DM Barcas - Kingmaker: New Beginnings (Inactive)

Game Master Isaac Duplechain

Completely out of character:

In Navior's Serpent Skull pbp (I play Mahjik the Flink) our gnomish cleric of Desna is busy helping one of the NPCs with a heal check:

"Now, let's look at that rash of yours." Heal check to treat disease on Jask 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (6) + 2 = 8 Well, her streak of good Heal rolls had to come to an end eventually. She looks at the rash on Jask's skin for a few moments, then starts to giggle. "Jask, if you connect these dots, this looks like a flappybite. Look!" She begins to trace shapes on his arm.

Just had to share... lol :D

Hah! +1

Good thing he's not connecting the dots with a needle and twine!

Socialism!

We can go to a half and half system.

Ok, given that the Stag Lord can gather a few hundred in a couple of days Berrin will want to confront him in less than that time. Getting to him without and army around him will let us talk to him in a postition of semi-equal streangth, not as beggars.

Just wanted to get that out if the conversation doesn't finish before I go to sleep and you guys reach a conclusion before I wake up again.

On a side note: WOOT! Just found out their showing Stardust on TV tonight. One of the best fantasy flicks made IMO.

So I went ahead and downloaded this and am glad I did. Good show!

Its a competitor for my favorite film of all time, a modern day Princess Bride. :)

Y'all are in the sandbox now! It's up to you to take the initiative to head into the wild. When we are exploring, we will have a 1 day minimum (IRL) for posts per hex, even if they are effectively empty. Obviously, it might take longer if you find anything.

@Barcas; I posted a question to Kressel in my last post, is she ignoring me or did you miss it?

@Taisper,
and everybody in general interested in Dexter-esque things

I just remembered another good example of Taisper-esque character. I heartily recommend that anybody interested read Death Note a manga available here.

The basic story outline is that a guy, "Light", picks up a notebook of a good of death. He figures out that you can write somebodies name into the notebook and that person dies. Promptly he decides to become the judge of the world and begins using it to kill villains and criminals.

The book has two caveats. You need to know the name and face of the person you want to kill. But you can specify some details of the death, and fate will arrange itself to make it so.

The problem comes in when the authorities figure out that there is a new serial killer, that they cannot track down. Ultimately a genius detective called "L" tries to track down the killer - and the story revolves around the two characters setting elaborate mental traps for each other to reveal each others identity.

Highly recommended. :)

I enjoyed the anime.

I figured the manga is more appropriate as introduction - but yea! If you want, the anime is excellent too. Caution to not accidentally download the live-action movies which are fun - but not what you want.

So it looks like we pretty much have three choices on the table:

A: Focus on exploration. Explore around Oleg's and slowly work our way south.

B: Focus on attack. Head straight for the Stag Lord to try to surprise him, not exploring as we go.

C: Explore and attack. Head straight for the Stag Lord, exploring as we go.

My vote goes for A. We really need to get some more experience and see if we can strengthen our position before we consider making a move. I think that even if we explored as we went, we'd still get demolished when we got there. We have no indication that the Stag Lord is even interested in attacking us and for all we know Kressle could be completely lying about the kind of numbers we'd be facing.

I'm fine with kicking around the woods a bit. :-)

I voted IC for option B.

I'd take A initially, aiming to explore to the point that we'd reach the Stag Lord just after reaching level 3. Very meta-gamey, but I feel DM Barcas is giving us all the rope we need to hang ourselves.

I agree that I'd like to be at least level 3 before we confront the Drag Lord. He's clearly a badass and I really don't think we should rush confronting him.

So thats 1 vote B (Berrin), 1 vote C (Verik) and 4 votes A (Jemini, Tandlara, Taispar and Zander).

I do believe the verdikt is in then. Exploring it is.

Oh I see, cool works for me. So do we leave today or tomorrow? I'm for today mainly because it does not seem like there is a lot to gain by staying until morning and RPing camping will likely be just as entertaining as RPing in the trade post.

lol@Verik

Call me simple-minded, but even though I know it is artificial it still makes me laugh

Too good a set up, lol. I think Verik would really rather Priests of Abadar were celibate. I think of him at fourteen or so with a big pile of paperwork shaking his head at the silly young people of his age wasting time while their is work and filing to be done, and secretly burning with jealousy, lol. And he always had the excuse of work, or study, and then those excuses are removed and he sort of thinks, "Oh I'm too sensible for all that nonsense." but in the way that someone tries too hard to not think about something and ends up thinking about it all the time.

Since Oleg has a good Appraise check, he gives you the correct prices:
The music box is worth 90gp, the earrings are worth 150g, the crates of fur are worth 50g each, and the booze is worth 20g per bottle.

So you guys need to decide which direction to explore. You have traveled through the southwest/southeast hexes. The east hex is part of Brevoy, while the west hex is unexplored plains.

1. East: Unexplored, Untraveled Plains
2. Southeast: Unexplored, Traveled Forest
3. Southwest: Unexplored, Traveled Forest

Map we're using?

Directly West is the mountain/hills?

Tandlara would like to go southwest into the woods.

No need to bother with Brevoy hexes - south-west is as fine a direction to start as any for me.

DM Barcas are those sale prices or full prices to be halved? Also does Oleg seem to have any stock of weaponary? Would Verik feel there was any reasonable chance of him having say a MW Morningstar?

There is something profoundly sad about her, and part of me wants to shout at her because most men would gladly trade their span of years for her's.

I like that line actually. Its my opinion that a long live is a carefuly what you wish for kind of thing, you only see how truly horrible it is after you have it. Nice touch.

And yet I think I would take it every time were it offered up. One of my favorite movies of all time is Groundhog Day, and I think its an interesting take on a similar idea. Think of what you could learn, what you could do, where you could go. And for elves they can even have the majority of their family join them in their long lives.

I am sure there would be sadness in unusual longevity, but then sadness is a vivid and visceral feeling - to me at least - and in its own way quite intoxicating. It is being moved, and there are few things more satisfying, or that remind you that you are alive so well as being truly moved in one way or another.

@Taisper,

and everybody in general interested in Dexter-esque things

I just remembered another good example of Taisper-esque character. I heartily recommend that anybody interested read Death Note a manga available here.** spoiler omitted **

Thanks for reminding me of this! I had heard about it from someone else and they also recommended it. Two solid reco's like this is more than enough reason to pick it up. :-)

I'm going to assume that the price given for the treasures is the sale price since that's how it's always laid out in adventure paths.

So onto the final loot. I went ahead and set all of the Stag Amulets aside since Berrin mentioned wanted to do that and no one protested and I also went ahead and claimed the Alchemist's Fire as those could come in handy. So here are the official loot splits, items included.

Zander is also going to sell his old Composite Longbow to Oleg for 50 gp.

Verik will take Zander's old chainshirt as discussed to if that's still cool.

I went ahead and made a Hexographer version of the map so far to make it a little easier to see hex-wise. The red line is Brevoy's border and the blue dashed line is what we've explored so far. I made the size of the map to fit with the original area we were supposed to explore as part of the charter. I'm cool starting to the Southwest though it would be nice to knock out those top three hexes to the west as well so maybe we could make a course like that and then loop around the mountain and come back to Olegs. Also we currently have 7 days worth of rations so I'm not sure if we want to get some more or not, but it probably couldn't hurt. Here's the map:

Map
Proposed Course

@Verik: Yep, that's cool. I already took your 50 gp and deleted the old shirt on my sheet ;)

The mountains are not impassable, but they do take longer to explore.

How about this then?

New Course

This way we could knock this chunk out and then get back to Oleg's to resupply and go out some more. Going by the movement table in the SRD this should take us about 6 days of just travel time and we'll probably need to double or triple that to account for exploration so if we just went ahead and brought along 20 days worth of rations that would be best until we know exactly what we're up against time-wise. That would weigh 120 pounds, but if we distribute it out amongst our horses, I think we'd be fine. I'm not sure how precise we want to get with loads and the like, but I can run the exact number if needed.

That looks good to me!

Thanks for doing all this work smashthedean!

No problem. This kind of thing is fun, not work :)

Jemini of Lebeda wrote:

@Taisper,

and everybody in general interested in Dexter-esque things

I just remembered another good example of Taisper-esque character. I heartily recommend that anybody interested read Death Note a manga available here.** spoiler omitted **

Thanks for reminding me of this! I had heard about it from someone else and they also recommended it. Two solid reco's like this is more than enough reason to pick it up. :-)

Good stuff! Let me know what you think :)

...

@Zander: muahahaha Jemini is rich! RICH I TELL YOU!! whahaahahahaa

So to buy the additional 76 rations we need, we'll need 7 gp, 6 sp so unless someone wants to foot the full bill (a hefty sum indeed!), everyone will need to deduct 1 gp, 2 sp, 6 cp from their gold total and then I'll use 4 cp from the party change pot to make up the difference :)

EDIT: I kind of feel like we're playing Oregon Trail. We should probably buy some axles and hope that Verik doesn't come down with cholera.

Note that I'm also selling Verik's leather armor to Oleg for 5gp - presume this has not been accounted for yet - if it has just let me know. I'll adjust for Verik's share of the rations now.

Personal item sales aren't accounted for in the loot, no. Any items you're upgrading you'll want to sell separately.

Also, you don't have to keep track of your rations on your sheet if you don't want to as I'm handling it on the loot spreadsheet, but you can if you want I suppose :)

Also, who wants to hold onto that Cure Moderate Wounds potion? I'm leaning towards having Berrin hold it since he's our front line fighter.

Jemini sold her normal longsword to Oleg. Also Jemini doesn't mind footing a 10gp bill for party rations; she'll be spending a good deal of her income on charity anyway. Unless otherwise noted, she'll subtract 10gp from her stash.

@DM Barcas:
...on that note; I might have missed it, but did Svetlana reply on Jemini's question regarding other victims to the banditry?.

Also, who wants to hold onto that Cure Moderate Wounds potion? I'm leaning towards having Berrin hold it since he's our front line fighter.

I'm fine with this. Makes the most sense.

Perhaps unsurprisingly Verik will insist upon paying for his share of the rations, not least because I've already deducted it and don't want to do math again. :)

I'm also fine with Berrin carrying the potion - though please lets try to avoid using it they are so overpriced it hurts me! And Verik has plenty of healing for free.

On a slightly different note DM Barcas are you cool with characters taking magic item creation feats? Craft Wonderous Itme will probably be Verik's 3rd level feat since we are so far from the shops!

Perhaps unsurprisingly Verik will insist upon paying for his share of the rations, not least because I've already deducted it and don't want to do math again. :)

Since Jemini already deducted her 10gp, if anyone else wants to pay, I'll just add that to the party gold fund and we can use it for future rations purchases. Also since the cost was only 7 gp 6 sp I'll be applying 2 gp 4 sp from Jemini's overflow genrosity to this fund :)

EDIT: So basically I'd adding 2.4 gp from Jemini and 1.26 gp from Verik and Zander since we already deducted. No one else needs to donate unless they really want to.

EDIT2: And Tandlara, heh. We'll be set on rations next time around I think!

Sure works for me.

Perhaps unsurprisingly Verik will insist upon paying for his share of the rations, not least because I've already deducted it and don't want to do math again. :)

Ditto this I'm afraid. I've already paid my share!

...terrible trouser torturer...

Game is over, Verik wins. Everyone can go home.

Verik Jarrow wrote:

...terrible trouser torturer...

Game is over, Verik wins. Everyone can go home.

So I hadn't read Verik's post yet and my first reaction upon seeing this quote was "Is he talking about Jemini?? What's going on here??"

Hahahaaa, I had the same reaction even after I read the whole post.

Hey I'm not claiming there is no projection going on. ;)