Since this is gothic horror, who else played Carrion Crown? What'd you think of it? For my money, I liked the flavor, but the time-crunch road trip approach really got in the way of what it could have been.
I played in one for about a week! It died off pretty quickly, so I have no idea what sort of flavor or theme or tone it had. Same for the other horror game I played though this one died in a single session (it was a real time meeting over AIM).
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@Grey - I actually scoured your physical description and introduction segment several times to see if you didn't have a hat Miranda could ask to borrow for her silent image trick... And totally not take a reading at the same time :P
@Carrion Crown - I have not played Carrion Crown, the only AP I've tried is Kingmaker : )
I ran Carrion Crown for my player group. The time crunch railroading seems to trouble a lot of playergroups and mine is no exception, and I alleviated that by...
Laurence, it seems that you and our GM both have quite a bit of experience with the APs. Which ones have you done? I've yet to complete one, but I've played parts of Council of Thieves, Legacy of Fire, Carrion Crown, Skull & Shackles, and Kingmaker. I've read a lot about most of them, but I don't get to play as much as I'd like.
Miranda, how'd your Kingmaker experience go? I was in a PbP here on the forums that started with three separate groups, but it got pretty overwhelming. It seems like a great AP, though.
Grey, what other experience do you have?
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I'm having trouble making a decision about Erasmus. I was originally going for the superstitious doesn't-trust-magic angle, but that doesn't really jive with the high magic setting. It also makes spending money really difficult, and screws with the math of the game; there's only so many times I can use the "It's not magic, it's lucky" line. Thoughts?
I tried to sell my players on Carrion Crown, but it didn't work. I'm the only one who's super into the genre enough to keep sustained interest. Which is a shame, because I had all these plans to expand their stay in the village with all of these creepy things where
In reading through the AP, I think it does a lot of things right, but it doesn't handle the whole "sweeping quest through a rural countryside encountering assorted classic horrors" thing quite as well as it should have.
Caliphas works well flavour-wise for this sort of thing, but its size is an issue for me. I used to run this in Korvosa in the original idea, but this new plot-heavier version ended up taking Absalom and turning it into Victorian London. This cold, unfeeling metropolis where unspeakable horrors are brushed under the rug. All Jack the Ripper and s*@&. Caliphas can achieve that, but with a fifth of the population it always felt kind of undermined for me.
It certainly is a bit small to actually play as full-on Victorian London, but that actually worked in its favor. The city is small enough that, even if it's trying to be cosmopolitan, it can still feel like a backwater. The main tension I have driving the metaplot revolves around the vampire underground.
Korvosa is probably my favorite city in Golarion thus far. The Acadamae is a great feature, and they did a really good job with the city as a whole. Absalom always seemed like it had potential, but the original book would benefit from an update. As a setting, the best part about it is that you can introduce just about any kind of character from the setting in Absalom without it seeming far-fetched, like a microcosm of Golarion.
The whole campaign setting is fantastic, and it's a little disappointing on some level that there aren't more people running homebrew plots in the setting. I'm really looking forward to seeing where you take us with this one, Spook!
I'm actually playing the AP as a pbp here too. However, I joined a bit late. The group was originally also something like thirteen people running diffirent quests parallely and ruling together, but due to one thing or the other mainly the original DM leaving and creating a bit of a gap until the next one picked up, the group has shrunk a bit.
I think we are way off track with exp, but otherwise it is going well and is quite fun : )
Caliphas definitely works well for expanding on the vampire threat and what's already squirming around in Ustalav, but not so much for the "everything and the kitchen sink" approach, which is the main reason I'm going Absalom and changing a bunch of stuff within it. Well, that and it being sort of the seat of power for a lot of things, a good centralized place out of which to plan sweeping conspiracies. I still adore Korvosa for more heavy, typical fantasy noir-ish stuff without the undead focus though, it just reeks of sleaze and and corruption.
Woah! A meaty plot-post randomly appeared :D
I must finish fixing my dinner, then I am ready to dig in!
I have completely run Carrion Crown, and am now running our group through Wrath of the Righteous. We are nearing the end of the fourth book. I have played in the first four books of Rise of the Runelords before the GM at the time had to stop, and I have played in the first three books of Kingmaker, which I enjoyed immensely due to the freedom of getting to run our little kingdom. And the fact that I somehow managed to play a CE character in a party of neutral to good PCs and not create a total party meltdown.
I started Council of Thieves three times on here and it failed all three times within the first book. :(
I started Serpent's Skull here and the first book was a really great setup and then I died to a yellow musk creeper. :(
I played the first four books of Shattered Star tabletop and it was my handsome young Rondolero Duelist who fell for the greatest trap ever (for players). That was a total monkey wrench in my character concept and I loved it. No need to spoiler that, if you've played it, you know what I'm referring to. :) The adventure overall was a little too dungeon-crawly for my taste, though.
I played in the first few books of Jade Regent once with a small, intimate group. It was a lot of fun.
Besides all of that, I read a lot of the APs. Just finished reading all of RotRL and next I will be consuming Council of Thieves because even with all I know about a certain bait'n'switch the AP seems to pull, the setting and the characters and the whole idea including the "hard lesson about civil politics" inherent in the shift intrigues me a lot.
I am glad Spooks chose Absalom for this setting. It really does seem to contain what's needed for the theme.
Erasmus, I think it is very possible to continue to have your character hold that view and do so without inconveniencing your inventory or making you out as a nut job. Judging from the backstory, he comes from a part of the world where it is easy to develop the opinion that while magic may be prevalent in society, it has a strong corrupting influence on people the deeper they dive into it. Particularly magic of an arcane origin. If divine in origin one might casually assume that the magic and its users are regulated by the gods, but when it comes to arcane magic, the only regulation is the extent of one's own ambition.
Therefore the PC is less of a magical luddite (I don't trust magic!) and more like the guy spouting the cautionary tale about magic (I don't trust what magic makes people do, and what people will do for magic!) He trusts himself enough, sure, and is confident that he isn't going to become some powerful arcanist who treats people like human test subjects...
*awkward glance at Dr. Grey* :)
...but he can certainly adopt the position that those kind of people are better off with a bullet in their skull!
Just some thoughts I had about what you asked. Not sure if it fits your concept, but it is what came to mind.
Not to mention...
*awkward glance at Dr. Grey*
... there are plenty of people who are not evil that still reaffirm that sort of thought process. Magic is dangerous. Just like guns are common now a days, but can still make people wary (and rightly so). I think if he was completely against magic of all kinds it'd be a little weird in a world of magic. But cautious of it? Wary of those who use it? That could be understandable. And as I mentioned, a magic user doesn't have to be evil to prove that suspicion entirely warranted. We'll also probably face enough things that are magical or the by-product of magic to make it sustainable too. 'G&$ d@!mit. Another zombie. Magic makes this possible, you know.'
I would like to point out though that one of the party members happens to be a scientist, not a magic user.
@Miranada: I think, if Spooky's okay with it, I already have an idea for what she'll see if she manages to snag his classes from him. It won't be easy if she tries to steal it, but the good Doctor is a very curious man, so perhaps there's another way?
We have divine magic, psychic magic, sciency-magic and water-bending magic. But no arcane magic : )
Edit:
@Dr. Grey - She'll be honoured to make it one of her goals to pilfer, negotiate or con herself into temporary possession of one of your belongings : )
Aaaaand now I see why I needed to do the about face on the Pathfinder ties, hehe.
To the earlier discussion, I have run Kingmaker through book 3 (on hiatus at the moment), and am currently playing in book 2 of WotR. I have read Skulls & Shackles, Serpent's Skull, and Council of Thieves (all for GM consideration). I would really like to play in Carion Crown some day (being a big Ravenloft buff), which is why this game appealed to me.
Yeah. I didn't actually think it'd come up, since the Society doesn't even really exist outside of Society modules. Now that you know why, I'm curious to know which angle you were going for on that connection.
Paizo never really managed to make the Society as appealing as they seemed to want it to be. I'd much rather play an Aspis Consortium campaign! Maybe if the Pathfinder Society were better integrated into the metaplot it could work, but Paizo seems averse to making adventures that assume anything about party composition (We Be Goblins being the exception).
WotR looks incredible, but I'm skeptical of the Mythic rules. I'd love to play a non-mythic character in a game with Mythic antagonists; it'd work great for a swords-and-sandals style game. Hercules and Xena anyone? I started working on a Worldwound campaign around the time Diablo III came out, before Wrath was announced, but it never went anywhere. RotRL and CotCT are on the list of campaigns I'm really excited to try. I'd REALLY love to play a Runelords game with canon NPCs, maybe a duo game starring Ameiko and Shalelu. Belor Hemlock could make for a great third, but I'm really not sure who could take the fourth slot.
Magic doesn't function the way it's supposed to in the Mana Wastes, so there's a very real danger that spells could backfire or worse. The history of the Mana Wastes also plays into the anti-magic angle, seeing as how the whole place was created by a magic war. Mechanically, persistent magic items simply stop being magical in magic-dead zones, so they pose less of a threat to life and limb in a place where magic gets wonky. And in a world like Golarion, being completely anti-magic is impractical to the furthest degree. Even the AM BARBARIAN makes heavy use of magic items. I'll keep the strong aversion to personal magic and typical arcane-types but temper it with grudging acceptance of magical items. Thanks for the input!
I like the appeal of the Society as a plot device. It's established enough within the setting that I can do things with it and paint it as a monolithic, far-reaching behemoth of an organization that the party is fundamentally outside of and in one way or another coming out as opposed to. Even what fluff we do have in-universe is just cutesy meta explanation for the entire structure of it as something in-universe. A neat idea but not something that works well in-universe.
Wrath of the Righteous is sort of everything I've ever wanted out of the high fantasy genre in terms of all the high-power, high-stakers, good gods versus evil gods stuff, since beyond The Hobbit the first fantasy novels I ever got my hands on were Dragonlance. Mythic works well for a lot of things, but they definitely underestimated how much power a single Mythic tier brings. That said, for someone willing to rebalance, it's been an amazing experience where I can build all sorts of gimmicky and interesting s*~$ to throw against the party. From the stupid, like the dual Bastard Swords Rogue, to a frankly vicious endgame enemy I've got planned called the Red Rover, who combines some really nasty stuff between Barbarian and the Guardian path to form a bull rushing-focused Minotaur who threatens infinite AOOs within 20 feet and gets AOOs on every attack made against him. It's vicious and completely impossible without Mythic, and that fun s%*~ alone justifies the whole deal for me.
Red Rover sounds terrifyingly awesome! It sounds like you really know what you're doing with balancing Mythic, and I trust it would be more entertaining that way. I love the different options that the Mythic mechanics allow for; I think I'd be more inclined to use them if I could abandon the conceit that these characters are on the path to godhood. I just never felt the inclination to play a god or to attempt the Test of the Starstone. Maybe part of the problem is that my group's games always seem to come crashing down as we're getting to levels 5-6, and I haven't gotten tired of the mid-tier levels yet.
I really enjoyed Dragons of Autumn Twilight, but I for some reason I never got past that one. Something about the writing really clicked; I still remember how warm and comfortable I felt reading about the inn where the party gathered in the beginning. I read the Icewind Dale trilogy because I've got a friend who loves FR, but they didn't grip me. My personal favorite has to be the Riftwar Cycle. What are everybody's thoughts on the Pathfinder Tales novels?
I think mythic achieved through different means could be cool. For some it could be, not godhood, but simply a goal. Alchemists such as Dr. Grey could be enhancing themselves. Mages or Monks could be on their way to enlightenment or vast knowledge. Warriors could be simply more, because they need to be.
And I haven't ready any of the Pathfinder Novels. I read pretty deep into the Drow series before giving up on the books. (I guess I read them in the wrong order cause every new series he seemed to be relearing an old lesson and the other old lesson he had already relearned was obsolete.) I've been more on a Web Serial kick these days.
@Mythic - My main gripe with the system is that it is filled with so many cool options, most which are overshadowed by things like Powerattack 2.0. But I guess that is part of the game really :)
That said, using mythic bosses and foes against a non-mythic party seems like one good solution to have that little extra in the boss fight. And all the extra defences one can pick up and the swift action mythic powers might make up for the fact that the party would outnumber such a boss. Haven't tried it yet sadly.
@Books - Haven't read any pathfinder novels, but I did play the Icewind Dale games. They were fun : )
Edit: Also, I have to apologize. I keep trying to come up with one of the million questions one should have in this situation and keep drawing blank.
I guess Miranda just have to sit there and soak up all the information and let the others do the talking at this moment : )
Thankfully, there's not really much about becoming a god in there. You sort of become one mechanically by the end, but fluff-wise it's pretty open about where you can go with it, which is nice. Never read the Pathfinder books, though.
I like the idea of the Pathfinder Society in general. A lot of this has to do with my old school love for the Harper faction back in Forgotten Realms days, even though the two organizations don't have very much in common save for their intelligence gathering agendas.
For Laurence, the ties I had planned for the society were not a critical factor in the design of the character so it was easy to dispense with them. They came rather on a whim while I was purchasing equipment and then I started reasoning out why he would be involved with them. For one, it is always nice to have someone with Pathfinder ties in the campaign. You never know, they might come in handy. But more associated with the character is the fact that he is an "intelligent and (mostly) reasonable man" who appreciates structure, and the Pathfinder Society offers enough of that. And the intelligence gathering aspect dovetails somewhat nicely with being an investigator in the watch. Since Absalom is Pathfinder Central, I intended for Laurence to be one of those exceptional agents who got into the society without the trial and is, unbeknownst to him, an "honorary" Pathfinder, the webelo of the society. His method of entry into the Society had to do with that author I mention in his backstory; the original incarnation of the author was that of a ranking Pathfinder working on a chronicle about the Razmirans, using Laurence as a case study. In exchange for his story, he received the "honorary" membership, which in essence meant that he would be sharing Palace documents with the Pathfinder society and vice versa.
I think I like him better without the ties, really. I just wanted their books and worked up an explanation as to why I had them that seemed rational, heh.
Oh, sidenote: I may not be able to make a post tomorrow or the day after, so just fair warning. I do Singing Valentines every year and we travel all over about a 100 mile area so that's a lot of mobility. But depending upon travel times I may be able to sneak one in while on the road. :)
Can everyone please put their crunch and backstories into their profile? It's easier to reference stuff when I have it all in one place.
Also, Raz, on a player level, how much are you the sort to go bluffing your way through situations? Like, full-blown "We're with the phone company" level of ploy. Mostly I'm just asking to know if I should leave a few opportunities open.
:D
I'm so totally game for that! I'm not sure how well it will go from a mechanical perspective, but I've always preferred the narrative to the mechanics. If you think it won't screw with the tone too much, I'll do my best to keep out of screwball comedy territory, but yeah, sign me up!
As someone who's done it often, it basically just requires a plan and a bluff roll. Whether it works is another matter, but from the perspective of the scene in Little China, basically he just kicked in the door, rolled bluff, and walked on. It's not something that'd go too tonally out of whack, since I'm thinking it'd be useful more for things like "break into this office and find this document with a record of something we need for evidence" more than "let's go crash the cult party". The sort of situations where you don't want to go kill the people who'd try to stop you, y'know?
Background added to profile. Sorry, forgot about that.
Totally bluff your way into situations, Raz. If we get buddy buddy I'll join you on the escapades as the straight man who is a terrible liar.
Raz: "Good morning, gents! We're with your local cable company here to do a check for a signal loss! Don't mind us!"
Laurence: "Yes. We do not have a warrant to search the premises, but we appreciate your cooperation."
*Heads turn; Raz facepalms*
Cultists: "Why would you need a warrant if you're with the cable company?"
Laurence: "....." *Quickdraws sap and bashes nearest man's face in*
Yes! That would be awesome! Just don't bring Grey along. I'm not sure he'd care enough and he's so bad at diplomacy he might make others fail by proxy.
Mathias would be better for the intimidating, "YES, I really AM the time warner cable GUY, do you get me?!"
Baqir, are you still with us?
At any rate, are there any more questions anyone's character has to ask, or should we advance the scene?
Grey's ready to advance.
Raz should be ready as well. I PMed Baqir, he mentioned he's having some trouble keeping up with our posting rate.
Ready :)
No time to make an IC post this morning but Laurence is ready. He goes upstairs, has a reflective smoke on the balcony, and then comes down agreeing to take part.
I asked some questions in post yesterday, but they were with the intent of advancing the scene. So yes, let's move along indeed.
The morgue... Are you just trying to make it easy for Grey to unnerve people?
I'll admit I am having a great amount of difficulty following the speed and quantity you fellows are posting at.
I also believe I started on the wrong foot and ended up not connecting with any character, besides Raz of course, so Baqir's having a harder time fitting in.
I'll post in and try my darndest to keep up.
Finally back. Nary a dry eye in our wake. I will post sometime this morning. Thanks for your patience!
I think unless anyone else comes up with idea's, or really wants to move along with forgery's, we should go along with the 'plague inspection initiative'. We're losing momentum with this discussion, such that I can't even think of anything to post other then good doctor Grey being snide. XD
+1 : )
No argument here. Laurence just needs to know how long the doc needs to perform an examination so that he knows how long he needs to keep the morticians occupied.
Ah. I have no idea. I plan on making up some medical crap by stealing from scrubs and house. About the only thing I can tell you is that it's not lupus and monkey's are funnier then cats.
I've got a Key of Lock Jamming, so if we can get inside, alone, we can have as much time as we need. "Seal the door against plague" and all that.
Hi guys, I would like to apologize in advance. I had to terminate my chef, two cooks, and a server in the last 24 hours. As such, I am very short staffed at work and my posting with probably dip for the next week. I will try to get on as much as possible, but if I have not posted in a timely fashion, welcome the GM or another player to post on my behalf.
You wouldn't happen to be a manager in the Fargo Downtown area of North Dakota looking for line cooks would you? XD
Nope, Durham, NC.
Sorry guys, stuff went down, currently couch hopping, just got to my friend's place and it's 3 AM. I'll post in the gameplay thread tomorrow.
Is there a juicy story in that termination you can share, Mathias?