Yeah, no worries. Take care of things before posting, definitely.
Jessibel, please slow down a bit, I think both Vantine and the Raven might be having a bit of a busy week. While I appreciate how much she's getting done, there's plenty for the others to do, as well.
Jessibel, please slow down a bit, I think both Vantine and the Raven might be having a bit of a busy week. While I appreciate how much she's getting done, there's plenty for the others to do, as well.
Will do. I'm trying to balance things as much as possible. Since Jessibel's got a lot planned for downtime, I figured I'd do the stuff she could do on her own first; that way, I won't be slowing down the game too much with the other stuff she's got planned.
That's fair.
I'll get at least one post up a little later on today. Being a West Coaster puts me a disadvantage for getting early posts in.
End of the month tends to be really busy for me because so many many meetings are scheduled then, which makes it hard for me to sneak in some post writing while I'm at work.
Vantine also doesn't have lots of downtime things to get done. I will ask again just to be sure if everyone is good with Vantine taking the fabrics and Harrow deck loot to sell at her mom's store.
I don't think anyone would object to those items being sold - I feel like Vantine's the one most likely to object to the Harrow deck being sold, if anyone would, as she's both Varisian (somewhat) and a witch, so...
That said, I would like to get you guys working on the rebellion system - otherwise I'm just gonna take whoever says something first and let them choose. :P
I've assumed that Jessi has sold/will sell the Abadarian symbol, and added it to your total party funds.
Will sell. Not surprisingly, Jessi has an ulterior motive for visiting the temple. :)
While I know that Vantine and the Raven are a bit busy, how are you two, Nyxra, Aisling?
Doing alright. Trying to decide what I want to do in downtime.
Okay, I'm glad. Feel free to attach yourself to Jessi (I have an idea for an encounter that Jessi and those with her might have, if there are people with her), or report to the family. Mind you, Nyxra knows that once elves reach adulthood, parenting tends to be pretty laissez-faire.
For lack of a better idea as to what to do, Nyxra opts to follow Jessibel and remain quiet as she takes care of her affairs.
The more the merrier!
I've been PMing a bit with Aisling, and last I heard, she was agreeable to tagging along with Jessi as well. I know Vantine's got a flat in or near Jarvis End so she can enjoy the nightlife, so she might be coming along as well to transfer gear and other stuff to the Wasp Nest.
The Raven's the big question mark....
I shall move you all on tomorrow morning, unless Vantine or the Raven object for some reason - I don't think they will, but... I want to give them a chance to do so.
For ze record, I put a point into Linguistics at level up and learned Tengu. I wasn’t sure what I was going to take, initially, but circumstances just led me to Tengu...
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The only thing we PC’s can do in the upkeep phase is add or subtract from the treasury, right?
So if I’m understanding the Activity Phase correctly we can do two actions. One by default and one because we have a Strategist. Looking at the list of available activities, I think this first week the options that would do anything are: Earn Gold (Fushi Sisters), Gather Information (also Fushi Sisters), Recruit Supporters, Recruit Team. There are a bunch of other options but I think since the Ravens barely exist at this point they won’t do much.
I don’t know if I’m overlooking it or what, but I’m not seeing how many Activities a given Team can do in the Activity phase. I’m assuming only one per week?
So, we can gather information or earn gold with the Fushi Sister team; I think both are valid options and that we should do one of them.
We could recruit supporters but that costs gold. We’re close to rank 2 which would give us a bonus skill point and you all probably know my opinion on skill points by now.
At our current Silver Ravens rank, we can have a second team - I like Peddlers so’s we always have gold coming if we don’t have anything else going on.
And then it’s on to the Event Phase wherein our lovely GM has to make a bunch of rolls.
Thoughts?
Edit: I should have a gameplay post up tonight.
For ze record, I put a point into Linguistics at level up and learned Tengu. I wasn’t sure what I was going to take, initially, but circumstances just led me to Tengu...
Seems a good idea to pick up, yes, if only for the ability to understand what they're saying to one another.
The only thing we PC’s can do in the upkeep phase is add or subtract from the treasury, right?
Indeed.
So if I’m understanding the Activity Phase correctly we can do two actions. One by default and one because we have a Strategist. Looking at the list of available activities, I think this first week the options that would do anything are: Earn Gold (Fushi Sisters), Gather Information (also Fushi Sisters), Recruit Supporters, Recruit Team. There are a bunch of other options but I think since the Ravens barely exist at this point they won’t do much.
I don’t know if I’m overlooking it or what, but I’m not seeing how many Activities a given Team can do in the Activity phase. I’m assuming only one per week?
That is my assumption, yes. A given team can only perform one action per week, as that action takes up the majority of their time and effort.
So, we can gather information or earn gold with the Fushi Sister team; I think both are valid options and that we should do one of them.
We could recruit supporters but that costs gold. We’re close to rank 2 which would give us a bonus skill point and you all probably know my opinion on skill points by now.
At our current Silver Ravens rank, we can have a second team - I like Peddlers so’s we always have gold coming if we don’t have anything else going on.
Incidentally, if you speak to Laria, she has an idea for a mission that might get you a team without needing to spend the action to recruit them. That said, as the Fushi Sisters are a unique team, they don't count against the maximum teams. So you can, in fact, recruit two more teams.
And then it’s on to the Event Phase wherein our lovely GM has to make a bunch of rolls.
Just so.
The above all looks right by my reckoning. I actually forgot the Fushi Sisters were a bonus team and don't count against the max.
I'll second the Recruit Supporters and Recruit Team (peddlers) for our actions this week.
I forgot Jessibel's other downtime mission: Getting a regular (5-gp) copy made from the platinum Juliac signet ring we found in the livery so we can sell the original. I see that the Whitegate Market in the Greens is known for its jewelry (among other things), but I figure they might also be knowledgeable enough about Kintargo's nobility to wonder about the Juliac sigil, so I was thinking it'd be safer to find a different jeweler in the city (I assume they exist). I'll roll a Knowledge (local) check to see if anything comes to Jessi's mind.
Oh, yeah, she can find a jeweler in a, er, less reputable store, where they won't recognize the (extinct) Juliac family crest. It's possible that most Whitegate market smiths wouldn't recognize it either, but she's certain one in Jarvis End will not.
That said, she also recalls at the last moment that she doesn't need to bring the ring itself with her (as a platinum piece of jewelry, it's pretty noticeable), but just the sigil in question. Probably best to get a rubbing or drawing of the symbol, rather than attempt to bring the valuable ring with her.
If we sell everything in the Selling Fodder list for half price, that comes to 1138.75 GP total. Divided by 5, that’s 227.75 GP. We could get a fully charged wand. Less 750 for a wand (presumably CLW) is 388.75. Divided by five that’s 77.75 GP. We could all take 70 GP and put a total of 38.75 GP into the Silver Ravens fund bringing the fund total to 48.75 GP.
Edit: What is the availability of silver-type weapons in Kintargo? The Raven would like to pick up an Alchemical Silver dagger, normally 21 GP.
Like I said to... someone (maybe Nyxra, in a spoiler, I think) before, it's not an uncommon procedure to undertake, but it is the sort of thing that might raise eyebrows if you make it too obvious. Agents of the House of Thrune and the Church of Asmodeus are generally given a pass, but anyone else purchasing silver weapons gets a bit of an official side-eye, if they're noticed for it.
Not illegal, nor even too dangerous, but... something to be aware of. In short, it's not unavailable, nor is it especially costly, but it might best be done... carefully.
EDIT: also, the selling fodder is already half-price - at least, the things that have prices from books other than the AP. So you can just total them all, not dividing any.
Ah. 12.5 for the scroll should have tipped me off.
SO that’s 2277.5 total. Divided by five is 455.5. Less 750 for a wand first is 1527.5, divided by 5 equals 305.5. Maybe take 15.5 each for the Ravens fund for 290 GP each and 87.5 GP in the Raven fund.
Which, I guess, brings up the question regarding a party gold pool. Do we want to keep a separate gold pool for the PC’s or put everything extra into the Raven’s fund and withdraw as needed?
============
Is there a dealer of goods with a questionable reputation near the Devil’s Nursery (R7 on the Player’s Guide map)? The Raven is going to head out that way. He could sell the crossbow, the shortbow, and the scroll of Pass Without Trace to some mischievous troublemaker and buy from the same troublemaker an Alchemical Silver Dagger, a Sproing-Loaded Wrist Sheath, and an acid vial or two just in case. Maybe the same person he gets his iconic feather-handled daggers from, I dunno.
We should probably include the sale of the platinum ring now as well. Luckily, that divides evenly: 250 gp divided by 5 equals 50 gp each.
It'd probably be easy enough to get a rubbing of the sigil at the jeweler and sell the platinum ring at the same place.
More seriously, if everyone's gonna go with Jessi on her errands, so much the better. I'll get a post up tomorrow morning describing the new day, and, er... what's about to happen. There may be combat. There may not be. Probably better if there isn't, 'cause that sort of thing gets attention.
Oh yeah--we'll be having combat! I've wasted a year's worth of good dice rolls today. It will have to be paid for in blood.
Vantine will be splitting off to go to stay with her mother. It's only a few blocks away from the coffeehouse so she doesn't need to cross the river.
She'll be arranging the sale of Nan's stuff, and she needs to deliver news of Nan's death to her mother. She can meet up with everyone the next morning either at the coffeehouse or another nearby location since we need to be discreet about going to the coffeehouse.
Aha! It is the day following the clearing of the Wasp's Nest now - do you want to have her come along? (Jessi brought us to the following day. :P)
Tell me what you'd like to do, and whether you'd rather I put this in the discussion or gameplay thread in the future. You can also decide your focus beforehand, and possibly change it to Loyalty if you want to - it wouldn't change the results, but it might help your activities.
You'll also want to decide the manager for the Fushi sisters - they get a bonus to their activities based on their manager's Cha bonus. (Nyxra counts as having a Cha of 2 higher for this purpose).
[dice=Supporters Lost]2d4+1
RIP in peace bonus skill point =(
I mean, there's always the chance you get lucky with recruiting supporters! But yeah, that was a pretty awful set of rolls.
Since we lost all our supporters, I vote we Recruit Supporters and Recruit Team(Peddlers). I’m happy to have the Raven manage the sisters. It does seem thematically appropriate.
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Vantine is keeping the Harrow Deck for now so removing it from the sell pool. +250 GP from the ring makes for 2477.5. - 77.5 GP for the treasury = 2400. -750 for a wand of Cure Light Wounds = 1650. /5 = 330 GP Each.
I’m assuming we’re buying a wand of CLW. Vantine or Jessi should take the wand since Aisling’s hands will often be full.
The Raven and Vantine each have one of the potions of CLW. Aisling has the mace, which I assume she will have reforged ASAP. I think we can remove everything from the loot pile save for the Magical Page. Everything else is claimed or sold.
Someone from one of my other games that ended recently posted a pretty cool Excel spreadsheet for loot tracking. I’m playing around with it right now, might add it to this game. I can edit Excel on mobile, so we - or at least I- can help with loot tracking.
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For the purposes of record keeping, last night the Raven purchased:
1x Spring-Loaded Wrist Sheath (5GP)
1x Alchemical Silver Dagger (21 GP)
2x Acid Flask (20 GP)
3X LBS of meat(fish) for the doggos (1.8 GP)
1x Masterwork Buckler (155 GP)
Decided to go with a masterwork buckler instead of a Darkwood Heavy Shield. Saves 100 GP and the Raven won’t be using a shield or buckler at all come level 3. His AC will still be High for a light armor wearer.
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It's amazing to see how tactically players think. I mostly muddle my way through things blindly.
Got to admit, when I saw 4 posts in this thread when I woke up from my nap, I fully expected four slightly different versions of "Jessibel! What made you think that traipsing all over Kintargo in 3 feet of snow was a good idea??!!"
In her defense, I didn't realize the snow was that deep. In retrospect, she'd point out that "You'd think that much snow would keep the stray hell hounds indoors!"
Oh well....
I agree with the Raven's musings, and if he'd like to make the organization action rolls, I say go for it!
Yeah, the snow hit pretty hard... but honestly, I didn't realize how deep it was either. Keep in mind that this is not a shoveled path - those that are are closer to a few inches deep than nearly three feet.
Hey, at least it hasn't rained yet. Imagine shovelling all that slush to clear your driveway.
By hand, no less!
I'm a muddler for the most part, especially if it involves spreadsheets.
I'll third, or wherever we're with it, Raven's Rebellion suggestions.
Kintargo GM made me nervous about selling the Harrow deck so Vantine's keeping it for the moment at least.
Vantine can hold the CLW wand if Jessi doesn't want to. At this point in the game Vantine is probably the one most likely to be able to sacrifice a combat standard action in an emergency. Especially now that she has the Cackle hex she can do something very useful with a move action when she doesn't need it for running away or hiding.
I'll think about it a little more today, but I don't believe Vantine will be making any significant purchases. Maybe a 2nd vial of holy water and some alchemical stuff in case of a swarm? Otherwise she'll hold on to her money and wait until she can afford a Pearl of Power.
That is my assumption, yes. A given team can only perform one action per week, as that action takes up the majority of their time and effort.
Turns out I was just missing it.
Rebellion actions can be taken in any order, but each requires a qualified team to take that action, and once assigned, that team can’t take additional rebellion actions this phase.
Week 1 Action 1: Recruit Supporters
Cost: 10 GP.
Week 1 Action 2: Recruit Peddlers
Yes, indeed, you are correct.
EDIT:
Event Phase
No events this week.
I'll draw up a team of peddlers for you tomorrow.
I've updated the Silver Ravens Members with the Peddler Team, and added the rumors to a link on my profile, so it doesn't have to be accessed through Jessibel's. That said, if Jessi would like to continue keeping that up to date, I'd be greatly appreciative.
Hi all
I'm really sorry but i can't kep up with the rate you are all posting, expecially at weekends. It's great that you have momentum but I'm just logging on and seeing 25+ posts and I don't have anything to ad to that. I'm slowing you down and I want to stay in but I'm not sure how it's going to work.
Alright, there's at least two ways we can try to handle this. First, and I think perhaps best, is to deliberately slow down the rate of posting, so that you can more easily handle it. Second, and probably the worst outcome, would be for you to drop the game, which I don't think anyone wants.
I don't have any other ideas, but I'll definitely try to think through them for the next couple days, and if anyone else has ideas, I would love to hear them. I don't want to lose you, Aisling, and I'm sorry I've not been handling the posting speed better.
Thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it. I don't want to slow things down so people think they can't or shouldn't post! I am catchig up now in the gameply and will post something in a few minuts.
I've totally been where you are Aisling. I once left a fast posting game where I was the only player outside a time zone in Europe. Every morning I'd be looking at 20 to 30+ posts. I wasn't able to contribute to decision making or conversations and mostly spent my posts trying to figure out how to fit my character into scenes that were already over. There wasn't any point in it.
It's surprising this game has maintained the high posting rate for so long. From what I've seen in the past, lots of games start with everyone posting multiple times a day. But as the excitement from the newness wears off, the rate slows down to once a day or a little less.
So far I'm been able to more or less keep up here, but it's circumstantial rather than sustainable. Things won't last as they are, and the time will come when multiple posts per day won't be possible for me.
Of the healthiest long-running games I've seen the posting rate is somewhere on a scale between daily posts - mostly daily posts - evert other day posts. Faster leads to burnout, slower loses too much momentum.
Could we aim for a daily post with a predictable update cycle where the GM moves things forward once per day?
Could we aim for a daily post with a predictable update cycle where the GM moves things forward once per day?
That's fair. I've been more or less trying to do that, but it seems I've been mostly unsuccessful. I'll definitely be better about it now than I have in the past, because I've got another game to run and hopefully diffuse some of my, uh... enthusiasm.
I love the enthusiasm! I don't want to be the cause of the game slowing down or losing what's keeping it going.
@Vantine - thanks for your post, I appreciate your perspective :)
I, for one, am most interested in seeing how the story plays out for our LG teammate.
I’m also just a huge fan of a good old fashioned Iomedian Battle Cleric.
So, as a question, because if it's not specific, I probably won't get it... should I reply now? What counts as "moving on" for everyone, because it's probably different from how I think of it.
A lot of the games on these forums that have a one-or-more posts per day expectation seem to be more lax on weekends--usually at least one post over the two days. Maybe we could try that.
I'm really enjoying the speed of this game. That said, I really, really enjoy having Aisling and her player as part of it. If a slowdown will keep her as a part of the party, I can adjust.
That said, I'm trying to rush things a bit currently because Jessibel seems to have so much more on her plate for this downtime than the other PCs. Some of her 'quests' can probably be lumped into a single post (selling the platinum ring and ordering a basic version, getting gear at her apartment, buying or ordering her Magpie Mask so she can be the Raven's sidekick [Yeah--I forgot about that when I made her original list!]), but a couple I'd like to RP at least a little. The visit with her friend Carlissa Solstine's important because Carli's a major NPC in her life now (and would likely be Jessi's replacement PC should the bard die), and selling the alabaster holy symbol to the Abadarans gives her a chance to give a meaningful apology for the little incident in her backstory where she and a Sarini friend painted pentagrams on their church (and Aisling was Jessi's lawyer). Jessi's becoming a silver balladeer which requires a good alignment, so I'm trying to show some of that in-game (saving damsels from hell hounds, the whole apology bit) rather than just adding "Good" to her alignment slot on her character sheet.
It doesn't help that Jessi's hyperactive, either; I'll try to tone her down once she gets this downtime stuff out of her system.
So, as a question, because if it's not specific, I probably won't get it... should I reply now? What counts as "moving on" for everyone, because it's probably different from how I think of it.
I would say: Yes--move the game on as soon as you're able. Maybe everyone will reply quickly and you'll be able to move on again, or maybe someone will post something like a question or an action that doesn't involve the whole party, so you can deal with those incidences as they come up. Just try not to go overboard or let hyperactive players (like me) go overboard either.
I believe the solution is for everyone to blame Jessi. She must be shamed.