Welcome to the discussion thread for my Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign!
The game will be starting up soon, but first I wanted to go over some guidelines:
Posting Frequency
As mentioned in the recruitment thread, I'd like to keep this game moving at a pace of one post per day. What that means is that I will personally be posting and moving the action forward every 24-hours at the minimum. If any people haven't posted their actions within that 24-hour window, I will control their actions for that step. In most cases, this will simply mean that they don't do anything and follow the will of the party, but if people know ahead of time that they won't be able to post for a coming day or don't have time to make a full post, if you post a brief summary of what you'd like your character to do in your absense, I can go with that. If we happen upon a day where multiple people are going to be gone and give advance warning, I'm cool with us all skipping that day so too many people don't get skipped. As I also mentioned, I'm not going to enforce posting guidelines on weekends or holidays. Not to say that people can't post on those days, but I won't move action forward unless everyone has posted in that case. Also if people do post more than once a day, that's totally great and I will just treat it the same way with not moving action forward until everyone has posted.
Formatting
I don't want to be a formatting nazi, but I do like things to be clear and look nice. Using correct spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are pretty much a given and in addition I like to do Bold for speaking in character, Italic for thinking in character, and Also, present tense please. Here's an example:
Batman is sitting alone in his batcave feeling blue. I'm feeling blue, he thinks to himself as a bat flies down from the darkness and lands on his head. What are you doing on my head, bat? he asks with a scowl. The bat does not respond.
I could really go for a cheeseburger right now, muses the caped crusader as he glares at the reflection of the bat in the batcomputer screen. He dips his fingers into his utility belt and pulls out a handful of spell components. Making an arcane gesture in the air and muttering the spell under his breath, Batman smiles. Cheeseburger time.
Combat
I like maps. As such, I'll be using Google Documents spreadsheets to make battlemaps for our combats. If you don't have a Google account either A) Get one, they're free, or B) Let me know and we'll figure something out. Basically I want everyone to have access to the battlemap and be able to move their characters around the grid as they make their posts for each rouch. How I'd like to format the posts is to start out with your name, current hp, and any conditions you're suffering from at the top in bold. After that, just make your post in the usual format and then include your actions in ooc text at the bottom along with any rolls. Usually it'll be best to roll damage as well for each attack and then I'll just apply it if it hits or not apply it if it doesn't. Here's another example:
Batman
hp 112/124, sickened
Spotting the crooks dash around the corner, Batman moves accross the alleyway and ducks behind a dumpster. This dumpster stinks, he thinks to himself as he pulls a batarang from his belt and throws it at the nearest thug, aiming for the groin.
Other Stuff
That's all of the main stuff I want to get out of the way at this point. I'll get the actual game thread up and running pretty soon and then we can get playing!
Also one question to help me write up the first post of the gameplay thread, where is everyone staying in town? As in do you have a room at an inn, living in a temple, etc? Assuming everyone posts in this thread by tomorrow, I should theoretically be able to get that started then. Looking forward to playing with all of you!
I'm on a phone so this post won't be long, but I'm checking in and excited!
Also, since I live in Korvosa on the streets, I'll be staying in the alley that I normally call home.
Checking in and ditto on the excited!
Red would be at a cheap inn somewhere, probably at the bar, drinking herself slightly silly.
Hey everybody! I've been looking forward to a Curse of the Crimson Throne game a great deal, so thanks for drafting me =)
As far as combat posts go, I typically include a spoiler like this one at the end of my posts, does that work for you, DM Kacy?
HP: 15/15
AC: 13 (11 T / 12 FF)
CMD: 15
F/R/W: +4/+2/+3
Rage Rounds used: 0/6
-Ongoing Effects-
After Travigan picks up some levels in sorcerer, this kind of spoiler is also helpful for tracking how many spell slots he has available from round to round. And speaking of his sorcerer levels, I'm still flexible on which to focus on: barbarian or sorcerer. I feel like barbarian might be a little more natural for the character, but if we have enough frontliners already I could swap my Str and Cha scores and pick up more sorcerer levels than barbarian without any trouble. I just need to make that decision now, before we start.
Anyone have any thoughts or experience with dragon disciples to help with the decision?
As for Travigan's whereabouts, he'd be staying in the tiny house attached to the smithy where he's worked for the last 40+ years.
I've never played a dragon disciple before, but I have designed one, and mine had only one level of sorcerer. The dragon disciple seems like a frontliner to me, with just a little casting throne in. But I think either way would be good.
I'm on my phone before bed myself so no long posts here either. The end of combat spoiler thing sounds fine and I've no experience with Dragon Disciples either, but the combat focused route does seem like the way to go. Between a Wizard and an Oracle we should have casting in the bag as is.
Sounds good. Strength focused angry smasher it is!
I'm looking forward to playing with you.
Rivane lives in the Great Cathedral of Pharasma.
Kind of weird replying to my own question, but I want to have it up here for reference :P
Xavaros rents a beat up studio on Harborview Boulevard South in the West Docks ward of the Midland district. It's a pretty terrible place, but it's all he can afford at the moment (assuming he can make next month's rent).
I just realised... Red is the only female in the party. And she's only 5 feet tall. This could be interesting.
Excellent! I'm just packing up at the office and about to head out to catch Les Mis. Will jump into the gameplay thread after I get home tonight. =)
Sounds good, enjoy the show! I'm going to run a little loose on posting guidelines until probably the 2nd too so if we take a little bit to get rolling while the holidays are wrapping up, no big.
I want to stay true to both the background material and your backstory at the same time so perhaps the problems with Kristen needing to be secretive about your relationship had to do with some sort of general anti-fraternization rule in the company? There isn't a lot of published material on them, but I could see something like that existing maybe.
As for Red's self conciousness about the matter, maybe her father was particularly bigoted, found out about Red's leanings at an early age, and beat her for it more than usual? I could see something like that instilling a general fear of letting others know about that side of herself. Maybe the secretiveness with Kristen wasn't even for any practical reasons and was just Red's way of handling the situation based on past experience?
What do you think? I'm just kind of throwing out ideas, but I want to give you the freedom to work everything into Red's backstory/personality however you want to.
Yep, when I wrote the backstory, I had in fact meant for Kristen to want the relationship to remain secret because of a possible Sable Company anti-fraternization rule. I also did have it in mind that Kristen's family, being of old Chelish blood, wouldn't have approved of the relationship because Red's half-Varisian and as common as dirt. (Not that knowing Red was female would have helped the matter along anyway.) They'd have tolerated Kristen being 'friends' with an impoverished Varisian half-breed sell-sword, but acknowledging Red as anything more would have been out of the question.
So basically, when Kristen was alive, Red would have kept the relationship a secret out of necessity and deference to Kristen. Now that Kristen's dead, Red remains quiet because that's how she did things when Kristen was alive. Revealing the truth would hardly help matters along at this point, nor would it endear her to the Vian family. It also puts Red in the interesting conundrum of being unable to publicly mourn Kristen as her lover, rather than as just Kristen's really good friend whom the family doesn't like.
All that said, Red herself is quite comfortable with her sexuality. I'd intended to show that in her dressing and hairstyle, and possibly her interactions with other NPCs later on. If she's less than vocal about it, I'd put that down to her naturally being quiet rather than her being worried about what other people might think.
I probably should have clarified all this in the backstory and/or in the gameplay thread posts, but I was still puzzling out the details over the past few days and didn't want to exposition dump. Sorry about that!
Happy New Year everyone by the way!
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to all of you!
REALLY impressed with that harrow reading! That was very, very well done!
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it! It was fun to do :)
Also,
NEW GAME MECHANIC: Harrow Points
Those of you familiar with the AP might already know this, but that Harrow reading actually has some in-game effects. Basically each book in the AP has a particular theme represented by one of the Harrow suits, which corresponds to one of the six ability scores. Edge of Anarchy's suit is Keys, which correspond to Dexterity.
The way Harrow Points work is that for each time a Keys card came up in the Harrow reading, you each got a Harrow Point that can be used during this adventure to do one of three things:
Dexterity Rerolls: Spend a Harrow Point to reroll any one Initiative check, Reflex save, attack roll modified by Dexterity, or Dexterity-based skill check. You must abide by the new result (although if you have additional Harrow Points remaining, you can use them to attempt additional rerolls).
Dodge Bonus: Spend a Harrow Point to gain a +1 Dodge bonus to your Armor Class for one encounter. You can spend up to 3 Harrow Points per encounter to increase your Armor Class in this manner.
Speed Increase: Spend a Harrow Point to increase your base speed by 10 feet for one encounter—you cannot spend multiple Harrow Points to increase your speed multiple times in one encounter.
You also get a free point for the card you chose during the choosing so basically at this point, you each have 3 Harrow Points. Use them wisely.
It won't be long before we see combat, so if everyone could post their Google username here so that I can add you to the document that will act as a battle map, that would be awesome. If you don't want to post it here for some reason, you can email me at smashthedean at gmail.com.
My google handle is arashirou at gmail.
johnnyhath[at]gmail[dot]com
joan.cotilla at gmail.com
eprister[at]nd[dot]edu (yes it's a gmail account).
To the player of Travigan:
This is terribly random, but can I just say that "goat-humpin' puke-pot" is one of the best insults ever? I was drinking water while checking the forum and almost snorted my drink up my nose.
lol - happy to be of service! =D
First combat of the adventure! If you guys want to discuss tactics at all, I'd do it in this thread instead of the main one to keep things cleaner looking in there, but other than that - have fun!
In the loot sheet it says that a silver piece equals 0.2 gp and a copper one 0.02. Shouldn't it be 0.1 and 0.01?
Nope that's right because to find the final "sell value" for everything, the "value" gets divided by 2. Since a gold piece sells for a gold piece it's "value" is 2 gp. It looks weird, but it works.
So how do we go about this? Is it fastest poster gets first dibs, or should we try to discuss this in a civilised manner? :p
In my old online group we always put all the loot in the "party wealth". If someone needed anything from the "party wealth" and nobody else wanted it, they took it. If two or more people wanted an item, it went to the one who could use it better. Once in a while we checked that everyone had roughly the same wealth, and if someone had less, they got first dibs on the next loot. Tha "party wealth" was used to pay for group wands, scrolls, potions, etc. and for raising fallen party members from the dead.
What do you think of this method?
Loot division is probably the aspect of the game I enjoy the least. Most of the groups I've played with online do an even split of the loot, with a party fund getting one share as well. (So, if there are 5 people in the group, any spoils would be split 6 ways and the party fund would go toward wands of cure light wounds and raise dead scrolls and the like)
I think it's just as easy to split the costs of those things on a case by case basis though.
In this instance, I think I'd like Travigan to lay claim to the studded leather armor - in which case everyone else's share would remain 106.9 but his would be adjusted down to 94.4.
I think the 6 way split would be slightly less complicated to manage? But I'll go with the majority voice. Either way, I don't think Red needs/ wants anything from this batch of loot, so I won't be claiming anything for now.
I'm curious as to how your old group's system would work, Amaranthine Witch - does this mean that someone who wanted something that wasn't in the "party wealth" would have to take out items of equivalent value to sell for gold? Because I'd be wondering what would happen if someone else in the party decides that the item being taken out ought to be kept for future use.
e.g. say hypothetically that Red decides she'd look fetching in chain mail (150gp). Since the current loot doesn't contain chain mail, she could take the tanglefoot bags (100gp) and the disguise kit (50gp) out to make up the 150gp needed. But someone else might protest and say that both those items could be highly useful in future and ought to be saved.
We always sold the weapons, armor and shields nobody wanted, as well as the jewelry and gems when we could. Then the players would make their requests and if all agreed, and there was enough gp, the purchases where made. If we were short on gp, we either waited until we got more loot, or we agreed to sell miscellaneous equipment to aquire the funds.
Here's how I'm used to doing loot:
1. List gets made and split up by a handy dandy spreadsheet. (Done!)
2. People call out items they want. (Travigan wants studded leather, etc)
3. If there is disagreement, the party can discuss it and hopefully come to an agreement about which party member would most benefit from the loot. (Xavaros says he wants the studded leather too, everyone agrees that he would not benefit from it as much as Travigan because Xavaros is a Wizard and that would be dumb)
4. If there are two members who both would benefit equally from the loot, they roll off and to the victor goes the spoils.
5. The loot's sale value is subtracted from the party member's loot share. (Everyone else gets 106.9 and Travigan gets 94.4)
6. Things that benefit the entire party like potions, wands of healing/buffing, etc get excluded from the loot total and just go straight party fund and distributed evenly throughout the party.
7. If one person claims an especially large share of the loot, they pay money out of their own pocket that gets split between the party. (Travigan decides he wants the garnet amulet valued at 200 gp as well, this would put his share of the loot at -5.6. To make this up, he pays the party 1.4 each)
8. If the person doesn't have the money to do this it gets taken out of the other party member's shares and the person gets the deficit amount (5.6) less loot next time loot is split that gets divided between everyone else evenly.
9. An optional party fund can be created with a certain percentage of the party's loot going to it for party costs. (The most my games have ever done is 10%, it's really easy for me to do in the spreadsheet whatever you guys decide though)
That works for me.
Same here. I dig it!
I agree, your method looks good. I'd say we can start with 10% going to the party fund and if we see its too much, reduce it afterwards.
Sounds good to me. I know it's a lot, but I would be interested in the masterwork dagger (since daggers are the only weapon I'm likely to use). It'll put me in debt for a while, but so be it.
OK, I confess that I have no idea how any of the math is working on the loot page. :p
OK, I confess that I have no idea how any of the math is working on the loot page. :p
Whoops, I get distracted and forgot to update one cell when I added in the party fund. Should be fixed now. :)
eatalotoftictacs, we have a keyring wiht various keys that should open that door if it's locked.
Oops. Well, Red does have INT 9. Feel free to have someone else nab the key? I can't edit the post anymore. :(
No worries, I just had Rivane provide the key since he's pointing it out here ;)
I can't believe it! What a waste of maximum damage :(