Apologies, players - I've been out of action for two days, and will be out of action for two-three more, it looks like. It's the end of term, and as a teacher the pressure is on. I'll be back and posting again as soon as possible.
Gatsby
take your time, whether have quality stuff than speed. Not to mention, since I am playing other games as well, slow speed would not bother me.
You have been doing a good job so far and game is full of surprises.
No problem, Ravboom's player is undergoing health issues anyway.
Checking in, but yeah, no problems here GM - hope it goes well and we'll see you when things calm down a bit :)
Just don't let it die. My own is the longest I've been involved in...
Indeed. I already had one campaign die on me recently, right out of the gate.
All of the ones I'm in (including this one) have only started up within the last month and 1/2 or so, but they seem to be chugging along well enough at the moment. Barring an untimely demise, I don't see myself having to drop out anytime soon :)
I know we're just kinda RPing while we wait for GM Gatsby's RL to ease up, but I'm sorry that I didn't post anything yesterday/today. I got tied up with some other projects and ran out of time, but I should have another post once I get some sleep (and can come up with a good name for Joza's hometown since I never really specified it earlier, doh).
Wow... two to three days more turned out to be a rather conservative estimate.
Apologies for the whole week away - the end of a Japanese school year is a lot more busy than I was expecting, and I'm looking forward to actually having a day off tomorrow.
However, this does mean that after my extended absence I am actually back and reading / posting again. I won't be able to start posting in the threads until after the afternoon leaving ceremony, but I'll try to give a big, worthwhile update for everybody to set things in motion again.
Sorry for the delay!
Gatsby
Oh, and thank you for keeping the thread alive while I've been away! That's really great to see.
Woohoo! Glad you're doing well :)
Aside from... whatever it is Zirul's trying to pull here, I would like to have a little discussion on some of the party interaction stuff.
Personally, my take has always been that things like bluff and diplomacy rolls only work on NPCs: so with my house rules, something like what Zirul is doing just plain doesn't work. You want out of a problem with another PC, you have to use actual words, tricks, reason, whatever. Obviously then it is up to what the other player thinks their character would go for. Naturally combat rolls and stuff are normal though.
Any thoughts on PC vs PC "social" dice rolling from the DM?
I did it because, in a table top D&D there really was a PC vs PC social dice rolling. Here is what happened. I was blinded. My friend who was a warlock missed his target, but said to my character I hit him, but not for a whole lot of damage. For fun roleplay, the DM didn't have an opinion one way or the other. I said, well your character is lying, so roll for bluff. The person who has the most experience who is in charge of the group and helps out the DM a lot said to me roll a sense motive and for my buddy to roll a bluff check. He rolled higher than me and said, okay your character believes his character.
I am deliberately not reading the actual gameplay thread before posting here - based on the discussion thread, though, Ｉ'm assuming that Zirul is attempting to bluff another player.
As for this PC on PC dice-rolling in my games? Meh... I'm not all for it, but it's situational. Attempts at diplomacy should never be rolled - if you can't convince the player, you can't convince the character. Same way I would never use diplomacy to force a character to accept an idea - it flies in the face of player agency.
That being said, I usually allow bluff rolls if they are designed to alter the perception of a character. One PC dressing up as a beggar and trying to go unnoticed by their party members is a fine use of disguise and bluff, even against PCs.
So yeah, I'm on the fence. Time to look at the thread!
Okay, this is a reasonably clear one...
is entirely able to attempt to bluff Rav into thinking that his sword is broken - and if Rav fails a sense motive, he will believe that his sword is broken until he looks at it.
Which seeing as he's holding it in his hands in front of him gives Zirul about... a quarter of a second's relief from being stabbed. Rav would also get a pretty substantial circumstance bonus (+10-+20) to his sense motive, because he is trying to be convinced of something that he knows empirically is not true. He knows that he's done nothing that would have broken his sword, he knows that such distracting advice from someone attempting to steal money and being stopped is one of the oldest tricks in the book and, as previously stated, he can see it isn't true. ;)
Bluff should be treated reasonably - no 'I am the moon' here - and to do so, just think of how you would act in real life. If I was in an office (which I am) and somebody said 'oh, your boss wants to speak to you' I would turn round immediately because that's a likely possibility. I might be able to 'sense motive' them to avoid the distraction, but generally I wouldn't even bother to, I'd just go and investigate. BUT, if a co-worker came up to me as I was typing this and said 'your keyboard is on fire' it would just earn them a rather odd look - I'm typing on my keyboard, I know that it isn't on fire. It's not something I can be lied to about - I hold the proof in my hands.
Hope that clears things up a little...
I didn't say his sword was broken, I said broken condition, as in slight crack or something wrong with the handle, etc.
...and had you said cracked...maybe a second. Do you know anyone that talks like that?
Or maybe if Ravboom was dumb as a rock like some barbarians. :) I once told a character they had to behave as if they thought a bluff was true even without rolling because of his character's vapid intelligence. He had the annoying habit of using Int as a dump stat and yet his characters were always as intelligent as he was...
We did once have a player who had an awakened animal as a loyal companion - a dog, with intelligence 8. The character's own intelligence was 7.
Needless to say, most of his party members started addressing questions to the dog rather than the character - and although he was a bit miffed at first, he did play along.
Sigh... never choose int as a dump stat. :)
^One of the reasons I personally dislike dumping stats unless it's part of a character concept in the first place. Not to mention how many people would really want to adventure with and rely on someone that's as dumb as a bag of hammers or socially retarded to a crippling degree? :P
I don't mind people dumping stats, as long as they actually role play what is on the paper. What annoys me is when people dump charisma for example, and then want to make long passionate speeches in character and get mad when the NPCs ignore or laugh at them because they rolled a total of 4 on their die. "But I was polite and diplomatic, they couldn't have gotten mad from what I said!"
I've banned point buying because of such idiotic things in my games. What I do instead is roll 3 sets of 4d6 drop lowest, and then everyone at the table picks one of the 3 sets. That way, nobody has to worry about a situation where they rolled awful and someone else rolled really well.
I allow dump stats and point buying, but I warn people if they don't RP the low stat to my satisfaction I'll start applying it mechanically instead. Low Dex? You sometimes have to roll reflex saves to avoid falling down (tripping over their own feet). Low Int? You can barely talk, and you probably ain't getting puzzle XP bonuses. Low Wisdom? I'll start forcing Will saves to prevent you doing stupid, impetuous things.
Then again there are the beautiful ones. In a game I wasn't even a part of, my friend decided to play a half-orc barbarian named Ock Ock (son of Grock Morock). The player is one of the best RPers I know, and has a strict sense of what falls into metagaming. He played a dumb, unwise, wrecking ball of a character that had to be constantly "managed" by the rest of the party and it was beautiful. He nearly got the whole party wiped a couple times (once for punching a demigod in the dick), but also saved their asses a bunch of times, so they counted him as a net positive.
Ok, we're breaking the 4th wall here. We're having a debate about alignments in character.
CN does not mean 'Thief'. It means 'I obey the rules I want to obey, and I break the ones I want to break'. Ravboom is a classic bounty hunter. He doesn't steal from shopkeepers. On the other hand, he's not worried about a bounty's rights or the rights or property of those that are helping the bounty. He's not worried about lying to people to catch a bounty, and he's not above killing the bounty or their allies and bringing them back in dead even if the bounty is only for alive.
Being lectured in character that I'm playing my character alignment wrong really really sticks in the craw. It especially sticks in the craw when that alignment is not 'I'm a homocidal thieving psychopath' by default.
Just because I'm NN doesn't mean i will ignore a crime taking place in front of me. Especially if it will cause problems for me later on. Jack may break the law every now and then, but its only when he finds it necessary. Being a traveler and intending to spend some time in this city he doesn't really want his rep to become poor.
Hell, CN doesn't even necessarily mean that. Alignment is a heavily complicated topic.
Geralt, for instance, generally obeys the rules of society because it's too much of a hassle not to. In general he follows the path of least resistance. His chaotic-ness will emerge more as the character develops, but it exists primarily as a short attention span right now.
Personally, I always view alignment for any non-divine character as "lite," anyway.
the alignments can mean many things and sometimes can be warped. i play a LE character who has broken many laws and once robbed a towns magic item and psionic shop blind. While those are chaotic acts he can do them cause they don't violate his code and were actually part of a plan devised by him and the rest of the party. on the other hand i ended up killing a party member for slaughtering a innocent family for no reason cause this violated his personal code and despite being a trusted ally he was was forced to act or he'd lose his alignment.
Varitus thinks it's all very funny.
He's a lot older than he looks...nominally human...and incredibly jaded.
Still...prison would be so dull...
Yeah, Joza is generally a law-abiding citizen but would have no problem breaking laws she personally felt were unjust or doing so in the name of a greater good such as catching a bad guy; she's happy to try things "by the book" and normally prefers it that way but sometimes you have to break a few eggs (or laws, as the case may be) to get things done.
I was not expecting this when I woke up this morning...
, you might want to cool off slightly - in-character speech is not the place to discuss game mechanics, and especially not the place to discuss those mechanics in terms of how you believe other character should act. Without wanting to sound too god-like, it falls on the GM to point out if he thinks people are completely breaking their alignment... and I don't think that your allies trying to stop you getting them all thrown in jail is a problem with alignment at all.
And, as has been said above, alignment is both viewed as :lite: AND is incredibly flexible. There are not 9 personality types in pathfinder, there are a whole range of different attitudes, personal codes and oaths that characters are played as observing. A chaotic neutral character could be an amoral thief - this is completely acceptable - but he could also be a wandering swordsman with a cowardly streak, an opportunistic con-artist trying to support his family who hates the chances he has to take, or a knight devoted to his god but secretly doubting the validity of the commands and devotions he is observing. An evil character might have absolutely no qualms about experimenting on animals, torturing adventurers or burning down the homes of those who would speak against him - but maybe he would also never hurt a child, or would protect his own family until his death, or holds a great reverence for a certain aspect of the law even if he ignores all the others. It's fluid, always - alignment is little more than a guide for certain divine entities and spell descriptions, and a reminder to the player as to how they might personally view a situation.
I tend not to enforce alignment in my games, partly because I find the concept limiting when it comes to character development and partly because it [i[is[/i] so nebulous. Please keep such discussions in the discussion thread, rather than waking up a shopkeeper by speaking in game mechanics.
, if you want to attempt to steal all the money, you can. That is a valid option. However, Rav (and others) does not want to be arrested on their second day in the city, which is also reasonable. You must also remember that, regardless of alignment, you are committing a crime in front of two bounty hunters that you don't really know very well. Their trying to stop you has nothing to do with them being lawful, neutral or chaotic - it has to do with them attempting to preserve their ability to do their jobs.
Please thresh this out here in the discussion thread. I don't want bad feeling at the table, if possible, and I feel things have strayed over the line.
I'm not anybody's father here. I'm the GM. I don't want to have to tell people off, or step in to arbitrate player to player disagreements - but I will if necessary, for the good of the game.
Gatsby
okay, but alignments go beyond game mechanics. Detect evil will show they aren't evil and detect good will show they aren't good. So in-game alingment exists. Not sure how dicussing alignment means dicussing mechanics when detect good/evil shows there is such a thing.
Ah... allow me to present an excerpt from the Orphan Sea campaign that I'm running, where this very point came up...
John, their resident judge, has just used detect evil - this was his result.
John, divinity flows through you for a moment, enhancing your senses. There is a vibration about this place, a resonant hum of balance. In some places the resonance is disturbed - certain people drive it up or down as they wander past you, revealing to you via extranormal senses their personal predilections.
The overwhelming feeling is of neutrality, some are probably edging towards good (though with your spell that's hard to tell for sure), while others are steeped in sin. The hidden area behind the dais curtains gives you a sense of... nothing. Not neutrality, or even evil, but a complete void.
When he runs through the rest of the detect spells to get the feeling of the area, he gets this...
Detect good gets you a little burst from certain people, detect chaos a little more (as people tend naturally to edge toward chaotic), but a test for Law leaves you drowning in it and with a splitting, instant headache. Whatever's behind that curtain defies good and evil, but is as lawful as they come.
SO...
As you can see, I try to avoid categorizing things as purely :good: or :evil: unless they are divine beings (which the lawful thing behind the curtain is). So while a spell may give you an indication of the 'core' of a particular character, that does not necessarily mean they define themselves in that way - in much the same way as, for example, just about every person in the real world having unconscious tendencies, biases or preferences when it comes to issues of race and gender, but few people describing themselves as 'racist' or 'sexist'.
Someone made the example in a thread on here a while ago of the magic hat, which changes alignment, being used to turn an evil character into a good character. it worked - the alignment of the character became good. However, said 'good' character immediately vows vengeance on the player characters, because from his interpretation he was forced against his will and tortured into his alignment change. yes, at the heart of him he is good - but if anything he is now more dangerous than he was before, and a lot more hostile to the party.
As someone mentioned in the thread, it's not Order of the Stick *although I did love that webcomic*, and if people start wandering round identifying each other based purely on alignment we would get some very, very strange in-game conversations.
That was a huge post, sorry.
Essentially, what I'm suggesting is to treat alignment as more of a loose tendency toward actions rather than an in-character signifier. I hope that helps.
Yes, people do understand, in character, the concept of alignment. They understand Good is an absolute thing, and a nebulous thing. Good (Capital G) is an entire plane, and planar creatures can exist made of primal essence of Good. They can also have an Alignment that is evil (Lowercase evil), in the case of a fallen angel.
They also understand Law (capital L, order, stassis), and also Chaos (capital C, Randomness, Utter Lawlessness).
However, they do not have the concepts of 'you must act this way if you have this alignment'. Also, they don't have the concept of someone having an alignment unless they are very powerful. Half the people alive don't register as Good or Evil or Lawful or Chaotic. They don't have enough hit dice. So telling a bunch of 3rd level people they are all Neutral and aren't acting it just breaks all versimillitude.
Nice way to put it, GM. My approach is similar. Most creatures don't "detect" as anything in particular in my games. The exceptions being:
-Characters with divine power (clerics, paladins, anti-paladins, etc etc) because they channel their god's alignment along with the power and one assumes they work to further their god's goals.
-Actual beings from the out planes such as angels and demons or other paragaons of a particular alignment
-PC's and NPC's who follow their alignment very, very strictly (usually in the good or evil axis). A mass-murdering psychopath would show up as Evil. A charitable person who spends their mornings delivering food to the needy throughout the slums would show up as Good. But these sorts of characters are rare.
Finally:
You "did" love that web comic? Why the past tense? It's still going! :)
Also a massive OoTS fan.
I just follow the base rules.
<5 HD, no aura
>5, some sort of aura
Has a [alignment] tag, that alignment (plus any others based on HD)
Aura class feature
Alignment should be based on a combination of actions, and intent.
For example, Ravboom is CN because he doesn't care if you are guilty or innocent, you have a bounty on your head, he gets it. He's not Lawful because he doesn't care about what laws you broke, or what he has to do to pull you in, he cares about the money. He doesn't steal because it interferes with his ability to be a bounty hunter, not because he's honest. It's strictly self interest. Now, if you're a bounty, or an ally of a bounty, he could care less about property rights, you forfeited it for being a bounty or aiding a bounty escape (and usually the authorities don't care on that score).
Finally:
You "did" love that web comic? Why the past tense? It's still going! :)
Also a massive OoTS fan.
I really loved the first bit, especially the 'you. broke. my. SWORD!' section, but I lost interest when it started with the dune-esque bit in the desert, and never picked up the thread of it again. Maybe I'll give it another read.
Sorry for the brief post, lunch with some of the teachers beckons - I'll fill in the objects in the store, get the boots and give Varitus his interesting thing when I get back.
Rav, Zirul, Geralt, etc - I'll get to you this afternoon. Work calls, I'm afraid! Rav, I'll probably just send you a PM.
Holy crap. 25 new posts? I thought that was a bug for a second. Looks like I've got some reading to do...
Yeah, I had a free day yesterday and a few people were online... :)
Well, I have a ton of work to do an no time to read through and get everything that's happened. If the team goes anywhere, bring me along with them, okay? :)
Barring that, I'll be able to post tomorrow.
No problem, Geralt!
Still here, just not much to respond to for Rav, he did a lot of stuff in a few poses. :)
I should also mention that I'm going on vacation for a week. I expect to have internet access, but if I disappear just putter on without me/DMPC me as necessary.
Okay Geralt, thanks for letting us know.
Oh, and seeing as your first free day in the city is basically ending, you should probably decide as a group (in character in the thread or out of character here) which plot thread you want to follow. Would help me fine tune the planning a little.
Ravboom is only aware of the one thread, which is the train ambush/alchemy cargo thread. At least in his mind, they are linked together. Given that so much fuss was made over that one box, and that the hijackers were so adamant that the train could not arrive in town, he thinks they were trying to prevent that box from making it to whatever the alchemy foundation is doing. So to him, it's one big thread.
However, he'll only follow that thread as long as he feels money in it. He's not a do gooder. If it looks like it'll cost more he will not
Zirul, tiny as in maybe 12 tables, one cook and one bar-tender. Not microscopic, but not a big establishment.
Bad news...phone's not recharging...I'll try to fix it...
No, Mal! If you die, who will play sweet sweet music for the locals...?