Flaxseed Lodge (PFS1)

Game Master Redelia

Two general things that I would remind you of:

-It's important to make your expectations clear, especially about posting frequency.
-It's also important to have a botting policy, either in your GM profile or stated in the game's discussion thread before you get started.

Oh yeah, I guess I should work on that... >_>

On Specials and PbP:

A while I go I recall a post from Hmm about what single table specials we could run via PbP. But I can't find it.

But since I just made my 4th star, I still need to get a few more special tables (I expect a good number of folks are in the similar boat)

So outside the multi table ones, what can we run? And how do we get them?

#6-98 Serpent's Rise, #7-98 Serpent's Ire, #7-99 Through Maelstrom Rift all count toward your specials count and can be run by a 4-star GM. You may have to email customer service about getting them, though.

Gustavef, I will let someone else answer parts of your question.

The only single table stuff that is flat out not allowed in play-by-post is Bonekeep. Any other 4* exclusive can be run on PbP by a GM who qualifies.

They will be automatically added to your account the next time a 'report is run' after you are put on a list of GMs who should have access. That report is run about once a week. I believe that some GMs have found they need to post in customer service to be added to the list, but I'm not sure if that's the way it's supposed to work, or just what sometimes needs to be done.

#6-99 True Dragons of Absalom also counts, but is limited to 5-star GMs

Gustavef, I will let someone else answer parts of your question.

The only single table stuff that is flat out not allowed in play-by-post is Bonekeep. Any other 4* exclusive can be run on PbP by a GM who qualifies.

They will be automatically added to your account the next time a 'report is run' after you are put on a list of GMs who should have access. That report is run about once a week. I believe that some GMs have found they need to post in customer service to be added to the list, but I'm not sure if that's the way it's supposed to work, or just what sometimes needs to be done.

Thanks. I suspected it was just the system "catching up" So I will keep an eye out over the next week or so.

No back to "How many characters can the Blakros museum murder?"

"How many characters can the Blakros museum murder?"

All of them. The Blakros Museum can murder all of the characters.

Oh, i had 2 close calls last game.

Brown heat sucking vegetation and a crit shocking grasp from the BBEG.
Bled to 1 point away from dying before a miraculous 1st aid roll kept death away.

And there they were wondering in discussion, prior to the mission, if the Blakros museum could give hem any more mental traumas.

:3

Yeah, it pushed us to the edge of death and way over the edge of frustration in Outpost.

I am currently on my 4th foray into the Blakros Museum (if you count both Solstice Scars) and the first time came down to one character's last blow with a quarterstaff to prevent a TPK.

@ Pete H.

Voice in the Void? Mists of Mwangi?

Let's not be specific about details of scenarios here for spoiler reasons of people who haven't played them.

Voice. Was a great run though all around. The tough ones can usually be the most memorable.

Ah, then you were at that other table. :)

One of the other tables, there are/were 3 running during outpost. Good times (and/or murder) by all!

One thing I like about Season 9. Finding out the real deep dark secrets of Blakros Museum and Ralzeros.

Words of one of my players:
"Blaming Nigel never gets old."

They blamed him for/at the very 1st encounter. :)

My barbarian hits better when he curses Nigel's name.

Awesome.

My favorite comment about the Blakros museum I've heard is consider these two phrases and decide which is truer:

"Blakros museum blows up once a month while under the guidance of Nigel Aldain."

Or

"Blakros museum ONLY blows up once a month while under the guidance of Nigel Aldain."

Yeah, it pushed us to the edge of death and way over the edge of frustration in Outpost.

I hope it wasn't too frustrating! Your sorcerer coped well with the occasionally very limited options - and I only came very, very close to killing several party members. I call that a win all around!

Definitely not 'frustrating' for me, just frustrating for John which was interesting to try to portray.

My table's PCs were suffering a little more from the colorful wand than your table, Khel. :)

Definitely not 'frustrating' for me, just frustrating for John which was interesting to try to portray.

Glad to hear it - John bore up under it gamely!

My table's PCs were suffering a little more from the colorful wand than your table, Khel. :)

Yeah, I wondered about using it more, since it had the potential to be so effective, but the written tactics seem to call for a bit more of a varied approach. And the dang Pathfinders wouldn't line up in formation for me either!

Checking the math on my

I was taught that the Empower feat meant that you just straight up multiplied the damage by 1.5, no extra dice. So that would be 4d4 * 1.5

Still way awesome damage.

To the above, iirc, Empower tacks the x1.5 onto the end of the equation. Otherwise you would be stuck at 5 die due to the limits of the spell without Intensified. Plus it would be wonky with odd amount of die.

I think you are missing that the theologian archetype only affects the granted power.

So your firebolt is done as a higher level caster (i.e. +1 damage), but I don't think the fire domain makes your caster level for fire spells any higher.

I think you are missing that the theologian archetype only affects the granted power.

So your firebolt is done as a higher level caster (i.e. +1 damage), but I don't think the fire domain makes your caster level for fire spells any higher.

Domain Spells are technically Granted Powers...?

Thank you all for you responses too!

This thread a developer seems to say the domain spells are also affected...if I am reading correctly

I also see the developer was corrected just after that..Thank you GM Aerondor!

So 2d4x1.5 then at level 1. Not horrible.

Can anyone spell out for me the proper typed equation to reflect x1.5-using {}for brackets if necessary

No worries. There are some builds that do similar things. If you really want to max out your fire damage, think about a gnomish evoker wizard with a one level dip into crossblooded red dragon and orc. Just make sure you come up with a real good background story for that.

I don't think there are dice tags to do the *1.5 from empower spell, I'd just add it as an OOC tag afterward.

e.g.

empowered burning hands; ref DC 16 for half: 2d4 ⇒ (2, 4) = 6 +50% from empower making it 9 damage

I have this character for reference as well, I could've maximized it more I believe, but still effective.

did I miss the sign up sheet for part 2 of out-post? I signed up for Solstice Scar sometime back...but have seen or heard nothing on other games. Don't want to play a lot of games just have a 2nd lv character I'd like to get in a game.

Other then the Solstice Scar - I don't think there is a second part to Outpost (and if there is, I missed it)

^Revvy is correct! According to the OutPost link pinned up at the top of the page (which can be easy to miss amid all the other links!) OutPost officially ends tomorrow, April 30th. There are a few games still finishing up and other games finished a bit early, but after tomorrow you should start seeing recruitment traffic for games in Flaxseed & Castamir Station start to rise again :)

The only thing that has a 'Session #2' is Solstice Scar B, which is set to begin on May 7th. You can find the signup sheet for >>HERE<<. While sign-ups opened quite awhile back, there are waiting lists for both Standard and CORE and it's always possible that some people end up not checking in for their tables or have changed their minds about playing. So even though things are pretty full, jot your name down on one of the Waitlists if you're interested in playing - you never know when a spot might open up :)

Pulling the discussion from the Recruitment thread back over here, do people feel that there's not enough 'unique' events or cons/gamedays happening via Flaxseed/Castamir during the year? I suspect that things don't happen as much during the traditional US summer months (May through August or so) because it's con season and also when a lot of kids are out of school so vacations and other stuff tend to happen that keep people away from the forums.

Getting OutPost during the spring and PbP Gameday through the fall is really awesome but there's always room for people (especially those outside the U.S.) to look about setting up their own, smaller events as well. Maybe not anything that you could get boon support for but doing stuff like running themed games and the like could be fun? :)

I was running Multi-table specials, and was scheduled to run one again at the end of the year, but they no longer attract Con support they were previously eligible for.

So we can run anything we like, but the support (boons etc) aren't available for them. Kinda defeated the purpose.

And once the support went, so too did some of the volunteers, more than likely.

*note* I wasn't one of the GMs, but I was considering taking it up at points before RL reared its ugly head.

Hey All —

Here’s what’s going on.

CONVENTION CONSTRAINTS

When Online became a region, Tonya set an upper limit of eight conventions a year for all of online, with the idea that the new RSP program would take up the slack for us. Eight conventions sounds like a lot until you realize that we’re sharing this number with the VTT crowd, who at the time had TEN conventions that they were planning on hosting.

So I had to sit down with the VTT folks and figure out what we could do. They cut down to 5 this year (with the plan of doing 6 next year.) We declared 3 this year with the plan of dropping down to only two next year. The reason for us hosting 3 this year was so that we could fully support ShiftyCon — aka Shifty’s last special run — a convention that was submitted to the OPC before all the rules changed on us.

One good thing that came out of all of this discussion was that I knew I wanted to have a fully-fledged Spring Convention that had a centrally-scheduled set of events to balance out the anything-goes PBP Gameday. I called it a number of things until I settled on the name, “OutPost” and this community and my VOs made it happen!

Shifty is correct that Race for the Runecarved Key is the last time we’ll get boon support for a special run by itself. He’s also correct that the OrgPlay office missed the support that they were supposed to give us. Jesse, our Regional Venture Captain, wound up purchasing the scenario for all of Shifty’s gms because the OPC did not drop it in time. We only got the boon package at the very end, after continual reminders.

RSP CONUNDRUMS

We were supposed to get RSP in online, but despite continual and persistent reminders, we have not been set up for that yet, either. All I can say is, we hope to have RSP at some point online. How it will work, I am not certain. At this point, chances are good that we will not see it until Season 10. One thing that affects all of this is that VTT GMs are able to churn out games faster then any face-to-face venue can. We run slower than any face-to-face venue can, but our GMs could theoretically run 12 games of the Confirmation at once to speed their way to an RSP goal.

(Please note that the above scenario is my own personal nightmare. 12 games at once is not recommended and would deteat quality standards.)

I think that one thing that may be delaying RSP for us is that the OPC wants an equitable playing field — but RSP opportunities are uneven in the face to face gaming world too. Compare the gaming opportunities in the Twin Cities metro area to those in rural Tennessee or in most places outside the US. I have been trying to argue that rolling out RSP to online is the only way to even out RSP inequities elsewhere, but I’m not sure the message landed.

ONLINE’S CURRENT CONVENTION SCHEDULE

PBP:

• OutPost (Spring) — There’s a possibility that we’ll expand to a second session, or maybe we’ll just keep it one eight week deal like we did this year.

• PBP Gameday (Fall) — Our anything goes, run what you want convention! It goes over two sessions.

VTT:

• January: TPKon 5
  
• April: FG-Con 12
  
• May: <PaizoCon>
  
• June: Roll20Con / <Origins>
  
• July: <PaizoCon UK>
  
• August: <GenCon>
  
• September: TPKon 6
  
• October: FG-Con 13
  
• November: AetherCon

OTHER SCHEDULING CONSIDERATIONS

We need to schedule specials, whether we can offer boons or not. One of the reasons why we do this is to help our GMs get the opportunity to run specials for the 5 star requirement. If I can get RSP, well then maybe we can at least offer RSP checkoffs for those event that happen outside of our conventions. From this point forward, we only get two official conventions a year in the PBP region (unless the constraint is lifted), so we might as well make the most of them.

When we’re scheduling specials and conventions, we actively try to avoid PaizoCon and GenCon. Why? Because of the number of our GMs that attend them, that’s why! There’s only so many backup GMs to go around as well. Although we’re running the second session of Solstice B over PaizoCon this year, we did our best to try to limit selecting GMs who go to PaizoCon. It is possible to do limited PBP at PaizoCon, though online connectivity is imperfect at the convention.

At GenCon, I don’t think that any GM attending is going to be able to keep up with PBP games at all. The schedules for GMs there are insane, and connectivity is spotty. As a result, I foresee that PBP Gameday will always start AFTER GenCon just to keep things more sane for everyone.

Our other scheduling constraint is the holiday season. PBP slows way down between the tail end of November and the start of January, and most of us are distracted with other things. So I try to avoid doing big events then.

SPECIALS GOING FORWARD

Some of you have probably heard that Granta’s stepping down from running specials after the second session of Solstice B. He wants time to do other things. We’ve recruited two great GMs to take his place. Tyranius will be Overseeing our first SFS multi-table special, and GM Dennis (Dennis Muldoon) will be Overseeing the PFS ones.

So that’s the straight story of everything that’s happening in the background online. We’ve got two major conventions, some specials that will be happening outside of conventions, and we’re hoping eventually to get RSP. And we have two new overseers to welcome to our fold.

Hmm

HMM thank you for spelling this out for us. Again, you were a perfect fit for the VC position.

Speaking of specials, I missed the opportunity to play Assault on Absolom. Any chance that may be on the horizon?

It sure is. We’re hoping to have it run on PBP Gameday VII, this fall.

Hmm

More gameday goodness! :)

Awesome sauce...I will try to get into GM...need more specials in my life...

Well that’s good, because this year the SFS special and one of the PFS specials will be running at the same time, and we’re only allowing folks to GM one special at a time. This means that we will be actively looking to expand our pool of Specials GMs.

(I’ll be GMing the SFS Special. I want to make room in PFS one for all those folks looking to collect specials for the 5 star requirement.)

Hmm

When selecting GMs for the specials, one thing we'll be looking for is a history of successfully running games in this lodge. If you're interested in GMing a future special, now would be a great time to start running some games.

I'm probably going to hold off on GMing another special until at least Solstice Scar C. I GM'd several of the specials up until now, but before I was able to play through the specials Face to Face, and get a good idea about the plot and pitfalls of each before running it on the boards. These days I'm unable to get out to conventions so while I'm planning to up my GM presence on the boards in the near future, I suspect specials are off the table for a while. Thankfully, there are quite a few kickass GMs here on the boards so I'm sure my disappearance won't be an issue.

Definitely going to try to get a seat as a player though in both. Perhaps if there are 2 sessions of any given special (PFS or SFS) I'll sign up to GM the second. Being a part of running a huge event like that is pretty damned fun.

I'm probably going to hold off on GMing another special until at least Solstice Scar C. I GM'd several of the specials up until now, but before I was able to play through the specials Face to Face, and get a good idea about the plot and pitfalls of each before running it on the boards. These days I'm unable to get out to conventions so while I'm planning to up my GM presence on the boards in the near future, I suspect specials are off the table for a while. Thankfully, there are quite a few kickass GMs here on the boards so I'm sure my disappearance won't be an issue.

:(

Well that’s good, because this year the SFS special and one of the PFS specials will be running at the same time, and we’re only allowing folks to GM one special at a time. This means that we will be actively looking to expand our pool of Specials GMs.

(I’ll be GMing the SFS Special. I want to make room in PFS one for all those folks looking to collect specials for the 5 star requirement.)

Hmm

Are there any prerequisites for running a special, like a certain number of GM Stars/Novas? I’d really love to run the SFS special when that comes around, but I’m not even close to my first Nova.

There are not any specific numerical requirements. We will be looking for people who have experience GMing play by post games, PFS or SFS.

As Redelia stated. Experience in GM'ing PbP games and consistency.

Proven experience running and more importantly completing PbP adventures is the only real prerequisite. Multi-table specials are a different beast from regular scenarios, so we definitely want reliability for our players. (I am not sure the SFS special is a multi-table, but either way a good track record is the most favorable qualification.)