GM Bret’s Outpost V Lodge of the Living God (Inactive)

Game Master BretI

Alright, I could see a GM ruling that way. I consider that text to be fluff, not requirements. Back to the hand waving.

I don’t mind if you treat it as a requirement because it makes sense in story, but I am not going to treat it as one. There is enough project management in this scenario as it is.

I was misinterpreting the requirements as we just needed one person in the overall task, not per subteam.

Revised plan sounds solid to me.

Alright, it sounds like you have a plan. Please post it in gameplay.

Please make it clear what each task is (preferably using the exact task name), which PC is leading the team followed by the NPC or PCs helping, and a skill check if needed.

As a group, decide if you are alright with one person just posting everything and Botting the rolls or if you want each team lead to do the rolls. If you are allowing Botting, I would like each player to state under what conditions the person Botting can use a hero point — such as only on a crit failure or on any failure.

You do have time in the mornings and night to do roleplay with any of the NPCs. Just realize that for this scenario the only way to change the attitude of an NPC villager is via the downtime activity “Talk to Locals”.

I will also repeat something I said before, if you have any NPC on a work team for something that is not free, it costs 3gp regardless of if it is one NPC or three NPCs. There is no advantage to having less than a full crew if you have NPCs on it.

Right, I think we should make sure to fill out the team for you Khaul. If you fail the check it will end up doing 2 days of progress instead of 4, so then one of either you or Vinny can fail the check and still succeed.

At first I was thinking there wouldn't be a reason to use more people than person-days of labor, but then I noticed we still make progress on a failure.

That is a good point! Let's do that!

I would like to spend some time 'Speaking to locals' in the next couple of days.

When there are multiple teams working on a site, do they each make a skill check, or just the main one? Actually given we need to have skills in each team, I'm guessing we each do it, so it certainly makes sense to have a full team, so if one of us makes it and the other doesn't we have th most improvement possible.

They each make their own skill checks. Each team is resolved independently and the results are then accumulated.

Although I also want to speak to locals, let's at least get the major cleaning done so that the crafters can craft. I don't want them held up in their projects.

BTW, I am really loving the quality of everyone's posts in this game. Reading all your well-crafted words is a constant delight!

Thanks Tess, its been a pleasure reading your posts (and everyone elses!) as well.

GM, what day of the week is it? Unless it looks like we're behind schedule, I think Faerinaa is going to suggest we take Sunday off as the traditional day of rest and spend it socializing with the townsfolk (mechanically, have everyone do Speaking to Locals as their activity)

You want Mask Lumley of the Third Step to give a sermon about sloth? You know he is unfriendly to your group. Given the way he set up the first service, it would be reasonable to think he is looking for ways to make you look bad without directly impeding the project.

1. Moonday: Generally a work day with some religions holding ceremonies at night.
2. Toilday: A work day.
3. Wealday: A work day.
4. Oathday: A work day on which it is often considered advantageous to sign contracts and oaths.
5. Fireday: A work day that is most often the market day.
6. Starday: A work day.
7. Sunday: Generally a day of rest and one devoted to religious observances.

Note that outside religions are not allowed in Razmiran. They may not treat Sunday the same way as other areas.

1d7 ⇒ 3

Guess it is Wealday.

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Looks like we still need Bastian to post what he is doing. Will update then.

Trying to get my head around what is needed from Bastian on day 2. Any advice welcome.

Trying to get my head around what is needed from Bastian on day 2. Any advice welcome.

A crew on either Task: Clean the Fort (Great Hall) or Task: Clean the Fort (Barracks) would allow that activity to complete and neither activity requires a skill check.

So working on the Great Hall with Sylvina, Bessama and Gerlind. That gives him opportunity to talk to them. Thanks :)

WORK CREWS

So... let's talk about work crews.

THE TOXIC TRIO

I've decided that we may be best off sequestering the 'toxic trio' of Mask Lumley, Benyan and Gerlind to their own work detail, and then trading off which one of us gets stuck with them. Tess really does not like them, and really feels disinclined to give those three any paid work for the moment. If any of the crafters disagree and want to take a turn with the toxic trio, that's fine. But for the moment, I am thinking that Bastion and I trade off who gets them. Once we get past clearing the cleaning hurdles, Bastian and I can take a break to be socialites, and we can leave these unpleasant personalities behind.

VILLAGE GUARD

I'd like that to be Aasif. He's unpleasant as heck, and doesn't like us. Alternately, he can go in the Toxic Trio if we decide to trade Mask Lumley out of scutwork.

POTENTIAL PATHFINDERS WE WANT TO KNOW BETTER

Here's my list so far:
Bessama
Matthild
Plisken

I also am curious about Sylvina, Rakka, Petrus, and potentially Mikkel for this. All are ones that we should investigate.

FOLKS THAT I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT - There's story here!

Sylvina (she feels a bit of a mystery)
Broderock (why is he in disgrace?)

What are your thoughts on this so far?

Hmm

DAY 3

FIRST: Completing Tasks in Progress

Let's finish the well and cleaning the barracks.

MORE THOUGHTS

I also may have mis-stepped just now with Mask Lumley. If anyone wants to play good cop to my bad cop with him for the sake of the future of the Lodge, that's fine. And if you want me to apologize or start working on him as one of my socials, I can do that too.

I'll take the three guards for wall duty. They are big and strong and can haul rocks. Heck, if we leave Aasif behind then - hmm, one of the smiths maybe for my third?

Okay, let's set up work details.

DAY 3

Guarding Town - Aasif

Finish the Well

Faerinaa - Matthild, Lotte, Braderock

Finish the Barracks

Bastian - Bessama, Mikkel, Sylvina

Excavating the Stairs

Tess - Benyan, Gerlind, Mask Lumley

Patch Hole in the Wall

Vinny -- Junissa, Wilfred, Plisken
Khaul -- Rakka, Petrus, Martin Hengus

Off: Plisken, Edgar Hengus

DAY 4

Guarding Town - Aasif

Finish Excavating the Stairs

Tess - Bessama, Sylvina, Mathild
Bastian - Plisken, Rakka, Petrus

Continuing to Patch the Hole in the Wall

Khaul - Edgar and Martin Hengus, Wilfred
Vinny - Junissa the Stone Mason, Mask Lumley, Lotte

Repair the Barracks

Faerinaa -- Braderock, Mikkel, Plisken

Off: Benyan, Gerlind

DAY 5

Guarding Town - Aasif

Befriending the Locals

Tess
Bastian

Patch the Hole (final)
Khaul, Junissa the Stone Mason, Rakka, Bessama

Repair the Barracks
Faerinaa - Braderock, Petrus, Plisken
Vinny - Wilfred, Matthild, Mikkel

OFF: Benyan & Gerlind, Mask Lumley, Sylvina, Lotte, Martin & Edgar Hengus

Does this schedule work for everyone? Day 6 will likely involve Repairing the Gate and starting the Scaffolding for the Battlements.

Mostly looks good, but I think Faerinaa would like to try for rebuilding the stairs to the roof after finishing the well repair. Braderock is going to be needed for the main gate repair, the Battlements repair and the stair rebuilding; we should try to keep him active on tasks that require him or Khaul. Stairs also gets us up to the roof with more work to do up there.

Since Day 6 is Sunday, Faerinaa's going to take that day to talk to locals and relax some from working.

I agree on the work crews and the general observations on who we want to look into for Pathfinder potential.

Likewise this sounds good to me. I think after we make another days progress we might be best off scheduling one of the non crafters a rotating day off, which gives some of the villagers time off and a chance for the social members of the group (not Khaul!) to try some diplomacy.

Getting the stairs done does look like a roadblock we want to get done, as does the hole in the outer wall.

The scaffolding needs a carpenter, so that might help get wilfred on side, giving him some work he is good at...

Okay, so let's switch out Rebuild the Stairs for Repair the Barracks. On Day 5, we will discover if we need more cleaning from Tess and Bastian to keep the crafters crafting.

I am fine with setting the social day as a rotating one, if folks want to suggest when that occurs so that we are not off all at once.

Suggested rotating social days:

Starday - Bastian (this gets him off on Day 5 of our schedule)
Sunday - Faerinaa (this gets her off on her holy day, Day 6 of our schedule)
Moonday - Tess (day 7 of the schedule)

Is this schedule otherwise good so that maybe we can roll through three days at once? I would like to be able to do 3-4 days of planning at once to make things easier for the GM, and to make our playtime go a bit more quickly.

We are going to need to resolve the repairs faster, but I wanted everyone to get an understanding of how it worked before I attempted to get multiple days worth of repairs.

Vinny would like to be at least friendly with Junissa, if not friends.

This scenario has a special downtime activity for improving the attitudes of the NPCs (Talk to Locals), so you would need to take that activity in order to improve Junissa’s attitude.

I have been making them more responsive than their attitude would really indicate so you get some idea of what the people are like. It is doubtful that Benyan would have been quite as open about things considering his attitude, but I think it is important to allow those interactions.

Revised Work Plan (prioritizing stairs, and keeping in mind day off)

DAY 3

Guarding Town - Aasif

Finish the Well

Faerinaa - Matthild, Lotte, Braderock

Finish Cleaning the Barracks

Bastian - Bessama, Mikkel, Sylvina

Excavating the Stairs, day 1

Tess - Benyan, Gerlind, Mask Lumley

Patch Hole in the Wall

Vinny -- Junissa, Wilfred, Plisken
Khaul -- Rakka, Petrus, Martin Hengus

Off: Plisken, Edgar Hengus

DAY 4

Guarding Town - Aasif

Finish Excavating the Stairs

Tess - Bessama, Sylvina, Mathild
Bastian - Plisken, Rakka, Petrus

Continuing to Patch the Hole in the Wall

Khaul - Edgar and Martin Hengus, Wilfred
Vinny - Junissa the Stone Mason, Mask Lumley, Lotte

Rebuild the Stairs

Faerinaa -- Braderock, Mikkel, Plisken

Off: Benyan, Gerlind

DAY 5

Guarding Town - Aasif

Talk to Locals

Bastian

Patch the Hole (final)
Khaul, Junissa the Stone Mason, Rakka, Bessama

Rebuild the Stairs
Faerinaa - Braderock, Martin & Edgar Hengus
Vinny - Wilfred, Matthild, Mikkel

Clean Fort Dungeon, day 1
Tess: Sylvina, Petrus, Plisken

OFF: Benyan & Gerlind, Mask Lumley, Sylvina, Lotte

Day 6 will likely involve Repairing the Gate for Khaul, Vinny, Junissa and Wilfred, and Tess starting on the Repairing the Barracks with Broderock, as that is an easier roll that she might be able to achieve. It will be Faerinnas day off to talk to locals

Day 7 Tess talks to locals, and we continue.

Day 8 Vinny gets the day off to plant flowers

More thoughts on my Work Crews post above. With a rotating day off for Tess, Bastian, Faerinna and anyone else who wants it (I suspect that Vinny and Khaul want to keep crafting once the lilies are planted) we can minimize our use of the Toxic Trio.

My list of potential Pathfinders has shifted a bit:

POTENTIAL PATHFINDERS WE WANT TO KNOW BETTER

Here's my list so far:
Bessama
Matthild <-- High Priority due to slave status.*
Plisken
Rakka

I also am curious about Sylvina, Petrus, and potentially Mikkel for this. All are ones that we should investigate.

FOLKS THAT I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT - There's story here!

Sylvina (she feels a bit of a mystery)
Broderock (why is he in disgrace?)

WHOM DO WE WANT TO FOCUS ON FOR TALK TO LOCALS?

Tess's highest priorities are Matthild and the two mysteries, Sylvina and Broderock.
Whom do Faerinna and Bastian want to focus upon? It's okay if we double team some of them to make them friendly and to get a better sense of them.

_____
* The Pathfinder Society would free one of their recruits if we decide that we can trust Matthild with a coin.

Also, I just realized that when teamed with a specialist, Tess would not be a bad crafter team lead. She's high level with an above average intelligence, so gets a +8 when teamed with a specialist. So we could potentially have four crafting teams going with Khaul leading by himself, and then pairing Vinny, Tess, and Faerinna each with a specialist.

For the moment though, I like pairing Khaul with a specialist for the plus two to the roll, but this made me realize that we could shift around the teams a bit more than we have if we need to do so!

We certainly can shift folk around. But I think we have enough time that we can give the social folk a chance to do their thing as well. If we finish the rebuild too early, Mask Lumley may get suspicious about us spending more time in town rather than our new keep, so getting past road blocks and then slowing things down a little makes a lot of sense to me.

If we start getting behind we can put more teams back into the rebuild.

Okay, so clear the road blocks, and then slow down enough that we can start giving regular social breaks?

I realise he isn't the best, but Bastian is a trained crafter (+6) if necessary.

He's interested in chatting to Bessama and Mikkel to see where/what they could become BUT....

He'd very much like to know the Horgats better, to see if there is a chance at redemption. They are unpleasant and have a slave, so they're on thin ice with him.

You're a trained crafter too? The only untrained crafter is Tess! We have an embarrassment of riches and talent!

We certainly can shift folk around. But I think we have enough time that we can give the social folk a chance to do their thing as well. If we finish the rebuild too early, Mask Lumley may get suspicious about us spending more time in town rather than our new keep, so getting past road blocks and then slowing things down a little makes a lot of sense to me.

If we start getting behind we can put more teams back into the rebuild.

Just a note, it doesn’t matter what Mask Lumley thinks.

Read Smine’s letter again, you are to stay here until staff arrives. You need to have the lodge habitable before they arrive.

Before I forget - as people keep mentioning the undead, Bastian's Blade Ally will give disrupting to his War Flail.

Faerinaa is most interested in talking to Bessama and Braderock. She's also possibly interested in Lotte and her two children, or Petrus and Rakka.

How do we want to move forward with this in gameplay once we have the approximate plan worked out? Start writing up each day with a summary after each one, or write up more at once, or something else?

I think that to be sure that we finish in time, I will ask for multiple days activities with rolls for everything except the Talk to Locals and Secretly Plant Whispering Lilies activities.

I’m thinking maybe 3-4 days at a time? Enough so that we make good progress, but it would be nice if we can avoid having to redo too much.

Alright, just need three days of activities from Vinny, Tess and Faerinaa.

@Khaul, I assumed you used the crews listed here, it seems to match your text. In the future, it would be really nice if each days activities you led with an indication of task and crew for the day. That makes my updates a little easier as I don’t need to dig in order to determine the information.

Yes indeed. I was just working the crew agreed into the text description. But I can easily make that the first line.

I realised today that Khaul is adventuring with an elven ancestor oracle for the second time! I hope this time goes better than the first - my oracle was cut in two in one hit in the Flames of Rebellion! (Just before the massive damage rules changed.)

It's really awkward to me mentally that we are demanding constant work from the villagers while never using the family that we hired to help us out with the lodge.

Thinking about it, it really doesn’t do anything mechanically to improve how fast you can do the repairs if I allow the father or mother to be on the work crew. With the youngest child being about three, I think one or the other should stay behind.

If you really want to you can include one or the other as yet another NPC with no special skill.

The only place it would hurt is you wouldn’t get the free Sense Motive I have been giving each team lead for those they are leading. It was that check that has been the basis for me directly telling you their attitude.

——

The Ancestor Oracle is really a little weird, with the curse urging you to do a particular thing each round. I think Tess is making it work well and I know of one other character Zhao Fen who I had the pleasure of playing beside in a PbP.

Sorry to hear your character got cut down by massive damage. It took quite a bit of convincing to get Org Play leadership to make the change to that rule. It really was unfairly harsh on the low level characters.

The talk of Ancestral influence made me add Ancestral Influence rolls to each day. On a 2 or a 4 while we are rebuilding the Fort, Tess gets +1 to skills including that free Sense Motive you have been giving us.

The talk of Ancestral influence made me add Ancestral Influence rolls to each day. On a 2 or a 4 while we are rebuilding the Fort, Tess gets +1 to skills including that free Sense Motive you have been giving us.

So you will be activating your Moderate Curse each day?

Oh wait. I guess it does not make sense, does it? Though by the rules I am supposed to roll for a dominant ancestor each day.

Is it weird that the player broke down crying realizing how heartbroken a duskwalker might feel over losing a family that she had made a connection with?

Oh wait. I guess it does not make sense, does it? Though by the rules I am supposed to roll for a dominant ancestor each day.

Yes, you roll for dominate ancestor each day.

If your action would take 1 minute or longer, it's long enough that you can overcome the meddling, and you don't need to attempt a flat check.

For most exploration and all downtime activities the ancestor doesn’t matter unless the curse has advanced to the Moderate or higher stage. You have time to work it out.

It is only if you have the Moderate Curse or Major Curse that it would matter. At your level you can only bring it to Moderate Curse.

Basically, you would need to do daily preparations, cast Ancestral Touch on someone, refocus, and cast it again on someone. They would need to save vs the spell and would likely take mental damage.

I don’t think you have any other Cursebound spells. If you do, you would be able to use them instead of Ancestral Touch.

Having chased the rules down, I don’t think you want to do that each day.

Is it weird that the player broke down crying realizing how heartbroken a duskwalker might feel over losing a family that she had made a connection with?

Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry. I was just trying to follow the story and have the NPCs react in reasonable ways.

No, it makes perfect sense. I just realized that Tess had gotten herself attached to this family, and that she is only four months old, and a duskwalker. The lore says they adopt families because they cannot have children of their own.

I just realized suddenly that this is Tess's first heartbreak, because she is so inexperienced and has not learned to guard herself that way yet.

Sorry if I missed this, for all the downtime tasks assuming a full crew:

Critical Success They complete 6 days of work.
Success They complete 4 days of work.
Failure They complete 2 days of work.
Critical Failure They make no progress.

Fractions are truncated, so if you only have one person working on something and they fail they get no work done.

Need to take a break for a few hours, will try to get Day 5 up late tonight.

Is the format I’m using for daily progress clear enough? Let me know if there is something you either don’t understand or think could be presented more clearly.

The format is great. Is it sustainable for you?

I'd echo that sentiment. How is this ever done in 4-5 hours live play? My group would take ages...

It is my belief that this can not be done well within a normal session of live play. Just bringing out the NPCs should take too long for that. Lots of tables took eight hours, getting it done in five and a half is difficult.

There are certainly things that could be done to make it easier and faster in person, but just the number of secret rolls becomes cumbersome. I would also want to hunt down images to represent each NPC since I know that a lot of people find such things help them.

Sorry, I did not take the time to create images for you.

I host PF2 locally and do not intend to offer this in person at my location.