Revival of the Runelords

Game Master Cellion

sigh, we may need to. I like the group and would like to keep going

Likewise, though in my particular case it is more like starting than continuing.

I've no problem searching for a new GM at this point. Has anyone done so before? I've never looked for a GM before, but things I'd like to see in a GM are a frequent posting history, the longer the better. Would we want the GM to adopt the houserules we have been operating under? I don't have a strong stance on this, but I'd have to do a slight rebuild if we do decide to remove them for the new GM. Not to mention our gold/items would have to be adjusted. Again, I've no problem doing this, but it is something we would have to be upfront about with the GM as they would need to adjudicate this.

Sorry y'all I got a into the weeds with changing jobs and whatnot.

What I've seen as far as recruiting a new GM: we post a thread on the PBP Recruitment page, list out what we'd like to see and what our party looks like + link to the current campaign. Would someone like to take charge of that? I can do it Wednesday if you're okay with waiting.

I was actually found by Peet to take over for our Kingmaker game.

I am fine with getting a new DM. We are also looking for another character in ROTL as I mentioned earlier in the discussion if anyone is interested.

I'm cool with you taking the lead Kargas!

@Uriel: did you mean Emerald Spire?

I was actually found by Peet to take over for our Kingmaker game.

I was a bit busy yesterday so I just made this quick post above. Hopefully folks got to read the link and the next few posts down and onto the next page. Based on the experience I would suggest we put a few stipulations (like perhaps keeping the house rules or not--forcing rebuilds in most cases), general posting expectations (something like 1 per day, or the like) and so on and maybe have prospects read the game thus far to get a handle on the groups play. That is if we make this a public search. This might seem like a lot but there are GMs that while not lacking enthusiasm to help run a game, I would not want to GM for me (for any number of reasons including: unfamiliarity with the rules, use of GM fiat in contradiction to established facts, adversarial GMs, etc...). Games are never just about the GM so as players (and I will freely state here that I see myself as the least among equals given my newbness to this game) that we should find someone we actually would like to see in the GM's chair for long (if not permanent) while and not just anyone.

On that note, is there anyone someone could recommend? I'm not sure I know anyone who has the time just now, but can think of a few people on the boards who I like as GM.

I am actually bot-ing Peet's character (Gansu) that he is playing in an Emerald Spire campaign PBP. We are wrapping up the current level, then we will likely be heading back to town and deciding if we want to continue with 4 players or recruit someone else. Feel free to take a wander over there and read up on us. I can't promise anything, but if you find yourself eager to join us, please contact the gamemaster and let him know your thoughts...

Emerald Spire Campaign

I would love to but... time is thing right now. :(

Still I'll see if maybe I swing by and at least read your nearly 4k posts!*

* Congrats on the long run thusfar!

I agree with Kellek, we have the opportunity to put a really good GM at the helm and I think we should take it. I have nobody that I could recommend that has the bandwidth for it unfortunately. I'm cool with having people offer suggestions, no need to make it a public search if people know who they would like!

@Uriel: did you mean Emerald Spire?

Right, sorry. My fault. Emerald Spire is the other game.

So when I make the post, should I specify that we'd like to keep the house rules?

I vote no, because requiring a new GM to adhere to a previous GM's house rules is a bit much. I'm okay doing some minor rebuilding in exchange for a larger pool of potential GMs

It's a little bit of rebuild for me but nothing I can't handle.

We might want to have who ever is interested just look at the rules and see what they want to do about them.

I vote no on the preconditions for the GM. I would like someone who posts regularly and maybe one of you has good experience with.

Let's leave the houserules out, but at least show them to the GMs. Who knows, they might like them! I'd like to definitely have posting requirements though.

Once we get applicants, how do we want to choose our GM? Personally, I think we should take a brief jaunt to a third party site unless someone wants to coordinate receiving each of our opinions. Idk about y'all, but I'm not comfortable sharing my opinions on applicants in a publicly viewed thread.

re:houserules- agreed. We're asking for their help after all. If they like them, cool, but no pressure.
As for evaluations/discussions, we could probably set up a survey monkey or something without many problems. Could also go by email, or a discord chat. Can you PM multiple people on this site? Anyone know?

Sent out some feelers today to folks I feel are solid.

While my GM friends are interested neither has the time. :(

Bummer! Thanks for reaching out to them Kellek!

Unless someone has any irons in the fire, I suppose now is the time for a public request.

I've also asked a few folks, but they're also overbooked as it is. Sounding like public is the way to go

Apologies, I know I said I'd take the lead on this but I started my new job on Monday, and things have been very busy (not to mention an hourlong commute), so I don't have much leftover bandwidth. Sorry y'all! I'll try to get caught up here as soon as I can

No worries. Remember, the first two weeks are the hardest.

I to am thinking we should open it up a bit more assuming no one has anyone else they can think of.

So as a possible consolation prize and in the vein of Brother_Guiness's kind invite to his Emerald Spire Campaign, I find my Kingmaker game lacking a focused arcane caster (nothing too weird... not sure why I bother saying that anymore considering; masculine would be nice for gender balance; 30 point buy (the previous GM's thing); I try to leave as much of the decision making up to players as possible (i.e. like a real sandbox--like I say in PFS game intro: I don't put your character in front of the next door they have to kick down, and I certainly don't kick it down for them. That's called: writing a novel. We're here to game. Your character can do as they like (or not) within the game world. You guys are the heroes here. You move the story. I'm just the guide.*); the party is 4th level at the very end of the first book, so if you have ever wanted your character to become a fantasy real estate owner nows your chance to get in on the ground floor!

Take a look, PM me if you are interested. We could talk here, but I want to try and keep this thread for this game.

* Caveat! There is an overarching campaign (it is an AP after all) but I try to weave into everything so there is very little daylight between it, day-to-day play, or any side quests the party might take on.

I'd be interested in such an endeavor!

EDIT: Have we had any luck with a replacement GM here?

Unfortunately I still haven't gotten a GM recruitment post up. The new job is an hour's commute away so I've also been apartment hunting and the whole shebang is eating up a lot of my time. Sorry all :(

I finally got the post up, thank you all for being so patient!

Here's the link, please help me field any questions! We should probably mention the current party makeup as well.

Just so it is posted somewhere we can all see, someone has taken the bait invitation! Let's PM Kargas our thoughts before the sucker wonderful individual can bail out! Just to be clear, I am being cheeky about my word choice here!

I expect everyone to play nice with each other in character and handle out of character disagreements out of character.

Do you suppose magic missile would be acceptable?

I haven't had a lot of time to get too deep in the GM picking process this week (I've worked the last two weekends) and had to set up things for Outpost II, but I should be able to take a look in the next two days. So far so good.

Hey all, I message Cellion and they're fine with waiting a few days for Kellek to get back to us. They also said it's fine whether we want to go on with just the four of us (bloodrager, cleric, bard, & wizard covers almost all bases) or would prefer to recruit another, in case Guiness & Colvyn don't get back to us.

I personally think 5 people is the ideal number for adventuring parties, but I'm fine with rocking this with four people as well.

Still here, was just waiting to see when we would get this rolling again.

Sweet! We should let Cellion know then.

excellent!

And sounds good to me too!

Sounds like we're set to get you guys moving forwards on Rise of the Runelords. And seems like we have everyone except Brother_Guiness checked in. If or when he checks in, he can join us as a sixth player, otherwise, we'll roll forth with five.

So once again, Hi! Nice to meet everyone. I'll be taking over GMing your RotRL game.

Some ground rules that I expect everyone to follow to keep the game running smoothly (mostly reposted from my post on the Recruitment page):

It'll take me a couple of days to get things organized and prepared. In the mean time, I need you guys to do two things for me:

1) My character building rules are in the following spoiler. I've tried to make them close to what RuneGM specified. If your current character doesn't follow some of these rules, please make the adjustments necessary and let me know once your character is updated. You're also welcome to make tweaks to your character's build at this time in case there was something in there you didn't like.

Note also that I am stripping out all the house rules that are currently linked in RuneGM's header for the campaign above, except:

2) RuneGM provided a staggering amount of consumables, that aren't ordinarily part of the adventure, so I'd like to to a wealth-check before we continue. Please calculate the total value of stuff your character is carrying. You don't have to be super accurate, but I need to get a feel for how much wealth you have. This should be calculated based on the sale value of items you have, not their buy cost. Someone should also take a look at the loot received up to now that hasn't been claimed by anyone, and give me a total value for that as well.

Thanks! Hope you guys are all ready to get back into things.

So I wake up this morning and suddenly remember—oh yeah, I wonder how the GM search is going in the ROTR PbP...Then I can’t remember the last time I checked on it, so I headed over this morning to see what it up...Looks like fate is smiling on me!

I am up for playing once Guiness is found...I’ll look through the updates and see what I need to adjust. Welcome aboard Cellion!

Nice! Glad you could join us.

I'm thinking that regardless of how the party plans to approach their assault on Thistletop, they'll find you captured in the first area they investigate. A little unrealistic, but it'll get you into the game ASAP.

Let me know if you (or anyone else) have questions on character build checks and wealth accounting.

Okay, so I think I've got the rebuild done, and my approximate wealth is 2,300gp including potions & the like.

Once I'm home this evening I can tally up the unclaimed loot if no one else does it first.

I am pretty sure Peet started me out with 400 gp worth of gear. I will check tonight.

I believe some of the unclaimed treasure was intended for you, Guiness, but I don't remember exactly what it was.

GM: Are you ok with a once per weekend noncombat post as well?

Wednesday and Thursday nights are when I have class (which occurs after working throughout the day). Not to start this off on a late foot, but it is possible that I might only get to all of this by the weekend. I might be able to get to it tonight, but just putting it out there for transparency. My typical posting times are between 6 and 8 am EST during week days.

@Kargas: Thanks for taking the lead on adding up treasure value from unclaimed loot!

@Guiness: 400 gp is awfully low. Depending on how the undistributed loot is looking, I may just bump you up to appropriate wealth for a 3rd level character. But go ahead and check and let me know.

GM: Are you ok with a once per weekend noncombat post as well?

Wednesday and Thursday nights are when I have class (which occurs after working throughout the day). Not to start this off on a late foot, but it is possible that I might only get to all of this by the weekend. I might be able to get to it tonight, but just putting it out there for transparency. My typical posting times are between 6 and 8 am EST during week days.

Thanks for the heads up Floredana. I understand this is a good bit of work to do out of nowhere :> If you can squeeze in at least your wealth check tonight, that'd help me plan out what to do around wealth/loot ahead of time.

Once per weekend is OK for noncombat, though as always, more is better.

400 gp is the starting funds Guiness was built with, although there were some shenanigans with masterwork item pricing houserules that would make the standard value of his gear higher.

His background as a mercenary means that he has serviceable armor & shield, plus the gifts from his parents -- one of which is the cool Warhammer.

I am fine with a new starting gear gold equivalent of whatever you think is fair--other than that, Guiness is going to stay roughly the same as he is now.

Okay, so the loot doc tally is currently at 1,300gp for the potions and unclaimed items like armor & masterwork stuff...all the big things really.

There are a couple of strange inclusions here: did Aldern really just give us those horses & boar spears for the hunt? They're in the loot list, but we haven't been acting like we have horses and I think it's reasonable to drop them first if we're way over-treasured (which it looks like we are)

I haven't bothered with the multitude of items marked Sold or Distributed, since those are presumably already accounted for in our characters' personal wealth.

Oh crud I hadn't even started on the pile of alchemical items Ameiko gave us before the catacomb raid, or the loot taken there. We're way, WAY over WBL y'all.

EDIT: 6,876 and counting. Various gemstones are marked "???" since there's no un-houseruled value for them posted.

I think that's about all I'll be able to get done tonight

Gotcha. Hmm. I was hoping for a little bit there that we might be able to get away with just rolling with what you guys had before. Well, I do have a potential solution in mind if everyone is way over WBL.

But let's hear what the rest of the party is approximately at first.
Kellek, Colvyn and Rig, hope you guys can chime in soon. I'm hoping to get all the rebuilding sorted out by this weekend so we can get back into the action.

Thanks for doing the loot log archaeology Kargas!

Rig's total gear value is $3982.86 (although most of that comes from the +1 fire forged steel long sword=$2915, and that also includes his horse and boar spear which we can dump), and he has $499.7 in cash. Peet had also allowed him to have proficiency in scimitar, but I'm fine losing that (so I'd dump the mw scimitar for another $315). Oh, I also have this winged serpent scroll... I don't actually remember having it. And I have no idea what it does or what it's worth.

I'll make his adjustments this evening. There's not THAT much to do, so he should be ready to go late this evening. If you don't mind Cellion, I'd like to switch out Rig's enforcer feat (which he has never gotten to use) with lingering performance.
And I know it isn't really $$s, that's just a convenient symbol :)

I think Guiness is about ready other than his equipment...I just need either the buy value or the sell value of his starting equipment (before he meets the PC's). Most of the value will likely be in the special Warhammer he is given (see his backstory).

@Rig: Thanks for going through the wealth calcs! I'm not sure what the winged serpent scroll is (not in the Adventure Path anywhere, and not a standard Paizo item as far as I can tell), and the +1 fire forged longsword looks like something Peet added. Absolutely feel free to switch out your Enforcer feat.

@Guiness: More likely than not, I'll be giving you a budget of somewhere around 3000 gp instead of 400gp. So feel free to start thinking about what other items you might want to start with.

BTW, since I don't have control over the campaign yet, I'll be putting links to relevant campaign documents in my alias' stat line. See RotRL Handouts above for the characters and handouts met and discovered in the campaign thus far.

Also, feel free to chime in in gameplay at any time. I've set out post to get you guys started, and it might be worthwhile to settle back in with some RP before you dive into the assault on Thistletop.