GM Parrot's The Ferry and the Depths: Rappan Athuk (Inactive)

Game Master parrot familiar

Merry dwarf grumpy Christmas Eve to all!

Happy new year and hope everone was able to enjoy the holidays with friends and family!

Sorry , I saw this re-activate a while back,but november and December were crazy for me, forgot all about it!

I'll review the game play and get back to it!

Work is intense right now! I hope I can get back into the swing of it soon but my energy levels are trash and after a day of reading computers, it's not what i want to do for fun.

Hope to be back though! Things are gradually getting easier.

It's been waaay to long since I checked in here. I'm sorry I left you all hanging.

This game collapsed when I/we attempted an encounter that was beyond my technical skills as a GM. It was demoralizing to realize I'd badly botched it after trying to get ready for a long time. I wanted to get back to it, but I never quite figured out how to make it fly. Getting DMs from strangers pointing out my mistakes was humbling, and not necessarily in a feels-good way (even if I know they came from a helpful place). I'm not a bloodthirsty GM and I felt especially bad for taking (even unintentional) illegal shots at the characters. So I figured I'd get around to it, and months passed.

That all left you and your characters (amazing characters!) in the lurch.

Real life isn't helping: things are up and down, with either too much or not enough work. I'm underemployed again right now and I'm thinking of trying my hand at DMing a PbP game again. I'm not sure I could/should restart this one because a lot of my knowledge of Pathfinder has atrophied, but I also feel like I owe it some attention before starting something new. This was one of the great gaming experiences of my life.

I have been playing in games with the players behind Anzath and Bedlam, which has been great. I miss their characters, though--and both in the case of Tragershen, Aurora, Terapin, and Lolly!

So, we could try to get the band together and take one more crack at the temple. I'm not sure how far we'd rewind, but it'd be played with the understanding that I'm not capable of "doing it right" and things would get sloppy. After the rewind, there'd be no turning back--just one big chaotic combat, rules falling apart, etc. Like last time, but playing through instead of collapsing entirely. The campaign would officially end with victory or defeat in the first temple: victory or hell, instead of limbo?

Or, if it's time to bury this one mid-battle (not the worst Valhalla), you're all invited to spots in my next game. It seems like the winds are blowing to Pf2e, and I've been learning a lot about it from Bedlam in his campaign, so it might be 2e. I have multiple homebrew games and settings that I'm wanting to launch, and possibly a few others who I might invite to a game.

I'm sorry, and I miss you.

Hey Parrot!

Thought I saw you lurking about! Meant to send you a PM, but here you are!

As for 'doing it right', it's really about the people you play with, the rules are there to support, if you get something wrong, <shrug> :)

I'm game if you are.

Al

Sorry if you felt called out regarding rules. As a GM, I'm a bit of a rules stickler, although I don't always get it right either. My intention is always let's work to get it the most right as a table and make sure we're all having fun. So I understand that it got to the point that you weren't having fun.

I do miss this group and I miss Anzath, but I don't necessarily feel strongly either way about revamping this campaign. I'd be very interested in playing something you've homebrewed. Whatever inspires you, I'm happy to be here.

I am of the opinion that we had a fantastic run and I am looking forward to another once you are ready to run your new one.

Thanks everyone for the memories provided by this Table!

Who knows, perhaps, Bedlam will be reborn!

Y'all are good folk.

That's one yes, one maybe, and one no. Let's see if the others pop in (maybe I'll reach out).

My setting ideas for a homebrew:

Floating Islands. A magical catastrophe ensues after powerful magical forces attempt to end an ice age, overdo it, melt almost all the ice on the Earth-like planet, and flood most formerly habitable territory in the equatorial lowlands. Magical folk found various ways to scoop up territory into floating islands and thus preserve their favorite spots. And of course, the ocean itself is in turmoil, and who knows what is thawing out under the ice? And what about the people or beings who caused this mess in the first place? This one has been stuck in my head lately.

Valley of the [Redacted]

Somewhat more spoiler-dependent. The party explores a rich, but flawed place teetering between dys- and u-topia I've been thinking of this one for years. A twist on some familiar tropes and an investigation of good, evil, utilitarianism, ends vs. means, law vs. morality, etc. For best results, characters should not be hard-locked into rigid alignments--no trad paladins.

Pulp Fictions and Weird Tales

Possibly combined with Floating Islands. I've gotten really into pre-and-during WWII pulpy stories in and beyond the Weird Tale genre. This one might be a tribute to the old stories. It's not a setting so much as a reading list, but I know some-of-our mutual friend Robert Henry would be into it.

Yes!

Floating Islands with airships please.

Already thinking ahead! I hadn't planned on airships at the get-go, but if you have a character who would like to start engineering one, I'd be heated up and inflated with buoyant joy.

Bedlam begins digging inside his pack for the cheese grader....

Floating Islands with airships please.

Nah. just gotta figure out how to steer the rocks! :)

Now you've gone and done did da thang!

My character will be:

Bedlam Bottomland Dwarf Alchemist (Mutagenist) [Barbarian] !

Please tell me you will allow Fred Archetype!? Pleeeeeease!

Anzath the sky pirate...

JK, I'd have to roll up a new PC.

...unless there's a cosmic blip in the multiverse and we all get shunted to this sky world.

Dwarf is actually difficult to pull off Alchy. The need for both Str and Int plus Dex and Con are not ideal.

Using the variant rules for +2/+2 gives
Str 16 Dex 12 Con 14 Int 16 Wis/Cha 10

Which is workable....lol.

I would be tempted to retool Bedlam. My Nagaji Alchemist was supposed to be Barbarian Free Archetype but we really needed a Healer, so my concept is still an itch....

Alchemist is still my favorite class in PF1e and 2e.

It's important that the party start at level 1 in the floating islands setting (catastrophic reasons), so I don't see how we could port y'all over to it in your current forms. My whole goal here is to run a tight, low-level campaign for a while. Recapture the joy of understanding the rules. You'd be welcome to reset to 1 as one of these characters if that's your kind of fun!

I would be super happy to grant some kind of thematic boons referencing this game. I'm still too new to 2e to say what they might be right now (the CRB and GMG are on the way).

Just me rambling...

I am happy that you enjoy PF2e!

I will change my mind on character concept many times prior to start...haha!

yeah, very happy to roll up a new character. I've only experienced a cleric and now a wizard in 2e!

I do have a fetchling rogue I might try to rebuild in 2e, or I'm really interested in trying out witch

I am just now seeing your post. It is really late, and I'll take a look tomorrow. I'm open to a new game, but I've never played 2e, so it would be a learning curve for me. I'm way behind on my board activity; I've been pretty sick for a few weeks and am just getting better now.

Hope you're feeling better, Tragershen! Weeks are a while to be sick! Really good to see you and I'm glad you're interested in the next game. I am just back from three nights in the Elwha Valley and did some worldbuilding while walking.

I'm not 100% sold on 2e yet, but it has some benefits. We should see who is in to play and then decide collectively.

My sense in my limited exposure to 2e is that it is much more balanced. The rules are streamlined and harder to break. The three-action system often feels about as cramped as the old two-action system, but it's kinda nice. It feels much more deadly, with PCs hitting the dirt in many encounters, but it also has lots of ways to bounce back, so I haven't actually witnessed a PC death yet. The multiclassing system is much more elegant, so weird builds are somewhat easier to pull off.

It doesn't have quite the same flavor that 1e and 3.5 taught me to love, though. The investment in learning how that universe functions keeps me wanting to stay there because I just... get it. I know how to spec out an evil necromancer with a suitable number of undead minions for their level, for instance--in 2e, I'd have to do a lot of reading just to get started.

Anyway, the game will happen! It's my turn to shower and I'm filthy so, that's all for now!

, so I haven't actually witnessed a PC death yet....

You don't say....

From the GM side, building encounters does take some getting used to. Building a monster from scratch seems easier, as you just pull numbers from some charts appropriate to the level. That's another perk, literally everything is tied to a level, which, well, seems to Level things out.

I do miss the mo ster templates from 1e, take a serpentfolk, give it some cleric levels and slap on a mummy lord template, say, for instance. It felt tighter. 2e is looser, but maybe easier, I'm still figuring it out.

Another thing is that in 2e, monsters play by a completely separate set of rules than PCs. That's why their numbers are so high. It's like the designers finally realized monsters and NPCs have an average in play lifespan of 3 rounds, and don't need all the Feats and abilities of PCs. That was a big frustration in 1e, I have a monster that has all these cool abilities and I get to use one of them in combat before they get obliterated. It's a big let down as a GM when your cool monster doesn't get their moment to shine. In 2e, monsters are stripped down to ther highlights, and are given bigger numbers so that they can have a chance against the PCs, if only for a round or two, they make a greater impact.

This seems to be offset by the fact that healing outside of combat is basically free or cheap and PCs seem to be expected to go into each encounter at full capacity. I get this is meant to eliminate the problem of the 15 minute adventuring day, but it also seems to as a consequence eliminate the need for resource management, which I feel should be a big part of adventuring.

Update: working on worldbuilding (started with climatology and plate tectonics and have moved into the metaphysics of magic and theology).

I have reached out to some former players who haven't posted here yet. I'll give 'em all a bit and then I will start asking other possible players.

Wavering on the shift to 2e, honestly... might stick to 1e. But haven't decided.

I might make a new campaign button for the game soon, in which case I'll post it here.

*Waves hand in front of Parrot's face*

PF1e is not the system you're looking for....

Terapin is coming back! I reached out to Talathel and Aurora. Tal is a maybe to join, haven't heard from Aurora.

Could be a 7 person party if they both re-up, which would only be fun.

I see you there, Dorian! I like 2e fine but I feel like 1e is easier for my headcanon worldbuilding just because I understand it and NPC building comes very naturally.

Come on over when you're ready. We can gather in the discussion page to talk over ruleset, rule modifications, my ideas for the campaign, etc. Once we have that sorted we can begin!

GM Parrot's Sea Change.