"We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars." -- Carl Sagan
Many have stared up into the inky darkness that lies between the stars and wondered aloud, "What is out there?" Some know the truth as fear; in the terrible, unknowable things that writhe in the dark, reach out and caress the mind only to destroy it. Others know the beauty, danger and intrigue of the specks of colored light that circle the heavens; the splendor of Sovaryn, the linearity of Verces, the crimson savannas of Akiton. But eldritch and academic knowledge only tells so much of a story, it paints the broad strokes and leaves gaps in between where a thousand narratives are waiting to be revealed.
For one group of intrepid adventurers, their destiny is painted in the stars.
----
Welcome to Pathfinder: Ascension, hosted on roll20.net! To the four players who have made it all the way in to participate, welcome! To anyone else watching from the sidelines it's good to have you aboard.
So, you're going to partake in an adventure that will take you between the darkness of the stars! A good question you might be asking yourself is...
What Now?
Here's some things you should be doing now that you've been chosen to participate:
Character Sheets
If you're in the final four, I'd like those of you who don't have your sheet on myth-weavers.com to head over there now to register an account and create a character sheet for your approved character. It's really easy to use and will help me coordinate running the game by having everyone's sheets in one centralized location with a good, standard format.
If you could put a link to your myth-weavers sheet in your profile/alias it would be very helpful. I'll be giving everyone's character a full once-over to make sure all the math adds up and everything is correct on a more in-depth level than I did during recruitment. I may also make suggestions and toss up ideas if I see anything that comes to mind.
Prologue
If you're in the final four, you may now post in the Pathfinder: Ascension prologues thread to set up an introduction for your character, flesh out some back-story, or otherwise help yourself get into the mindset of the character you've chosen (and give a nice sample of your character for others to enjoy as well).
Please stick with the date format I've been utilizing in my posts, so we know chronologically where pieces of the prologue take place. You can find the Golarion Calendar here for reference.
Check Out Roll20.net
If you don't already have one, you should go make an account over at roll20.net and familiarize yourself with the site and all it has to offer. You can sign-up to Ascension as well to be listed as a player and fool-around on the Sandbox map (presently blank).
To join the campaign, once you've signed up at roll20.net, follow this link:
https://app.roll20.net/join/50905/7qVErQ
Art Crawl!
I will be making personalized character icons for use in combat, so if you would like a piece of artwork to represent your character (a face portrait is all that will show on the icon) than feel free to take some time trawling places like deviantart and cgsociety for something appropriate. Otherwise just pick a color and I'll use that color for your icon.
Campaign Start Date/Time
We will be beginning Pathfinder: Ascension on Wednesday, January 2nd at 6:00pm Eastern (-5 GMT).
If the start day/time does not work for any of you four starting players, please let me know via PM as soon as possible and we'll work something out.
An addendum on that last post, Session 1 will go from 6:00pm to 9:00pm. From there on out the sessions may not be quite as long for the remainder of January due to some work-related scheduling on my end. They will potentially be an hour shorter, we'll see how it all goes!
Wednesdays will be session-day, unless something extra-ordinary comes up, in which case you'll be given as much forewarning as possible.
To be honest I'm surprised to have been picked given all the amazing characters I was seeing. Thanks for choosing Gabriel! I'm almost done writing the latter part of the background, then I'll get to writing Gabriel's prologue (which will be something different.)
And a hello to everyone else who made it! I look forward to adventuring with you lot in the future!
Greetings from the Playground! This is Kasimira Welter checking in, and I'm glad to have made the cut. Once I finish with finals tomorrow afternoon, I'll get to figuring these messageboards out and typing up some vignettes. Until then, here is Kas's character sheet, for you people to get familiar with. Any comments or criticism are welcome, and congratulations to my fellow players. The New Year is looking pretty bright.
Checking in
Access to Gabriel's sheet seems to be restricted.
Out of curiosity, how long would one of our characters have between being notified of their acceptance and actually meeting with their patron?
Sorry about that. Mythweavers really doesn't like me at all. At least it didn't eat the bottom half of the sheet this time though. Should be available now. Thanks for pointing it out!
Ok, here's the sheet for Biatz
Access to Gabriel's sheet seems to be restricted.
Out of curiosity, how long would one of our characters have between being notified of their acceptance and actually meeting with their patron?
A month, on average. If you need a little more time due to logistical constraints of travel distance or what have you, feel free to wiggle that around some.
Gabriels Prologue - Empty Nights is now up!
Edit: I already feel like rewriting parts of it...
Really? Wow. I thought it would be "Get a note from the guy, wait a few days, meet up with him, set out." Are we beginning the campaign on/near site, or will we play out the journey there?
The campaign will begin at Piren's Bluff in Western Andoran on the border with Cheliax. The group will have time to meet each other (and the NPC members of the expedition) as well as make last-minute purchases before setting out. Gideon has promised a more detailed explanation once the group meets up just north of the town before beginning the journey.
The beginning of the adventure will detail the journey to the site. Half the trouble is getting there in one piece ;)
The main reason for the month-long time between proposition and actual meet-up is that Gideon is recruiting people from different nations across the Inner Sea, so there's a lot of travel time on his end and time people need to meet up, etc. It also gives room for some post-recruitment, pre-adventure storytelling on the PCs part :)
Is it me or did this thread get really quiet?
Granted, the Holidays are coming up soon, so it really might just be me. XD
Lucent, you've gotten a chance to look at Gabriels background? Aside from the addition of Rune, there really wasn't much change, just a greater attention to detail on certain things. (Such as his traveling and his parents and so on.)
One also hasn't reported yet.
Holidays have been busy for me as anticipated, so I haven't had much time to look into the thread. I've also got the first round of RPG Superstar being worked on right now, so my plate's pretty full. That's also why the prologues have been late this week and last as well. I'm hoping next week to have more time freed up to put out the back prologues and read Gabriel's introduction and the second part of his backstory!
Really excited for the 3rd, though.
Pretty much expected this close to the holidays, so don't worry about it! Take the time you need! And I am looking forward to the game as well.
Tomorrow night (let's say 6:30pm Eastern) I would like to get whoever is available together just to hop on roll20.net and get acclimated to the system, answer any questions and discuss next week's 1st session.
If you can make it tomorrow, let me know here so I have a rough head-count.
Secondly, if everyone can just wave a flag around for me to know you're still alive and good to game starting next week. I know the holidays are a crazy time, so if anyone has schedule hiccups incoming just give me a heads up and it'll all be good.
Hope to see you guys tomorrow for the test run! Oh, and good luck to any of you who are participating in RPG Superstar!
Still here. I'll get around to my prologue eventually. I feel like it has to be perfect because what's posted is so good, and so I haven't worked up the motivation yet.
So your saying 12/27 at 6:30? I may be available. I have a wedding going on tomorrow, but I have no idea what times that is going to take me away. I will try to be there if i can.
I'm still alive, still interested, and I should be able to make it tonight.
The last two prologues are up, and that sets us up for the beginning of the game next week. Tonight I'll just be going over some basics of play format and letting whoever shows up get comfortable with roll20.net. I'll post a little bit about how sessions will go afterward. We shouldn't take more than an hour.
Looking forward to seeing who shows up tonight, and for the start of things next week! :D
A reminder to those showing up, the roll20.net link for Ascension is https://app.roll20.net/join/50905/7qVErQ
So, Wofguy (Biatz) and I discussed a couple of things tonight, but since we were the only two together I decided not to bring up everything I wanted to. So I'll list everything here for people to consider and give me feedback on.
So the first thing we talked about was that it can get really spammy in roll20.net's one chat window for the campaign when you have everyone rolling dice, asking questions and getting results. As such it makes it pretty hard to pay attention to dialogue, description, and other equally vital elements that could also be flying past in a text-only environment. Were we using voice/video chat that would be different, but we're not.
So, Wof suggested something that I'm leaning towards, which is utilizing a secondary chat option specifically for in-character text only (actions, descriptions, etc). That way we can keep the narrative flow clean and undisruptive, while the gameplay and other meta concerns are in another window.
My recommendation is utilizing a shared google-docs document for that or maybe utilizing google chat, since it's a ubiquitous piece of the internet these days. Though if anyone had an alternative, I'd be more than willing to consider it and see what everyone else feels.
On a more specific topic, I wanted to go into how combat is going to flow and how it impacts in-character descriptions of actions, etc. Typically, for actions that require game-play mechanics, I want to have all the rolls/mechanical adjudication out of the way and once results are known, whoever was performing the action is free to go off and describe how excellently (or poorly!) it went.
This is mostly specific to combat, where you'll have a turn to handle actions, reactions and know how much damage is dealt, etc. From there you're free to go over and describe just how your character went about those things, based on what you did, down to dealing damage and the meat of combat (yeah, that means describing how your sword cleaved into the horrible, tentacled abomination!) In turn I'll be handling the same responsibilities for NPCs under DM control / environmental descriptions. In a round-by-round account of things, everyone should wait until their turn is over to describe things that way we don't have people running over one another with description.
One of the main reasons for the structure on this, is so that the logs of all the story elements can be posted here for others to enjoy/review, this is especially important for players who might miss sessions, so that instead of getting a glossed-over view of what happened, they can read a play-by-play of the story as it happened.
When outside of combat, people will be free to write/react as they want, but if anyone is feeling steamrolled by someone with a faster typing speed, please feel free to wave your arms and let us know to hold on a second while you write up a response/interaction. I want everyone to get a chance to participate equally, regardless of words-per-minute proficiency.
During combat, there's some prompts that you'll see come up in the gameplay chat window that you'll want to pay attention to:
[ Halt ]
This one is pretty straightforward. If you see halt, stop what you're doing. No descriptions/dialogue (unless the action has already taken place mechanically), no combat actions, etc. I'll only use this if something got confused/poorly explained in the gameplay or if something new is being introduced, such as a paradigm shift in combat when reinforcements arrive, etc. When halted, you'll want to look for the next prompt to start up again.
[ Resume ]
This means go back to business as usual following the initiative order (or outside of combat, feel free to go back to describing your characters actions/dialogue and react to whatever changed during the halt.
Another prompt you'll see typically comes at the beginning of a session, or after we've done a transition from one scene to the next or what have you. Typically this prompt will be prefaced with a lot of descriptive text describing the scenario your characters have found themselves in. An example below, taken from one of my older Eberron campaigns from ages past:
The sound of clinking glasses and the converging of many voices filled the air, mixing with the scents of tobacco and alcohol. "So, you ever play Dhakanni Dark Six?" Kree leaned forward on the table he sat at with Snow, "It's a dice game, uses six stones with six sides. You match up point values of four and five... pretty easy." The goblin looked around. "Gotta remember to pick some up when we make port."It was raining heavily by the time the Scrapheap had dipped back down beneath the sea of clouds. Everyone but necessary crewmen had been called back below decks, and the distant rumble of thunder and flash of lightning in the clouds was reason enough for that. From the observation windows in the mess hall, the distant Ironroot Mountains could be seen up ahead; it wouldn't be long now before the journey finally came to an end.
Business was going as usual in the mess hall of the Scrapheap. "'ey, Vandercamm." Kree leaned back in his seat, motioning to the bartender sitting in the mess hall. "Fill me up again." He held out his glass full of alchemical ice towards the young man. He was dapperly dressed, a black glamorweave vest buttoned up over a high-collared white shirt with a thin black necktie; he certainly looked the part of a bartender.
Kree hopped down off of his seat, walking over to the bartender and standing on his toes to settle the glass down on the bartop. The dusty-blonde-haired man looked up, smoke blowing out of his nose after taking a drag on his cigarette, "Just the whiskey this time; I need to stiffen up my guts for drinking with the beardies." Kree hated dwarves, almost as much as he hated halflings. He was certain Atanna had done this on purpose.
Everyone was excited about making port in a city when the ship wasn't in need of dire repairs; hitting a metropolis like Krona Peak would be a welcome respite from the extremely dangerous time the crew had had since leaving Wroat. It wouldn't be long now, before the journey Sapphine had begun would find its ending.
[ LCA Scrapheap, Mess Hall - 25 Nymm, 998 YK - Afternoon: Indoors (Thunderstorm) - Free to Act: All ]
Following that prompt (which contains useful information such as the environmental conditions, where the story has picked up, all players are free to act as they will. Sometimes, if members of the party are separate we'll bounce back and forth between perspectives with something like [Free to Act: Biatz] or the like, showing that right now we're focusing on a specific person. Typically I'll do this to give a character a little spotlight time, and usually everyone gets equal measure focus time when they're on their own. But don't worry about that sort of thing eating up entire sessions, that won't be happening.
At the end of each session, I'll be posting the full log of the story thus far here on the Paizo forums in the campaign journals section, like I did with the prologues. Each chapter of the story will contain any number of logs, up until that chapter is rounded out. At times, you may even see scenes that didn't happen in the gameplay pop up, such as vignettes about what certain NPCs are doing in the meanwhile, or events your characters may not even have been privy towards. This creates an atmosphere much like watching a television show or reading a book, where you become invested in all the story and characters, not just your own.
If you're worried about not being able to keep IC and OOC knowledge apart, don't be. If I see anything fishy I'll discuss it privately. If you're more worried because you can't trust yourself to keep straight what your character knows and what you know, you can always review the in-game logs, or just avoid reading the optional vignettes as they show up.
Between sessions, if the characters are at rest or aren't otherwise in the middle of a scene/combat/event, you're free to do what you want within the pre-defined amount of down-time. This is anything from crafting items to having characters meet and discuss things on their own. In doing this, you can post stories of your own detailing what your character is up to, where they're going, and even interactions between characters that would normally not be shown.
If there's particular elements you'd rather keep secret, you can always play them out and post them later as flashbacks for just the right dramatic zing.
If you're not sure what your character should/could do during downtime, feel free to throw me a PM here on the forums, I check them all the time. If you need rules adjudication and it's something you know the DC of, feel free to just roll in the roll20.net, it keeps an active log of things I can just scroll back through.
...aaaand that's about all I can think of right now. If anyone's got any questions, feel free to ask here/in PM and I'll get around to it as soon as I can.
If anyone no-shows the first session without any kind of pre-warning, odds are you'll be taken out of the campaign and one of the reserves will be tapped to join in the following session, barring exceptional circumstances.
I look forward to seeing everyone next week!
I better warm up my writing fingers. This is going to get crazy.
Sorry for the miss; I was called in to work. It shouldn't happen again, as the circumstances were... unusual. Next week is definitely a "go".
I am still alive as well! I just haven't been checking the thread as often as I should. XD All of those things sound cool!
Has everyone taken a moment to log in to roll20.net via the campaign link? I just want to make sure there's no connection/account issues for anyone before game-time comes next week.
I have logged into and joined the campaign! I also agree with using multiple chats. I have been in a game where the DM used one. It was not pretty. Again, sorry about missing the thing on Wednesday. I've been checking this thread every few days and completely missed it.
Will I be the only one posting a prologue? Was hoping to read a bit about the other characters in the game as well.
Sorry to hear that vthings, I was really looking forward to seeing that Sohei in action!
Since vthings is out, we'll run this coming session with 3 PCs and I'll reach out to our standbys to see which one is available to take that place for next week's session.
Oh, darn, I missed his post completely. Sorry to hear that as well man! Like everyone posting a character you had some very interesting ideas!
I will be posting a prologue, once I can break down and do it. I feel like it has to be amazing to match everyone else, so it's a little daunting.
Hey everyone! So I just got back from work, and after considering things I think I'm going to postpone the initial session tonight in order to find our missing 4th player. I need to reach out to the two standbys and see which one (if any of them) will be available, and if not I have a few other options.
I'd rather we start out strong with everyone if possible. So we'll start next Wednesday at 6:00 and I'll let you all know who winds up being our new 4th man. Sorry for this short notice on this, I didn't have a lot of time to consider vthings departure when I was at work today.
So we'll get the ball rolling Wednesday, January 9th at 6:00pm.
Don't blame you man. You really only had a little time to consider it. Best to start out strong too!
It's okay, life has a way of happening to the best of us! Sorry you won't be able to participate.
I hate to be that guy, but I probably won't make it on the 9th. I'm trying to find a replacement for where I need to be, but at this point it's looking unlikely. I don't want to hold the game up, and I'm not opposed to the rest of the group starting without me. I'll let you know if it turns out I can make it, and I definitely will be around on the 16th. I hope that's alright.
I'd suggest we either play a man down or find another day we can all play. If this game keeps getting postponed it will never get off the ground.
Provided the backup for vthings shows up I'll probably start things on Wednesday even if Kas can't make it for this one session. I reached out to both of our standbys and neither of them look like they will be able to make it, so I've touched base with a friend of mine who is interested who is working on a character. I'll let you guys know if anything changes between now and then.
I just heard from one if our stand-bys who has agreed to join us. So in Wednesday the gnoll ranger Karrn will be a part of the expedition! I'm going to keep the invitation to my friend open to join us (especially since Kas won't be in the first session) so we may wind up with a party of five, but I think that's going to be okay, especially since I've gamed with this new addition for seven years :)
Really excited for Wednesday :)
Hey folks, Karrn here. Hopefully you lot won't point at me and scream. It's highly distressing. :P
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I'm pretty sure Biatz is more ugly than you.
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That's because Karrn is an adorable voracious hyena-man.
Welcome Wahrheit to the game! Which I am happy to hear is still on for WednesdaY!
Gabriel might have trouble with Karrn at first, given that he grew up in a village on the outskirts of Kyonin (an elven territory that deals with a lot of raiding Gnolls). He'll get over it quickly though, especially given the fact that he's been traveling for the past decade or so and has probably met weirder folk.
Granted, once Gabriel gets over Karrns nature, he's likely to start asking a lot of questions about Gnolls.
Also, feel free to post a prolouge! Please! I'd really like to not be the only player who did so. Makes me feel like a brown noser or something.
Should be interesting. It likely won't help that when it comes to anything even resembling civilized manners, Karrn is... lacking. He'll definitely appreciate curiosity though.
Anyway, I have one prologue-chunk up to help me get into Karrn's mindset. I'll likely be writing a second one that's more prose and less stream-of-consciousness later.
To be fair, that was a rather brilliant stream-of-consciouness that also somehow contained bits about what he was doing and why he traveled. Two claws up to Gnoll hunting not-eating prey for the mind.
So we will have a 5th player joining us, who should be posting in this thread some time tonight. The bigger news about it is that they come with a dedicated text-based game server that is going to host our non-gameplay related goings-on.
In order to connect you'll need to download a really small/simple text client here (MUSH client).
Anyone familiar with the old text-based games from the 90s will find the interface familiar. It will provide us with a place to post in-character actions (without a noticeable buffer limit for single lines) that won't get choked up with all the game play chatter/elements.
Connecting is easy and I'll have the connection address up as soon as I get it. If anyone has any issues running the software let me know, I'm pretty sure there's both PC and Mac versions, if not there's some alternatives.
It works pretty slick, I ran an online campaign for a few years with a similar setup. I think you guys'll really enjoy it :)
And just a reminder, start time is 6:00pm (Eastern; -5 GMT) tomorrow!