The Dire GM's [SFS] Into the Unknown (Tier 1) (Inactive)

Game Master CanisDirus

Discussion thread for The Dire GM's table of Starfinder Society Quests: Into the Unknown (tier 1)

My "Table Rules" -

0 - RL > Game. No other rules trump rule 0! :D

1 - I'd like it if everyone posted once a day Mon-Fri. Friday night through Sunday night is eh-whatever (I am in US Eastern Time, for reference). I'll try to post when I can over weekends, but I know people have lives and won't always be online, so no worries.

2 - If you don't post in the middle of an "action" scene for a day, you get skipped once (or botted if your action would be super obvious or you leave a note to me or another player "proxying" your character). If you don't post a second time, you get "botted" by me to do something simple (usually just attack or aid another). If we get into the 3-5 range, I'll probably drop you a line off-list to see what's up. If it goes on too long...well, I hate dropping people from games, but it unfortunately happens :(

3 - When you've got a saving throw to make, roll that first before posting anything else.

4 - Feel free to roll perception and sense motive whenever you want, and if you have a reroll, feel free to use that anytime as well.

5 - Have fun! Rule 5 trumps all other rules! :P

~~~~~

Also, please post the following information in this discussion thread:

Player Name/Alias:
Character Name:
Character Level:
Organized Play # / Character #:
Perception Modifier:
Initiative Modifier:
What is your favorite color:
What is your quest Day Job (if any) Roll:

After the briefing and initial info/culture checks, I'll ask you about slotting boons and such, but until then - the above is all I need.

Thanks very much, and I look forward to running this scenario for you! :)

Player Name/Alias: meloriel
Character Name: Zez'ka
Character Level: Spacefarer Operative 1
Organized Play # / Character #: 276820-703
Perception Modifier: +6
Initiative Modifier: +4
What is your favorite color: Red!
What is your quest Day Job (if any) Roll: None

Thanks for having me!

Player Name/Alias: Betty / Incendiaeternus
Character Name: Kima Taligos
Character Level: 1
Organized Play # / Character #: 95342-701
Perception Modifier: +6
Initiative Modifier: +1
What is your favorite color: purple
What is your quest Day Job (if any) Roll: n/a

Player Name/Alias: Matt Colbert/ btown_mc
Character Name:Vodra Zist
Character Level: 1
Organized Play # / Character #: 35530-702
Perception Modifier: 6
Initiative Modifier: 2
What is your favorite color: Green
What is your quest Day Job (if any) Roll: n/a

So, I have two more RL friends who will be joining in, and should be ready by Thursday. Rather than potentially open up a single seat to the public, do any of you have a person you'd like to invite to fill seat #6?

Ignore my last post - I now have three RL friends who will be joining us in the next day or two - this table is now full! :D

If there is an open seat, I would like to fill it.

I will have a character idea built by tomorrow (Thursday) morning if so.

As mentioned on FB, it's all yours, Jim :)

Here is a template for turning a character into a good PbP format (alternatively, check out my SFS character that I played in a PbP recently: Al 2O3 (although I need to level him up to level 5 with all my GM credit, heh).

Barbara and Caleb are the other two players joining us, and then we can begin!

Attempting to do this in the specific character template.

Note, never played a solarian before...so this should be interesting.

Player Name/Alias: Jim/Waldergrave Venomous
Character Name: Kiktul
Character Level: 1
Organized Play # / Character #: 56565-702
Perception Modifier: +2
Initiative Modifier: +1
What is your favorite color: Blue
What is your quest Day Job (if any) Roll: n/a

Player Name/Alias: Caleb Moore
Character Name:Salamander Vossk
Character Level: Soldier 1
Organized Play # / Character #: #75739-701
Perception Modifier: +0
Initiative Modifier: +6
What is your favorite color: Red or Gold
What is your quest Day Job (if any) Roll: To seek the Holy Grail! (N/A)

How do you put your stats above your post? That is really cool.

See the "Here" in the Dire GM's post above mine. Basically you set your profile race and class as those.

Cool, thanks!

Welcome!

Barbara will be driving cross-country and getting home tomorrow (if I recall correctly), so she probably won't have her sheet ready until tomorrow night, which is fine - we'll begin after that :)

I'm excited for this game - this will be the first-time ever Starfinder game for at least one person here, and the first play-by-post for several!

Super excited! This is also a test post to see if I formatted correctly. Note that the land speed is 50ft because of rapid response from blitz and I took the feat fleet. Do the speed bonuses stack?

Super excited! This is also a test post to see if I formatted correctly. Note that the land speed is 50ft because of rapid response from blitz and I took the feat fleet. Do the speed bonuses stack?

Formatting looks good! As far as I can tell, both speed boosts are untyped bonuses, which means they do stack! That's going to be one scary-fast Vesk!

So far, 3 PCs are checked in with character sheets ready to go, and 2 more are checked in but need to post their sheets to their profiles (and the last is driving, heh). Looks like we'll be good to start soon! :)

Player Name/Alias: Barbara/DizzyBunny
Character Name: Shiohn Virami
Character Level: Envoy 1
Organized Play # / Character #: 66614-702
Perception Modifier: +6
Initiative Modifier: +1
What is your favorite color: Purple
Day Job (if any) Roll: N/A

Working on the profile info now!

Alright...I think I've got everything ready to go on my character sheet/profile page. Let me know if anything looks off or if you notice anything that's missing! I will help Caleb make his after he gets off of work.

This is the don't mind me thing. As our illustrious GM can tell you I'm a big Fluff Settings junkie and make things that reflect a lot of the neat stuff they give us to work with.

Ok a lot more in PF then SF but it's still there and fun!

I know that two players are not yet 110% ready, but because there is a con this weekend, I'd like to at least post the briefing and such, so you can all see the mission, ask questions, and the like. I'm looking forward to running this for all of you! :D

As the GM mentioned, there is a IRL con this weekend, and I am one of those people who will be there. So I won't be able to post much (if any) after about 3 or so hours from now...unless I attempt to do so with my cell phone (which I am going to say will be a right pain in the behind to do formatting and all that fast).

Have fun at the Con!

Zez'ka is slotting the following boons:

Faction - Exo-Guardian’s Champion
Social - AbadarCorp Augmentations

Only 2 boons I slot are

Faction: Exo-Guardians Champion
Social: Factions Friend

And with this I am packing up and heading out to the con. I might be able to respond between PFS and SFS sessions....maybe :-)

Boon slotting takes place after the briefing and knowledge/culture checks. The "Into the Unknown" quests work differently than normal scenarios, so please hold off on slotting boons until I post instructions to do so? Thanks!

Zez'ka will only have her faction boon slotted then.

So with boons:

Personal: GM Racial Boon: Formian
Faction: Exo-guardians champion
Promotional: Promotional Reroll (Starfinder Shirt)

Apologies for Caleb (Salamander) and I being a bit absent. He's sick as a dog and needed a lot of extra time and attention today, lol. Hopefully a good night of rest will make tomorrow easier :)

RL > Game :)

As one of my favorite comedians (Eddie Izzard) likes to say - "Relaxed and groovy" - hope he feels better soon!

FYI, for people's mental sake--in case anybody wants to have some pbp role play back and forth posts, I figure to post approximately when I post based off GMT:

Weekdays (Sunday evening to Friday afternoon)
Morning to afternoon my time (11 AM GMT to about 6-7 PM GMT)
Evening time my time (10 to midnight GMT)

Weekends (Friday evening to Sunday morning)
I can promise 2 to maybe 3 posts max...usually similar times as the morning weekdays. Evening my time is often busy with IRL things.

RL > Game Always -- I'll hopefully have something posted here shortly as the caffinee trickles into my brain and up is up again.

Sorry been doing back and forth to the hospital with my significant other with a busted ankle (dodged surgery, just lots of tests).

Boons: Dataphiles Champion
updated on character page

Starship combat in PbP! It can be a little nuts, but the last one I ran went surprisingly smoothly so I'm hopeful that it can here too!

I have uploaded Starship role sheets to my PbP Folder on Dropbox. I also uploaded the stats for the Loreseeker (Pegasus-class ship) in that same folder, although these stats also appear in the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild Guide (pages 37-42).

Let's take a moment here in the discussion tab to figure out who wants which ship role (since you would have two weeks in-game to decide this before anything "happens" en-route to your destination).

~~~~~

Once you're all set, here's how I like to run ship combat in play-by-post (copy/pasting from my other PbP) -

GM Instructions for Starship Combat: Because this is PbP and Ship combat can be somewhat slow even in person, I'm going to allow everyone to declare actions and make rolls at once. However, in copying another great GM's idea that I've seen, I'm going to ask that all of your dice rolls be kept behind [spoiler ] tags. When declaring your actions, though, please write those so your fellow Starfinders can see them (to allow you to work together with what each other are doing), and also feel free to post as many contingencies as you'd like, using a similar format as below.

~~~~~

Example:

Phase: Helm
Role: Pilot
Action: If our ship is forced to move first, I will attempt the "Evade" maneuver to increase our AC/TL and then try to get around very wide to the "south" of target X, making sure our front arc is facing it. If we can move second, I will instead attempt to increase our maneuverability to accomplish the same thing while making sure to not end up adjacent to the enemy.

~~~~~

Exception:

Because you all know the DCs that you are rolling for, if you succeed at taking an action that has an effect for a crewmember in a phase of starship combat that occurs after the one you act in, you may edit your post (or make a second post if you'd rather do it that way) to indicate such.

Example: The Engineer successfully diverts power to the shields (let's say +6 shields). The Engineer can post this visibly so that the Science Officer knows how many shield points they have to play with should they decide to utilize the "Balance" action during that Helm phase.

~~~~~

During ship combat, you will not be able to edit the maps, only comment. For whomever ends up as Pilot, this means that you will need to trust in that I will make the most advantageous moves for you based on what you write (see example above) and I will annotate all movement with arrows. I will keep as close to what you write as possible at all times - doing it this way just helps speed things up, I've found.

Feel free to ask me any questions you might have, and go ahead and select your ship roles now! :)

Also, recommendations from the Quest itself to help you decide on what roles might best fit your character:

Starships can have one captain, one pilot, and any number of engineers, gunners, and science officers.

• The Pilot should have a good Piloting bonus (and ranks in Piloting).
  
• Gunners should have a good base attack bonus (at least equal to her level) or ranks in the Piloting skill.
  
• Engineers should have a good Engineering bonus.
  
• Science officers should have a good Computers bonus.
  
• The Captain should have a good Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate bonus, as well as any of the skills identified above.

I figure I would post discussion on what role Kitkul would fit best here.

If people set up their character page like how the Dire GM suggested, I believe most of us can at least see what each other has in skill bonuses and ranks.

With that said in order of most to least proficient for Kitkul:

Captain>Gunner>Engineer

Kitkul shouldn't be the Engineer or Science Officer (no ranks, and INT isn't a strong suit for it either).

My error on above...should be:

Captain>Gunner>Pilot. I originally had all 5 in there, then I deleted the wrong two. Though to be honest, Piloting should be handed to somebody with a better score than +2 ;-)

Zez'ka can be a decent pilot (+8), science officer (+5) and gunner (+4).

I've never attempted pilot before, so I'd prefer it go to someone else if there's another decent pilot among us. That said, I'll take to the challenge with aplomb if she's the best choice for the job!

All needed skills for ship combat are bad for Vodra being a on the ground healer/support/Mystic.

The best scores I have that apply to checks are Diplomacy (+3), Piloting (+2).

Engineering (0), Computers (0), Bluff, Intimidate and Sense motive (-1)

Gunner would probably be best as I have ranks in Piloting..I wouldnt want to put my rolls towards the overall bonus effects to the group.

The best Kima can do is Captian (Diplomacy +4) or Gunner (Shooting +1) She just doesn't have the skills for the other roles.

Shiohn is best suited for Captain (+9 Diplomacy) or either Engineer/Science Officer (+6 in both engineering & computers). Definitely not good for Gunner or Pilot (only a +1).

Salamander is a decent pilot (+6) and probably a decent gunner (+3).

I will lead this with I have played this scenario before with another character, and have run the quests before also....so I don't want to steal the fun from anybody. Just posting thoughts on what I see.

At this point, the best pilot is probably Zez'ka (+8) with the Salamander 2nd (+6).

The best Engineer is Shiohn(+6) it looks like. The rest of us just don't have the skill in it. (Man....this is the first group I haven't seen a Mechanic in ;-) )

Science Officer is Shiohn (+6) and then Zez'ka (+5). Again...the rest of us really don't have the points in the right places.

Gunners...here we have a few choices. Obviously the Salamander is probably one of the highest (Full BAB and a +2 Dex modifier), Vodra is also +3 (+1 Piloting and +2 Dex modifier). Myself is +2 (+1 BAB and +1 Dex Modifier). Remember, that the to hit of ship weapons is BAB or Piloting Ranks (not modifiers) + Dex Modifiers. So a lot of us are either weak on Dex or not full BAB...that hurts.

Captain. We have a few choices. Shiohn is the most qualified to do the diplomatic aspect (+9 Diplomacy, +7 Bluff). I am probably the 2nd (+6 Intimidate, and +5 Diplomacy) and Kima is probably the 3rd.

The most versatile characters are obviously Zez'ka and Shiohn. The least is Kima, myself, Vodra and Salamander.

With that said....my thoughts, and I hope I am not stepping on any toes....I am certainly trying not to, and if I did, I apologize.

1 Captain: Kima
1 Pilot: Salamander (either Salamander or Zez'ka)
1 Engineer: Shiohn (Unfortunately she is the only one skilled in engineering I believe)
1 Science Officer: Zez'ka (either Zez'ka or Shiohn)
2 Gunners: Vodra, Kitkul

In order to keep us moving, I am going to start you out with the following (thanks Kitkul for breaking things down!)

Captain: Kima
Pilot: Salamander
Engineer: Shiohn
Science Officer: Zez'ka
Gunners: Vodra, Kitkul

Feel free to make any changes, and remember that you can change positions at the start of each round of starship combat. Also keep in mind that the Loreseeker gives your Pilot ad Science Officer bonuses, in addition to general bonuses that can move around each round!

Look for a gameplay thread post shortly!

As a suggestion....maybe after this first round (where we are all learning how to do ship combat on pbp), maybe the +1 to any two rolls that the ships computer gives us should be given to the 2 gunners. That or one gunner and the pilot (as pilot rolls are kinda tricky).

What does everybody think?

I definitely wouldn't mind moving on! I think we've got it figured out at this point :)

Since I have played and ran these quests before....I know the space combat system pretty well...I will abstain from voting and go along with the group consensus.

I'm fine with moving on or finishing the battle.

Moving on is fine by me! I'd like to show that pilot a thing or two but my dice rolls are just so bad...

Moving on is fine by me.