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

Game Master BretI

It does feel more like a module that has been cut down to scenario length, or part of an AP even.

I'm loving your posts.

@Bastian,

I can look at the other people you wanted to talk to later. I wanted to make sure that I covered the three you were concentrating on and attempting to change the attitude of right a way. It is getting late here so I stopped once I had that.

Sorry to have run you out of Hero Points like that. It is rough getting two critical failures and a failure. I will say that the difficulty is not the same for all the NPCs.

It does feel more like a module that has been cut down to scenario length, or part of an AP even.

I'm loving your posts.

I have expanded quite a bit on the various NPCs, following what I was given and trying to expand it in a sensible way. No sense in having all those NPCs if they don’t have any character.

If people are interested, after this is over I can talk about what material the scenario provided and what I expanded on. I am not changing any of the mechanics, just adding detail and trying to react to what you give me.

Hero points are there to be spent. Avoiding crit fails is useful! I know that it may take more than one person/attempt to do something useful.

Task: Repair the Barracks

Progress: 0
Completed: 4/12 days

I know the Progress is 0 days because Day 6 has not happened yet, but shouldn't that be 6/12? I think Tess may have gotten a Crit Success on that DC 15. We fail so often so keeping track of the occasional crits is important.

And for my records:
Tess, Broderock, Plisken, Sylvina

EDIT: Nope, missed that Vinny also repaired the barracks. So the completed was right for Day 5, but the Progress should be different.

I am probably missing something. Vinny’s check was an 18 for Repair the Barracks on Day 4. Would have needed a 25 for a critical success.

Day 5 no one worked on that task.

Day 6 has not been reported yet. Tess is the only one who gave me what they were doing for that day.

Okay so 0 Progress means 0 Progress that day. Good to know.

Reposting here so that I can see the list while assembling work crews for Day 6, 7, 8.

Day 5 work

Already completed tasks:
* Clean the Fort (Approach Road)
* Clean the Fort (Courtyard)
* Collapse the Watchtower
* Repair the Well
* Clean the Fort (Great Hall)
* Excavate Stairs Below Great Hall
* Clean the Fort (Barracks)

Task: Patch the Hole in the Outer Wall
Khaul: Junissa, Rakka, Bessama

Progress: 4 person days, 3 gp spent
Completed 18/18 days

Task: Rebuild Collapsed Stairs
Vinny: Wilfred, Matthild, and Mikkel Critical success
Faerinaa: Braderock, Martin, Edgar Failure

Progress: 8 person days, 6 gp spent
Completed 10/12 days

Task: Repair the Barracks

Progress: 0
Completed: 4/12 days

Task: Clean the Fort (Dungeon)
Tess: Sylvina, Petrus, Plisken

Progress: 4 person days
Completed 4/8 days

Task: Talk to Locals
Bastian speaks with Lotte, Lumley and Sylvina.

Money 123 gp - 9 gp spent today = 114 gp remaining

Proposed work schedule

Day 6 - Sunday

Already Rolled

Tess with Braderock, Sylvina, Plisken

Repair Barracks - crit success

Day Off for Talk to Locals

Faerinna

Other Projects

Clean the Fort (Dungeon)

Bastian, Bessama, Matthild, Mikkel -- this will finish it.

Rebuild the Stairs
Khaul, Martin, Edgar, Petrus -- 10/12 Even if he fails the roll, Khal finishes it.

Repair the Gate (this one needs both carpenter and stonemason)
Vinny, Junissa, Wilfred, Rakka

Day 7 - Moonday

Day off to Talk to Locals
Tess who will target Sylvina twice and Matthild once

Repair the Gate
Khaul, Wilfred, the two smiths (Wilfred gives Khaul a +2 on the roll)
Vinny, Junissa, Broderack, Petrus

Clean the Fort (roof)
Faerinaa -- Bessama, Matthild, Sylvina
Bastian -- Lotte, Mikkel, Rakka

Day 8 - Toil Day

Plant Lilies
Vinny

What projects would people like to tackle next? I think we can leave the barracks unfinished and do other stuff.

Here are my priorities:

Finish Repairing the Gate if we failed any rolls along the way
Rebuild Scaffolding for Battlements
Rebuild Cover for Roof

Thoughts?

From now on, rather than just say “Progress” it will say “Today’s progress:” for each task. That should make it more clear what that line was supposed to indicate.

I use it when double checking the results, previous day completed plus progress should be new completed.

Final work schedule

Day 6 - Sunday

Already Rolled

Tess with Braderock, Sylvina, Plisken

Repair Barracks - crit success

Day Off for Talk to Locals

Faerinna

Other Projects

Clean the Fort (Dungeon)

Bastian, Bessama, Matthild, Mikkel -- this will finish it.

Rebuild the Stairs
Khaul, Martin, Edgar, Petrus -- 10/12 Even if he fails the roll, Khal finishes it.

Repair the Gate (this one needs both carpenter and stonemason)
Vinny, Junissa, Wilfred, Rakka

Day 7 - Moonday

Day off to Talk to Locals
Tess who will target Sylvina twice and Matthild once

Repair the Gate
Khaul, Wilfred, the two smiths (Wilfred gives Khaul a +2 on the roll)
Vinny, Junissa, Broderack, Petrus

Clean the Fort (roof)
Faerinaa -- Bessama, Matthild, Sylvina
Bastian -- Lotte, Mikkel, Rakka

Day 8 - Toil Day

Plant Lilies
Vinny

Rebuild Cover for Roof
Khaul -- Broderock, the two Smiths

If Gate is not fully finished

Repair the Gate
Faerinaa -- Junissa, Wilfred, Bessama

[ooc]If it is finished, send Faerinna to join Khaul's team.

What Bastian and Tess do depends on what we find behind the bricked up door in the dungeon.

That sounds good to me.

So Day 6, Khaul can use assurance for a guaranteed fail and finish the stairs, no need to try and rush that given we pay for a full crew no matter what.

Day 7. replacing the gate - see if Wildred is happier doing jobs he is good at. That will be a roll at +10, so likely to make it.

Day 8 - doing the roof with assurance for 4 days progress.

Tess is running out of jobs she can do, so unless the door reveals more cleaning work, she may go all social.

This looks good to me. I just finished getting caught up on everything that was going on, thought I needed to get Faerinaa's writeup for her talking to people day in, but it looks like I can do that tomorrow. Which is probably good, since I've been mulling it over but don't have everything worked out yet, and its getting late for me.

I think Faerinaa's going to see if she can hang around with Lotte during the day, maybe help with some light chores and get to know her better, then maybe stop by to talk to Plisken as the second person to ask if there's any local natural spots that would be good for an afternoon stroll, and see if she can talk to Bessama after dinner and her work is done.

This adventure is super fun, especially in PbP format, but the more involved RPing posts can take a lot of mental energy sometimes!

I'm really enjoying this one as well. I think we had the right bunch of characters, lots of crafters and also social folk. If we were barbarian heavy, this may have been less fun.

That said I recall playing through a very social SFS scenario with a solider and having a ball even through there was not a single combat.

I agree with you all. It's a good one. I'm pleased I signed up and we got this mix. Missions with lots of days give good opportunities.

She Who Must Be Obeyed? I thought that in character Khaul was deciding the work crews. All Tess knows is people. If she's making task lists, its because Khaul told her what was needed where.

Khaul suggested the work at the start. He's all for that, but Tess has shown a knack for putting people into the right teams. And ultimately the order that things are done is not his biggest concern.

And yes, he is poking a bit of dwarven fun at Tess.

So we have writings to decipher. Tess was going to take Sylvina and try to decipher them on Day 8, Toilday. Does Bastian want to join us there, or work on the Barracks?

We need to put in 6 days of deciphering the texts. I don't feel like taking any other villagers with me to help me with that task other than Sylvina, but I suppose it would make sense to take a full team of four. If I did so... who else would I take, other than the Sage? Does anyone else even make sense?

I guess I will wait for my Day 7 results to find out if I made Rakka, Sylvina or Matthild friendly.

Waiting for Bastian to post his activities.

For the deciphering secrets, noone else really seems like a good fit for interpretation except maybe Mask Lumley, but I'm not sure we want him involved. He might know stuff about religion as part of training to purge heresy or whatnot, but he's also definitely going to inform on anything interesting found there.

Maybe someone who could act as a secretary or something, played as taking rubbings or copying notes and organizing the information? Maybe one of the business owners has experience doing bookkeeping and could assist with some basic scribing type of work. Perhaps Lotte or one of the smiths could fit there, or both?

If you succeed, we could also just allocate two additional days player person-days instead of 1 to wrap it up and save the 3 gold. I think we're likely on track to complete repairs with enough time, and maybe having money left over from the budget will be viewed favorably.

The requirements are one person trained in religion or a sage.
Think of the others just copying down the parts of the writing they can make out and helping organize, the sage or person with religion tries to make sense of it.

Mask Lumley is not listed as a sage.

Yes, you think the society would react favorably to you having money left at the end.

Just hit the end of work on Friday, so I'll post soon.

Sounds good.

I’m working on Faerinaa’s Talk to the Locals update in the meantime.

I'm low on energy tonight, so the post was a bit short. Next time!

If necessary the ever-helpful Khaul can 'lead' the deciper activity as I'm also trained in religion. But my bonus with it is kind of low.

Just to explain what happened with Sylvania on Day 6, her attitude was improved by talking with her previously but the person talking with her couldn’t sense it.

On day 6 someone was able to tell that the attitude had improved.

Yes, she is a relatively difficult one to read.

I’ve updated the NPC interactions but don’t have time to update the task chart for progress.

I will try to do that either late tonight or early tomorrow.

GM, in your summary did you miss that Bastian also cleaned the roof? That should be a finished project.

Looks like I did, sorry.

I will fix that.

Will update for Day 8 tomorrow. Sorry for the delay.

You can either blame Sony or Spider-Man for the delay. :)
Finally got to see No Way Home.

Tess does not know who Spider-Man is, but is in awe of anyone with a bit of spider lore to them. Perhaps no one else has noticed, but she is somewhat spider obsessed.

I really cannot wait for her to meet her first anadi in the Society.

A reminder of what tasks we've gotten done:

Day 8 work

Already completed tasks:
* Clean the Fort (Approach Road)
* Patch the Hole in the Outer Wall
* Clean the Fort (Courtyard)
* Collapse the Watchtower
* Repair the Well
* Clean the Fort (Great Hall)
* Rebuild Collapsed Stairs
* Clean the Fort (Roof)
* Excavate Stairs Below Great Hall
* Clean the Fort (Dungeon)
* Clean the Fort (Barracks)

Task: Replace the Main Gate
Faerinaa: Junissa, Wilfred, Bessama Rakka Failure

Today’s progress: 2 person days, 3 gp
Completed 12/12 days

Task: Repair the Barracks

Today’s progress: 0
Completed: 10/12 days

Task: Construct Cover for the Roof
Khaul: Junissa, Wilfred, Bessama

Today’s Progress: 4 days, 3 gp
Completed: 4/12

Task: Decipher Ancient Writings
Tess: Sylvina, Bastian Critical Success

Today’s Progress: 4 days, 3 gp
Completed: 4/6 days

Money 96 gp - 9 gp spent today = 87 gp remaining

So... What do we want to finish next? I want to clear out the Deciphering of Ancient Writings, and I think we should finish the roof. Do we want to get started on the scaffolding, or finish the barracks?

Also GM, it's been a week. Have any patterns emerged on who stays after for confession each day?

Also GM, it's been a week. Have any patterns emerged on who stays after for confession each day?

Yes. Haven’t written it up yet, sorry.

That's okay, so long as its on your radar at some point!

Might only want to do one day of work, to get the results from finishing the Decipher Ancient Writings.

I think we should have Khaul do the roof over the next two days. It is a very efficient use of his assurance to put him on tasks he can autocomplete. Likewise, I think we want Vinny on the Scaffolding, since she's got the highest crafting modifier and is most likely to make good progress there.

The question then becomes what we do about the Deciphering. I figure it can go a few ways:

--Have Bastian and Tess try to finish it: I think we can do that with Tess rolling, correct?
--Have Bastian, Tess, Faerinaa and Sylvania try to finish it: We'll finish on a failure this way, but it uses all our actions and costs money.

I assume more workers were not brought in because of a desire to keep the things discovered there a secret, right?

If Faerinaa's not needed with the writings, she can repair the barracks to finish that off.

--Have Bastian and Tess try to finish it: I think we can do that with Tess rolling, correct?

Technically I should roll it since it is supposed to be secret, but at this point it really doesn’t matter provided the person has at least one Hero Point.

Yes, you could use Tess’s Religion skill. Without Sylvina she doesn’t get the +2, but there is no need for any of the people helping to even have Religion trained. Only the leader needs it.

--Have Bastian, Tess, Faerinaa and Sylvania try to finish it: We'll finish on a failure this way, but it uses all our actions and costs money.

You need 2 person days to complete it. If you want to complete it even in the case of failure, you would need a full crew. That crew could be all PCs in which case it wouldn’t cost any money. Using one NPC costs the same as a full crew.

I think it is worth the three gold to have Sylvina along, just to see what she says on all of this. It also gives an opportunity to have Bastian and Faerinaa ask her questions in relative privacy.

So, Khaul on roof, and Vinny on Scaffolding?

SCAFFOLDINGVinny - Junissa, Wilfred, Broderock. Junissa wants interesting and challenging jobs and does not want to be left at the inn. So let's put her on scaffolding with the two carpenters.

Let's give the smiths a day off -- they deserve it, poor things.

ROOF Repair Khaul - Bessama, Matthild, Plisken

DECIPHER -- Sylvania, Tess, Faerinaa, Bastian

Does this look good?

Also GM, it's been a week. Have any patterns emerged on who stays after for confession each day?

Done.

——

On a different topic, please note that it takes a day of Talk to Locals to give an NPC one of the tokens. You can try to improve their attitude during that. It requires you Make a Request of them which can be done as part of Talk to Locals. There is a check for detecting if the NPC is lying when you offer them the token.

Sounds good to me! Lets do it.

Sounds good to me too!

So I only see Tess posting for Day 9. Are Khaul and Vinny going to post or do you want me to just Bot Vinny’s roll?

Sorry, busy weekend.

Khaul you still have time to fix your formatting.

Done!

Sorry, busy weekend.

Not a problem, just wanted to make sure everyone wasn’t waiting for me while I was waiting for others.

Sorry, busy weekend here too! I've posted now.

I will also post soon - I had to go to the office today and I won't get out for another hour and a half.

How is this for building the watchtower?

Build wooden watchtower
[Downtime] [Manipulate]
Requires: Clean the Fort (Courtyard), Trained in Crafting or hired Carpenter
Work Required: 12 person-days
Skill Check: DC 15 Crafting/Architecture Lore
Build a 30’ wooden watchtower that is 10’ x 10’ at the base and large enough for a single person at the top. Has a ladder going up the side.