NostalgiaCon Fate GM Thread (Inactive)

Game Master Dennis Muldoon

We're 100% on Time thanks to Exocist and Silbeg!

♫ Let's seal the Time Rift again! ♫
It's just a jump to the left...

I posted the Time Rift condition at your tables. We'll transition to Part 3 in 7-8 hours, depending on when I'm done with work this evening. Please wait for me to post the transition before beginning Part 3.

"After 5 minutes have passed, or when all Table GMs are ready to move on, the House GM should read or paraphrase the following."

— I'm unsure how this is supposed to translate into real-time here and doesn't;t seem to be on the timeline. 5 minuets in-game = 1 day of PbP, right? So are we going to have a day of downtime between starting Part 3 and starting Event 1?

5 minuets = 1/4 of a symphony

But I was also wondering about that transition. The pause is for tables to settle after an intermission, and is really not needed in PBP.

It may be needed if people want to prep other spells for the day? That was all I could think of.

I've just mashed those two sections together, slightly tweaking the start of the second section to say "After a night’s rest, Venture-Captain Jirneau gathers the Pathfinders together once more, just as Ashasar and a team of scouts stride into camp..."

I figure, once I post that you should give your players a chance to make daily preparations, account for effects of an overnight rest, etc.

My table just closed the rift earning a supplies success at the eleventh hour!

This is where the ninjas from UHF leap out and scream, "Supplies!"

This is where the ninjas from UHF leap out and scream, "Supplies!"

I love that movie!

Posted both the transition to Part 3 and the Supplies Discovered (which came in at the very last minute).

Supplies Discovered also corresponds to a bonus for the Starfinder House when that special runs, so well done!

Checking on a couple more things.

First, these are missions not encounters so all the boosts that say "during the next encounter" do not activate till the "next encounter" in part 4. That is how I am interpreting it (else all the boosts are pointless). Let me know if that is, for some reason, incorrect.

Second, Supplies Found says:

Couriers dispatch the useful equipment discovered in the ruins to the Pathfinders. Each PC may select one consumable they’ve used this mission; they gain one additional consumable of the same kind and level.

Few of my PCs have used any of their consumables (one person used a scroll). Do PCs who have used no consumables on this mission get no supplies?

Using that definition for encounter is fine.

Given the strange timing of when that bonus came in, I'm fine with you extending the Supplies Found bonus to one consumable they used at any point in Part 2. In general, though, the purpose is to replace a spent consumable. If they haven't spent any then they only get the warm, fuzzy feeling of helping the future Starfinder house.

As a reminder, we are now "3 hours" in, so you should have assigned 3 hero points to players.

Reminding myself as much as anyone else!

One more coming, probably at the break between parts 3&4, though technically that would be early, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think that's reasonable. That gives them a chance to use it in Part 4.

And we're back! Given the <relatively> short duration of that outage (anyone else remember the two-week crash during a PbP special a few years ago?), I'm going to delay the decision on whether or not to add more time to this portion of the timeline until I see how successes are shaping up. If we're going to end this section early because of successes anyway, then we probably won't mess with the timeline. If we're coming up toward the end and it's going to be close, we may add a day to make up for lost time.

Pepperidge Farm remembers

It was brutal. I think some tables moved to discord for the time being and after that, it became semi-normal practice for a while to get everyone's discord handle just in case.

Heh. I remember doing daily updates when the special was down to all the GMs. I think everyone got sick of me by the end! Glad we're back!

Small question: any estimation when we'll do the Event 2 of Part 3?

I thought we did the three events in sequence.. finish event #1, then do event #2. The PCs can choose which aid mission(s) to do

Nope, we have to wait until all the rifts are sealed. Dennis has to announce it, which means that tables that finished sealing their own rifts should start another round so that we can move to Event #2.

Can PCs heal up between events? Doesn't seem to say anything, I am assuming "yes" unless someone tells me otherwise. At least 10 min rest.

Also, only three tables have reported Rift successes so far. If any of you have sealed your rifts already, report them!

We're moving on to a second rift. I have been liberal with botting after round 2 and website downtime.

Yep, I moved on to a second rift as well.

I made the same mistake of having Heraxia appear.

I ‘fixed it’ by having the rift burst the seams and Heraxia disappear mid-sentence. They are back to clearing away rifts.

As for healing, I don’t think there is any problems with a group moving back out of reach of the rift to heal. Anyone who has no good skills for closing it might also want to move out of the area. My reading is people can move far enough aware to not be exposed to the cold damage.

I wouldn’t expect the sealing of the rift to take 10 minutes, so it would be a single chance to heal using Medicine skill, plus any Battle Medicine.

I thought we did the three events in sequence.. finish event #1, then do event #2. The PCs can choose which aid mission(s) to do

Yes, I misread/misremembered

If the House GM has not yet announced that the time rift has been sealed, the party can move to another part of the rift and attempt to further close it by running the event again. This could allow the table to submit multiple successes for the House.

Our group got our second Rift success. Other GMs, do you think you are close to closing on this? I am trying to decide if I need to start a third round of Rift sealing or not to help us move to Event 2. We are currently at 8 of the 13 successes required.

Backing up Fi's table for next few days

Fi's table is 11/12 atm. Should be able to get it today. Similarly interested if worthwhile to start another round.

One more success at my table and we c lose a rift. Hoping someone posts this morning.

Silbeg's table is 7/12 on second rift.

I am hoping we don't need to move to a third. It's getting a little mechanically tedious.

That is kind of why I did not go into a third round -- that and I don't want my table continuing to take damage and spend hero points. So that sounds like we have 4 successes coming in soon, since Bret was close the last time I checked. I'll wait.

Same we are one success away. My group was slow on coming back after the outage.

I need one more set of checks on my table, likely will have it today. They are 3 short of closure.

That is kind of why I did not go into a third round -- that and I don't want my table continuing to take damage and spend hero points. So that sounds like we have 4 successes coming in soon, since Bret was close the last time I checked. I'll wait.

Yes I have players spending hero points on the second time through the event. I am honestly going to be a little extra generous re-upping them this part, as they are using valuable resources to do extra work thanks to the site outage.

That is a good idea.

Just checking, but we do need to wait for instructions to begin Event #2?

Yep. We are waiting for the announcement that we have reached 13 rift successes. We are currently at 11 of the 13 required, and several GMs are one post away from achieving that status.

If the House GM has not yet announced that the time rift has been sealed, the party can move to another part of the rift and attempt to further close it by running the event again. This could allow the table to submit multiple successes for the House.

Don’t start any more rounds of closing the rift. We have our required successes.

Huzzah!

Do the PC's only get the two attempts at a skill check per aid mission? That is the way I am reading it but with having to obtain double the amount of players in successes that seems like a potential for a lot of failures.

I think that's the point. Everyone gets 2 tries. Otherwise, with no repercussions like Event 1, there's no way to fail them. You just roll dice until the success it met. At a live table, that would be especially trivial.

Thanks! Yup that is the way I was reading it as well. Wanting to make sure I didn't miss a small sentence tucked away somewhere that said to try again.

If the total number of Repair Points is equal to or greater than the number of PCs, the PCs repair the stasis pod.

It looks to me like you don’t need 2x the number of PCs on Event 2 missions. It looks like only closing the rift has the 2x number of PCs requirement.

If the total number of Repair Points is equal to or greater than the number of PCs, the PCs repair the stasis pod.

All three of the Aid missions say total greater or equal.

Each PC may make up to two skill checks. There is a standard list of appropriate skills but the GM is given permission to allow other solutions.

I’ve been running it that once the group has enough successes, call it done and move to the next Aid mission.

2 rounds of checks to get <# of PCs> successes is a pretty common construction in PFS scenarios.

At least that is the case at 5-8?

Fi's table has reported 3 aid success. Should we put on the breaks until part 4 or keep going? The pdf doesn't seem to be the most clear on repeating-

"The PCs should begin
with an aid mission of their choice. Upon completing it, they can move on to another aid mission."

It seems to me like the intention is that they do each one once, since there isn't an explicit repeatability callout like there is in Part 4.

As for timing, I think I will go ahead and give us an extra day to make up for the day we missed. We were originally scheduled to move to Part 4 in about 20 hours. I'm instead going to give the 5-minute/1-day warning at that time, then move us to Part 4 a day later.

My table is done. 2 successes and one fail (the skills just didn't line up for one of the encounters)

My table has only one aid mission left. They nearly missed moving the pod, it was down to the last skill check to get the last success.