Throne by GMs Rutseg, Zek and Snowheart (Inactive)

Game Master Balacertar

Not to be a mite but why the spread in gold distribution? 326-376

Not to be a mite but why the spread in gold distribution? 326-376

The way gold distribution is calculated automatically compensates for people picking up items out of the available loot.

For example: If you claim a CLW potion out of the group loot pool, you get 25gp less gold (the sell value for the potion) out of the total pot of gold after everything is sold than someone who didn't take the potion. This is to make sure that everyone is getting an even share of the loot, whether its in the form of items or loose gold.

@Snow No worries. I'm curious what your fire drills look like that they take a whole night and a day to finish!

It's hard to explain but in a nutshell it's project management services to law firms (a mix of eDiscovery/IT/legal services). Client/law firm says "jump", we say "how high". Can't complain. I've been getting paid to do no work for two weeks (except study for certification exams that just make me more marketable, all at my employer's expense).

I think I get it (and getting paid to do self-improvement is nice!), though now I'm confused what this has to do with fire drills.

Hmm, I'm guessing 'fire drills' is some kind of specific lingo to your workplace/employer/industry, and not a drill for how to escape your building and muster when there's a fire? :>

Oh. It's just an idiom; usually means a chaotic pointless activity that needs to be done immediately with little or no advance notice. I guess this isn't pointless but it's a little chaotic.

Thanks for handling the loot distribution, Bashiel! It's been really slick so far.

Good luck on the 'fire drills,' Snowheart!

Wow, I've never heard 'fire drills' being used that way. Probably just isn't very common around where I live in the north-east.

Makes a lot more sense now than what I was imagining (You guys standing outside your building for hours as the fire department takes their sweet time putting out fake fires, lol)

It might be a good idea to sell the dagger but we don't actually know how much it's worth, or what it actually does. It really does make keeping track of my loot a pain though.

Just as a heads up I'm going to be without internet this weekend and won't be able to post until Monday or Tuesday. If need be, feel free to bot me following whatever group is appropriate.

Heads up...I will quite possibly have no internet/bad connection for the next 2 weeks. I apologize in advance...

I will be traveling from Saturday morning until Weds. night (driving up north to see the eclipse). I will try to check in at least once a day, but if I miss a post time, please feel free to bot me to keep the flow going. I don't want to hold up the game.

Seems like we have a few people on the road or traveling and, as a consequence, forward momentum has stalled. I also have people traveling in the other game I'm GMing and can't possibly bot all of these folks in the event of a combat.

So, for those are are still online daily, do you want to pause until folks are back from their trips or push forward? If forward, I need you to either push the game forward or let me know you'd like me to do it. I'm happy to railroad things a bit when I need to, but this particularly juncture really seems (to me) like a time when the PCs need to make decisions for themselves.

I want to say I'm sorry due to extenuating circumstances that were not foreseen I wont be able to play any Pbp for about 2-3 months. in another week I will have to stop. so I decided it would be better letting people know now than continue posting. if anyone wants to take over I would recommend it I chose good people I felt in the campaigns and I'm sorry for letting everyone down. I take my obligations seriously and am not the type of person that will just drop without at least trying to explain. those that didn't know I was a stay at home husband so I had a lot of free time on my plate however me and my wife bought a house dirt cheep as a investment and I need to renovate it before we move in top to bottom. I have done this before, because if you can, sweat equity is the best (my father was a custom home builder/contractor so I can redo anything in a house). because I've been through this before I know what is involved and I will not have the time or the inclination (even though its for fun) to get on when I will be dead tired. I have met many really awesome people in these forums and I am grateful to meet all of you and playing with you. I hope to see you all again in a few months when things calm down.

Brin - you and Cookie will be missed!!! I'm sorry to see you go...

SNowheart... I don't mind a brief hiatus... or a push forward, whichever you prefer.

So, Kalem is without Internet for a couple weeks. Bashiel may be back online today or tomorrow.

If you're online, please check in here and let me know what is preventing you from moving ahead to Eel's End?

My impression is y'all are stuck in analysis paralysis while trying to decide on a course of action. But maybe that's wrong. I could put some NPCs up in your face to give you something to act against, but I also want to give y'all room to make decisions on your own without totally railroading you.

OK, I'm back.

Brin, sorry to hear you have to go. One of my friends went ahead with a fixer upper a couple of years ago and was slammed with how much work it took to get the place in reasonable shape. Even now he's not happy with the problems it still has. I assume since you've done it before it'll be less of an ordeal, but either way, good luck!

I'm ready to continue and push forward rather than take a break, after all, at the pace of PbP we may not get very far in two weeks.

I'm also happy to take the lead on investigating Eel's End. I just thought I'd let the rest of the group take the first swing at it (seemed to make sense to do so both in and out of character). Not sure about the rest of you, but it looks to me like we have plenty of good options on how to approach this and we can start with any of them.

If no one else wants to take the lead on investigating, I'll probably go ahead in-character some time late this evening.

I'm good to keep going (sorry, usually a little slower on weekends with my posting). I'll second Bashiel's suggestion that we start at the Dragon's Breath first.

Brin, I'd really hate to see you go. Rather than just withdrawing entirely, what if you just did your best to check in once a week for the next few months? You'll need a break every once in a while. This is a long campaign, and I'm sure we can keep it going forward and then you can jump back in when you're finished. I really want to see where this demented baker character goes!

Brin, I mentioned it on a game you're GMing, but just to re-iterate, I'm also sad to hear this. If/when you return and find yourself back online, please know you're spot will remain open.

Lol. My turn to apologize. Been slammed today with meetings and last night my husband, son and mother-in-law got back from a week-long road trip so I was visiting with them until late. Should have an update up tonight if not sooner.

So, I've been having a blast with this campaign and really want to make sure it continues.

Would it be out of place to suggest we open recruitment back up? We have lost 2 players and are down to 4. I've had several of these start up and fizzle out. Somehow there are always a couple people who make tremendous effort to create a character and then drop out within a matter of weeks.

I just want to make sure we have enough energy going to go the distance! Just a thought. :)

That sounds good to me, though I guess we're currently a bit low only because Kalem is on break. And yeah, this campaign is pretty nice :>

Well, another one I played in went from 6 to 4 players, and we all played on for a good while. Finally, we lost one more, and then it starts to feel like there are too few players. I just don't want to see that happen to this one...I'm loving it.

agreed..... recruitment might be in order.

Kalem should be back soon but I'm happy to do that. A bit swamped at the moment but I'll look into it this week.

Thanks for saying something, Ilsa.

I will be attending Strategicon from Friday through Monday... Will be able to make limited posts, but not reliably nor frequently... I will try to keep up with at least one post a day, but no guarantees. Please bot me as needed to keep up the pace of the game, thanks.

Hey all. Here is the final post I had from the recruitment thread that lists all the submissions. Please take a look when you have time and them send me a PM with the top two or three folks you'd be interested in having join us. I'll then send those players PMs to see if they're still interested. If that's a bust, then I'll restart the recruitment thread.

Link

If you can have something to me by Friday evening, I'll reach out to folks over the weekend.

Thanks!

Gotcha Snow, I'll take a look and let you know tomorrow.

At least this part of the campaign is pretty RP/investigation heavy, so I'll be on the look out for someone who seems passionate about that stuff.

Gosh, I did not have time today, and there are a lot of people in that list of submissions. Sorry Snow! If you want to hold off, I'll take a look tomorrow evening.

I had some time and started looking. I think, rather than party composition, I was thinking it would be better to have consistent posters. Some had thousands of posts, some just a couple hundred. I'll try to get more specifics soon, though I also wouldn't mind discussing it here rather than via pm.

No worries. One person that two people thought would be a good candidate got his character into another CoTC campaign so he's out. I did PM one person yesterday and am going to give him a day or two to respond. Definitely feel free to let me know other thoughts in case this guy doesn't respond or doesn't have the bandwidth to join.

That sounds good...if he doesn't respond, let me know and I'll go through the submissions again.

OK, I've gone through all the submissions. All the ones that looked really good have managed to get their characters into CoTC or another campaign, so maybe it IS time for a mini-recruitment?

Its been quite a long time since the first one.

And yeah, I totally agree Ilsa: consistent + quality posting is the most important criteria (though I was looking less for sheer volume and more for people who have been in some longer form PbP campaigns already).

Yup. I'll have to open recruitment again. Tonight is looking pretty full but I should have time tomorrow/Monday.

I am back! I am sorry for my recent absence but I have full internet connection now

Hurray! I'm really liking Kalem, so miss him when he's gone.

Thank you! Your kind words are appreciated.

Welcome back Kalem!

BTW: I'm hoping at some point we have a good excuse to go smash Devargo's whole operation.

I'm back too, sorry for my absence, but the con was good.

Hello everyone! Really excited to be part of this. Thank you again for the selection, GM Snowheart. I'm going to read everyone's backstories, but from what I've seen so far, you all have quite the group, so it's an honor to be part of it. Good luck with your current fight. Though my character has no clue what's going on right now, I think he would cheer you on if he knew what was happening.

Hey there Pellius and Zamanda, nice to have you join us! I'm looking forward to seeing what your characters are like.

Hopefully we manage to get through this fight without losing anyone, and you'll be able to meet the group in character soon. Fingers crossed.

Fingers crossed along with you. I've been reading along with the last couple pages of posts. Looks dicey.

I read everyone's backstories and I have to say that you all are quite the wordsmiths (including Zamanda).

Also, I realized that including all my prepared spells in my quick stats spoiler would be impractical and also impossible after a few levels, so I'll just include how many spells I'm allotted and how many I have left of each level. I'll post the spells I've prepared each day in a spoiler within my first post for each new game day. Should make things a little less cluttered. Also, for reference purposes, the 'AR' in my quick stats line refers to my arcane reservoir points.

He said before we all died in the encounter.

Thanks for the welcome Bashiel. I just got finished reading all of the gameplay posts in the story so far.

I was briefly in a CotCT game (in person when I lived in New York a few years ago... never played the beginning, and only got a little bit in the middle, I think just after where this game is), and in our game the Spider King was an ally, so some of the differences are weird, but great characters, and interesting interactions. :)

Totally looking forward to jumping in.

The Spider King was an ally? Wow, either your GM took some serious liberties or your party must've been some no good scoundrels. Because our King of Spiders seems like the kind of guy that'd back-stab you the instant he got bored.

Bashiel, remember that I've got a flanking mesmerist trick implanted in your mind. All you have to do is think of me flanking with you, and it can happen on any of your turns.

Well, we weren't evil, although some in the party you might call scoundrels... no more so than this party though, just no paladin... or cleric.

We also seemed to have met him a little bit later in the game... at least things were worse in the city at that point, and he seemed way *less* evil than other things that we were facing. Not a murderer... just a normal criminal leader who was helping to hold the city together... at least in a way.

We didn't ask about him or tour his drug house beforehand... just went straight to him, and when he asked what was in it for him, we just gave him an incentive, and after that if we needed anything, he was one of our sources of information.

I really don't think that the GM was stretching the story (although I haven't read the AP) *or* that the characters were necessarily morally bankrupt, because they were still fighting evil... just seems like different choices to me. I guess it could have been the morally bankrupt explanation though, at least from a paladin perspective. :)

Oh wow, I didn't realize that was still going on. It was implanted before All the World's Meat, right?

Thanks for the reminder!

Yeah, it was...you just hadn't used it yet, so I thought I'd let you know it's still out there. Maybe grandpa can remind you. :)

I think that's one of the cool things about APs. They're always going to work out a bit different for each group. Depending on the decisions of the characters, the roleplay of the GM, and the resources on hand, certain scenarios can play out completely different from group to group.

I could see a more chaotic neutral party working for most of the AP. In this case, most of us are already good-aligned (or leaning that way, at least), so it should make it a bit easier to get along.

Though us chaotic folks might have to protest the good sir paladin's absolute sense of morality from time to time. : ) All jokes aside, I'm actually really excited to play with a paladin. It seems like they don't get played a lot, perhaps due to their perceived inflexibility. Bashiel's concept is super unique, though, so that's not an issue in your case.

Oh, indeed. I hope I didn't come across as anti-Paladin. I'm not. :) Just a different perspective on the game sometimes, but not a bad one.