Kingdom Building for Beginners (Inactive)

Game Master robertness

I guess so. Never trust a druid ninja.

I guess so. Never trust a druid ninja.

That would be a tricky multi-class build to pull off, but the potential is scary.

Sorry for the long post, hope I haven't make too much mistakes while typing

Very nice Vivian, loved your intervention!

@Vivian: Nasty! "that grave could be empty Rolo..." ts ts ts ;)

Ninja-druid... I'm going to build one right away ;)

He's worried about Happs? Happs is mostly dead and one sword blow to the neck from being all dead.

Not much more I can say about that until others have had a chance to make some rolls.

so if i understand, Rollo is afraid of Happs, not for himself but for his family? The confusion about names troubles me..

Oh, boy. Two botched rolls... Yes, Vivian, something like that. You and Gordom could always ask him for clarification. And to be clear the Knowledge(Local) roll is available to everyone, not just Vivian and Gordom.

I think I just found in opening for more in Shix's post.

Hehe that's some awful Sense Motive rolls there!
@Vivian: it doesn't matter since you failed your Sense Motive. You're probably thinking he's worried about himself.

Can we move forward to the interrogation setup?

Najara is anxious to do some torturin'.

...and therefore I must apologize, since the book that I just wrote in the gameplay thread is actually a step back from getting to the interrogation. I just hope we can all be on the same page this time.

I don't think Najara believes in torture. But we don't need to resort to that when we have the perfect zero-sum game to offer them.

we've got a bunch of tough guys/gals in our group btw, hard as nails!

I wouldn't really call the offer perfect. No offense, but your offer isn't phrased as "You have a chance at redemption if you're willing to take it." it's more of a "Which one of you scum bags is the biggest scum bag who's willing to betray anyone in order to live?" I have no problem with you questioning Rollo to determine the validity of his story, but the whole "one will live, two will die" thing is not what I thought we were going for.

/agree with Gordom.

Najara isn't concerned about redeeming Rollo. She wants info and this is the best direct method to obtaining it. We need intel on the rest of the bandits in order to wipe them out as well.

Now if you believe Rollo's sob story and want to redeem him, then you should press upon him to tell us info. It's a win win for him and for us. He gets to live, we get the info, and Happs bites it. But if he doesn't tell us anything, what can we really do? The path to redemption starts with helping the right side.

The offer is to spare the one who "testifies for the prosecution" so to speak. Just make sure Rollo is that one. The others may provide info too, but we have wiggle room to ultimately spare Rollo and not them so long as he helps us.

But all in all, I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself and are determined to believe and redeem Rollo. We haven't heard from the others prisoners yet. This could be more complicated than we thought. Let's interrogate them all (seperately) first and then see.

I keeping quiet for a bit until you all confirm a plan.

Just to clarify, the "one will live, two will die" is essentially a gruff scare tactic in the purest form. Obviously it can be phrased with a little more tact :p but the point is still the same. They need both fear and hope as an incentive to talk to us.

I think the plan should be to question them seperately as previously put forth. Tell them that we plan to execute them for their crimes but there is a chance to save themselves if they cooperate. Regroup to discuss the info we find and decide their fate with the agreed upon intent sparing one. Logically this should be Rollo if what he says is true.

Okay, well we could always play it good cop bad cop. You say they need both fear and hope. Does that work?

Sure! Vivian already suggested that before. Do you two want to keep working on Rollo? He seems like he has incentive enough to cooperate if we off Happs. OOC, it would be cool to see him redeemed.

I think the plan should be to question them separately as previously put forth. Tell them that we plan to execute them for their crimes but there is a chance to save themselves if they cooperate. Regroup to discuss the info we find and decide their fate with the agreed upon intent sparing one. Logically this should be Rollo if what he says is true.

I'm all for everything here if one is guaranteed to be spared and the others have a chance to be as well. Of course we wont tell them that last bit. I'm just not too cool on 2 of them having no chance of living, but this bridge can be crossed when we get there for now lets get these guys separated and interrogated.(or are they already separated?) As for who's going to do it I volunteer to be "good cop", my diplomacy is pretty high and I like to look at the good in people.

let's get it over with, I haven't entirely made up my mind on what Juwwem would do/prefer but Shix and Gordom have some good points imho. Besides believing any "sob stories", most of what has been said IC reeks of evil ways to me. Replace us with a group of naughties and the result wouldn't have been much different (notice: naughty, not: dumb).

But most importantly we should have our characters agree, or at least not fight eachother. I rather have Juwwem be a bit nastier than having him fight Andarr and Najara all the time.

To summarize what I've seen planned so far:

We have three bandits being interrogated in isolation:

Rolo - Vivian and Shix
Happs
Unnamed Bandit

Let me know who's talking to the other two and we'll get the interrogations rolling again.

Can we all just talk to them serial (and thus all participate)? I have a good sense motive and would like to get rolls against each of them.

If not, then put me down for Happs. He seems like a bowl full of fun.

That's really an unfair and simplistic characterization to call Andarr and Najara evil.

Now you may be noticing why I killed off half the incapacitated bandits although theoretically you could have stabilized the lot. ;P

Here's my dilemma from a time management standpoint: If we're processing this at a "turn a day" rate and allow everyone a chance to respond to every bandit's reply, we could be interrogating bandits for weeks. I'm not sure how much fun that would be for everyone. On the other hand, some of you have good skills for interrogation like Najara's Sense Motive that the party might want to have in on the questioning.

In the interest of time, I'm going to say that each bandit will have a two PC team responsible for the interrogation. Each interrogator will have a post to ask the questions they want (including appropriate descriptions of how you'll attempt to "influence" the bandit.) I'll post the bandit's response once I have the questions from each interrogator. PCs that weren't part of the interrogation team will be able to use Sense Motive to sense whether their response rings true. Depending on the questions asked and the replies given, I might ask for other rolls like the Knowledge(Local) regarding Happs.

Please post here which bandit you want to "play with" and whether this approach makes sense to you.

Thanks!

Makes sense. Najara will interrogate the charming Happs.

Good system, I would like to go with Najara or Andarr to help balance them out.

I'll help interrogate Happs with Najara. Is that alright Shix?

cool with me

So that gets it to something like:

Rolo - Vivian and Juwwem
Happs - Najara and Gordom
Unnamed Bandit - Shix and Andarr

That's really an unfair and simplistic characterization to call Andarr and Najara evil.

That's absolutely not what I ment! I'm sorry for giving you that impression. I was trying to say that, to me, the last-meal and my-cat-will-eat-you remarks look like stuff the bad guys would say.

Najara's and Andarr's name later in my post aren't (directly) linked to those words btw. We're all here to do something good, even our in-your-face friend Andarr. (right?) ;)

I'm not sure the bad guys would offer a last meal.....but if they did, I would like to cook it my self. Baddies are notoriously bad cooks, don't wand to get food poisoning after all.

Then how do you explain this:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilChef

:D

a Godfather reference now... but hey, it was WAY too tempting!^^

a Godfather reference now... but hey, it was WAY too tempting!^^

Now we need the countdown clock for Shix making spaghetti for a bunch of guys. Given how much info you want from all of these guys, I probably won't start posting replies until tonight. The last business day of the month is always nuts at work, so I won't get online long enough to post at lunch.

@Najara: I tried to do you proud and put up a tough front, but I really botched my checks. It's probably going to be up to you to break this guy.

@Juwwem. Sorry! I misunderstood and jumped to the wrong conclusion there :)

@Najara: no need to apologize, my mistake.

I'm very curious about what the results of our questionings will be.

@robertness: Just to be clear, Shix doesn't know that Happs is up to something, right? The only people who were in the room were Najara and me and he definitely beat our SM checks. So if I'm correct, the only people who heard Happs' story have no reason not to believe it.

I thought part of the compromise of not having the entire party interrogate every single bandit was allowing the ones who weren't present apply their Sense Motive (and possibly other skills) to the stories they hear second hand.

I'll post the bandit's response once I have the questions from each interrogator. PCs that weren't part of the interrogation team will be able to use Sense Motive to sense whether their response rings true.

It makes a little more sense (but not of motive) to require a separate Sense Motive roll for each bandit. I'll amend Happs' post to ask for rolls for him.

Oh, so Shix's roll was being applied in a "So this is what Happs told us.." "Well, that seems a little fishy..." sort of way? That makes more sense now. I just didn't realize that was how you were planning it.

welllllll, that was interesting. Looks like we might have acted openly too soon after all ^^

And here's a map of the Greenbelt. The boring white bits are what remain to be explored by intrepid adventurers. The possible location of the bandit camp based on your interrogation is indicated.

From a pure OOC perspective, I don't think it would be wise to leave Oleg and Svetlana alone with more than one bandit just in case. And I would certainly value their lives over these guys. Najara only has one set of manacles that I would trust to keep someone securely locked up for several days while we are off.

Well, we could kill Happs, bind Rollo and bring Franco with us as a guide of sorts...or kill him.

mmm under the circumstances that might be the best idea.

I don't think we should be killing Franco, he cooperated and from what he says he is new to the group and wouldn't be too much help as a guide.