Lost Lands

Game Master Edeldhur

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to drop a line to acknowledge I am not moving at my usual full posting speed - Christmas season is coming in fast and hard, and as usual work follows suit with people wanting to get stuff done before we all go on vacation, instead of just putting their feet up, relax, and listen to Bing Crosby, Sinatra and Nat King Cole.

So I have been a tad busier than usual, and that is why our pace slowed down some - I will also be travelling from the 19th December to the 3rd January, but will keep us moving forward here and there. Since this game is not something I feel I need to 'take a break from' it isn't a chore to keep us moving, even if possibly slower than usual, as I will have to stuff myself with all the goodies provided when one visits family and friends. Poor me :P

Makes sense. Slow's fine by me honestly.

Slow for the holidays is a good thing. No worries sir

No complaints here. I can deal with slow any ol' time. ESPECIALLY this time of the year for sure.

Nice, I used present tense in my last post for the game I GM, where I typically use past tense, and used past tense in my last post for this game, which is run in present tense.

One of us! One of us!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Yes, Merry Christmas, I hope you all get to spend the holidays with someone you love.

Merry Christmas!

And a Merry Christmas to you all.

Merry day after christmas as well!

Merry Christmas, all!

I am back from my 'vacation' - Happy New Year!

Doing a roll call, and will get us moving soon. How is everyone?

Doing well, I hope everyone's holidays went well!

Here and Happy New Year all.

Here! Happy New Year everyone!

I am here, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year, all! Still here. :)

Happy new year all!

Hope Jalros and Elgrin are still with us!

Hey guys and gals, just to let you know I will continue following your flow - you are in charge of the action now, and I am just filling in the blanks.

Just so that it is clear, this is not a comment on how the game is going or regarding any of your actions. It is only to let you know how I see things. Fairhill is simply... There, with its inhabitants, secrets, public and private stories, dramas and issues, dangers and threats, and so forth.

I am not going to railroad this game, and I do not feel the need to rush - some avenues of your exploration/interaction with NPCs will provide adventure possibilities, RP opportunities or simply valuable information, while others will provide nothing at all. Some may even provide 'mechanical' advantages/disadvantages, like increasing/decreasing your reputation in the village, discounts or increased prices, gifts, services, goodwill, ill will, the list is endless.

Feel free to explore as much, or as little as you'd like! ;)

Happy to move on whenever. I was just trying to see how linked the wizards tower and all the bandits might actually be. Seems like Crimmor might be a good secondary goal once we've managed the tower. And given our necromancer could be the one affecting the fish stocks, maybe the two really are linked.

Question: Which direction are you planning on taking when leaving Fairhill? I cannot remember if you gathered specific detail on the ruined keep's location :P Did you?

Honestly I forgot Gubble didn't know where the tower was. Gather information rolls?

Question: Which direction are you planning on taking when leaving Fairhill? I cannot remember if you gathered specific detail on the ruined keep's location :P Did you?

Hamish asked Baran if he had any maps when he inquired about the bandits. Did the Captain or Lauriel show him one? Was there one on the wall? He certainly would have examined anything he saw. Otherwise it sounds like it is somewhere along the road to Crimmor if I understood the captain's directions/warnings correctly.

There was no map, but he did provide some directions yes.

Good enough directions to find it, or do we need to see if we can find more? I ask from the perspective of our characters, since I am in no way a good direction kind of person, my left and right keep getting mixed up and all.

Come now... You guys don't expect me to do all the legwork here right? Told you we are in Sandbox mode ;)

I wasn't asking for inside knowledge. Just character knowledge verses the utter lack of player knowledge (on my part at least, since without google maps I couldn't find my work place, somedays). :)

But okay. Carry on we can.

What do you mean?! You didn't take any notes?! I am shocked.

I guess my plan of having you drawing your own maps will also have to go out the window then...

What do you mean?! You didn't take any notes?! I am shocked.

I guess my plan of having you drawing your own maps will also have to go out the window then...

LOL, Naomi wasn't there so can't pretend one way or the other. As for maps. What kind of compromise can we do? Could you provide a generic hex grid with terrain marked and we place 'items of interest' as we go?

Don't tempt me :)

Ah the joys of running a game.

Let me know if you guys are planning on re-stocking any supplies, rations, water, etc.

man, good point! I'd assume they fill up the waterskins daily if possible, but hadn't thought about food rations. Unless you have a quick count, I'll to go back and see how many days the trip took. But since Naomi is down to silver pieces I'll see if we picked up enough 'gear' to sell, to see if she can afford to purchase rations.

So I guess we've got some gear and other items to sell in order to have coin to buy food. TBH, I'd rather just hand wave all that rather than try to RP out every transaction. If I wanted to play an accountant, I'd just go to work. :)

I can't recall how many sets of leather and short swords/bows/daggers we got, but it should be enough to cover a couple of weeks worth of rations for the party and mule.

Please forgive my forgetfulness if this has already been discussed. But what are we doing with 'loot'? Did we decide on a list? Are we assuming we're keeping everything we find: ie, armor, weapons, personal items of those we fight/search. Or are we only keeping the items we actually pick up and add to our characters page?

I've been doing the latter, just in case. But I am not opposed to a group sheet that everything automatically gets added to.

Obermind, any opinions here?

OK I went back and looked around, back on Aug 18, 2022

I have no preference Gubble - you guys can handle it the way that suits you best.

From my end I have a simple word doc, with what you found, and with what everyone took. I am assuming you also get the gold or treasure, but if nothing is said about other items, I assume they are left behind.

It sounds like we need to actually identify the items we pick up, other than actual wealth.

So we may need to be more intentional if were keeping and selling 'gear'

Edit: From the first combat I did find what we gathered.

Hamish, Jalros and Naomi recover four studded leather armors, four rapiers, four daggers, two shortbows, two light crossbows, 63 arrows, 48 crossbow bolts, dried rations for 12 days, two insignias in the shape of a crow, two ropes, 8 torches, 10 sp and 87 cp.

So there is that. Noami did keep one of the light crossbows and ten quarrels.

Obermind, any opinions here?

I will leave that up to you guys ;)

So I guess we've got some gear and other items to sell in order to have coin to buy food. TBH, I'd rather just hand wave all that rather than try to RP out every transaction. If I wanted to play an accountant, I'd just go to work. :)

I can't recall how many sets of leather and short swords/bows/daggers we got, but it should be enough to cover a couple of weeks worth of rations for the party and mule.

I am good with it, just let me know what you've got to trade, and I'll let you know what you can trade it for. We can also handwave if you prefer. Example: We can 'clear' your loot sheet now, and in exchange you get one week worth of rations and water each.

Hmmm Noami just used the gold from the dead guy at the farm to purchase five days of rations for everyone. And your charging for water? Lets see if anyone has an opinion other than Hamish and myself.

Obermind, I definitely get the feeling that if we don't 'pick up the items' then it's not on your list, is that fair to say?

That is fair to say, assuming I don't forget to add it :D

Hmmm Noami just used the gold from the dead guy at the farm to purchase five days of rations for everyone. And your charging for water? Lets see if anyone has an opinion other than Hamish and myself.

Well, lazy players get bad deals :P

As a side note, I normally play characters that are burly enough just to stuff everything in there pack, so I do so. But sadly, Noami is so weak she can't carry both her lute and her new (slightly used) crossbow.

I feel your pain Naomi. Getting enough wealth to afford the bag of holding so I can stop tracking encumbrance is such a relief I'll even buy that over a cloak of resistance lol.. Rather have the character die than track encumbrance

I dislike tracking encumbrance also, but in my experience if you waive it, people will abuse it.

And personally in this case, if I was Naomi (or any other character concerned with encumbrance issues), I would be counting my pennies, and looking around in town for a masterwork backpack ;)

That is just one way to try and mitigate the issue, but there are definitely other, between ‘nothing’ and ‘getting a bag of holding’ (not sure if it is relevant at this point, but I am seriously considering not having ‘magic marts’ in this game).

oooooh I love no magic marts! Can we do the automatic bonus progression so you don't need to adjust Challenge Ratings?

Being encumbered doesn't come up as much for a wizard, without armor and lots of weapons.

I am a lazy player, very much so, liking interactions and banter and story WAY more than tracking loot. Automatic bonus progression is very neat, though I only have had it used for one game so far.

I am not a big fan of Automatic Bonus Progression - I find it is much more exciting to 'make do' with what you find.

I am fine with 'make do'. Now that we know to expect it. What a party can handle typically includes the normal progression of gear. Weapons bonus, stat boosts, saving bonuses so on. Not as important given you are constructing the adventure and we're not in the standard pathfinder AP, which would assume that progression.

With not knowing, it might be frustrating, either cause it is what we expect or we start to feel like our characters seem frustratingly ineffective.

An personal example, only you would understand. I loved Cleo Gingerberry, but she stunk in a battle in anything other than healing. Most of that was me, building for the holes we kept getting in the party, but it also didn't help that TreasureFox's loot was sparse and often time custom, so her normal progression was way off.

But he was running from an AP, so the fights were based on that.

Long winded, sorry. But... um, thumbs up? yes, I think so. :)

I am totally fine not having MagicMart's. Haven't really ever liked that particular trope. As for whatever automatic progression is, haven't heard of it, so I guess I won't be missing out if we don't have it. :)

Example: We can 'clear' your loot sheet now, and in exchange you get one week worth of rations and water each.

I won't speak for others who may have taken better notes or kept better track, but I for one am fine with this. Call my loot cleared and I've got a weeks rations and water for myself and the mule. All of which are loaded on the mule because that's why she's tagging along. :)

Clearing the loot sheet is fine with me.

I surely can't keep track of loot. I just don't have that kind of time. Keeping track of Jalros alone is a challenge within itself. :P

i'm fine with this as well ;)

ninja'd by Elgrin: will edit
Is it that you all would prefer to do that? OR you don't want to do the math?

I don't mind doing the loot sheet, but if we're only tracking what we find of value, ie coins or trade items, or what we pick up; we need to be more intentional about what we pick up.

Like I said if Noami was stronger she'd carry everything. Hamish do you mind if we put stuff on the mule. And would it offend anyone if Naomi reminds fellows to pick stuff up?

We did a good job with the first set of bandits when we rescued the caravan But we dropped the ball on the captive at the farm.

Obermind, in the morning (ours not hers) Naomi will exchange the items I have listed in the post above. Could you remind me of the name of a store to go to, or do you just want me to calculate the amount at half price and split it up between everyone?