Gm Aest's Kingmaker: To Forge a Kingdom

Game Master Aest

I believe she's referring to this: On the Spectrum. Correct me if I'm wrong, Kaz.

My son also has Asperger's syndrome. Even small changes can really throw him off his game sometimes. But there's no one that can match him when it comes to analysis and problem solving...

Yeah, that's the one. Sorry, I work in education where we refer to children we suspect are "on the [autism] spectrum", and I forget that not everyone would be familiar with that. But yes, I have Asperger's, I don't cope with change, and meeting new people is damned terrifying.

Thanks for the song and the virtual hug, though. I may or may not have grinned like a fool.

If I have time before work, I'll post; if not, I'll try to do so tonight.

Glad you liked the song! We all have our own diverse mental issues. Like most creatives, I'm a depressive -- though allowing my brain to spew doggerel and keeping up with my exercise both really help with that!

Speaking of which, I'm off to aikido. Looking forward to all your posts later.

Hugs
Hmm

Like most creatives, I'm a depressive...

Same here! Maybe we should get t-shirts - "Depressed Pathfinders Anonymous (Keeping Happy Through Silly Dice Games Since 4705 AR)".

Have fun at aikido - I'm off to work, myself! Gameplay post should come tonight. I'll prioritise it.

I won't be able to get a proper post in until tomorrow. But I want to throw my two cents in on our planned route. Laliytsa wants to go back after the 'big mean thing' and the mites before going to new areas. Especially the big mean thing since it seems likely that's where Kaz needs to go.

Laliytsa wants to go back after the 'big mean thing' and the mites before going to new areas. Especially the big mean thing since it seems likely that's where Kaz needs to go.

Lali, darlin', it's like you can read my mind. :P

Cyanne is along for the ride... She has 3 main goals at this point:

1) See Svetlana regularly and help support her pregnant friend
2) Remove the bandit threat
3) Explore new things with her new friends and help them with their projects

This may be the most goalless character I've ever done... However, I see her as going through the aasimar equivalent of a life-crisis. She's quit her job in the wake of her mother's death and is taking time off to reexamine her choices. She'll follow you four anywhere. Especially if she gets to meet faerie dragons and grigs along the way.

Quick question. The date at the top says it's snowing lightly. Is snow normal during Pharast? Like, would taking some snow gear or at least extra blankets be a good idea?

Pharast is the equivalent of March.

In Minnesota, March is the snowiest month of the year, see-sawing between sunny days with rapid thaws and blizzards. Of course as an aasimar, Cyanne likely dresses light in winter. When everyone else is in heavy parkas and scarves, Cyanne's the snow bunny in a cute vest, hat, gloves and fur topped boots. Her winter wear is likely mostly for show.

Some blankets and snow gear is probably a good idea but the weather should get steadily warmer in gameplay.

The top says that because I haven't changed it in a while. I need to be more up-to-date on it, but I've been a bit behind. It's not the right date, either. I need to stay up on that more as well.

I'm basing the Stolen Lands more off of the area in Colorado I'm in. You're in for one hell of a May, let me tell you!

EDIT: Tomorrow will be the 11th of Pharast, I think, and the weather will be...

...partly cloudy, with a slight chance of isolated thundershowers and highs in the mid 50s.

In Australia, March is juuuuuust coming down from 40-degree days. That's Celsius, for you Americans; it's over 100 Fahrenheit. We might even get some rain, if we're REALLY lucky.

Ah, the Southern Hemisphere. Post Incoming!

Chris --

What? No designer snow bunny gear for Cyanne? No pretending to be "cold" to snuggle up next to an unsuspecting half-elf? I guess I'll just have to deal with lovely spring weather with the world all in bloom...

By the way, If you're in the mood for updates... Some other updates that might be nice would be the side quests and GM dice roll blocks.

EDITED to ADD: I'm in a crunch mode right now -- I'm GMing at a local con, and I'm trying to slog through 148 mostly badly written writing contest entries to pick winners. We got the entries only three days ago, and have until the 1st of July to judge them... Sigh. 137 more stories to go.

The side-quests that currently exist there are just the ones that came with the book. There's plenty of other stuff to do, but those ones have "experience" and/or gold rewards tied to them.

As for the dice-roll blocks, I've just been stealing the current ones from previous combats. I probably should update though, if just for Perception and Initiative.

Oh man. The game's going to have Real Weather eh? I live in Southern California. I have no idea what that is. Fun fact, I never saw real snow up close until last year (I was 27). And that was just old snow left over from a small storm. I was driving through Utah with my family and I made us pull over so I could stick my feet in it and make a tiny snowman. I have NO CLUE how you guys live with that for half the year.

Edit: Highs in the mid 50's would have me wearing a sweater and complaining about how cold it is ;)

I've never even seen snow. I guess the 40-degree temperatures have something to do with it.

Off to work; will try to post tonight!

It's going to have "real" weather. I'm not using the specific weather from a specific date at a specific place, but I am using general trends to inform the "random" dice rolls.

We got "actual" snow 5 times this year where I live. Once for a week in late December, which was easy to deal with because it wasn't a ton at a time, once in January (not much), A 21-inch monster storm, followed by a 6 incher three days later in late February (out of character for my region), and an inch or two in early March.

Snow's not that bad. Right now, it's 99 degrees outside, and I hate it. I have to wear shorts. (Eeeeew, shorts...)

EDIT: Updated the quests (a little) and the NPCs (a little) and the dice combos (a little). If you have any specific quests I'm missing, let me know what they are.

And im just sitting here in jolly old Denmark, enjoying my reliable 10-15 Celsius degree weather and frequent rain.

So, I got a call from my wife yesterday that my oldest girl "Swallowed a nail". The little girl was crying and carrying on like the world had ended and that she was going to get holes in her stomach. I came home from work to help her out, took her to the doctor, and after two x-rays, it turned out she made that story up. There was no nail.

I live in Michigan where we get a proper four seasons. Although I went to college in the mountains in Montana, Where winter was a good month longer than it should be, but my wife lived in Alaska for a bit, where it never really got terribly dark at night during the summer and they had to chip ice off of the lake to take their lifeguarding test in mid May.

That sounds absolutely terrifying. I'm glad to hear there wasn't a nail.

Oh Daen --

I'm so sorry you had that scare, but I'm glad that everyone's alright! Big hugs! Children have an amazing tendency to scare their parents. I think that's their job in life. My kids are now teens and they're still terrifying.

Luthor --

Denmark! I'm so jealous. I loved Denmark when I visited it as a child. Tivoli Gardens stands out in my mind, but so did everything else. The whole country seemed a happy pretty place.

Hmm

Me too. I am a bit disappointed about spending that much money on a story my daughter made up, but it was interesting hearing the kinds of things kids were swallowing these days. The doctor said that we'd be very surprised to hear about what kids could swallow that passed through without harming them, nails and screws were relatively common. The new pennies, though, could give the kids zinc poisoning if they swallowed too many, but the most dangerous thing was small magnets. They could bind the bowels together and cause some major damage. They would have to get those out as soon as possible. Other things, even razor blades, they'd just usually wait out.

edit: I actually have some Danish blood in me, although I've never been to Europe. I'd like to go some day. When I was in high-school, I got a bit jealous on St Patrick's day since I wasn't Irish, I couldn't in good conscience wear a "Kiss me, I'm Irish" button like some of the other kids did. So I made my own button, it said "Eat me, I'm Danish", only thinking about the type of cherry or cream cheese danishes they'd sell in the cafeteria. I was completely unaware of the double meaning at the time, and was rather disappointed when the teacher told me I couldn't wear it.

"Eat me, I'm Danish?"

Oh, that's glorious! You just made my day with that one!

Lol, thats glorious Daen ;)

And yes Cyanne, it is a nice place to live. Apparently we have been winning the "happiest country" title regularly for a good long while now. Must be all that social security.

Yeah, Luthor. I took a political science class while I was getting my bachelor's degree in history, and we talked about the method of measuring wealth by happiness. Denmark rocks. I personally like a lot of what you guys do, as far as your political system goes. Wish the USA would figure it out; too many people in poverty and too few focused on trying to fix it.

Since both PC-on-PC and PC-on-NPC romance is a definite possibility in this game (and, in fact, could be a plot point later), I'd like to take a moment to lay out some ground rules. The big one is please, even if you're in spoilers, keep it PG-13. The forums have rules, and if we start breaking them, it'll end badly. Just tastefully fade to black. Aside from that, try to respect everyone's comfort level, and if you're not comfortable with where things are going, say something out of character.

No problems so far, obviously, but I wanted to head off potential issues before they came up.

No worries. I'm fine with gentle innuendo and fade-to-black. The slash piece that I did earlier in discussion is about as far as I'll go -- hinting at naughty stuff without actually showing it on screen.

Ooh boy. Just got home from PFS, and I am beat. Lots to catch up on here, and I'm not gonna get to gameplay before tomorrow night, sorry. :-(

Luthor - I would LOVE to go to Denmark. It sounds like a wonderful country.

Daen - oh jeez, I cringed all the way through that nail story. That'd be one hell of a scare! Glad to hear there wasn't really one, though I'd be rather miffed, too. But hot damn, I laughed at the badge story. That's brilliant.

GM - yeah, a 'fade to black' type thing is just dandy for me. I like playing out the interactions, the lead-up, the development, the 'morning after' (my bard in Rise of the Runelords began the campaign by waking up in the Pixie's Kitten and looking for his trousers) and whatnot, but even without the forum rules, there are some things I'm just not comfortable role-playing. Romance, hell yeah! I am all for romance. Naughty stuff, not so much. There are other places for that kind of thing; I don't need details in my games. As for comfort levels, playing to the lowest common denominator seems to be a good way to go about things.

Cyanne - yeah, that was hilarious (and a pretty good benchmark of how far I'd personally be willing to go in a PBP as far as such things are concerned).

EDIT: just read gameplay, and yep. I ship Daeyanne. :P

Luckily for you, Kazimir, Daen and Cyanne seem to ship Daeyanne too.

Lucky for me, indeed. Now I know I won't be like this for half the campaign. :P

Also, I wanted to be the first to come up with a cutesy couple nickname. >.>

Note to Future Ronnie: stop postng after midnight. You get weird.

LOL

PG-13 is definitely my limit. I don't want to write anything that I'll have to explain to my wife. Explaining things to your wife is usually a place where you've already lost and every word you say gets you in more trouble, but she's asking question after question. I don't like that place, I don't want to be there.

I was rather miffed at my daughter, and she got a lecture from daddy about making up stories that weren't true. She cried a bit, and took a nap, then things got better.

Daeyanne, that's awesome. I really like the two of these together because they're so different. So very different. They'll have plenty to talk about.

Daen took me totally by surprise with his crush on Cyanne. I wasn't expecting it, especially after his comment in discussion long ago about not being built for romance... But I agree that the contrast in their personalities will be fun to play out.

Chris, it's almost too bad we didn't run into Oleg on the roof. There'll be plenty of other opportunities for that though... Cyanne is a climber. Trees, roofs, whatever. She likes heights, has a prehensile whip and can sing notes into existence when she needs an extra handhold. One of these days we can have the roof argument with Oleg.

By the way, my boyfriend and a few of my other pbp buddies are reading this Kingmaker campaign. They've been loving the writing of this campaign so far.

Everyone seems to think that the most exciting part of a relationship is the start. To me, that's nice, but the real exciting part is how people learn to deal with one another. When the feeling's gone, how do they work it out then? My favorite Sitcom of all time was Mad About You, my favorite Anime, Clannad After Story. Because those struggles are real, and not really explored that well.

Maybe it's not so much that Daen is built for romance, as much as he's just a complex person just trying to deal with the cards he's been given. He saw his opportunity and he's going for it, because that's what heroes do.

Daen doesn't particularly like heights, but he is practical, and it was the best place they could go to kinda be by themselves. He isn't really paying attention to the compost, all it would take is a whiff of the pheromones that are coming into his nose through her hair, and he'd think that sauerkraut has a pleasant smell.

My step sibling’s dad lives in Montana. My step sister lived with him for part of high school and then did college in Missoula. I’ve been up there during the summer and it was beautiful but there’s no way I’d go during winter. My step sister is weird in that she’s like immune to cold. She loves it, she’ll leave the window open while it’s snowing and everything. One time she left her freezer open overnight on accident and everything was still frozen solid when she woke up in the morning. That’s how cold it was. I would die.

Daen, it really sucks that you went through that. That sounds scary! I’m glad she didn’t actually swallow anything.

I’ll tell you a story about the time I made my parents take me to the emergency room. Sort of the opposite of what happened to you. I had an eraser stuck up my nose but I wouldn’t admit that anything was wrong to my parents. No, I hadn’t been doing anything wrong I’m perfectly fine why do you think there’s something wrong with my nose just because I keep trying to blow it like crazy and I’m crying, I didn’t do anything wrong!

What I didn’t want to admit was that I’d been sticking the eraser in one nostril, pushing the other one closed and blowing out trying to see how far I could launch the eraser across the room. I think I was about 6. I knew it was stupid but hey look how far I can make it go! I didn’t want to go to the doctor so they tricked me into the car by saying we were going to the park. Dirty liars! I have a very vivid memory of being held down by three nurses while a doctor took the longest pliers you’ve ever seen and put them up my nose. Not a good time.

I told this story at a family gathering not too long ago. It was the first time my dad heard how the eraser got in my nose in the first place. Laughed for a good 5 minutes XD

There was also the time I swallowed a nickel just to prove that I could….man kids are trouble!
I am interested in this PC/NPC romance idea. It would be fun to play Laliytsa in a romantic relationship after Kazmir breaks her heart

I <3 Daeyanne

Any and all NPCs are available unless they're not. I'd advise not putting too much of a priority on getting hitched quickly, though. This is a medieval, A Song of Ice and Fire world, and marriage is as much a political tool as it is a romantic attachment.

One time, I got tricked into going to a psychiatrist by my mom. She said we were going car shopping. I was not happy (actually, that was why she tricked me in the first place, but still...).

On one hand that's a very good point. We could use a political marriage to our advantage. On the other hand we're in trouble if we're relying on Laliytsa's political skills. XD

So, yesterday, Cyanne and I had a conversation about the bigger picture beyond the limits of your charters. I was pretty certain I'd thrown some of this information out somewhere, but close inspection makes that seem unlikely. All of this is considered common knowledge to the original chartered explorers, and the entirety of it's a bit of an open secret around Restov.

1: Just over ten years ago, the entire line of Rogarvia vanished from Brevoy. House Rogarvia was the ruling family, and they'd kept the two former kingdoms of Issia in the north and Rostland in the south from active conflict. However, every single member of House Rogarvia vanished in one night. In the power vacuum, the Surtovas stepped up to take the throne, as regents, of course.

2: Since then, tensions have been growing in Brevoy, with the warlike House Lodovka engaging in low-grade warfare against House Orlovsky's ships and road-travel, and other petty conflicts. This situation has led the Aldori Swordlords to send four groups out into the Stolen Lands in a bid to secure Rostland's southern border in the event of civil war between Rostland and Issia.

3: Maegar Varn, son of a minor lord in Rostland and newly-minted Aldori, was sent out with a small force to explore the base of the Tors of Levines to the southeast, form a settlement, and pacify the restless Nomen centaurs. Baron Hannis Drelev was given nearly one hundred trained soldiers and assigned to clear the East Sellen River in the Hooktongue Slough, a huge swamp to the west. Even further to the northwest, a group of mercenaries called the Iron Wraiths was given orders to subdue the Tiger Lords barbarian tribes. And to the Narlmarch and the Kamelands, considered the calmest and least critical section of the Stolen Lands, they assigned the PCs.

Any and all NPCs are available unless they're not. I'd advise not putting too much of a priority on getting hitched quickly, though. This is a medieval, A Song of Ice and Fire world, and marriage is as much a political tool as it is a romantic attachment.

So, who is going for the political marriage to Tyg (a.k.a. the cricket)?

You laugh, but there was one game I read about where a nixie was one of the best choices for the king to marry, because nixies have like a +4 to charisma.

Also, hi! Are you a reader? I'm always happy to hear we have readers (if we have them).

You laugh, but there was one game I read about where a nixie was one of the best choices for the king to marry, because nixies have like a +4 to charisma.

Also, hi! Are you a reader? I'm always happy to hear we have readers (if we have them).

Nixie would certainly be a fluid choice.

I'm Hilary's friend, and have been enjoying lurking and reading.

*gasp* A wild lurker appears! *throws Pokéball*

Laliytsa, LOL. That eraser story had me in stitches! I used to do the same thing with grapes when I was that age >.>

Political marriages? Awwww, but I'm a sucker for "Wuvv... Twoo wuvv!" (Though the idea of Daen marrying Buvormest for political reasons is hilarious to me, regardless of leadership roles.)

It would be fun to play Laliytsa in a romantic relationship after Kazmir breaks her heart

My heart is preemptively breaking for Lali. But at the same time, the RP-drama section of my brain is eagerly anticipating the reveal and the awkward conversations that are sure to follow! :P

Belkar: "Oh no! Poor Elan!"

Laliytsa will be disappointed for sure, but she'll survive. I'm pretty sure, at least. In all seriousness, Tyg would be a terrible marriage partner, for...reasons. A lot of reasons. There are, however, six noble houses in Brevoy, the Swordlords in Restov, the Exiled Swordlords in Mivon, and the other exploration parties to think about.

I'm always happy to have readers! If you want to dot the Gameplay thread and then delete your post, it'll show up in your campaigns (according to Cyanne).

Chris, the cartoons of the party are adorable! When did you put those together?

Hmm

The last couple of days. I basically stole them all from Legend of Zelda: Windwaker, with redesigned clothes, weapons (sometimes), and hair.

Very nice. Still haven't completed my flashback Cyanne post. I was double checking something on the map, and discovered your cute surprise.

BTW, thanks for welcoming Bret when he posted here!

EDITED TO ADD:
My Sense Motive modifier is now a +10, and I still can't roll the skill!

Those cartoons are awesome! Also, Hi to the lurker(s?)

Wait, what? *clicks*
*silence*
*frantic squealing and flailing of limbs*

Ohmygosh, they're so cute! :D

So I'm a geek... I tried to look up what Star Count might be in Elvish alliterated into common tongue (ie, written with our current Roman alphabet) so that I would know how to pronounce it. The closest I found was "Elendil" (lit. "Star Friend" or "Lover of the Stars").

Anyway, that's how I think "Star Count" is pronounced in Elvish. So now you all know.

I like how scowly you made Daen. His sword looks a little big, but it would if he were pointing it at your face, which he absolutely is.