Kingmaker

Game Master Rackal28

Let's play a game! I figured at least a round of this to spark our "campfire chat". If we want to do any other rounds, someone else can be the dealer and request their own stakes. And hey, maybe Oksana comes over for a round, or the drunk face-down at the bar wakes up.

I'll try to respond tomorrow! I've been swamped with wrapping up a Recruitment thread (augh, Rackal, now I know how you felt with choosing your players) and I don't want to half-ass a reply.

EDIT: Actually, I want to be sure I understand the game's rules, so I'll leave Wisp's first roll and wait for Brental's clarification.

Choosing players is stressssss. I felt so bad for so many good players left behind >.>'

Good luck Kobold! I do not envy you xP

Just wanted to 1) sleep and 2) give everyone a chance to chime in.

Official rules
here.

For future reference, you can use this code: (url=Link Here)General Text(/url) to set up links, poly. Just use brackets instead of parentheses, and you'll be golden.

I think this is a lovely idea, by the way, Brental.

Thanks, Meneas. I was just grabbing it quickly.

Amusingly, the Lucky Drunk doesn't actually give the Luck domain. A few other unexpected ones do, like Shelyn and Kurgess, but Cayden doesn't.

Well Kurgess takes after his mom in that respect.

The Oppara Song lyrics are totally ripped off from a real song, lightly edited for fit and to remove anachronisms. I reserve the right to totally rip off other songs in the future as well. :)

Whoops! Well, there I go getting my gods mixed up. Wisp is more into the morbid gods, anyways. Not that she'll admit to a mistake! :P

Hey Rackal--do you want to go through Brental and Wisp calling and interceding with the horses, or handwave it and say that we're on our way with mounts?

If you're going to cast spells I would prefer that you do so in game. Casting spells is super fun and flavorful after all :)

Part of the fun with Wisp and Brental both being druids is that they have extremely distinct druidic styles. Wisp is a Charisma-based druid, all about songs and sweetness, cajoling the earth, enticing the horses, luring the wind, befriending the trees. Perhaps occasionally seducing the river. Brental is much more in control than Wisp is, though obviously still a friend to the natural world in a different sense.

Of course, when Wisp rolls a 5, it doesn't much matter how pretty her voice is, does it? :P

Aw, I thought 10 was enough to aid :( Probably not enough to push us over the top, though...

Assuming 10 was enough to Aid, we didn't make them any madder at us—an 11 doesn't decrease their attitudes from Indifferent. Not to metagame, but the DC to influence an Indifferent horse is a fairly reliable 13. So Wisp is going to cast speak with animals and attempt Diplomacy properly, if Rackal will allow that. Otherwise, we'll walk.

Rackal shall allow diplomacy~

Turns out all Wisp needed was for Brental to believe in her. It warms one's shriveled blackened little gnome heart. <3

Also, I am stealing my "animalspeak" format from Aubrey's Eberron Campaign, though I'm sure they stole it from someone else in their own right. I like the idea of animals speaking in much simpler, universal terms, making for a clunky translation that feels almost like programming. I came this close to actually using IF/AND/OR language.

Huzzah for higher checks! Just let us know if you want anything else specific, or if Wisp's check was adequate for now. I can do another wild empathy, or else handle animal, to seal the deal.

I think we should review whether certain things do or don't require GM input before acting on them. I'd suggest if the subject in question is a matter of fluff RP or inter-party chatting, players should make the call in order to keep things moving.

For example, Signy asked whether the horses have names. There's really no reason to pause and wait for Rackal to make a call on this. Whether they do or not will have no effect on game outcomes. Wisp should just decide and go with it.

If players act with autonomy in cases where there are no effects on game outcomes, we can keep things moving rather than waiting for a trivial decision from the GM. It relives some of the GM's burden, lets us improvise a little bit (which can actually produce useful outcomes for the GM), and doesn't create circumstances where players have to weight posting banter for fear everything must stop after they do.

Signy question was meant to be a throwaway piece of conversation, not halt everything until her question could be officially resolved. If that's a question I need to weigh whenever I post for Signy, she will inevitably become a quieter character.

Thoughts?

I generally agree, but there's not actually anything I feel like I can do here. We don't know for sure the horses are befriended yet. Yes, I got a high roll, but the GM gets to set the terms of a success, and this is a fairly un-adjudicated situation rules-wise (i.e. "what can a Diplomacy check accomplish?"). I feel uncomfortable trying to move ahead on things.

I apologize if I seem like I'm being obtuse or frustrating. I didn't mean to hold things up. I'm trying to tread carefully because the game has just started and we don't have an established norm for "declaring success" yet. Once we've established one, I will be much more flippant in this kind of situation.

I promise your question isn't the delay here. I wasn't aware anyone was waiting on it to continue roleplaying.

That's fair. This does seem like fluff rather than anything significant, so I would support moving on. The main reason I punted it to Wisp was because of the nature of the spell.

That being said, I know I've been busy at work today, especially the last few hours. I was able to post a bit more earlier because y'all were responding during a break.

Sorry my posting hours are weird so you all have to wait for me usually >.>'

Um yeah if you guys feel it would be better please do just move forward if unimportant questions like horse names are asked, I wont mind if you make some up.

Understood!

For a group that's been so excited to get horses, gosh, we sure don't have a lot of points in Ride, do we? XD

I would describe Signy as not all that excited because she might break her neck, and also excited because she's never ridden a horses before and how cool is this?! But which one of the two is stronger changes from moment to moment

Oddly, one of the criticisms of the Kingmaker CRPG was that you didn't get horses - not for speed of travel, but because the non-CRPG version lets you access 'em early to help carry loot back and forth from the wilderness to civilization. The CRPG has you frequently being overburdened.

I'm a 4+Int non-human 10 Int character who has a lot of skill bases to cover and isn't planning to ride his animal companion until Level 7 ^_^ I figured I'd pick up some ranks in Ride later.

Thankfully typical riding conditions don't require checks, so we should be good unless combat happens.

*looks nervously at the GM*

Oops. I misread Meneas' ability - he can't actually up the speed of horses until he's 9th level. My mistake.

Hey, in the future, would it be okay if you guys made a list of who keeps watch at what times during the night and I can roll the perception checks for you so that way we don't have to wait for everyone to post every night you guys are roughing it outdoors?

I feel that would help keep us moving.

Seems logical, yeah.

Sounds good Rackal.

Agreed, that would keep us moving.

It looks like the other four already took their watches. Brental was going to take at least one of the watches, but will grab a fifth watch if needed. He has Perception +7 with Darkvision, and his companion has Perception +7 with Darkvision, Low-light vision, and scent.

Man, I feel like... yes, this is true: Meneas is the only one without enhanced senses - he's got no low-light or darkvision. Even Veil has low-light and scent!

I should've dropped skilled for Fey Thoughts, Fey Magic, and Low-Light Vision... I really should've, actually.

Sounds good to me! Wisp will always take 10pm-midnight. She uses that time to finish up her potions and regain her spells.

Meneas, not having any enhanced vision, should probably be the latest/earliest watch, if he's going to be on watch at all.

Which would be:
Wylhia 10-12
Signy? 12-2
Lorna 2-4
Brental 4-6
Meneas 6-8?

That works. The dimdweller thing just works for Lorna (thematically) and ends up having some mechanical advantages, though losing the skill point hurts my heart.

What language (or language style) should we use for Druidic, do you think? I like to run Druidic as an almost nonverbal tongue, being so linked with the natural world and context around the speaker that it's almost impossible for a non-druid/shifter to understand. That said, I'm also fine picking a real-world language and sticking with it.

Yeah I always imagined it to be people imitiating animal sounds and motions, maybe throw in some wind/leaves/waves/rivers just for funsies

I started translating from a few things on Google Translate until I realized that I liked the way that a lot of Slavic languages sounded. This most recent bit was Slovak with the diacritics stripped out. Officially, speakers of Elven an Sylvan occasionally understand a few words of Druidic, so I do believe that there are at least some verbal components. I don't really want to get too conlangy with it, but I can envision that the language is syntactically complex, semantically dense, at least bimodal with both verbal and manual components, and with a complex system of tones and honorifics that change meaning drastically as you go. But I'm happy to have such an idea floating in the background while we focus on just getting across the idea that we're speaking in a language that the others don't understand.

I also sort of liked the idea that different druids speak it differently, but universally understand each other because it's all coming from the same basic knowledge of the language. That does give us some flexibility here. :P

Oh there's almost certainly different dialects of Druidic. And dialects aren't always mutually intelligible. But we presumably understand each other's dialects reasonably well.

Linguist-me is coming out to play.

Wisp: *speaks in bee buzzing*

Brental: *responds in earthquake*

DM: "Seems legit."

I forgot to add the +2 to Perception Meneas gets while on a road! Well, it wouldn't have made much of a difference. I think I'd've been at a total of 11, anyways. Also to Survival... oops. Well, I'll try to be better about that in the future.

I just realized I've hit the point where, between the constant tension between PCs and the guarded/unfriendly NPC interactions, I think I might actually trust this aggressively nice lady less than if she'd told us to go eat rocks. :P

I'll try to respond in the morning! It's late for me. Or, well, early, I guess.

That's very fair XD I think I can only blame myself for poisoning the pot like that >.>'

Sleep tight Kobold! I look forward being very active myself over the next two days so the campaign should really step it up here!

I'm so excited!

I'm sure she's perfectly friendly! Certainly this isn't an ambush by the bandits waiting to happen.

Mind you, there's an interesting idea... something to consider if I ever run Kingmaker for myself.

Figures—the one PC who decides to try Aiding on Diplomacy is the one who gets a 25.

Funny, I don't feel any tension at all between the PCs.

Honestly, I do? It seems like almost every conversation the PCs have had has featured at least one character either pointedly ignoring someone, holding back what they really want to say, arguing, or being annoyed with someone else. It might just be my perception, but it's really hard to say it's all in my head. I don't actually really enjoy the dynamic, so I'd love if it was. It's a rough energy to start out with. That joke was sort of my clumsy attempt to broach the subject.

There's a reason Wisp has morphed so fast from "mysterious soft-spoken but friendly gnome who sometimes makes mean jokes" to "compulsive placator with some secrets who's just trying to get people to talk to her". I don't feel comfortable running with the former concept in this party. Honestly, roleplaying with this party is kind of stressful, and I sure don't like having to voice these feelings as the lone "problem player", but there it is.

I... I am not feeling it either, my friend. I actually see this game as being very active on the RP side, but I didn't really feel any tension. Not between the characters and not between the players... I'm not sure what I am missing? I had been in games with *so* much drama here in the forums, that this one here actually feels quite light. Is there anything I could do to make you feel better?