Adventures in Oakstead

Game Master Foxy Quickpaw

Minigame rules.
Every kid has to help in the family business. The businesses are
a) the local butcher, which has also a vegetable garden behind the house.
b) the farmer, with a chicken pen.

Every morning every kid will get a task for the day. I'll roll the DC and come up with a description. Hopefully this will be creative.
And then you'd have to work an hour for every try to get it done.

Other days it will instead be a cumulative task. With a DC like 67s and you have to work for an hour for every roll, until the sum beats that.

And once you're done with that, you're free to 'play' with your friends from the village.

Most of the rolls will probably be Profession(Farmer) and Profession(Butcher). But I might come up with additional ones. Doing the work you're told to do is of course not the only option. But you were a kid once and should remember how to get out of that.

Siblings in the families:

Johnson
Kygar(10)
Tobar(9)
Clara(8)
Lilly(4) NPC

Branston
Tarjun(10)
Jewel(?)
Silas(?)
Agnes(5) NPC
Marcus(2) NPC

@Tobar
The goal of the job is a sum of 80, as given in the job spoiler in game. You haven't reached that. There are still 12 minutes for you to fix that post.

As an additional explanation for the jobs. Everyone gets DC80 work. If someone rolls exceptionally well, he/she can help their siblings with the numbers that exceed the 80.

Sorry, I thought that the TOTAL we needed was 80. So, with 2 of us, it would go twice as fast.

Doesn't this mean that there is no benefit to having 2 people do one job?

The goal is that everyone has about the same time of work to do. Maybe you save one hour when you roll exceptionally good. Or you lose one when you roll bad.

Of course working with two kids on the same job has the benefit of working together on the 160 and if one make 79 in five hours and the other 81, then you have some advantage.

It will become more interesting if you work all together. For example, the need could arise to get someone out of work completely. With the others covering for him/her.

Or talking someone with prof(farmer)+5 into helping with your work in exchange for a sausage.

I knew this would start the day I was on the road.... OK. Create the character quick and post! :-)

@Silas
You should change your skill distribution. Without Profession(Farmer) you will be doing only work and no play. As you didn't manage to get the work done before it's time to go to sleep.

I don't have it either. Should I change it too?

It's simple statistics. The jobs you get are in that way, that you need 8 hours when you get an average of 10. With Str mod +2 you get 12.5 which nets you seven hours of work on average to get everything done. If Strength applies. When it comes to harvesting it won't. As most seem to have not much Wis Bonus you'd end up working 8 hours on average and not play with the faster kids at all.

And you know: All work and no play makes Tarjun and Silas dull boys.

Got it! I changed my skills, then.

Hope the Branstons don't have any axe.

Hope the Branstons don't have any axe.

Why?

It's a reference to the Shining movie. :)

Someone writing redrum on the walls already?

The oldest character walks with a limp, and a small child with magical powers starts to see ghosts.

We all know where this is going.

I don't see ghosts, I create them.

Guess why the tower is bewitched. :P
Once I get spiderclimb, I'll walk over the ceiling. Just for the movie reference. Muhaha.

By the way. This is playtime. If y'all wait for me to throw the next task at you, this will become super boring. It's about getting to know each other, play to gether, do stupid things with your abilities. Maybe even some quarrels. Or even if you have no idea, you'll sit around and complain about all the games someone suggests being boring.

The first 'encounter' like thing will happen at night when all are asleep.

Delete it and post it again? That should work.

Delete it and post it again? That should work.

Doh, I should have thought of that :-)

Excellent idea. Thanks

Just because Clara doesn't want, doesn't mean you can't dig it up. With Jewel there is another voice against it, but there is always the way of conspiring to meet without those.

This game is a sandbox (so far a pretty small one) where you can do what you want and I'll try to come up with something interesting to happen.

I added the @... house Tags to all my latest posts to make it clearer. Weeding is only for the Johnson kids. Tarjun is free to guard the chicken pen and find out what happened.

Suggested skills to use: Perception to find where the predator came in and Craft to fix it. Everything else you want to investigate is up to you.

@Tobar
As talking to your cat is not possible, I'd like to see what you do to get her to search.

Survival anyone but Tobar? Maybe you get a lucky roll.

Are the wisdom and survival rolls for everyone or just Jewel?

The heal check is just for Jewel, as she is the only one who picked up the dead chicken. The other rolls are for all.

@Tobar

As talking to your cat is not possible, I'd like to see what you do to get her to search.

As events transpired it wasn't necessary this time. But this definitely deserves an answer

I'm thinking that between the fact that Brina has an intelligence of 4 and my ability to push an animal (may take some time but I can reliably hit the DC 25 to push her) I can probably get fairly far. I'm hoping for at least Lassie levels of "Timmy is down the well" and "Brina, go get help!!" :-).

And when that isn't sufficient he has found that occassionally, if he concentrates REALLY REALLY hard, he can actually communicate properly with Brina. In game, I have the speak with animals spell memorized for a reason :-)

That is similar to how I figured my feral speech hex would work. My familiar 'taught' me the basics and I just 'concentrate' on the particular animal that I want to talk with. The conversation is still limited by the intelligence of the creature, and the hex clearly states that I don't get any special influence, just speech. (Which is why I also took the charm hex.... but she doesn't like using it. Too much like forcing someone to do what they don't want to do.)

Foxy Quickpaw wrote:

@Tobar

As talking to your cat is not possible, I'd like to see what you do to get her to search.

As events transpired it wasn't necessary this time. But this definitely deserves an answer

I'm thinking that between the fact that Brina has an intelligence of 4 and my ability to push an animal (may take some time but I can reliably hit the DC 25 to push her) I can probably get fairly far. I'm hoping for at least Lassie levels of "Timmy is down the well" and "Brina, go get help!!" :-).

And when that isn't sufficient he has found that occassionally, if he concentrates REALLY REALLY hard, he can actually communicate properly with Brina. In game, I have the speak with animals spell memorized for a reason :-)

I'm not saying that you aren't able to do it. I just want you to role play it and not simply put the rolls of Brina searching for tracks. Also you might want to expand your list of tricks:

You've made adventuring for you kids a lot more complicated now. Any ideas how to get the adventuring back to the children and out of the hands of the adults?

I have an idea, but it's not the best, so hoping for better ideas from your side.

I finished the details for my familiar. With the higher intelligence that a familiar gets I'd like to have words known and people known as trained skills. Is that OK?

According to UM, a Thrush can actually speak. "Thrushes are small, plump birds that eat fruit and insects. All thrushes are known for their beautiful songs, but thrush familiars are also capable of actual speech." But I'm thinking that a 6 Int wouldn't give it full conversational language skills. ??

A Thrush can speak, yes. Thrush is just a reflavored raven. But I don't know these tricks. You have a link to them?

I'd never heard a thrush described like that.
The thrush is actually category of birds including robins, bluebirds, redwings and several others. A Raven is in the same group as crows.

As for the tricks, I use the Handle Animal skill in the Core rules as a guide. It indicates that an animal can learn 3 tricks per point of Intelligence. The d20PFsrd also lists some things of interest, including speak. It refers to teaching a dog to bark differently for 'Yes' or 'No', but again a dog wouldn't have the ability to actually speak or have a 6 Int. (The 6 int comes from the description of a familiar in the listing for a wizard. It increases as the master gains levels.)

Here is another resource, including the tricks Seek Individual and Speak Message. Some of the listed resource books are 3.5 though.

All of that said, my familiar has to be smart enough to train me.... Just kidding. A witch 'communes' with her familiar and learns the magic that the Patron bestows. The familiar is only a conduit, not an instructor. Thanks for reviewing and let me know your decision so I can keep it in mind for my posts.

I actually know what a thrush is. But I wrongly assumed that a thrush uses raven statistics and is only a reflavoring of the raven. And that only as an example to say: like the raven familiar it speaks one language of your choice. If you try to teach it one chirp for yes or two chirp for no, your bird would literally ask you "Are you batty in your brain?". Or not, depending on the behaviour it learned from you. ;)

As for seeking individuals. You can assume that the bird knows every person you introduced him to and you meet regular by name. If you'd send it to find Dwayne, it would have a hard time. If you send it to find a goblin, that you yourself don't know what it looks like, it will get hard. You'd explain with limited knowledge, to a creature who is not the brightest candle on the cake what to look for. Here it is on you t ofind the words to make it plausible for your trush.

Generally, familiars do NOT need to be trained. They are, after all, more intelligent than some PCs :-)

I'm fairly sure that is official. But my search function is week right now

Genrally familiars can use skills that they or their master has ranks in. And no description how the master gets the animal to do what he/she wants. I guess they understand one language, before they are able to speak it. A tleast that's the only solution that makes sense to me.

I sounds great. I guess I was limiting it because we are playing kids and I thought I'd have to be teaching my familiar. Kind of a 'kid' familiar.

How about a my animal is better than yours argument until someone has to walk the talk? That goblin isn't staying there forever.

Do we notice Clara sneaking out? And can any of us join her?

That was the idea, to get that adventure underway again.

If you really wanted to roll, I'd say sense motive would have been the way to go. But you also can follow into the barn and notice that she is not there and there is a freshly dug out hole in the wall.

I still don't have access to the google slides.

And I'd still like to know what rules I'm going to be using for Brina.

Pretty please?

Str instead of dex for attack modifier.

There is only the village map in the google maps. I wanted to grant edit rights for all again, like I did and checked when I set it up. But obviously that got revoked. And now I forgot my password and Google won't let me reset it. >:(

I need to think about how to shorten this, as this getting scolded part is not so much fun. I'll throw in a post wrapping that up later.

:-) While I'm grinning a lot reading these, I guess we should move on.
Is everyone still with us?

I forgot about size when I created the CS. Never played in a game like this before. What is average height and weight for a 9 year old girl? With Jewel's stats she's probably slightly above average.

Or am I mis-understanding the medium size comment? If I'm playing wrong please let me know.

You're understanding it right. I have no clue what the average height and weight of a 9 year old is in Golarion. But up to 4 feet you're only medium if you're a dwarf. Google says that 9 years is 133cm and 62lbs. So your choice what size you want to. As of now you're the big and responsible acting sister.

Still here! Sorry if my posts have slowed down, but I'm a university student, and between my homework, my classes, and the physical drain, sometimes it's hard to keep up the pace with the game.

It's for the fun. And as there is no real storyline behind it, I'll move it on with whoever is around. Nice you got in just in time for the shooting practice.

@Tarjun
You get for sure one more try. If that fails too, you got to wait til tomorrow.

Nope -still no luck!

I used up all the good rolls ;)

@Tarjun
Cause fear is a spell with reach close. The only ones close are Jewel and Tobar, as they both attacked the same animal. I'll take that as a readied action in case the boar makes it that far.

As the participation is better when there are rolls to make I'll move the game on to a real quest. But please don't run to the parents with it, but take it as your quest.

Gertrud showed you that you don#t have to tell your parents everything. Ok?