Jesus dude. I hope it goes well. Obviously don't worry about the game at all, take care of yourself.
Good Luck man! I'm sorry to hear that it got worst, but I hope you recover.
Didn't mean to call out Skygge like that, but in the RP of the caravan that you guys were doing, it seemed like he was a bit more outspoken, a bit louder than I would expect him to be right now. Obviously, your character, but that is why I asked that. Don't hate me ;)
I am excited about this game!
Hey I wasn't rude or anything man, don't worry. Indeed there I was trying to convince folks, but each of us has an answer, so he is waiting for the dwarf-like one to give his, before adding in ^_^
I'm really enjoying how this is going so far. I can't wait to get you guys actually moving. :)
Just so you guys know, Zach has an idea of what to post for his reply, but he isn't sure how to put it down in writing just yet. He also said this is an incredibly important question, and he wants to make sure he thinks its all the way through before he answers.
Torag protects us!
Well written bro!
so i hope that's alright, basically stolen from the hobbit, but so is the whole AP and it's honestly the best answer I could think of. Hope you enjoy it, it took a while :D
That was great! And yeah, it should get progressively less Hobbit-inspired as we progress.
Sorry to have made this conversation so one-on-one, that wasn't my goal, it just kinda happened lol. I tried to throw a few bones to some of you others to open this conversation up a bit more, hopefully that works. And sorry for the giant wall of text there, I thought about six different ways to handle the conversation, but at this point, the old elf is tired of beating around the bush. Give it to them and see if they can handle it is his thought I think lol.
I don't want to interrupt if you guys have more to say, so let me know when you're ready and I'll move us along.
I'm waiting on the old man...
Maybe he forgot he has to reply? Memory often goes at that age after all
Anyway, believe we can get moving. We may chat more on the way, or we will never get there.
Crap... I checked my campaign tab multiple times this weekend thinking I was waiting on you guys, and here it was all along you were waiting on me. Dang it! I will get a response up tomorrow morning. My son had surgery today and has been grumpy grumpy all day, so I am beat as all get out.
Now where did I put my bed....
I'm praying for his recovery.
No worries at all - hope your son is doing well!
I appreciate the patience guys. The surgery wasn't a big deal, tubes in the ears, but apparently the anesthetic makes my little 9 month old a grumpy man and he screamed most of the day yesterday. But its all good and he is doing fine, on with the game!
Man... I love this type of character. I hope you guys don't mind the GIANT WALL OF TEXT I just put up. Once I got started, I couldn't really stop lol.
I'm loving it. 80 posts and we're still on the first night: the campaign hasn't even begun yet. It's basically a roleplayers dream.
With that said, I certainly don't expect this to all be solved the first night. It's a very complicated situation, and everyone having different opinions on it is pretty aces. I forget if I said this already, but I didn't expect you guys to recruit Gumar this first night, so don't worry if he doesn't come around.
I already have Ari's response set, in regards to that semi likely event.
Gumar has a multiple personality disorder, I'm sure about that.
Just aheads up, Zach has been rather busy with work. He'll post when he gets some down time hopefully in the next day or so .
One thing I think I need to clear up: am I originally from fasturvalt, or am I heading there as it's the nearest gnome community?
I originally thought I would belong to a burrow that got wiped, but it might be more interesting if I was originally from Fasturvalt and then I would be seeking any remaining family and trying to reconnect with my roots, or would that hold me back from joining the group?
One thing I think I need to clear up: am I originally from fasturvalt, or am I heading there as it's the nearest gnome community?
I originally thought I would belong to a burrow that got wiped, but it might be more interesting if I was originally from Fasturvalt and then I would be seeking any remaining family and trying to reconnect with my roots, or would that hold me back from joining the group?
I had in mind that you had not been there before, but given you spent years as a slave / exploring the underdark before arriving here, it actually works either way. Things will have changed quite a bit since you were last there. If you want to have been from there originally, let me know, though, and I can give you a bit more background on the place than I have so far.
You'd have to have a reason for why you'd left, though, and what you were doing when you were enslaved.
Also, just because you were from a burrow doesn't mean you don't necessarily have family there. It's not a large settlement, a few hundred people, but the deep gnomes don't particularly live in large communities - especially with the looming threat of the drow. It's possible that your burrow had a couple survivors, or that other burrows nearby were evacuated, or what have you.
I'll give Zach a chance to get some more words in, and look to move things forward sometime later tomorrow or on Saturday. Weekends are generally not good for me, but I'll see what I can do!
That works for me. I figure it would have been around my 100th birthday, which means we parted company around my 150th, and I've spent the last 75 years or so in Nirmathas assisting them against Molthune and the Drow.
Because apparently the old man in game is being played by an old man out of game, lol.
We only traveled together for about 50 years. Ariael is only 225 years old, and the bulk of his non Kyonin time was spent in Nirmathas, as that's key to his character and much of the reason he's built the way he is.
I had in mind that you had not been there before, but given you spent years as a slave / exploring the underdark before arriving here, it actually works either way. Things will have changed quite a bit since you were last there. If you want to have been from there originally, let me know, though, and I can give you a bit more background on the place than I have so far.You'd have to have a reason for why you'd left, though, and what you were doing when you were enslaved.
Also, just because you were from a burrow doesn't mean you don't necessarily have family there. It's not a large settlement, a few hundred people, but the deep gnomes don't particularly live in large communities - especially with the looming threat of the drow. It's possible that your burrow had a couple survivors, or that other burrows nearby were evacuated, or what have you.
I am just thinking about why Fasturvalt - other than it being the nearest gnome community. Am I searching for news about my family or any other survivors, or am I planning to move to other gnome communities. Seems to me that, narratively speaking, I should have a reason to want to stay there, either because it is the place survivors would go to or because it's where I am from originally.
The other reason is that I'm lazy - I don't want to have to invent the name of a long-lost gnome burrow to enquire about when the name of Fasturvalt already exists. The main problem is that I have assumed that my family are all missing, giving him a reason to want to work against the Drow. Let's just say it was a family outing, and he got separated from them and doesn't know if they got captured or escaped. That gives a reason to go after them once he gets over his current lethargy (assuming they never returned and their bodies were never found - so presumably they got captured). It also means that there may be someone in the city who remembers him.
Something to let you guys know:
A lot of the reason that I'm making things up as I go along with this AP and am drastically changing the intro is because of how it's presented. For those of you who don't know, it's not an official Paizo AP, but is written by the guy who did "Way of the Wicked".
Going this route has some pros and cons, I've discovered. On one hand, there being only one author means the entire thing ought to flow pretty well, rather than having some disjointed sections like a lot of games do. At the same time, it means that work progresses far more slowly.
This AP is still being developed, and is written in an incredibly linear fashion. I'm making things up to keep us moving, but I have no idea what actually happened at Dammerhall. Unlike many of Paizo's books, there isn't even foreshadowing for the DM to be able to drop appropriate hints. I find this a little unnerving - one of the reasons that I wanted to run an AP is that I don't have a ton of confidence in myself to make things up like that. This is going better than I expected, really, but I wanted to let you now that we are deviating decently from the AP already, and I expect to be even more so by the time we get to Book 3.
I'm bringing this up now for the following reason. Throne of Night Book 1 came out in October, (after it was supposed to have been out in May) with the others promised to be delivered by March. After the first one came out, the company went into complete silence. There are stories of people not having received their orders, being unable to get in touch with customer support, and so on. To a lot of people it looked like Gary just f%!*ed off with their money.
Today, he posted the first update since September, which promises that Book 2 will be done "this month". Given that he did not apologise for the silence or explain why it's all so badly delayed, I'm more than a little f~!*ed off.
With all that said, we technically haven't even started Book 1. It's likely that it'll take us, what, maybe 9 months to get through? I expect that Book 2 will be out long before then. But in the event that for whatever reason, the books don't come out, I'll definitely figure out a way to keep this going and do my best to make it interesting.
ANYWAY BACK TO THE GAME.
I am just thinking about why Fasturvalt - other than it being the nearest gnome community. Am I searching for news about my family or any other survivors, or am I planning to move to other gnome communities. Seems to me that, narratively speaking, I should have a reason to want to stay there, either because it is the place survivors would go to or because it's where I am from originally.
The other reason is that I'm lazy - I don't want to have to invent the name of a long-lost gnome burrow to enquire about when the name of Fasturvalt already exists. The main problem is that I have assumed that my family are all missing, giving him a reason to want to work against the Drow. Let's just say it was a family outing, and he got separated from them and doesn't know if they got captured or escaped. That gives a reason to go after them once he gets over his current lethargy (assuming they never returned and their bodies were never found - so presumably they got captured). It also means that there may be someone in the city who remembers him.
Why Fasturvalt? Really, it makes logical sense because a) it's close, and b) with how long you've been gone, you may not know how many other gnomish cities are still standing, and it's not exactly safe or easy to go searching for them.
You could have family there, or have the intention of moving on to others. Really, it's a good place for you to start either way, and it's understandable that your character might not even be sure. You've been away from your people for a long time, many things could have changed. Whether you'll be able to consider it home or not is something that I expect your character will kind of struggle with.
A family outing can definitely work - searching for food, harvesting mushrooms, exploring, there are plenty of reasons to be out and about. If you'd still like to have been from a burrow, though, I wouldn't worry about the name of it. There are so many small burrows and they're so spread out that it's unlikely the name of your burrow would mean much to anyone. I'd expect you to be more likely to have a "family name" that you're searching for people for.
If you want to pursue the idea of searching for family who may have escaped capture, perhaps on the journey you can talk to one of the other characters about the circumstances of your enslavement. I'm sure that the Elves would be interested in it at the very least. That'll create a better bond with one/both of them for your character, and give some colour to your family members, which will of course help me when I decide what actually happened to them.
Well, it says somewhere that there was no survival from Dammerhall, and no one came back alive from searching it, so the lack of information makes sense. Its gates were shut the day it felt, so no one knows anything about it. It two centuries we can pretty much assume any information we gather might be wrong at the end, so...
I think we will end up book one fairly faster than in 9 months, but that's just me. In any case we will have some fun, so don't worry about it too much.
I bet there will much more supernatural stuff than we imagine at this moment.
Usually Paizo books give at least a teaser to give the GM some kind of rough idea of what happened, though.
And you might be right, we could finish sooner. But if Book 2 is out at the end of this month, that will be fine. I'm mostly worried about us getting past them around Book 3-4. But maybe their development will get better. Either way, like I said, we haven't technically even begun Book 1, so we definitely have some leeway / time to muck around.
I'll give Zach another 12 hours or so if he wants to get in a post, and then I'll do a bit to move us forward - first the bit with Dietrich and the Caravan drivers, leading up to the breakfast conversation in the morning. Some interesting things are on the horizon, for sure.
I'm really excited to get this moving. The "intro" relies a lot on character and you guys are all really interesting and have a pretty cool dynamic going on.
OK, that makes sense. I like the idea that he simply does not know what has happened to his family, so he will be asking after them.
Let's say they were from a small burrow near Fasturvalt that got overrun; that would make Fasturvalt a natural place for survivors to go while the loss of the Burrow would mean that he has lost both home and family. Fasturvalt would be the natural place to start without him having too much prior knowledge of the place.
Who decided to let a pair of PCs who have no interest or desire to go on the adventure into the game?
Sounds like some wonky goblin logic to me, lol :p
I expected it from Gav because we'd talked about it beforehand and I worked it in, but I was pretty blindsided by Dietrich. His reasoning is solid, and it's in character, so I'm definitely not complaining.
I never really cared for the whole "everyone just agrees to go on a huge adventure together for no real reason" thing. This seems more natural - even though you guys have a rough idea of what everyone wants, you're still definitely not all on the same page. Even those who want to go have reservations about it.
Sorry for the blindside... I didn't quite expect it either till I started to play him and then I realized, this is what he does lol. Ahh well, It will work out. Hopefully, this (much needed for Dietrich at least) side is over and we can get everyone back into the game.
No yeah it definitely has been great. I'm just a bit uncertain how to drag you into it. :P
Worst case scenario, I'll get you to agree to go with the group as far as Fasturvalt. By that point I'm sure you'll be convinced to stick around.
I'll have a post up tonight, wrapping things up with Dietrich and getting everyone up in the morning for more exciting deliberations.
Who decided to let a pair of PCs who have no interest or desire to go on the adventure into the game?
You gave words to my thoughts, brother, although I expected a lot of resistance when trying to recruit fellows, so I'll just keep trying and win by persistence (and by metagame, of course)...
lol, if all else fails... metagame! :)
Stupid question... Do elves in Pathfinder have the 4 hour sleep thing ... or is that a 3.5 thing that I didn't realize didn't come with? I assumed it, hence why I was up later than others, but given that I am a spellcaster, I should probably figure that out lol.
Before getting mocked for such a silly question (not that anyone here would mock for things like that ;)), let me just say, out of all my pathfinder games I have played, I have always been a human... this is my first non human race lol. Sad I know, but alas, it is how my pathfinder career has gone lol.
It's something that didn't carry over, I believe because they thought it seemed setting specific. You wouldn't have been up much later in this circumstance, so no harm done, but yeah, the need to sleep is definitely something to keep in mind in the future.
I was about to mention that some days ago but I thought you only meant it because you were getting old, and old people sometimes have sleeping problems (specially if you are in a Stephen King's book).
^_^
*Yorick nudges the group*
Any word from Ancian?
Yea, he's around. Today is his birthday, so he's out celebrating.
Gotcha, just checking
I think he didn't post anything cuz for awhile there it was just you and Yorick going back and forth.
Well Ancian, when you get back on... HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!
Happy birthday bro!