I'm also on board with the Bellicus friction (this sounds familiar, I think). If there isn't a little tension, where's the fun of the story? The little man in my brain who animates these stories to play in my imagination's theater is practically salivating for the possible moment later on when Bellicus starts to reform. Plus, in the meantime, we get great pithy dialogue and a shake-up of the usual formula that has all the PCs piling on the same bandwagon regardless of their differing backgrounds.
Sorry for disappearing for a week! Life took an unexpected turn, but I should be back for the foreseeable future.
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Figured I'd throw this out there since you're all a fun lot! I've got a recruitment up for a new PbP I'll be running. Information to be found here.
Oh, cool. I've wanted to try out those mythic rules.
GM: I don't mind if we accelerate through this whole negotiation if you wish. It's fun to roleplay Elion as a merchant but it doesn't leave much for everyone else to do.
Elion is intending to drive up the price of our help as much as possible for our help returning the 'dragon' then barter for the information we want. I believe he still has two rat carcases yet to bargain with as well.
If you leave him alone he'll probably spend an hour or so bargaining down to the last copper piece :-)
How about you roll a Diplomacy check to see how good a deal you can get, and also to see if Yusdrayl will let you inspect the items.
Sorry for dropping out again-- I had to go out of town on family business for a week on short notice. I had no cellular data reception on my phone at the hotel, and they didn't offer WiFi either!
I'm back now.
Urg. Sorry about my total absence this week, guys, I've been crazy sick in addition to my usual business. Recovering now, should be back up to snuff shortly.
Hey Lucent (and anyone else who makes maps for games), what do you use to make your maps? Now that I actually have a real job and real money, I am considering investing in a map-making program. But there are several out there. Suggestions? Photoshop works fine for the most part, but I'm somewhat limited by what I'm able to scan in from the tiles I have... and I'd like to be able to put nicer-looking fires, pillars, and such on my maps.
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I use photoshop. I either create tiles I need by hand, or do google image searches for "X dundjinni" and usually come up with good transparent.png results. So if I needed a wagon or a tree and didn't want to make it myself, I'd search for "tree dundjinni" or something of the sort and scroll through the results. Dundjinni was once a good mapping tool with a huge community of people making tilesets.
Also, you can get a free (legal) version of Photoshop CS2 from Adobe here. It is the entire CS2 creative suite, Adobe offered it to the public early this year as a concession to the registration servers for the paid version going down permanently.
For my in-person (with two remote players) game, I use MapTool. When I need to export a section of the map, say as a graphic to include with the text of a module I'm writing, I generally use the Windows screen capture utility Snipping Tool to copy the section of the map I need.
Probably not the best tool to use for a PBP, but on the plus side, it's free!
I am going to get in touch with Anton and Teral and see if they intend to continue with us. (If either of you reads this, feel free to post or reply to my message and let us know!)
Sooooo sorry, guys. I'm loving this campaign! Anton isn't a very verbal type, but I should be posting more. Sorry. This year's classes I'm teaching are ...rough, shall we say.
Just kill a goblin. It'll make you feel better :-)
Anton - no worries, glad to know you're still interested! Just let me know if you ever think you won't be posting for an extended period. (Same goes for everyone else.) Out of curiosity, what do you teach?
Just kill a goblin. It'll make you feel better :-)
Elion wouldn't know... ;)
I'm licensed to teach general education from k-6th grade. This year I'm doing my principal a favor and teaching seventh and eighth graders Health and Character Education.
It's a g$#@~# nightmare.
Elion wouldn't know... ;)
Ouch! Maybe he can talk them to death? :-)
Rrg. Okay, guys, here's a thing. I'm really enjoying myself in this game, and I hope you folks have enjoyed my contributions thus far - but if it hasn't been obvious lately, my time and energy are kinda riding the ragged edge. I've just gone back to school for the first time in a coon's age, I'm rehearsing a play, still working graveyard shifts...it's nuts. The gist is, entirely too many commitments are stretching my ability to do basically anything, and in the free time I do manage to come across, I pretty much just collapse without enough left in the way of creativity to do anything useful 'round these parts. Because of this, I'm withdrawing from basically all the games I'm currently in. This causes me no end of sadness - these stories are a welcome distraction, and I really hate to let my characters float in limbo; they tend to gather up behind my eyeballs and yell to get out if I don't let them play.
That said, I'm particularly invested in this one; the writers involved, the characters they've come up with, and the story all intrigue me pretty thoroughly, and I'd really hate to walk away. So I've got a question for you - mostly for you, Mike, but I'd like to hear everyone else's opinion too. Come a week or so into December, my schedule frees up quite a lot, and at that time, I'd be willing to bet that my brain will start chomping at the bit to get back into this stuff. Any chance I could just go on some kind of hiatus until then, instead of pulling out completely?
I know that's kind of a weird request that makes a bit more work for you - you might want to replace a missing party member, you'd be forced to either NPC Teral or find a reason he can stay behind somewhere, etc. - but if possible, I'd love to come back to this thing when I've got the time. I could make a heroic return, it'd be great. =P
With all that said, I would totally understand if you don't think it's worth the effort, and you'd rather I just bow out gracefully. There's definitely no need to clutter up everyone's lives just for li'l old me if you're not into the idea.
...so? Whaddya think?
Thanks for checking in :) I understand that life can get busy sometimes. I'm cool with you going on hiatus, and with six other players I don't feel the need to find a replacement.
If you're okay with it, I think it would make sense for Teral, as a dragon disciple, to spend some time with Yusdrayl and the kobolds. Why? Some combination of each party wanting to keep an eye on the other, plus the fact that Yusdrayl is keenly interested in Teral's powers. (I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of a similar bloodline in the Kobold King!)
Cool?
Cool by me! Thanks for understanding, folks. I'll keep paying attention, and hop back in as soon as my life cools down a little.
Yes, we certainly will! I'm sorry I didn't respond to this more quickly - I've been under assault by a nasty head cold recently, and stuff's a little hectic around here, too.
Pretty redundant to say anything now that you've gotten Mike's word, but in my opinion it'd be really weird for any of this group (as characters) to disappear and to switch around the cast. There's something very... established about the group, even since the beginning. In my mind, anyway. So I'm glad Teral will be sticking around!
Agreed! This sounds like the perfect way for a player to drop out for a few weeks without the PC drifting into the Phantom Zone or running the risk of getting killed while being run as an NPC.
(I've had the latter happen in a real-life tabletop game. It was a bad scene when the player found that out his character died while he was out of town!)
Evan-- I hope life gives you a break soon!
There's something very... established about the group, even since the beginning. In my mind, anyway. So I'm glad Teral will be sticking around!
I totally agree! This group seems to have meshed extremely well since the start-- including the baked-in intra-party conflict. I think the slight level of tension really adds to this game.
Glad you all seem to be enjoying it. :)
Mos def, yo.
If I could just get this stupid sling to work <grumble> :-)
Treasure coming soon FOR REALZ THIS TIME
I'm licensed to teach general education from k-6th grade. This year I'm doing my principal a favor and teaching seventh and eighth graders Health and Character Education.
It's a g%@&&+ nightmare.
Sorry to hear that! I teach high school social studies, and so far it's been a blast.
I came very close to teaching high school social studies. After I'd been working in IT for a few years out of college (back in the mid-90s), I applied to, and was accepted into a Master of Arts in Teaching program at a state college in another city. About six weeks before the program started, I was in my faculty adviser's office to chat about the program. (I was also going to go apartment-hunting that afternoon.) My adviser proudly said that "for social studies teachers, we have an 80% placement rate within five years!" I asked what the first-year placement rate was, and after demuring a bit, he said it was around 15%. I then started asking about starting salaries-- which were about 30% less than what I was already making in IT.
Between the low placement rates, lower starting salary, and the fact that I was going to have to live on student financial aid (i.e. loans) for two years before I even got my degree, I made the financial decision to withdraw from the program.
While my career in IT has been very good, I do think I would have been an awesome high school history teacher! I wish the economics would have worked out better.
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It's never too late to change careers. :) One of my best masters program buddies was a 50-year-old ex-lawyer. I won't say that the job market is any better for social studies teachers right now (unless you have some other endorsement like special ed, ELL, or language arts), but I will say that I got a full-time, long-term job this year straight out of my masters program (with only a social studies endorsement). Granted, that doesn't happen for everyone, but it happened for most of my classmates.
Yesterday I got to dress as a pirate and make all my students call me Captain. One of the most fun days of my life, and something I would never have had a chance to experience if I'd just kept working as a web designer. :)
Congratulations! It's time for...
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XP REWARDS
4 twig blights: 540 xp
4 dire rats: 540 xp
3 adv. skeletons: 600 xp
1 mama rat: 200 xp
1 poor poor Meepo (RP): 200 xp
1 water mephit: 800 xp
1 Yusdrayl (RP): 800 xp
9 kobold guards (RP): 900 xp
1 pit trap (bypassed): 200 xp
6 goblin guards: 810 xp
Role-playing: 710 xp
TOTAL: 6,300 xp
PER PC: 900 xp
Treasure stuff coming up.
Awesome!
Re: XP: Which advancement track are we using?
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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Okay, I'm sending each of you a link to our shared google docs treasure tracker spreadsheet!
On the first page ("Treasure") you will see a list of all items you have received, as well as their market price (what you'd have to pay for them in town) an their cost (what you could get for selling them in town). Lower down is an entry showing the number of gold pieces (or other coins, expressed in gold pieces) that you've found.
The "recipient" column indicates who ends up getting an item. "Party" is a valid entry in this column - for example, you might decide that a given potion or wand belongs to the party. Someone will have to carry it around, but the party decides when/how to use it. Another valid entry for the recipient column is "Sold," which will automatically generate gold pieces to be divided amongst the PCs. Of course, you won't actually be able to sell things until you find someone to buy them (likely in town).
The "claims" column is where you should put your name if you want an item. Multiple people can put their names here, and then you'll have to work it out. The "comments" column is useful for questions about an item, or I might put comments on there as well.
The "consumable?" and "consumed" columns will help later on in tracking how much of your treasure you've consumed (such as scrolls or potions).
Beneath the gold-colored rows for gold pieces you will see your names and several "0" entries - these will be used to divide up any remaining gold pieces after other items have been claimed.
Page 2 ("tracking") shows each PC's "budget" (one seventh of the total), how much each PC has received, and how much budget is remaining. The "remaining budget" is basically how many gold pieces you're going to get in addition to any items you've claimed. These numbers are generated from the total COST of all items that you have (not market price) --- when you claim an item, it subtracts that item's COST from your total budget. In other words, to claim a potion of cure light wounds you will "pay" 25 gold pieces of your budget. A given PC (and the party as a whole) gets more bang for their buck if they claim items rather than just taking gold pieces and then buying them in town, but sometimes you'll want to save money for something specific.
All the above explanations are maybe not super helpful, but you'll see how it all works once we get using it. I'm not used to having to explain this in writing, because with my other groups we've just sat down together and taken a look.
Please don't fiddle with things too much, because many of the cells have formulas and such which reference other cells, so it will be prone to errors if you change things around. The columns you can and should edit are "claims" and "comments" on the first page, as well as "recipient" if it is decided who will receive something; "consumable" and "consumed" if you wish to track such things; and "Claims done?" on the second page (which is a useful indicator to me that everyone has claimed what they want and the gold can be divvied up).
Currently you all are a bit "behind" in treasure, but mostly that's because you haven't hit the big treasure rooms yet. Those will help make up for things..... a great deal. :)
There are seven potions/oils, so perhaps each of us should claim one. Val is most interested in the potion of disguise self. (I've put in a claim on that.) She can cast both cure light wounds and remove fear, so those should probably go to someone else. She has no use for arrows, not being proficient in a bow.
I think we should sell the dragon figurines in town, unless they come up again elsewhere-- perhaps the kobolds would trade more than that for them?
Man-- the Paizo site was pretty much unaccessable yesterday after about 10 AM Eastern Time, due to the release of the Advanced Class Guide playtest!
Hi, folks.
I just wanted to mention that I have a very busy weekend planned, starting tonight. I'm probably only going to get in a post or two before next Monday.
Also-- I'm traveling next week for the Thanksgiving holiday, and will probably only get in a post or two from Wednesday 27-Nov through Saturday 30-Nov.
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Whew! It's been a super busy week for me. Five meetings in the last three days. Anyway... next encounter starts tomorrow, and I understand if folks post infrequently for the next week or so. We'll go two days per round instead of one until next weekend, or something like that.
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So, for treasure, there's not a whole lot that Bellicus needs. He'd like a potion of cure light wounds, for sure, and the oil of bless weapon would be good, since he's probably the guy who could get the most use out of it, but everything else isn't that important to him. Do we have any archers that can use the arrows?
I believe Leynus has a bow.