I agree on a second check.
Leveling up today.
100xp WS +5 (38 -> 39)
125xp S +5
125xp T +5
155xp Fel +6
0xp Wp +5 (5 advances from character creation)
100xp Change career level
20xp Heal out of profession
15xp Perception -> 6 ranks (5 advances from character creation)
100xp Etiquette (Servants)
100xp Rover
10xp Outdoor Survival -> 1 rank
850xp total spent
0xp left
Talther is embracing his rural assassin side! ;)
What do you guys think of the idea of going back to examine the ruined coach a second time? I'd forgotten about it by the time we reached this point, but Andreas did say in the beginning that he thought Elicha Hochs was behind the coach's disappearance. As it happened, I was surprised by their vehemence in that matter.
I think it's fair to say that our characters might be interested. If we don't find anything on a second try, maybe we can use that information to our advantage. If we do find something, perhaps we can hold it over the Cannonball Express.
It helps that I don't have any solid idea of what to do when we arrive in Altdorf, although Landolf is busy trying to make connections so something might come up.
I'm not sure how far back the wreck is from where we are now though.
If you want to go back that's fine but you'll need to figure out how to get there since you no longer have a coach at your disposal. You're about 1.5 days journey by coach back to the ruined coach location. A coach covers about 60 miles in one day so you'd need to walk ~90 miles which would take about 6 days. There is 1 coach inn (The Broken Hart) between the Crossed Axes and the wreckage. The other days, you'd have to camp out along the road as it meanders through the Reikwald.
Honestly I’m right now all for heading straight to Altdorf to make an unannounced visit.
Honestly I’m right now all for heading straight to Altdorf to make an unannounced visit.
From somewhere off-stage you hear a voice whispering Go to Altdorf, go to Altdorf...
Funnily enough, I am also keen to go to Altdorf!
@Aubster, did Talther get the same discount with his haggle check?
Funnily enough, I am also keen to go to Altdorf!
@Aubster, did Talther get the same discount with his haggle check?
Yes
11 Shillings total from everyone to cover the debt (you all decide who’s contributing what towards the 11 shillings) and free room for the night but you have to work around the inn to pay for dinner.
Yes...I have a strange compulstion to go to ...Altdorf :)
Ruprecht just paid the 11 shillings....
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Being french, and writing in english about Bretonnian langage, which is vaguely supposed to be based on ancient French Brittany... ^^
Being french, and writing in english about Bretonnian langage, which is vaguely supposed to be based on ancient French Brittany... ^^
And to unfortunately speak no French but try to throw a few phrases into Phillipe's dialogue to someone who is French. Mon Dieu! ;-)
Well, at least I can translate these for you.^^
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OK, I'd fallen behind on keeping up Landolf's character sheet, so I just went back to do a review of the coach ride arc with an eye toward trappings & money changes specifically, but noticing some other things. Here is what I found:
* the name of the lady who gave us a lot of trouble in Ubersreik was Lorbeer Weber, a minor noble of the Jeungfrueds that has an insane grudge against us for some reason. Important mostly because I eventually got her confused with Elicha Hochs, who we haven't ever actually met or even heard about except from our cheatyface Cannonball Express crew. So I was wrong above when I said that I thought that Elicha had a grudge with us too, at least so far as we know.
* According to Andreas, Elicha has been involved with anti-Altdorf activities around Ubersreik and some coaching trail incidents. She is in the coaching business as well, so it sounds pretty opportunistic to me. I'd rather not have anything to do with the woman if we can avoid it, although my vengeful instincts have gone off a bit toward the Cannonball Express, so who knows?
* our promised reward from Andreas for finding the coach, not for finding evidence implicating Elicha, was 20 gold crowns. I assume that was a purse to be split among the party.
Inn expenses: we never really specified what kind of food we were ordering, but my assumption is that unless otherwise stated, we all got cheap meals and no extra alcohol. The inns we stopped at were:
Halfway House Inn
Five Oaks Inn
Luitpold Inn
Enchanter's Shadow Inn
Smith Sons Inn (we got Bugman's Ale here for free, but there was nothing I noticed saying that we got a meal for free as well)
Journey's End Inn
Festival Rest Inn
Pitcher & Peryton Inn
Speared Pike Inn (we were specifically noted as getting meals from the people we saved from the goblin riders, so this one doesn't count toward costs)
Standing Stones Inn
Crossed Axes Inn (where we are now, and we haven't quite finished paying for it)
* by my count, that is 9 inns we stopped at and have paid for already. The simple meal I mentioned above was 3d, so that's 54 meals for six people, or 13/6. After we offset for the funds Andreas gave us, we're left owing 7/6 still as a party.
Landolf money costs:
* Landolf got a purse of six shillings from Andreas/Jan for road expenses. This seemed generous at first, but in fact it was woefully inadequate if it was actually meant to cover our expenses.
* I assume that the first 6/- for inn expenses came from the purse Andreas gave to Landolf.
* Landolf was given a gold coin for agreeing to deliver a message to the garrison commander in Bogenhafen.
* Landolf gave the gold away to Max as we took his pistols, then sold one of the pistols for 2g. I'm fine with it if we want to throw 1g of that back into the party pot and/or to cover expenses, but I'm considering the 1g of it that is sort-of sourced from the garrison mission to be Landolf's personal money.
* If we're going to do party loot of some sort, the other loot I saw floating about was a 6 shilling purse Valghaz got for healing the guard and 2g that Talther got for the second pistol.
More than happy to throw the 6 shillings in. That’ll leave me with 1.
Your work is both precise and precious.
Adelaida will give some money. I do still have 46 silver, as I haven't bought much trappings so far, and used downtime to get "rich"?
@Landorf: I found 6 shillings earlier in the goblins lair
Not at all surprised that I missed something.
Somewhat randomly, I just remembered that Adelaida said their short-term ambition was to learn to read & write. I have no complaints about that, but will note that it's quite difficult to learn a talent outside of your career level & especially so out of your career.
The only way I know of to get Read/Write as a Soldier is to use the Unusual Learning Endeavour during Downtime. Even then, you spend the xp & money and then attempt a Hard characteristic test, getting nothing on a failure except an increased chance of succeeding should you try again.
It's pretty daunting.
Thats why it's an ambition. ;-)
Would another character help in that...Ruprecht could teach her...
Speaking of ambitions, do we even have party ambitions right now? I haven't hunted through the threads to confirm it, but I think we completed our party short-term but never chose a new one. The party long-term was very Ubersreik-centric and the campaign appears to have abandoned that area.
It would have made sense to choose finding the wrecked coach as a short-term if we had been staying on top of it.
I think that our party ambition is now to get our 20 gold! Or some sort of recompense.
Also if the GM will allow it, Valghaz has offered his services as a tutor (as well). I’d be happy to spend downtime on it, as it isn’t like he can make that much money anyways.
Ha....just saw that Adelaida askes Valghaz for help with the reading/writing....I guess she just doesn't like Ruprecht!! :)
Finding a tutor is part of the process of trying to learn an out-of-career talent. I neglected to mention it because we're headed to Altdorf & finding a Read/Write tutor there should be trivial. The tutor normally just allows a check to proceed rather than give a bonus.
That assumes that the tutor is an NPC. Whether you guys can help Adelaida with the mechanical bits is a GM question. I've also avoided talking about what kind of check would be made because the text leaves that up to the GM explicitly.
One thing to remember is that if push comes to shove, you could spend a Resilience to force the check through. That is crazy costly, but it is an option.
To be fair V and A were having a conversation and it came up naturally. I doubt that it is anything against R, it’s just that V asked.
Yes, I didn't knew Valghaz knew how to write, Adelaida was just confessing her future goal
Got to say, this is my favorite RPing system.
* Issues such as wealth, literacy and social class are actually important (looking at you, Pathfinder, with your profession skill). In a different campaign I’m in, a logger and a noble are in the same party with the exact same amount of coin. This system makes much more sense.
* Combat is insanely dangerous, but not stupidly so. And isn’t always required.
* The system *encourages* and *rewards* characters having goals outside the main story.
* Being a rich noble and a good speaker is arguably much more OP than having high WS, Str and T.
* Leveling up makes much more sense because PCs get better bit by bit, rather than suddenly getting a ton of skills, abilities, HPs, etc.
Really glad this campaign is being run. :)
I'm fine with Talther throwing in the 2g. I think I had said so earlier but I can't remember if I actually said I had handed up the gold.
This campaign is excellent! This setting is excellent!
I'm feeling glad of the impending long weekend here.
A while ago I changed Landolf's long-term ambition to clearing his family's debt, and we eneded the discussion around here. Around that time I put in some work on deciding what the banks that held his family's debt were, but never finished it. I found my notes recently and thought I should present what I've got so far for Aubster's review.
Frudel & Sons – one of the original lenders to Nikolaus Gersun. I'm currently thinking that they hold the largest portion of the debt, and the negative tally has been on their books for a long time. If we want to add an additional wrinkle for Landolf to overcome, we could say that Frudel & Sons only has an office in Ubersreik. Possibly the owners are on good terms with the Gersun family (or are at least resigned to not collecting their money properly) making it easier in one way for Landolf to deal with, but the size of the portfolio works in the other way, making it harder for him to satisfy them.
Resolute Bank – I never got around to making up anything about them other than the name. Given what I'm thinking about the other two debt holders, though, they probably hold the second largest portion of the debt.
Sedersberg, Hansberg & Co – a trading company that purchased a large bundle of consolidated debt at the closing of the old Reikswald United about ten years ago, a portion of which consisted of Gersun family debt. Debt servicing isn't really their business but they hoped to cover for losses in other areas of their business with the payments made by old debtors. Three years ago, they realized that the payments being made on the Gersun portfolio were plainly insufficient to pay off the sum and started legal proceedings to revise the favorable terms negotiated by Livina and her partners. The legal proceedings are ongoing and have bogged down in technicalities. Possibly, they hold the smallest portion of the debt, but have potential to create the most trouble over it.
*
While I'm on the topic of Landolf and his background, the issue of the 'von Ubersreik' portion of his name has been bothering me for a while. I came up with the name in a hurry while initially designing the character for his first campaign and was taking cues from what information I could find on Germanic naming practices. If memory serves (according to what I found), the 'von' part of the name related to where the family was from and Ubersreik was the largest city in the region I was placing him in, so I just chose Ubersreik.
The trouble is that no one else in the setting seems to be using that convention, and if they did we would have had von Ubersreiks all over the place during that part of the campaign. So, a hurried choice made a long time ago doesn't seem to fit well with the game now. It would still be awkward to just change it given that Landolf has been calling himself that in-game the whole time.
One idea occurred to me today: we could say that the Gersun family's debt problems nearly caused the ruling class at the time to strip them of their nobility entirely. Instead of going all the way on removing the family's nobility (something that would likely have made the other nobles nervous), they instead stripped them of the family's noble name. So the 'von Ubersreik' part of the name would be part of the punishment for Nikolaus's failings. That would explain why Landolf's name seems weird while leaving an out to change it later through an in-game process.
Or maybe I'm the only one who is at all bothered by it, and it isn't a problem.
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Back to money/trappings. It sounds like everyone is fine with going for a (mostly) group pool. So here is my listing:
Income:
* 6/- shillings given to Landolf by Andreas for travel funds
* 6/- shillings given to Valghaz by army garrison
* 6/- shillings found by Adelaida at the goblin lair
* 3g crowns from the sales of the pistols (with Landolf keeping the 4th)
Total: 3g 18/-
Expenses:
* 13/6 in travel food from Ubersreik to the Crossed Axes inn
* 11/- to settle Andreas's debt with the Crossed Axes inn
Total: 1g 4/6
Final Remaining: 2g 13/6
I'm assuming that the gambling in the common room is going on with personal funds.
Someone might want to track down some coachmen to take us the rest of the way to Altdorf.
@Landolf: next career: accountant? Or just IRL Talent Super Numerate? ^^
I've always had a soft spot for Warhammer RPG, back with the first edition. I tried the second edition and enjoyed it too, missed the third one.
But this edition is really good too, even if I still have to fully understand a few points about downtime events, Advantages in fight... Playing with all of you is a great experience!
Many thanks for getting this all straight. I’ve deducted 6 silver from my character sheet. I think it would be best to keep the group pot separate from for now and divide it at the end of the adventure, with the pot being used for travel expenses until then.
I think in-game it probably makes the most sense for Ruprecht to be the one managing the party's money. Unless someone else wants to though, I'll track it.
Since we're coordinating our funds in-game it makes more sense than normal to formally make an adventuring company. Guild? Co-op? I don't think mercenaries fits...we don't seem the sort of party that it willing to hire out for anything.
Does anyone have ideas for a name for the group?
Great idea. How about....
The Ubersreik Lantknecht (Literally servants of the land, it is where Landsknecht comes from)
The Reikland vergleichers (Literally means “argument settlers” and was a name for a kind of club used to keep discipline among the landsknechts)
Landolf’s Landsknechts (Make use of us having a noble leading us. Extra points if we all have spears/greatswords. Mostly just a catchy name showing that we are for hire. Can also be Landolf’s Lantknechts so we’d be “Landolf’s Servants of the Land.” Less of a militaristic feel, but still gets the idea across)
The Daring Doppelsöldners (Mercenaries for fought on the front line. Extra danger for extra pay)
Ranald’s Reisläufer (Ranald’s mercenaries. Has an adventuring feel to it)
Bringers of the Black Rose (as we all wear one. Has a nice Morr theme to it)
Or Company of the Black Rose ?
Or just keep our original moniker : The Trollslayers :)
I could live with any of those but especially like:
Reikland Vergleichers (we do settle dispute and aren't necessarily mercenaries)
Company of the Black Rose (thematic and sounds great)
The Trollslayers (I love it of course but we could be confused for a team of Dawi!)
I'm most favorable toward the Company of the Black Rose or Bringers of the Black Rose. It helps that I can say it.
Reluctant about Trollslayers simply because I don't want one event super early in our career to define the group. The Black Rose names aren't entirely the same as that because we all carry an ongoing symbol to relate that to. Also, Landolf isn't really looking to go troll hunting.
Company of the Black Rose would get my vote. It has a better ring, in my opinion.
Absent any objection, let's go with that then. Should we say that we haven't yet formalized it in-game?
I'm in the Black Rose.
Hi All,
I haven't abandoned you, just tied up with family this weekend. I'll get things going tomorrow.
Aubster
PS. Glad that you all are enjoying the campaign. It's really been a pleasure for me.
OK, I'd fallen behind on keeping up Landolf's character sheet, so I just went back to do a review of the coach ride arc with an eye toward trappings & money changes specifically, but noticing some other things. Here is what I found:
* our promised reward from Andreas for finding the coach, not for finding evidence implicating Elicha, was 20 gold crowns. I assume that was a purse to be split among the party.
Yes, the reward was 20 gold crowns total, not per person :)
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Speaking of ambitions, do we even have party ambitions right now? I haven't hunted through the threads to confirm it, but I think we completed our party short-term but never chose a new one. The party long-term was very Ubersreik-centric and the campaign appears to have abandoned that area.
It would have made sense to choose finding the wrecked coach as a short-term if we had been staying on top of it.
I don't think that you all have set new party ambitions, it would be very appropriate to set a new short term party ambition of getting the gold owed to you all which ties into the nudge to head to Altdorf.
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I think that our party ambition is now to get our 20 gold! Or some sort of recompense.
Also if the GM will allow it, Valghaz has offered his services as a tutor (as well). I’d be happy to spend downtime on it, as it isn’t like he can make that much money anyways.
Sure, you can tutor. That gives me an idea...what would you all think about a campaign rule that gives party members an opportunity to train other party members in special skills as you all are moving around the country. I was thinking that Valghaz could tutor Adelaida during nights at the inns/hostels. But anyone that has a skill could use their training to advance the skills of the others. Need to work out details obviously but it does seem like an neat way to have the party members help each other.
Thought?
Back to money/trappings. It sounds like everyone is fine with going for a (mostly) group pool. So here is my listing:
Income:
* 6/- shillings given to Landolf by Andreas for travel funds
* 6/- shillings given to Valghaz by army garrison
* 6/- shillings found by Adelaida at the goblin lair
* 3g crowns from the sales of the pistols (with Landolf keeping the 4th)
Total: 3g 18/-Expenses:
* 13/6 in travel food from Ubersreik to the Crossed Axes inn
* 11/- to settle Andreas's debt with the Crossed Axes inn
Total: 1g 4/6Final Remaining: 2g 13/6
I'm assuming that the gambling in the common room is going on with personal funds.
Someone might want to track down some coachmen to take us the rest of the way to Altdorf.
You definitely need to talk to the coachmen before they drink themselves senseless.
A while ago I changed Landolf's long-term ambition to clearing his family's debt, and we eneded the discussion around here. Around that time I put in some work on deciding what the banks that held his family's debt were, but never finished it. I found my notes recently and thought I should present what I've got so far for Aubster's review.
Frudel & Sons – one of the original lenders to Nikolaus Gersun. I'm currently thinking that they hold the largest portion of the debt, and the negative tally has been on their books for a long time. If we want to add an additional wrinkle for Landolf to overcome, we could say that Frudel & Sons only has an office in Ubersreik. Possibly the owners are on good terms with the Gersun family (or are at least resigned to not collecting their money properly) making it easier in one way for Landolf to deal with, but the size of the portfolio works in the other way, making it harder for him to satisfy them.
Resolute Bank – I never got around to making up anything about them other than the name. Given what I'm thinking about the other two debt holders, though, they probably hold the second largest portion of the debt.
Sedersberg, Hansberg & Co – a trading company that purchased a large bundle of consolidated debt at the closing of the old Reikswald United about ten years ago, a portion of which consisted of Gersun family debt. Debt servicing isn't really their business but they hoped to cover for losses in other areas of their business with the payments made by old debtors. Three years ago, they realized that the payments being made on the Gersun portfolio were plainly insufficient to pay off the sum and started legal proceedings to revise the favorable terms negotiated by Livina and her partners. The legal proceedings are ongoing and have bogged down in technicalities. Possibly, they hold the smallest portion of the debt, but have potential to create the most trouble over it.
...
Landolf's name is unusual in the Empire. You normally would be Landolf von Estate Name not the name of a town. It could be seen as a last ditch attempt to hold onto any vestige of a noble title if your estate is seized? Planning for the worse as it be.
I do think that Sedersberg, Hansberg and Co could throw some pitfalls in Landolf's way. The might hire thugs to beat up the family's wandering child as a message to the family to pay their debts.
Absent any objection, let's go with that then. Should we say that we haven't yet formalized it in-game?
Don't forget that the Morr Priest wrote the group a letter that you can use to call on aid from their temples.
I think that our party ambition is now to get our 20 gold! Or some sort of recompense.
Also if the GM will allow it, Valghaz has offered his services as a tutor (as well). I’d be happy to spend downtime on it, as it isn’t like he can make that much money anyways.
Sure, you can tutor. That gives me an idea...what would you all think about a campaign rule that gives party members an opportunity to train other party members in special skills as you all are moving around the country. I was thinking that Valghaz could tutor Adelaida during nights at the inns/hostels. But anyone that has a skill could use their training to advance the skills of the others. Need to work out details obviously but it does seem like an neat way to have the party members help each other.
Thought?
If I'm putting my pretend-game-designer hat on, I think you should be careful with such a campaign rule. I do like the ability that Downtime gives to train in things out of your career, but only because the access is intermittent and expensive (including both the money costs and the cost of a Downtime segment).
The pitfall is that if characters can train outside of the careers too easily, then the careers themselves lose much of their meaning. A lot (not all) of the point of a career is to define what you can advance in.
So I'd say it's fine if you want to open things up more than they are now, but I'd work roughly within the guidelines the game already has for such out-of-career training:
Skills & Characteristics:
* train whatever you want for double cost (with sufficient story justification like we had with the hospital lady & our Heal advances)
* train at normal cost during Downtime with additional costs and sufficient story justification (finding a tutor or having the advance category be sufficiently available)
Talents:
* normally, no training out of your current career level (not even career)
* possible during Downtime, but only at substantially greater cost than skills and characteristics.
Pretend-game-designer Landolf can't evaluate your in-party tutor idea since you haven't presented an actual plan, but I will note that it is at least more restrictive than the Downtime out of career training options in one sense: you can only get things that other party members know already.
I personally don't think that should be enough to just allow access to in-party skills, characteristics & talents at normal cost without anything other than story justification. There's too much risk to the career system. Landolf would be very happy to get normal cost training in Endurance & Cool just by saying he asks Valghaz about it, but that seems too easy to me.
I could see some tweaking of the normal Downtime rules based on party tutoring. For instance, maybe the talent training isn't quite as punishing after receiving some help from your friends. It'd be easy to justify giving the training check an assist (especially if the tutor spent their Downtime segment on it as well), or perhaps refunding half the xp on a failure if the party tutor spent their Downtime segment helping on it as well. I personally wouldn't be comfortable if any amount of party help made Talent training out of career become far less daunting, though. Talents are a big deal.
I will note that Adelaida has at least one other major option to get Read/Write: she could train out of her career altogether. I did a quick overview, and I found at least sixteen careers that give Read/Write in their first tier if Adelaida was willing to bounce in and out of something to get it...or switch altogether.
Edit: just as an example, I could see 'Army Medic Adelaida' becoming a Physician's Apprentice briefly, picking up Read/Write & Field Dressing and then going back to Soldier.
...A while ago I changed Landolf's long-term ambition to clearing his family's debt, and we eneded the discussion around here. Around that time I put in some work on deciding what the banks that held his family's debt were, but never finished it. I found my notes recently and thought I should present what I've got so far for Aubster's review.
Frudel & Sons – one of the original lenders to Nikolaus Gersun. I'm currently thinking that they hold the largest portion of the debt, and the negative tally has been on their books for a long time. If we want to add an additional wrinkle for Landolf to overcome, we could say that Frudel & Sons only has an office in Ubersreik. Possibly the owners are on good terms with the Gersun family (or are at least resigned to not collecting their money properly) making it easier in one way for Landolf to deal with, but the size of the portfolio works in the other way, making it harder for him to satisfy them.
Resolute Bank – I never got around to making up anything about them other than the name. Given what I'm thinking about the other two debt holders, though, they probably hold the second largest portion of the debt.
Sedersberg, Hansberg & Co – a trading company that purchased a large bundle of consolidated debt at the closing of the old Reikswald United about ten years ago, a portion of which consisted of Gersun family debt. Debt servicing isn't really their business but they hoped to cover for losses in other areas of their business with the payments made by old debtors. Three years ago, they realized that the payments being made on the Gersun portfolio were plainly insufficient to pay off the sum and started legal proceedings to revise the favorable terms negotiated by Livina and her partners. The legal proceedings are ongoing and have bogged down in technicalities. Possibly, they hold the smallest portion of the debt, but have potential to
I like the 'planning for the worst' idea for dealing with Landolf's name. In-game, Landolf has been comfortable with the 'von Ubersreik' and not ashamed to give it, so I'd think that it was something he's lived with for his whole life. Possibly switching the name was something the family did fairly early on after they went into debt so badly. Their circumstances have improved only modestly since then.
So if I'm understanding right, Landolf can potentially change his name later on in the campaign if his situation improves, and specifically if he gains an estate or rescues the family estate from its debt burden.
Absent any objection, let's go with that then. Should we say that we haven't yet formalized it in-game?Don't forget that the Morr Priest wrote the group a letter that you can use to call on aid from their temples.
Is 'Company of the Black Rose' something that would be automatically associated with the faith of Morr by people that weren't otherwise familiar with our party's story?
I don't think that we're intending to relate our party strongly to Morr by choosing the name. Unintended consequences can be fun of course, but if it was obvious that everyone would say 'oh they are knights of Morr' then our party would be aware of it as well.
I'm exploring the possibility of other careers than a soldier.
Yes, that's a shock.
Shock and awe, that's what we do in the Army. Sign here.
Maybe we should keep the rule for training talents downtime, with having a tutor giving a slight advantage to the roll?