Kingmaker

Game Master Rackal28

Feel free to take 10 poly!

As for interesting scenes... we would have to invent them xD

Hm, it depends on the PCs then, and their interactions, etc.

Can always have some fun with player interactions!

But yeah it was more to ask if you guys wanted more talking amongst yourself or skipping to the action xP

I wouldn't do this all the time just here and between books really, other than that your gonna have to rp travel so consider this a one time only offer~

Also I'm enjoying Meneas a lot. He's vastly gentler than I thought he would be and I'm kinda digging it?

Yeah, he's only neutral because he's, uh, kind of merciless to enemies. Which is to say he, uh, might execute bandits rather than take prisoners. Otherwise he'd be neutral good!

I mean, if you took them prisoner their sentence would be death anyways sooo you're kinda just cutting to the chase ;D

Also I'm in negotiation with my wife to get a group art of your characters <3

With your permission of course

Also I'm buying!

Maybe we could do a 1st evening on the road scene? I wouldn't want to string things out too much. I'm also fine with cutting to Oleg's straightaway.

I really like roleplaying travel and "campfire scenes" (I just think they're opportunities for interesting character studies), but my availability today's a bit wonky, so maybe I shouldn't take part in the vote.

So, sounds like the vote is generally leaning towards playing out the travel so looks like you guys are in for a long trip, it's five days by foot btw which is the speed you'll be traveling at since many of you don't have a mount. :P

I'll give you guys a few hours to figure out if you want to find a way to get horses or not and then I'll post moving us on our way to the first day of travel <3

Wisp's not much of a rider, nor much of an animal handler—maybe a well-trained pony, but otherwise, maybe she can share a mount with someone? She and Brental both have a 20 foot speed. But I'm not sure we can afford to get even one extra horse. She can ride with someone, or on the holy mastodon, assuming it will put up with her.

The mastodon doesn't have a riding saddle but could probably manage to hold Wisp no problem! If Brental removes his armor we can move at a faster clip. Another busy day at work, so I'll catch up soon.

Wisp is always happy to serve as the poor adventurer's Leadership feat and help Brental get his armor back on, if we wind up in a pinch. :P

Moving right along! Feel free to continue any conversations you were having as though they progressed naturally throughout the day before you arrived at the village <3

Hope I set the atmosphere right, this is my first nature scene and I was a bit nervous I wouldn't paint it well xD

I think the atmosphere is lovely, and in general I've really enjoyed the ways you choose to set the scenes and describe the locations so far. That said, I am going to bed. I should be more available tomorrow than I was today, but maybe not in the morning.

Awww thank you <3

Understood! Get some rest and take care~

It's probably a good thing I went with the gecko skull, and not the deer skull like I considered. As a sidenote, the reason Wisp wears it is twofold: As armor, and to hide her hair. Nobody's seem more than a stray lock so far.

Also, I'm really glad we're keeping tracks of dates in this game. It's one of those fun little things in PbP I enjoy doing. It's fun to look back and tell the party it's been nine months since they started adventuring. Wisp is keeping a running calendar on her profile to help with tracking future buffs and the like, and also because I find it fun. :)

I actually love keeping track of time, date, weather, moon cycles, holidays, etc. Don't know why it's just a lot of fun to me!

Also I'm officially asking if I can get their permission for my wife to draw their characters!

I negotiated her down to $350 and yes, I'm paying for it so no worries there <3

Also yay! We got our first natural one of the game! uncorks the champagne

We're getting the bad rolls out where we won't be horribly maimed or killed for failures.

That you know of.

Old Man Jenkins here is an unstoppable killing machine. One wrong move and I'm predicting a TPK

My goodness, Rackal, many thanks to you and your wife! I would be honored for a drawing of my little weirdos.

Old Man Jenkins might be a Level 20 Commoner who has perfected the art of clobbering with his tea kettle. We must tread lightly. Maybe we should recruit him to help us fight the Stag Lord.

I'm incredibly partial to Taking 10. The d20 and I have a rocky relationship. I save my natural ones for combat, I guess. ;)

Also, dang, Rackal, that's incredible! Consider my permission given, though a part of me thinks you might want to wait a bit until the game's running steady—just because I don't want you to feel like you waited your money if, goodness forbid, we lose a player before the first encounter.

Old Man Jenkins has Catch Off-Guard and the full chain of Shikigami Style feats. His tea kettle hits as hard as it gets!

And GM: I am humbled and awed with the idea! I can barely wait for the final result. I'm always amazed with the the talent of the artists, while I can't even draw a flower without looking childish.

That's awesome Rachal! Thank you, and tell your wife thanks for us!

Signy might have to camp. Enjoy those beds. :p

*logs back in to see that Signy rolled another Diplomacy check*

*looks at the result*

NOOOOOOOOOOO!

*to be read in full Michael Scott*

I agonized so much over, "Should I aid? It's probably more sporting to aid, since it's Signy's moment. But a 13 might still be 5 below the DC..."

And then I rolled a 13 anyways. Welp! This is why I always Take 10. ;P

I guess I should aid, too... I think two people can aid a Diplomacy check?

There's no formal limit on most skills being aided, so it's the GM's call.

Huh. I must be thinking of Disable Device or something, which I saw someone run with only one aid another. Oh well.

This party's off to a pretty rocky start, isn't it? XD

For the record, I think it's a lot of fun. Wisp's almost-too-eager friendliness being met with mistrust from Meneas and prickliness from Signy is challenging her in an interesting way—every attempt she makes to wriggle into people's good graces just seems to tick them off more. She's confounded. It's not the dynamic I expected, but I'm coming to really enjoy it. It might take some time for these partymembers to begin to trust each other, and that's kind of an unusual dynamic for a D&D party to have starting out.

It's possible that I'm simply bad at roleplaying a gregarious character and everything I write that's meant to sound agreeable and pleasant comes off badly, of course. In that case, I will simply claim that it's entirely intentional and take credit for roleplaying her character flaw so convincingly. ;P

Ah, perhaps Wisp is not familiar then with the human social institution of s~~# talking. It is fundamentally an exercise in creating 'we - they' distinctions. If Signy wasn't confident Wisp is in the 'we' grouping with her, she would not talk s!@! about the watchman because she wouldn't be sure what she said would receive sympathy, or be kept in confidence.

It's main function is to reduce social distance between participants, bonding, by increasing social distance between themselves and some other(s), the 'they' getting slagged on.

i.e. Signy would not be talking s#*% about the watchman if she didn't believe Wisp (and the others) would understand her grievance (like-mindedness and empathy), and would not side with the watchman over her (trustworthiness, solidarity).

Hmm. I had to think about that a little. Maybe the issue may be that Wisp isn't used to dealing with teenagers. Combine that with it having been twenty years since she was among her much rougher family, and she's probably grown unaccustomed to so much backtalk directed at her. She's used to getting what she wants from people. "I'm being nice to you, so you have to like me. That's how this works."

Finding Wisp's character is tricky, and I do feel like I keep misreading Signy's lines a little. It's a work in progress.

So the way I run diplomacy is that the person's attitude only increases towards the person who made the actual check or the person who made the check and the person who assisted them if the assistant succeeded on their aid another check.

In other words Old Man Jenkins is indifferent towards some of you, unfriendly towards most of you, and approaching outright hostility towards one of you due to the resulting diplomacy checks.

Also Kobold don't worry about doing this whole art thing too early, I only booked it now because she has a queue lined up already so it's unlikely she'll even be able to start on the art until a few months from now.

Also, sorry all my NPCs are so rude so far xD this is just a very unfriendly town.

Loving the dynamics emerging amongst the PCs already~

As a note, Wisp's gnome mischief is meant to be a little gesture of solidarity with Signy, not a derailing. If she can't do it without it being obvious what she's doing, she won't try it. Or we can let it stand and let her get into trouble, but, well, I don't want to disrupt things too much for our party's first day on the road. :P

My wife and I laughed so we decided no roll was necessary xD

Also enjoy your stay at the Two Beavers ;D

I have finally settled on Meneas' appearance beneath his hood, but also on the fact that his mother is of Kellid descent - one of the lost clans of Brevoy. Culturally, he's pretty much Brevan, though - he doesn't even know Hallit.

Oh, very interesting! Can't wait til we get our first face reveal! :D

Wisp and Meneas are in a low-stakes game of chicken over who takes their headpiece off first.

You guys cant sleep with a hood/helmet on ;P

Meneas just pulls the covers up over his face. :P

BTW: I use Icelandic for Skald, which admittedly is unlikely to come up much again if at all.

I use Finnish for verbal components when spell casting. It strikes the right balance between being extremely alien while also still being possible to more or less sound out.

For Hallit, I was looking for languages of cultures tied to animism and shamanism, and I picked and chose Irish and Filipino words to find the right feel. Russian makes sense, too. Hallit's a hard language to place—the Kellids are basically the "Dark Ages/caveman people", with all their mammoths and Conans the Barbarians, and it's difficult to find a real-world language that wouldn't inadvertently insult one group or another.

Clever devil... I'll get you some day Meneas >.>'

Also prices are set the way they are because the lovely people at Paizo who I absolutely adore... have an economy that makes no sense. In my game one copper equals $1 so her prices are actually relatively cheap.

And farmers make 30 gold a month, they could afford this place, just not all the time, like how a low income person like myself wouldn't eat out all the time cause it gets expensive.

You couldn't have possibly known that though so don't worry about it. I should have explained that from the get go. My bad I did a dumb again >.>'

It makes sense for Signy to be on edge, and to be used to the prices of the Caydenites—who might, for all we know, sell hospitality at cost, being good-aligned and not especially capitalist.

Ah, yeah the monetary system in Pathfinder is completely bonkers.

The only other case where pocket change levels of money have come up for me is in War for the Crown. There's a degree of fiefdom management in it eventually and we pay salaries. 8 or 10 gp per month is a good salary in that game. Like good enough for people regard us as generous.

I try pretty hard to not consider the implications of the economies in d20 settings, because they rarely make any sense at all.

When in doubt, I go off of two things: The standard prices of trade goods, and the Profession earnings. A generally capable +5 Profession (indicating a +2 Wisdom and a rank in the skill) earns you a standard of 7.5 gp a week, or about 33 gp per month. A pig costs 3 gp, a chicken costs 2 cp, and a hunk of cheese costs 1 sp. That's how I sort of get a sense for things.

Admittedly, my system has issues too when Pathfinder tries to tell me a simple copper ring is worth 15 gold... $1500 in my world xD

At one point when I first started playing Pathfinder I sat down to try to understand the economy. After my twentieth spreadsheet, I gave up.

I think they fixed some of the issues in 2E, but they more just made it a silver-based economy instead of a gold-based economy.

Re: games, we could either actually attempt to roll or else abstract through some conversation. Preferences?

I'm open to either. If we're both neutral, I say roll, purely because rolling is a good way to break up that kind of passivity. :P