DM Brainiac's War for the Crown: Table 1 (Inactive)

Game Master Brainiac

You could use stuff like moment of prescience or bit of luck to bolster those rolls. Still need Maria's check as well.

Sorry, still can't think of what approach Maria would use.

That 5 actually did some serious damage... I could have picked up 6 of them with a 20...

Maria and Melodie are up!

Maria and Zileska are up.

I will be out of town without internet access from Saturday 2/29 until Friday 3/6. It may take me until the following Monday to catch up on everything.

Seems like you are good for a miracle, yeah?

Zhi hops up and down hoping that Zileska will say 'Yes'.

Just letting everyone have a chance to speak!

Everybody has chimed in now.

About to leave on my trip. The campaign denouement will have to wait till I get back. :)

Argh! The suspense!

Two years in the making and the GM leaves us hanging for a week now? How fiendish!

Sorry! I was hoping to wrap up before now but things took a little longer than anticipated.

Good things are worth waiting for. :D

And you are a good thing Boss. We'll be here when you get back.

Oh yeah, forgot we lost someone!

I will start the full epilogue writeup on Monday!

Tomorrow will be exactly two years to the day from our first gameplay post! I wanted to take the time to thank all of you for being incredible players and helping us get through the entire War for the Crown campaign in a relatively short amount of time! This has been the first full campaign I have completed on the Paizo boards, and all of you helped to elevate it into one of my favorite gaming experiences of all time.

We've still got several epilogue posts until we wrap everything up, but I wanted to hear from you. What did you like about the game? What didn't you like? Which storylines or characters resonated the most? Is there anything you would have liked to have done differently? Was there anything you would have liked to have seen me do differently? Any other feedback you'd like to add? :D

I don't think there's anything I'd change at all. War for the Crown is a great AP and I've been immensely fortunate to have a wonderful GM and fantastic party to enjoy it with.

I think that one of the best things has been how everyone has been willing to put the story on hold to allow people time to expand their characters - the whole kerfuffle with Kurana is a great example. Brilliantly woven into the main plot by Brainiac and everyone gave me the room to keep running with it, which has been much appreciated.

The highlight was getting married, of course(!). Only thing I regret is that so many interesting NPC's came and went fairly quickly - Galina, Bartelby (my fault I know), Night Swan - there's just so many interesting characters in this AP who could nearly be PC's in their own right.

Also very glad that we went for the diplomatic options, and that Brainiac played them out. The verbal duel with Bartelby was great, a real lovely bit of the team working together (Sorry Mel curb stomped the later ones so hard...) and I think the game would have been much weaker if we and/or the GM had just gone 'that's too hard - lets kill him'.

So five stars from me for everything! :D

That was an enjoyable ride and the first time I've been in a campaign on the boards that made it successfully to the conclusion.

Zileska was a difficult character for me to play, because normally I have no interest in playing the Chaotic Neutral alignment. My experiences with other people playing that alignment have been almost universally bad. The major hurdle with Zileska was that she was whimsical and devoted to apparently random impulses, but also that as someone with a very high Wisdom she ostensibly has a strong will, good insight, and a lot of sense, which is tough to reconcile with a character whose religious principles are to do whatever makes you feel good, and take out your frustrations on anyone who crosses you.

My only dissatisfaction was with my own bad luck, which made me feel useless at several points. Part of this was due to the poor design of the social system, in which if a character couldn't participate due to bad rolls, there was no alternative way to engage. Thank you for at least giving me something to do in the end!

I enjoyed the other members of our team and feel a bit sad that I didn't have more interactions with Maria. Would happily play with any/all of you again.

Side jaunts were amusing too. Characterization was good, although I occasionally got lost in the roster of NPCs (which is to be expected for a sprawling political drama like this).

Glad to apply for whatever opportunity comes up next with DM Braniac.

I've had a blast throughout this game. Like a couple of you, this is my first fully completed forum AP.

One of the aspects of this game that I really enjoyed was that the characters formed relationships that were separate from the completion of the main story goal. The characters fit into the story as well. The story itself also encouraged intra-character interactions. Some of the greatest moments, I felt, weren't even directly connected to the primary story. Melodie's bachelorette party! Mel and Sara's political discussions!

The verbal dueling didn't spin my wheels as much as it did some (Melodie!), but I felt that it was in an appropriate place and not just tacked on.

I think the social system was ... interesting? I feel that it needed a little more tweaking to be prime-time ready.

I really want to thank Brainiac for running this game and allowing the character's personal stories to play a large part in the overall game.

Very enjoyable game, folks! Thanks all!

I'm playing this with another group and a very different character and I've botched the first couple of persona rolls. It'll be interesting to see if I can ever recover from it or if Caspian will go the same way as Zil did... fingers crossed he won't...

Thanks for the kind words. I do feel as if War for the Crown is one of the better adventure paths Paizo has created, and this is coming from somebody who has GMed at least part of every single AP from Shackled City in the days of Dungeon magazine on, most of which I have run to completion (some multiple times). The quality is very consistent throughout and I enjoyed seeing plotlines and NPCs develop throughout the entire path.

The highlight for me was all the rich and nuanced NPCs presented in Book 2. Everybody in the Stachys and Lotheedar region felt fully realized with complex motivations which helped me bring them to life. Bartelby, the Okerras, the Crabbes, Onora Piscum, the Night Swan, just to name a few. The RP was rich and plentiful.

Unfortunately, the deluge of NPCs in later installments kind of diluted the waters for me a bit. I feel that is one of my weaknesses, though--letting NPCs that don't directly interact with the plot fall by the wayside. I would have liked to have played up some of the older NPCs more but didn't really find a time for it. I think Safina in particular was a bit under-served towards the end.

I agree that the persona system felt undercooked and wasn't implemented in the best ways, but the same can be said about literally every AP-specific subsystem Paizo has put out. If I run this game again, I will happily ignore those rules with no great loss. I thought the relics were pretty cool, though.

My main regret is that Sara couldn't stay with us for the ending of the campaign. She was such a vital part of what made the game great and it felt slightly diminished without her presence. Still, I think it was a worthy conclusion to the game. :)

To turn the tables on our great GM ... ;)

If you have any recommendations/critiques on me as a player, feel free to pass them along ... via PM if you'd rather not critique in public.

I'm always looking for ways to improve as a player and feedback is always appreciated.

I have nothing for you. You all rock! :D

Definitely seconding the relics - I think they're seriously cool.

Since I am a bad GM I've pulled back from the game of Ruins I was running but not before I introduced Relics into that game too, they're just too cool not to have!

Tettia never got one. :( :(

I sent them to the new GM - if he's not using them then :(.

She was going to get a special spellbook with extra stuff.
Although unless you guys are going crazy fast you aren't in the place to get it yet.

So once this is over, what's next?

I have been asked to run a Hell’s Rebels game, if you are interested in joining.

Sure, I'd be happy to apply.

Sorry; meant to post sooner but then allergies started kicking my ass and I couldn't concentrate.

This has easily been the best Pathfinder campaign I've ever been in, and not just because most of the others died mid-way through their first parts. The persona system lost me pretty quick, but I did enjoy how the NPCs were handled. Honestly; my lack of activity towards the end was more just getting burnt out on PF1e and on play-by-post (I've been playing 3.5/PF1e for what must be nearly fifteen years now and all of it PBP).

I was kind of hoping that Maria's mum would factor in at some point, but then I realised it would lead to a third "missing parent" subplot after both Melodie's and Zhi's.

But other than that my sentiments are much like what the others have said.

G&!-d&%n all these orphaned adventurers with parental issues!

In retrospect Mel having three parents was very greedy and I must apologise. :) [My defense is that I'd just got Blood of the Coven when the recruitment went up and changelings are cool!]

Seriously though Maria, if I crowded you out I am sorry.

I am also... a little sad that things didn't wind up going in the direction of Zileska sleeping with Maria and then revealing that she'd slept with Maria's dad. Because drama. ;)

As awesome as that could've been, I wrote Maria to have enough distaste for Calistria and her church that she'd have been too put-off by that to really get into it.

And you didn't crowd me out, Mel; I wasn't hell-bent on having it happen or anything, threw it in just as a potential hook for a GM to use if they wanted to.

It was good to have that little funny scene regardless, Maria. Thanks. :)

I think we are still waiting on that miracle scene. :)

Yes, a certain small flat-chested woman has been waiting a very long time for a miracle like that. Years in fact.;) :)

I know. I'm working on it. It's tough with the pandemic stuff going on, since I have to adjust to changing job circumstances and my wife getting laid off from all of her jobs.

No worries, Zil. Lots of stuff going on.

Sent draft to DM, awaiting edits.

The draft looks good to me. Fixed a few typos and broken tags. Forwarded to Melodie and Zhi for approval.

Excellent work. N0thing needs changing from me.

Thank you! I hope it was worth the wait!

So... what's next?

Waiting on Zhi's approval, then I'll post it in gameplay and you can all go from there. Once you've played out whatever further scenes you want, I'll make one more post to wrap everything up! Then on to the next games! :)

clap, clap

Brava! Brava!

Zhi approves!

Okay, posted it in gameplay. Proceed! :D

PREAMBLE

Two years ago I was anxiously awaiting the release of War for the Crown. I had my group lined up and I was going to run what I had hoped to be the best AP written yet (I was not disappointed)!

When I run my games, I always look through other PBP games to get ideas on how other GM's ran the NPC's, the dialogue they used and general atmosphere building text (Read: I steal other GM's work). Brainiac's game was the only one running at the time and hollllly crap, you guys were able to keep pace with my live game because of your ridiculous post rate. For months and months this kept up until my group unfortunately fell apart in book four. But by that time, I feel like I already was in this game for as well as I knew your characters and the story.

Fast forward a year or so and a couple of your players ended up in one of my recruitment's for a game here. Knowing the players posting habits pretty well, I plucked them out from the general group, made a second table and snagged a few more good players I know. Over time we've played a few other games together and sow chaos every step we take (Or maybe that's just my characters? :)

GET TO THE POINT ALREADY

Mel and Zhi's daughter Harmony is the best-est friend in the whole world to my endearing, charming and rambunctious redheaded swashbuckler Tessa. When I saw Itzi's post describing Tessa meeting Zhi for the first time, I couldn't help myself but decide to put something together for you guys. So my parting and congratulatory gift to you is that I've visually recreated this scene where the two first meet. I hope you all enjoy it! :)

Zhi goes into labor

Kudos on completing a game on the forums, it is a feat in and of itself. Bravo to you all! I wish you all the best of luck in all of your future games and look forward to playing with you!

That is so cool, thanks!

Tessa and Zhi making faces... priceless! :D

Fantastic! Great job. :D