[PFS] GM Mjolbeard's 'The Wounded Wisp'(#6-10) (Inactive)

Game Master Mjolbeard89

Welcome, one and all, to PFS 6-10 The Wounded Wisp!

First off, I must confess that this is my first ever attempt in the GM seat, so we may have one or two sketchy spots here and there. I've been playing PFS for about 2 years now, about two thirds of which has included PBP as a venue. I mention this to reassure you that, despite my relative lack of experience on this side of the table, I do value the game and will do my best to make it a fun experience for all. With that in mind, here are a few expectations that I will hold for myself as well as my players:

1) Please try to maintain a posting rate of 1 post/weekday. Weekends are almost always busier for me than weekdays in one way or another, so I may or may not post during that timeframe. I'd accept the same from you.
2) Please list important information about your character in the Classes/Levels section of your stat block. Please also have your full character sheet available in your character's profile.
3) I'll roll initiative for combats and perception for potential surprise situations. I'll also provide information for knowledge checks in spoilers with the DCs listed. Please refrain from reading the spoilers unless you make the DC with the appropriate skill check.

That's it for the most part. This will be a bit of a learning process for me, so please be patient. If I make any egregious errors, feel free to call me out on it here in Discussion or in a DM. I'll get things going on Friday, January 13. For now, please visit the On the Table link above, head to the second page, and fill in the requested info for your character.

Thanks for joining me, and happy gaming!

Awesome. I have no doubts Mjolbeard will make a great GM!
Count me in. Character to be determined shortly. :)

I'll be there in some form to be sure to test your skills! Hrmm I bet I can make someone quite special just for you!

I've been dying to try out this Unchained Summoner.

I'll also be there to harass you GM as well as some other familiar faces.

I'll come up with something special for you my friend!

I'll be playing a rogue, likely unchained. Likely a halfling. ENJOY.

Dang it! Game hasn't even started and you're making me stat up NPCs! You guys really are gonna make it hard on me aren't you? Haha!

Shouldn't he be stat'd already in the adventure? He's got some quick fingers, quicker than Frankie does!

Meredith was an ordinary farmhand, making a trip to the city. Until...

<record scratch>

She met a living tree, a child grifter and a dirty beggar. What wacky hijinx will they get into next? Who will join their crazy adventure?

He doesn't seem to have stats from my read through. I forget, have you guys played Wounded Wisp?

Yes. Once all the way through and my Slayer's group just failed it. So... 1.5x?

He may not since he's kind of a boss.

I'll make my PC today, Gallix.

I've played Wounded Wisp with other characters. This is an evergreen scenario, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Hurry up, D. This "kid" is taking all of my lunch money!

Only 2 silvers geez. And the old guy took those so blame him. But I totally would...

Red here. Here's who I'll be bringing. I never got his fluff solid and I have pending purchases to make but he will be ready in time for the game. Oh and I have not played this before!

Cool! Thanks for checking in. I see you're planning to join the fun over in Gameplay later, so I'll look forward to that. In the meantime, please also update your info in the sign-in sheet in the On the Table link above.

I think we're just waiting to see what Uesugi is bringing to the party. Looks like we're on track to get started Friday!

Be forewarned that lil Frankie will be icefishing most of the weekend with Mr Pepper's on the Canadian border for monster lakers so his fun times will be slow.

Mjolbeard I'll have something by tomorrow sorry for the delay. (Uesugi here)

No problem, KK! Wasn't planning to start until Friday anyway, so you've got plenty of time.

Hey there, guys and gals! One more day until we kick off the fun for realsies! Obviously, since tomorrow is Friday, we'll just be kinda getting things rolling before a slight lull (from me at least) for the weekend, but we'll be back up and running full speed ahead on Monday. With our group's usually posting rate, we'll probably be through the scenario in the space of a few weeks, barring any GMing issues on my part. Either way, I'm looking forward to getting started with you folks!

I'll be ready :)

I was thinking of childlike too, as a feat, Frankie.

But with Alice's general idea in mind, i have to let it pass.
I used to have (non PFS) a halfling gravewalker witch.

The creepy little girl with a spooky doll. Sadly never got off far, the GM needed a permanent haitus it seemed.

Ya he's definitely more of a social/skills oriented rogue vs combat. Who couldn't believe that face?

Man, Meredith's gonna be upset whether or not Guisseppe reveals the ruse. Either she was tricked or an innocent kid was thrust into danger.

Someone specced as a law abiding interrogator, with sky high SM and perception. ;)

I want to make Alice a bad luck cannon.

Just keep her perception and sense motive low and she'll never know the difference :) But yes, rogues don't like to see those skills show up high. I'm sure I'll be doing my best to push my skills up to counter that.

He can be innocent enough even if he's not a 'kid' age wise :)

I have a feeling my mooks are gonna be very sad before we're through here. Haha

Denair will eventually be the investigator of the duo (1 Evolution Point for +8 to SM or Perception? Yes please), but she would keep the joke to herself.

Ya I've never really read through the summoner very hard, certainly not the evolution list.

I had a real interest in trying out the Summoner, especially the Synthesist archetype, but I don't have PF Unchained so I can't really use them for PFS, and that's where I do most of my playing. Someday I'll get Unchained though, for the rogue and summoner if nothing else.

I couldn't touch the regular Summoner because it's really, really easy to build a show-stealing combat beast. Kind of the opposite of Core Monk where you have to be very careful about building your PC or they wind up very meh.

I'm hoping Unchained Summoners are a bit more restrained. At least Haste is a 3rd level spell again (2nd level Haste, Paizo? Oh boy!)

I hear that someone awesome is GMing this.

Wanted to wish you all a great game!

Hmm

Haha! Thanks, Hmm. I suppose that awesomeness remains to be seen, though.

As I mentioned in the Red Arm thread, feel free to creep and throw out any tips you might have. :)

Tip 1: Be nice to 'children'. They are our future and the ones pushing your old ass around in a wheelchair or shoveling your snow.

Edit: Ya the spell lists for Summoner were what I thought the issues stemmed from. Lower level spells than some classes. Haste really is a game changer. Often times a better choice than fireball for level 3. Not that Mr Peppers would choose haste over fireball! HA!

I have a pre-unchained summoner, no archetype.

I think i'm one of those non optimizers, but it's a fun class.
I was lucky i was 2.1 before they locked that one down.

I'll get my purchases done this weekend.

Uesugi/KarmicKnight, I'm starting the scenario up, but feel free to jump in whenever you're able. Just make sure you add your character's info on slide 2 in the On the Table link above.

Alice/D, that's fine. You're wandering around Absalom in this scenario, so you'll have plenty of access to shops as you go about your business.

And so it begins.. with a bang. Lets ride!

It's been a busy day so I apologize if my posts have been, well, crappy. I'm heading out shortly for a few hours but I'll have a higher quality post up later on.

You can not escape!

How are you liking the other side of the screen Gallix? Really enjoying the bar scene so far, nicely done. And I've already decided I likely will change my traits, nothing like figuring out a character in game.

PS, its quite fun playing as a child, no need to be serious and official or anything like that.

*Waves her hair aside*

I knew it, somewhere there was someone who saw through it. :)

I'm curious to see what absurd bluffs you could pull off against hostile forces.

I'm liking it pretty well. I was talking with my wife about it over the weekend and telling her that I'm enjoying the freedom to kinda hold all the information and work with you guys on how to get it to you. Like in the scene with Dreng, how Zav worded his question about Dreng's attire was kind of indirect, but it gave me a way to work in some exposition for you guys. That's pretty fun.

On the other hand, the bar scene has been kinda challenging because there's not really any hard and fast DCs for these interactions with the people in the bar (unless I'm just supposed to go off of the normal Diplomacy DCs for adjusting attitude or something, it's kinda nebulous in the scenario info). So coming up with some way to give you guys credit for your good role-play has been a bit more of a challenge, especially when I'm having to come up with all sorts of stats against Frankie's disguise and what not.

I think it'll be a lot more straightforward once we get to the nitty gritty of hostile forces, so I'm definitely looking forward to that both as a newbie GM and as a sort of audience to Frankie's antics. Hahaha!

With my ninja, i tried to fool an aspis agent into believing i was a mere tourist, tagging along with the pathfinders.

Despite the -10 penalty, the GM rolled sense motive on the skin of his teeth.

That would've been awesome otherwise.

Bahaha! That really would have been great!

My -1 is a CORE fighter with a greatsword and a heart of gold (Diplo ranks for days!). I once managed to get my party past a bunch of unfriendly Leshies with a killer Diplo check, despite her not speaking their language. Turns out body language works on plants too! :D

What little GMing I've done in face to face games, the hardest part for me was always the roleplay, noncombat stuff. Things aren't broken down into a turn by turn basis and there's much more involved in knowing rules and what can/can't be done, etc etc. Its pretty straight forward when it comes to I stab you, you punch me. The RP aspect is the one that stands out most and sure seems the hardest.

Did you ever ask anyone about the disguise stuff? Its kind of mean for me to spring it on you as it seems to be a bit difficult, but I've always wanted to play a disguising character, and well, so far its been fun! Its a good time to try it out since we all play together normally.

PS, I'm still wondering if Zav will ever get a chance to use that axe or those claws!

You've been doing great, so far. PbP tends to vary on how much RP they want- this is the most I've done for the Wounded Wisp.

I haven't asked around about Disguise stuff yet. I'll have to look into that a bit more.

Zavubak and his claws will get their time to shine soon enough... :)

Thanks for the support on this guys! Despite any challenges, I am having fun and it seems like you aren't totally miserable yet either, so that's a good thing. Haha. The RP has been pretty awesome!

Yup, you've been doing a great job with this scene, GM. I own this scenario but this introductory section was always a little intimidating to me so I've never run it. The time commitment increases with the amount of expository needed for a scene, but it also makes way for your creative GM juices to flow. It's one of my favorite parts of GMing, moreso than combat.

Yeah Zav is pretty badass when the claws come out. So far this game has taught me more about him that I've ever known before. Zav's been pretty quiet (aka boring) in other games he's played in. The strong, silent type doesn't really have a place in PbP in my humble opinion, hard to RP with someone who doesn't speak much.

Ya the only real way to RP that is with tons of italics text to try to get your point across.