Discuss things here.
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Made some last minute changes to the character since I discovered the changes to simple and martial weapons and the fact that we get 4 extra proficiencies. Like he has a bastard sword instead of a longsword, cause it would make sense for him to try to use the most effective weapon possible being in a war. Gave him a hand gun like you suggested. Made him proficient with longbows and Heavy cross bows as well as the bastard and greatsword, stuff he should be proficient with.
Jazz is good to go.
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As far as being associated with anyone, I'm not sure who Jazz should be associated with. He did serve in the war, but there is no mention of him in the war to the public, nor would his name be in the history books, etc. Only people that served with him in his very infantry group would know he served, as well as classified documents.
He lived the rest of his days out as a construction worker, the life he had while he was a slave, only he was getting paid. He practiced his combat skills in his free time.
I don't really see Fang knowing any of the others.
I think the reason I will be investigating the situation at Rockerfeller's is that my father instructed me to go after reading a letter. He gave me some money and told me to investigate the situation, specifically instructing me to seek out our initial contact and offer my services.
William could have patched up any of you, but I don't know what could justify a deeper connection. Maybe he could have taken a shine to Digger as he used to be a street child as well.
I'm a member of an Indian regiment. Could anybody possibly have a connection with that regiment? In the way of the times, many of the officers would be Europeans (English, mercenaries, whatever)
I've been to India, but it was around 20 years ago.
I was thinking of this ...Digger himself doesn't have any traditional skills or styles that would lead him to be invited to the group, so perhaps he heard about it ...maybe intercepted a message, and thought "Rockefeller? Now this I gotta see!" if only for the clams casino he assumes will be constantly served.
Does Fang do any public/sporting fights? Digger would know him and be a fan, even.
If you want, we could do a slight edit to say that you found Jun on the road and helped him get to the house. There is some criminal stuff going on that could have brought you to the area.
Works for me!
Fang did the kind of ugly street-fighting that you can imagine when you get a bunch of orphaned kids into a group and have them beat the mess out of each other. Had his father not found him, Fang would have likely ended up a Triad enforcer.
Which is a long way to say that his fights were far from public, and going to them on a regular basis would likely be an alignment check.
Gah, just saw the gameplay started already. Sorry, guys. I'm on it today.
I just had an idea for the language barrier thing. I think it might be interesting if, when we get to Golarion, we all can speak common (since it's basically a magic language anyway). That way we can still have the language barrier for the first part of the campaign (when such things are fun) but remove it before it gets old or tiring.
Yes, I think I have found a way for that to work, and it retains the ability for their to still be languages you don't understand. Regional, racial, etc.
Gunsmithing.
In a setting with Modern Firearms, the Gunslinger class loses the gunsmithing feat and instead gains gun training. I thought that I read somewhere that this was because gunsmithing isn't necessary to clear jams, but I can't find anything about that now. I would like to propose that anyone proficient in firearms can clear a jam in a certain amount of time. I'm not quite sure what amount of time would be appropriate, but I would think 20 minutes might be good.
Honestly, these guns are misfiring at a rate that is a little too high for the genre. I might consider making the misfire only on rolling a double failure. So 1, then roll to confirm and get a 1, something like that. What do you guys think?
I don't mind getting misfires, I just wanted to avoid spending the adventure until level 3 with broken guns.
Does Anachronistic Adventures have any rules about it?
As for clearing, I know nothing of guns, so... the Gunslinger's quick clear can fix a renaissance-era firearm in one round, so maybe a minute could be enough, if we don't go with the 1-in-400 chance route.
First off, I'll admit that any resemblance to reality and Paizos rules for firearms is at best a coincidence and more likely an error on Paizo's part :-). I think one of their design goals was to make firearms as unrealistic as they possibly could :-) :-).
I'm not an expert but my understanding is that in real life misfires are quite rare as long as the rifle is clean and well maintained and the ammunition is good. And most misfires can be cleared quickly, depending on the cause (if it is a faulty round, which it usually is, clearing is as simple as loading a new round. Otherwise, the firing mechanism may have to be fixed).
That "clean and well maintained" is very important. In WW1 the Canadian Armed Forces replaced the Ross Rifle with the Lee Enfield because the latter did better in the horrible conditions of the trenches. A similar thing occurred in WW2 where Russian weapons were far resistant to dirt than their German counterparts. Fine machining and greater accuracy is great in some circumstances but worse in others.
Note also that WW1 era rifles are bolt action, NOT semi automatic. So the misfire that occurs in modern rifles where the cartridge jams as it is ejected doesn't happen.
Actually, cartridges still eject on bolt-action rifles; They eject when the bolt is pulled back.
I'm good with a minute to clear a misfire. Advanced firearms don't explode on a second misfire, so you could still use the gun, just with a higher chance of misfire.
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Speaking of Hollow Earth, there are people who still believe it today even though Science hasn't definitely disproved it cause we haven't dug to the center, but in the 1980s it was mostly disproved by science.
Anyway liking the game so far, and the idea that our characters are all trying to rationalize everything when the players really know it is all magic.
I am obviously happy and genuinely astounded at the success of how you guys are playing the game. Your commitment to character and segregating character knowledge has been really impressive. Even as a GM it is challenging for me to think about how to present some of these situations to characters who would not be as genre savy, and I'm not always succeeding there, but I feel great about the whole thing. I can't wait until we get to the meat of the scenario.
It's been great so far. For those of you not reading my spoilers, I've been asking some of the same questions that you have been asking, usually right after I see a good one. =D
Jazz, I think I confused you. It is July. The winter is only here inside this strange aberration.
I think that he means that it is a Fing cold winter outside (at least here in Eastern North America)
Oh. He meant in the real world. That makes way more sense. And yes, it is painfully cold.
It wasn't deliberate at all. The concept has been in my head almost since the AP came out, and I just thought I'd see if I could find an audience. Turns out you guys are awesome.
FYI: I've come down with the flu, so my time for posting has gone way up but my energy way way down. I'll keep up as best I can.
Take care of yourself and get lots of sleep. PBP games are NOT worth ruining your health over.
Besides, you might transmit your disease. That is what computer viruses are, right? Viruses transmitted by computer?
Sorry for precipitating the situation, by the way. But I guess we all anticipated it would happen.
I don't think it could have been avoided, really. There isn't much opportunity for diplomacy with this lady.
Heads up that we will soon level to 2nd. I imagine that will be complicated a little by the unusual rules we are using. I'm excited to see these characters grow. I'm having a great time with this campaign. Almost wondering if I need to break out some sanity rules for poor Dr. Johnson, but I'm glad to have a skeptic.
I'm enjoying the game as well.
Yeah, it's a new system, but it's working well. The "not even close to murder hobo" thing is harder than it seems, haha.
Although, aren't we already at second? EDIT: Nevermind. I was thinking of the Starfinder game I'm in ...the other new rule system ha.
And healing without magic is brutal.
I think sooner or later I'll make "I don't believe in fairies!" into my battlecry.
I think we are going to need to talk about healing. I don't really want to go down the road of having to have a wand and UMD to heal people. The only other d20 system I really know is Vitality and Wound points from d20 Star Wars and the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana. I think that might get closer to what we need to represent these Pulp Out of Time heroes, but even that might not be perfect. I think it is genre appropriate for people to get beat up but not really suffer penalties as they go forward. In a noir sort of way, the characters take a beating but still muddle on without really getting worse. Some of them even get better with the beating.
Any thoughts? I like the notion of Vitality and Wounds, with Wounds being equal to Constitution. I'd probably ditch the notion of criticals going straight to Wounds. Just keep the regular critical modifier and have it apply to vitality and then wounds when vitality runs out. Maybe vitality recovers at 5 or 10 times level per hour? So you can bounce back pretty quickly between encounters. That feels genre appropriate to me.
I like the system that they suggest in the Anachronistic adventures book: Bruises and wounds.
It basically works like this: the first half of your max hp that you take are bruises, which you heal all of after a 10 minute rest. The caveat, however, is that you can never heal more in bruises than you have in wounds (for example, Fang has 16 hp, which would divide into 8 bruises and 8 wounds. During a fight, he takes 12 points of damage, which is 8 bruises and 4 wounds, leaving him at 4 wounds. after taking a breather, he would heal his bruises, but since he is currently at 4 wounds, he could only heal 4 hp worth of bruises.
If we're going to be going with the idea of having limited or non-existant magical healing, then perhaps we can just house-rule it so that as long as you get a good night's rest you fully heal?
I'm ok with either of those systems. But in any case I planned to take UMD in the future.
Naajy is also definitely planning on taking UMD. It fits his character background.
We could possibly go the Starfinder route (simplified). After a short rest you get back to half. After a full nights rest you get back to full.
If we go a Vitality/Wounds rate then Vitality should come back at a class or Total hp related rate. Otherwise you get the strange situation that the more combat capable classes heal slower than us namby pamby sensitive sorts :-)
I'm thinking we go with Bruises and Wounds. I like the feel of that. William can treat injury, so that helps. 10 minutes removes all of your Bruises. A full night of rest restores you to full hit points.
On another note, the modern military flamethrower appears to have been invented in 1901 and used in The Great War, so that is an option. Your patron could certainly connect with military personnel to gain access to advanced weapons if that seemed necessary. You have achieved your initial goal of finding the kidnapped woman. There is certainly a greater mystery here, but you need not feel like you have to fly headlong into it.
Everyone levels to 2nd as you put yourselves back together in the cabin.
How are we doing HP for levelling?
We can actually make it back? Excellent :-). I'd thought it was highly probable that we'd crossed over to the other side (Golarion) and wouldn't be able to make our way back until book six or so :-) :-)
I meant the fellow who dragged you into all of this, Mr. Rockefeller. He has extensive government connections. He could certainly arrange for some cutting edge military hardware. Of course, that would require you to get back out of the snow to civilization.
We can actually make it back? Excellent :-). I'd thought it was highly probable that we'd crossed over to the other side (Golarion) and wouldn't be able to make our way back until book six or so :-) :-)
Ha! No, you haven't crossed over yet. This incursion of Winter is pretty extensive. I did try to drop some hints there that suggest there is a bigger problem that needs to be dealt with, so hopefully that will give you some direction.
So how are we doing hit points again?
Let's do full hit points for 2nd level. Then we will feel out how this healing goes and see if you guys are tough enough.
I can see why we are having trouble figuring out where to go from here. I'll try to think out loud here about the genre. These are just ruminations, not to be taken as writ.
1. It is entirely appropriate to take a break, have a drink, smoke a cigar, even rest over night. The world moves slower here, and while the situation might seem dire, there is no real reason to think it is urgent.
2. We've discussed getting help, but that might not be entirely genre appropriate, where the heroes are isolated and without assistance. However, I think we can make this work. If we consider what has happened so far, we could take all of this as the "invitation to adventure." We've had some good denials from the good doctor, we've got Jazz on a wildly and wonderfully wrong idea of what is going on. Everyone thinks they know what is going on when everyone is wrong. This is all good. There is an upcoming moment that is really the crossing the threshold, but in a sense continuing on from her is that moment of commitment.
We don't need to play out the whole going back to civilization and getting help. We could send out for help and stay here. Or we could go out and come back in. Or we could hole up here and have a bit of a horror movie happening. I suspect that our characters wouldn't tolerate that, though.
3. I'd love for the characters to get one nice gearing up montage before heading on to what is next. We know there is a problem now. This is bigger than rescuing a kidnapped woman. Let's get our gear together and go to work. I want managing your modern resources to matter, but I don't want you to start the adventure with no modern resources. I'd rather watch them dwindle over time.
So how do we want to proceed?
Fang cares more about destroying the demon than rescuing the woman. It has seen their faces, and so it has to die before it draws more supernatural stuff onto them all!
Fang is however, excited because this is clearly the nebulous trouble that his father wanted him to find and stop.
As far as gear goes, Fang can probably be talked into carrying stuff for others, but he really doesn't need any himself.
Returning and equipping appears to be the sensible thing. Of course, should there be trouble getting back to civilization, I'll enjoy the challenge of making do.
Right now, I wanted to finish the conversation with Naajy before deciding what to do. And then down a few glasses of strong stuff.
@william - sorry, Naajy really had no more to say at this point
@GM its partly in character and partly meta but I think that what we really need in game is knowledge. We failed against a Mephit or the like. Partly bad luck but mostly DR is NASTY against low damage attacks.