Some guidelines for game pacing:
1. Once two players agree on a course of action in gameplay, I will assume the party takes that course of action.
2. Please post consistently once per weekday and once over the weekend, with a few, occasional exceptions. Even if it seems like there is nothing for you to do (e.g. not your turn in combat) there is something you can post. Post your character's reaction to another's actions, comment on a recent event in the discussion, etc. Do something to keep yourself and everyone else engaged. In addition, ensure your posts have a hook or push for other players or myself to keep the action moving forward.
A. Example post with no pushL "John finishes off the last ogre with a mighty blow to the abdomen."
B. Example post with a push: "John finishes off the last ogre with a mighty blow to the abdomen. With blood still dripping from his face, he turns to his comrades. Let's search their corpses and get out of here."
3. Related to both 1 and 2, use the discussion thread a lot. Feel free to plan ahead so that gameplay flows smoothly, e.g. "My character doesn't know X yet but once he does he will want to do Y.
4. FYI, I update mostly around 10 am EST and 7 pm EST on weekdays and at some point during Saturday and Sunday.
For those who haven't looked yet the "Dossier on the First Mission" can be found in the campaign tab.
At this point it seems we're already a team and likely know each other to some extent if we did not already. So first question is how did we get here? I'm thinking body-guarding a caravan would be pretty standard method for adventurers to travel and would be much less suspicious then showing up all at once as a group.
The second question: What do we do now? I'm thinking collect intel and find a place to stay while we strategize.
Thoughts and/or alternatives on either?
Certainly spying - that's why we have stealth synergy after all.
Face guys goes to tavern and talk with people.
Being new to town we certainly should go for a tavern or something similar for a stay. Everything else will make us look suspicious.
We should try to behave like your average traveler/hired muscle as possible. Drinking, resting, walking around town, pay some stuff from local merchants, ...
Collect intel in the various ways and map out the area.
Maybe two days later, we should strike if nothing forces us to do so earlier.
Bodyguarding a caravan is a good idea. I will go with that in my gameplay post intro, and then we can all meet in a tavern room to plan our next moves.
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Nice opening to gameplay, team deft. Keep it up.
It'll be another level before I can put ranks into Linguistics. Until then I'll need to have someone translate the sign language for me or perhaps make Sense Motive checks for a 'hunch'.
Same problem, as I can't see giving up Taldoran since they are the primary opponent.
Level 2 will make Basheer a much better contributer over all.
Sure. Its mostly for flavor anyway, so I'd figure Ashivla will translate anything interesting for you as a matter of habit without the need to post it every time.
Looking good so far. Let me know what you want to do once you've decided on the order of your plan. I can't tell yet what you'll be doing tonight except it sounds like the bard wants to party. XD
Also fyi, I'm not sure if you guys are waiting for vmaaxt but don't. Just do your thing and he'll jump in if he can. He's a friend of mine who's new to pbp, which is why I wanted to be sure whether or not you guys wanted him on board before bringing him in here.
Do we have any kind of legal authority as members of the Shadows?
Do we have direct line of sight from the tavern rooms to the target?
Lo'Laan: You do but a Shadow would almost never admit to being a Shadow. Even if arrested by conventional police for killing a target, a Shadow would be expected to escape rather than reveal their identity.
Amari: The direction of the window was unspecified so we can say you chose a north-facing window, which would give you a distant, somewhat obstructed view of the warehouse.
Well that was to be expected.
Ladies first, I guess ;-)
We may want to consider some way to lock the door from the rooftop if we don't take this way in. That way, no one from the inside can escape without being noticed or at least slowed down.
There's this little man on my shoulder shouting "Never split the party!" but I'll just ignore that for now and hope it all works out.
My instinct in PBP is usually to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Keeps things moving at least!
I'll keep that in mind. I could make a joke about living on borrowed time but it might be too on the nose.
Splitting the party is a big strength of pbp format in my eyes.
And you did just the right thing, find yourself something to do as well, while the other half of the party is exploring, training or whatever.
@GM: How difficult would it be, to climb down the wall without the aid of the rope? I think it would be a bad idea to just leave the grappling arrow & rope behind, dangling from the roof. They would know someone was up there quickly, probably trapping or guarding the roof from then on.
From my own experience, I know that there are special knots for climbers, that only keep tight while they are held under tension and will open by themselves once the tension eases . I'd plan to dislodge the grappling arrow after Ashivla has climbed down, then use such a knot on some solid object on the roof, climb down and release the knot, such that the rope can be pulled down, leaving no trace behind. Legit?
Would be a DC 21 climb check to climb down without the rope. Not a lot of handholds. You could do what you are proposing but it would require a DC 12 dex check and a DC 12 int check to make the somewhat specific knots you are describing (since there's no "use rope" in PF). You and Ashivla could work together on it and take the better result in each case.
Yes, Lo'Laan. There are pros and cons to splitting the party but for now just keep yourself moving forward. There will be times when splitting the party is extremely dangerous. :)
I would succeed at both with taking 10.
Is that an option here?
Oh no, I wouldn't at the Int one, never mind.
Yes taking 10 is an option but you IDed the issue with that.
How far down is it? If it's 20 ft. Ashivla could just jump down with an acrobatics roll.
Yes 20 ft.
<sigh> No point in claiming a cover if you refuse to behave like what you are pretending to be.
Quite the entrance from Drakar... Demonstrating his lack of face skills... XD Interested to see how Basheer adapts to it with his.
Welcome Drakar!
I don't believe Paizo has a code for color formating. I usually use Italics for spells though.
Those days when you forget that you're not a face, but you've a;ready committed to a bad idea...
@Lo'Lann Thanks for the suggestion about italics. The last PBP that I ran was on ENWorld, which uses the full bbcode options.
XP updates: 400 split between Ashivla and Amari for some key scouting.
100 for Lo'Laan for successfully IDing and listening to targets in the tavern. I'm adding this to the XP tracker. In general, I will award 5% (100 at level 1) of the xp required to go from current level to next level for achieving a minor but significant goal if that goal does not already have xp listed (e.g. killing an enemy already has a listed xp). I will scale this up or down based on the task and split between participants.
All: Seems we are having difficulty keeping up 1 post per weekday and 1 per weekend. Some of us more than others. Talk to me. Are we losing interest already? Are we unsure what to do? PBPs die easily and I want to maintain expectations of frequent posting (doesn't have to be a big post). PM me if you would prefer.
Still here and interested. I hope it's just a clash of assumptions, of waiting until day two comes around before a flurry of actions. Currently I am unsure if anything will happen overnight, so was withholding Ashivla's post until time advances (time thief puns!). I can post what she does when she wakes up now though and retcon if needed.
Is Basheer still here?
Ok I'll try to provide clearer pushes to help. And no, I'm not too concerned about retconning. It's more useful and necessary in this format.
Still here and interested of course.
I struggle a bit with the dual-PC thing.
Harder than I thought to keep two different PC's knowledge apart.
Then again, both aren't on the talky side of the river.
Plus: splitting the party has the chance to drop the post rate of those not involved.
e.g. I have the habit of reading up on them and thinking that the game is continuing, but forgetting that I am uninvolved in that time...
And, what Ashivla said.
Still here, still interested. Just getting back into the swing after a few years off boards.
Hey Drakar, what do we others know about Drakar?
Is Wyvaran correct? I thought he was a dwarf, wasn't he?
I struggle with imagining him at the moment ^^
Vmaaxt's other character was a Dwarven cleric. Drakar is the Wyvaran sacred fist.
Huh, I thought they both were dwarves.
Funny thing how the boasting dwarf suddenly changed into a humanoid drake before my mental eye *haha*
That's often the funniest part about tabletop RPG... when you were seeing something wrong and just realized it so there's a moment of transformation. I play a paladin who's in danger of falling because another character described some witches as "hags" so he took them out unprovoked... thinking they were actual hags...
Yeah. He's Wyvaran. I've got his sheet off-line, but it's taking me a little while to get it formatted onto the boards. (If anybody has suggestions, I'd appreciate it).
In training, Drakar would have been the one who never hesitated to rush into a situation, confident that he could fight his way out if needed, or at least turn around fast enough if things were way out of hand. He doesn't always resort to violence, but it's a pretty good first and last solution to more problems than people give it credit for. Definitely overconfident though.
Long day, sorry everyone. I will work something up this afternoon.
Just a general announcement about posting style that I forgot to make before: Try to make sure you do not assume the actions of other characters. This is easy and tempting to do given the format but should be avoided. If you wish to speed things up, you can post what you will do if teammate does x and what you will do if teammate does not do x.
Fun first fight. Posting rate is good too, folks.
I don't think I need to roll sense motive for that one... Poor guy.
Sorry, got shanghaied into a work trip. I will post in the morning with a little more brainpower than what I can muster now!
Sounds good.
I seem to have missed the Crimson Caravan clue and a search of the GP thread didn't pull anything up.
Edit; NVM. Reading it again it comes across as the Crimson Caravan owns a lot of things one of which might own the warehouse in question.
Disclosure: I shamelessly pepper small but obvious to those who know them references to things I like into my homebrew. Anyone catch that one?
We played so much New Vegas my 360 burned a hole in not one but two copies of the game.
Haha. Thank you! Four points for Griffindor! I love that game. Really? A hole? I've never seen that. XD
Oh it's been so long since I played New Vegas. For some reason I was thinking Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, a game I absolutely love!
I will be heading out on a short weekend vacation tonight and tomorrow. I will catch up on all posts when I get back on Sunday. If anyone needs to bot me, please do so.
No worries. Weekends are an expected slow-down time. 1 post for the whole weekend meets expectations.
I'm alive! and I finally got my character built into PCGen, so I can actually post without it taking forever! Also, MassEffect >> Fallout