Remember that we don't have to fill in every detail now. As long as the GM has these types of details figured out before the characters learn them, everything works, and PBP allows plenty of time for that to happen. Mystery can be a powerful tool for GMs and players alike. Worldbuilding is fun, but if we can agree that there are things that our characters don't know yet, we can start playing while those details are still being figured out.
Remember that we don't have to fill in every detail now. As long as the GM has these types of details figured out before the characters learn them, everything works, and PBP allows plenty of time for that to happen. Mystery can be a powerful tool for GMs and players alike. Worldbuilding is fun, but if we can agree that there are things that our characters don't know yet, we can start playing while those details are still being figured out.
Ahhhh... Good point Whosawhatsis. Good point. I've already got more than a few ideas for those names in my head. Having them unnamed for now in game is actually a better driver of the story. So... As suggested, we'll leave them unnamed. That actually even works better for Orwyll also, if he doesn't know the name of the being from which he is drawing power, he would have a great deal of difficulty researching anything about him. :)
All right Syrus, just waiting on the particulars for Orwyll, and we can get this thing fired up completely.
Meanwhile we could have a little bit of fun getting Dutch and Talbert out of Rydwyrna... Since I don't think they have enough money for horses, perhaps Dutch can come up with a plan to "procure" the money they'll need for riding horses? Or maybe she just steals the horses themselves? Nothing like starting off an adventure as a horse thief... Or, alternately perhaps Dutch has been deep into the social scene and already has some information about a few merchant caravans that might be headed west? Is her deception high enough to pass herself and Talbert off as mercenaries? Maybe she can convince the caravan master to hire them as extra guards in exchange for "room and board," and a few silvers...? Or maybe you had better ideas Whosawhatsis?
Okay, here's what I have for Orwyll:
Str 7
Dex 7
Con 14
Int 10
Wis 12
Cha 19
Class: Warlock, Great Old One pact, Tome pact
Alignment: Neutral
Background: Hermit
Ideal: live and let live (stay out of it!)
Bond: I must confront the impending threats of ______, and ______, my patron.
Flaw: Keeping secrets is a must!
Trait: speaks infrequently, preferring gestures and incomprehensible mutters when dealing with others
Trait: frequently lost in thought, oblivious to surroundings
Skills: Intimidation (variant human); Religion, Medicine (Hermit); Arcana, History (class)
Feat: War Caster
Languages: Common, ???, ??? (whichever is appropriate for "Hadar")
Cantrips: Eldritch Blast, Chill Touch (?)
Spells: Dissonant Whispers, Arms of "Hadar"
Gear: burglar's pack, arcane focus - staff (not sure if this can double as a melee weapon . . . .), herbalism kit, 64 gp (I could benefit from some input on additional purchases)
Languages: probably Abyssal and Infernal... Those are the two most common Lower Planes languages. Of course, you could also go Draconic since it's a dead language no one would be able to make any sense of it, until Orwyll meets Talbert, and Talbert can actually understand a few of the words he spouts during his mumbled ramblings... This would also give Talbert and Orwyll a strong reason to continue being around each other... ;)
What are the blanks in the Bond statement for? The names of the two beings? Or the most imminent threats?
Why the question after Chill Touch? Not sure if that's really what you want to take?
Yes an arcane focus staff can be a quarterstaff; I'm pretty sure that's the flavor the rules are meant to duplicate.
Gear: I'd suggest a belt pouch (everyone should have at least one), a blanket or two (that still doesn't/don't keep him warm, and is/are frequently covered in frost upon his waking), several sheets of parchment in a leather scroll case and charcoal pencils (for his insane scribbling of the "other world" ideas that keep penetrating his thoughts--I already know one of the first things that will pop in there), and possibly a grappling hook if you're interested.
"Retreated" for the Seclusion? Or do you want a custom Seclusion?
Languages: Abyssal, Draconic (eventually taking the Eyes of the Rune Keeper invocation)
Blanks in Bond: Yes, those are placeholders for our "Tiamat" and "Hadar" beings. They *are* the imminent threats, as far as Orwyll reckons.
Chill Touch (?): Yeah, not sure what I *really* want here; chill touch is thematic-ish, though.
Will add to the gear list a bit later today.
Seclusion: Yup. Went into isolation just after the curse/pact first manifested.
Also, dude, Orwyll's AC is 8... Being an arcane caster, intelligent enemies are going to be targeting that dude... Even if/when you give him leather armor (which he is proficient in and therefore can wear without any penalty - add that to my gear suggestions) his AC is 9... That's just straight up rough. Dude's gonna need a stash of healing potions.
Edit: You can afford studded leather which gives a +2 to AC so that would put him at a 10 for AC, still rough, but might be worth the cost... Until he can take the Armor of Shadows invocation (Mage Armor at will without using a spell slot).
Yeah. Armor of Agathys is on the list, too . . . .
Armor of Agathys is only 5 temporary HP with a retribution of cold damage to the first target that hits with a melee attack... Not a boost to armor class. Flavorful, yes, but as 1st level spell slots are at a high commodity, I'd actually suggest against it. Maybe Caelbrash is going to have "draw aggro" with his intimidation skill?
Edit: Also Eyes of the Runekeeper is almost a game breaker for the campaign we have going. I mean, Talbert's whole mission is to scavenge for every scrap of Draconic lore he can find in an effort to puzzle out the dead language. If suddenly at level 2 Orwyll can just read any writing, Talbert's whole purpose for adventuring just disappeared... O.o I'm sure we can find a way to manipulate that when it comes to it. I'll have to brainstorm about that before it comes up.
Or Orwyll can get Eldritch Spear and just blast away from afar . . . .
EDIT: Provided he survives at all, of course . . . .
Are you still recuperating at home, Mended? Or is it a slow day at the office? :D
I'm mending... Pun intended I guess... Slow day at the office. :)
I just realized that last was about as ambivalent as possible. I should have said, I am on the mend, well enough to be at work since yesterday. So, I am at work, it is a slow day. :)
I have a guy playing a warlock in our tabletop game who wants to take Eldritch Spear next time he get's invocations. As is he took Devil Sight and Agonizing Blast.
Hmmmm . . . . Maybe Stealth, rather than . . . . Well, no. Dex still sucks . . . .
Meh. Either he's tough enough, or he ain't.
I have this image in my head of the pain of injury being one of the few things that REALLY brings Orwyll's attention to the here and now. Having a sharp pointy thing driven into your flesh will do that... Maybe he doesn't even fully engage in combat unless he sees his friends being seriously hurt, or gets hurt himself? Sort of one of those "you've woken the beast" kind of characters...
Meanwhile we could have a little bit of fun getting Dutch and Talbert out of Rydwyrna... Since I don't think they have enough money for horses, perhaps Dutch can come up with a plan to "procure" the money they'll need for riding horses? Or maybe she just steals the horses themselves? Nothing like starting off an adventure as a horse thief... Or, alternately perhaps Dutch has been deep into the social scene and already has some information about a few merchant caravans that might be headed west? Is her deception high enough to pass herself and Talbert off as mercenaries? Maybe she can convince the caravan master to hire them as extra guards in exchange for "room and board," and a few silvers...? Or maybe you had better ideas Whosawhatsis?
I was assuming they would be on foot, but if she's planning horse thievery, that might be a good reason for wanting to get going before first light. How far is their destination?
Edit: Also Eyes of the Runekeeper is almost a game breaker for the campaign we have going. I mean, Talbert's whole mission is to scavenge for every scrap of Draconic lore he can find in an effort to puzzle out the dead language. If suddenly at level 2 Orwyll can just read any writing, Talbert's whole purpose for adventuring just disappeared... O.o I'm sure we can find a way to manipulate that when it comes to it. I'll have to brainstorm about that before it comes up.
For that matter, the existence of the spell "comprehend languages" is a problem. For my part, I can just say that it's not in the book, and thus not available for Talbert to learn, thereby ensuring that he has to do it the hard way.
Yeah, I thought of comprehend languages too, and thought I might just have to GM fiat something that said Draconic is so dead that even the spell can't decipher it. Your idea is much better, since Talbert only uses that book for spells, just saying it isn't in there is the perfect option. :)
Distance to destination is 100-110 miles on the highway (Republic Way) then around 30 miles traveling through the Mourning Forest, off road. It is roughly that same distance for Brash and Orwyll as well, just coming from the Highlands instead of from Rydwyrna. Funny thing is... having a horse in D&D 5 doesn't do a darn thing for "daily" travel, except help you carry more gear than you might normally carry. Mounts can make a difference for "hourly" distances, but when you're talking about daily travel, the game has you pick a pace, and you go that pace regardless of whether you're riding a mount or not... Which, I guess, except for treasure carrying purposes, makes horses not really all that important.
It could also turn out that large parts of the book are written not only in draconic, but in code. Of course, a good code is all-or-nothing, so we wouldn't be able to trickle out information as effectively. Once he cracked the code, it would just be a matter of having he downtime to decode it.
So, this is going to be a couple of day of travel on the road before they even enter the forest. Are there towns along the road to stop for the night? Is there a regional map that would show such things? "Republic Way" doesn't sound like the kind of road that you would have to camp for the night on the side of. I would think there would at least be inns, like the "Inn at the Crossroads" that shows up repeatedly in GoT.
Total Sidebar: I once had a notion to build an encryption protocol, inspired by the specifics of the old WWII Enigma device. Since I've never been especially math- nor tech-savvy, it was all completely hand-written. It was laid out to cycle through 26 different cipher keys on a rotating sequence, even shifting its position on the 'character string' as it went. There was an additional layer of obfuscation in that new cipher keys could be embedded in a message to vary the results a bit more. But it was just a straight-text-conversion effort.
I haven't delved into cryptography or its particulars in many, many years (if 20 or so counts as "many, many"). But that was an engaging effort back during all my high school free time . . . . :D
I fail to see what advantage you get from rotating through 26 distinct cypher keys vs. having a single cipher key that is 26 times as long.
The best form of cryptography is the one-time pad, in which both the sender and the recipient of the message have identical strings of truly random noise longer than the message to be sent. These, of course, must be the ONLY two copies, and must never be visible to anyone but the sender and the receiver. The sender convolves his pad with the message using some reversible function (XOR is a good one, since it is its own reverse and won't lose data, even to overflow), then destroys his copy. The receiver reverses the function with his copy of the pad, then that pad is never used again.
Most modern cryptography uses a variant of this, but instead of having full random pads longer than the message that can only be used once, the key seeds a pseudorandom number generator.
Edit: Of course, the fact that you use the number 26 implies that you were planning to retain letters as a character set rather than converting to binary (which is necessary for using XOR). Some type of numerical conversion is necessary to employ an decent compression algorithm, which itself is good for obfuscating data. As the information density of a message approaches 1, the message becomes indistinguishable from random noise until the algorithm is reversed to decode it.
Remind me to kill all four of your characters for your crimes of talking about advanced mathematics in my discussion thread!!!!
Hey!! I did no such thing!! I was just scrambling letters -- that's still Linguistics!! :P
P.S. -- But I won't apologize for mentioning a PF skill here. lol
So, this is going to be a couple of day of travel on the road before they even enter the forest. Are there towns along the road to stop for the night? Is there a regional map that would show such things? "Republic Way" doesn't sound like the kind of road that you would have to camp for the night on the side of. I would think there would at least be inns, like the "Inn at the Crossroads" that shows up repeatedly in GoT.
There is an "inn" which is really more of a hamlet entirely owned by one person, an elf named Macillondë. This "inn" is a walled fort with a three-story inn, a smith, a general goods and provisions store, a gambling house (also a brothel but on the sly), and one of the best sculpture gardens in all of the Republic. It also has a garrison for Republic troops, a bunkhouse for Macillondë's own hired men, and several houses for some free folk that have chosen to live in his fort/hamlet/wayside inn. Everyone calls the fort by the name of the inn, The Wailing Banshee.
My imagining of Republic Way is that there is enough traffic on it throughout the summer and autumn that one could easily fall in with a caravan moving along it as a straggler, sort of like the road is almost constantly dotted with little "tent cities" and wagon trains. So, brick and mortar inns just never seemed like great business sense, as most people going along the road would be prepared for more than a week "without civilization." Macillondë's place is smack dab in the center of the Mourning Forest. A new road, going north to Briarhill and the ferry that crosses to Blueblossom Haven, starts at his fort. His fort also has gated entry on the road at both ends, so travelers either have to go through his hamlet, or around it. Good business sense.
So, I guess to answer the question underneath the question, Talbert and Dutch would need to be prepared to sleep outdoors for the duration, and either find food of their own, or bring standard road fair (read: rations). A tent might not be a bad idea, in case of rain... ;0
As to the cipher keys, cryptography, and enigma devices. While I appreciate that that might be a natural discussion flowing out of the game's focal point of a slowly deciphered dead language. It still made me feel like an imbecile because I only understood about every seventh word. So, again, remind me to kill all four of your characters. Orwyll will be the easiest, he's got an 8 AC for goodness sake! :P :D ;)
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I should name our version of Tiamat something like Kraiula... Since she's a dragon of diverse chromatics... :)
Syrus!!!
I've taken everything you've given me and then taken liberties with what I thought was best, and finished your two characters. Their PDF sheets are in the shared Drive folder linked at the top of each thread in this campaign. Here it is again, just for the sake of ease of use.
Look Caelbrash and Orwyll over thoroughly, make sure all is as you want it. If it is, the only other thing I really need you to do, and there's no rush on it, is to get some of the information in the Class/Levels tagline like we've used before. If they need changes let me know. It's ridiculously easy to change things in Hero Lab. :)
Let's get this party started right! Let's get this party started quickly! ... Name that tune. :)
You want to start the RP with Orwyll mumbling his way into a meeting of his clan's elders?
@Whosawhatsis! What do you need from me to get started with Talbert and Dutch hitting the road? Anything? Or do you want to just back and forth it the way you have been. I have to say, thoroughly enjoying that. :)
Lastly, and then I'll be AFK for the rest of the night probably. Whosawhatsis... did you make the backgrounds transparent on Talbert and Dutch's images? Cause, frick, that's awsome! I don't suppose you could whip up some wizardry like that for Caelbrash and Orwyll...?
Lastly, and then I'll be AFK for the rest of the night probably. Whosawhatsis... did you make the backgrounds transparent on Talbert and Dutch's images? Cause, frick, that's awsome! I don't suppose you could whip up some wizardry like that for Caelbrash and Orwyll...?
I did. It works better with a higher-resolution source. I did an image search for his, but it didn't turn up anything. Syrus, you don't happen to remember approximately which page each avatar was on, do you? When you look at them there, it shows you which book the image is from. With that info, I could extract the high-res versions to work with.
Hoo-boy. I'll do some checking, get back to ya on that, whosa. :D
Nevermind, found them.
Okie-doke.
Turns out, when you download the image, the file name starts with the paizo product code for the book it came from. Drop that in the google and it will usually spit back a pdf download link.
Added to map.
My imagining of Republic Way is that there is enough traffic on it throughout the summer and autumn that one could easily fall in with a caravan moving along it as a straggler, sort of like the road is almost constantly dotted with little "tent cities" and wagon trains. So, brick and mortar inns just never seemed like great business sense, as most people going along the road would be prepared for more than a week "without civilization." Macillondë's place is smack dab in the center of the Mourning Forest. A new road, going north to Briarhill and the ferry that crosses to Blueblossom Haven, starts at his fort. His fort also has gated entry on the road at both ends, so travelers either have to go through his hamlet, or around it. Good business sense.
Some follow-up questions:
You say "center of the Mourning Forest", so I take it the road is going through the forest? I was picturing something skirting the edge of it. It would really help to have the roads marked on the maps (or is there one that includes them that I'm not seeing?)
How likely is rain this time of year? (and what time is that? Summer/Autumn?)
How close to/how far past The Wailing Banshee do we get before we need to leave the road? How many days to get there?
Some conclusions:
Dutch is going to have to purchase more provisions than I had planned on. I'll have to give some more thought to what her plan for this journey would be.
Also, Talbert is even more woefully unprepared for this journey than I expected, but that's Talbert, so it's ok.
Whos... Funny you should mention a map with roads. I've been thinking about that an awful lot myself lately. Thinking about "upgrading" the map altogether. I'll be looking at various options today, might even purchase some cartography software if the price is right. I have a SLOW day ahead at work, with only a few things I have to do. Might be I find enough time to create an entirely new map, with roads, and get it posted to the site. If not, I might just use Paint and add some of the major roads to the existing map.
As for time of year it is Autumn. I'm going to start this game at the exact same calendar date as the other campaign is taking place, so we're at the beginning of the month of Ilsa. As far as weather patterns go, two things: 1) My imagining of the continent of Iewiuf makes only the very northern parts like the Orc Hold, Elven Queendom, and the Racamere susceptible to blizzards and heavy snow. There might be occasional snow fall in the southern part of the continent, but they would be very infrequent, abominations as it were. 2) Weather in 5e is entirely determined, as you may have noticed in the other campaign, by the roll of three d20s. The first determines temperature, the second wind, and the third precipitation. Only on a roll of 18-20 on the wind and precip. d20's would get a "storm." 13-17 on the second two d20's would get light wind and light rain. I hate math, so you go ahead and tell me the likelihood of rain. :)
Realized I forgot to address your Wailing Banshee question. Most people use the Banshee as a jumping off station before venturing into the forest in any direction, since it is right at the heart of the forest. Your destination is a swampy part of the forest about 30 miles south of the Banshee. That's actually two day's worth of travel unless you hire a ranger to help you through. Rangers... they're useful. :) It is entirely likely (read: you will if you want to) that you could find some Order of the Wild Rangers hanging out at the Banshee, and could hire one to help you make the trip from the Banshee to the designated area of the forest in one day. That would, of course, mean that I get to make a Ranger NPC and have him ask you all kinds of questions about why you need to go to such a swampy and "dead" area of the forest... :P
Edit: Alternatively, I could be talked into just setting a Survival DC and allowing Caelbrash (since he actually has Expertise in Survival) to roll to see if he can help the group Navigate the forest at a normal pace... That would give your pairs a reason to get together and start bonding before you actually meet at the site of power, obviously meeting at the Banshee would be the best way to accomplish that... Let me know what you guys think about that option for your first meeting instead?
Well I didn't end up upgrading it. I'd love to get Campaign Cartographer 3.0, but the price tag is too big of a barrier for me. Someday maybe I'll bite the bullet, pay the price tag, and redo all the maps for Eafphqu. For now though I used Gimp, added roads, and in so doing added a bunch more settlements, because the roads had to lead somewhere... :) The big map on the Eafphqu front page is now that updated image. I'll probably spend a fair portion of the rest of my day rolling up random inns and NPCs for those locations so I have at least a spine of a settlement to work from.
Okie-doke!
Gonna get the aliases built today (and I'll note any gear changes here for you, Mended), and I might *finally* be able to post backstory in Gameplay . . . .
At your leisure my friend. At your leisure. No rush here. I've had no end of fun just prepping this campaign, and figuring out about these new characters that are in the world of Eafphqu. :)
And as for meeting at the Banshee: I'm good with it!
I'll think about how that would work, but my initial reaction is that Dutch wouldn't want to let anyone know what they're looking for (and remember that what she thinks they're looking for is pretty different from what the highlanders think they're looking for). Thus, even if they did happen to meet, they wouldn't end up travelling together, and even if she saw them leaving at the same time in the same direction, she would delay or take a detour so that the others didn't realize they were going the same way.
Even if she knew they were absolutely going to the same place? Which, granted, would be a difficult conversation to pull off, since both Orwyll and Dutch and Talbert are all going to want to keep things as secretive as possible...
If that's the case, I'll just have to make sure that everybody ends up at the same place at the same time. That worries me though. Out there, in the middle of nowhere, with possible magical power/treasure on the line, I'm afraid this campaign will be over before it starts. What could Orwyll or Caelbrash say that would make Dutch trust them as opposed to want to remove them from her path?
I don't know that there's anything they *could* (or would) say to engender trust from Dutch. Talbert, on the other hand, could pretty quickly lock in on Orwyll as potentially helpful, though in a confused fashion . . . . Perhaps.
Yeah, I suppose Talbert might blab something, or he might overhear something and (awkwardly) strike up a conversation.
Quick note, I was thinking a little about Talbert's ability scores, and I decided that CHA should really be his lowest score, so I switched it with STR. No changes to the modifiers, since one was an 8 and the other was a 9, and I don't plan on putting ability bumps into either, it just feels like a better fit.
I'll make that switch in Hero Lab and update the PDF of the character sheet just so we all are operating with the same information. :)