ORCy Beginner Box (Inactive)

Game Master Luna C

Grolugh identifies the symbol as belonging to Abadar, god of commerce. Risk's detect magic does detect something. While the group tries to figure out what to do and how to manipulate the machinery, they see tiny shafts of light coming from the northern wall. Peering inside, the group sees a kobold standing watch.

The group does notice a lever protruding from the back of the machine. In this particular case, operating the machinery is a crafting check, not thievery or perception. Please do not try to guess which check to roll; I'll let you know what to roll when something is needed. I have said this several times now.

Well, you could have let us know from the outset it was a crafting check. That's why I made suggestions as to what I, the player, thought might be appropriate for the GM to secretly roll.

I will wait until you tell me when I may roll the Crafting check.

Sorry for the delay! Life is lifing. Anyone who wants may roll a Craft check to attempt to discern the nature of the machinery and potentially interact with it.

Crafting (T): 1d20 + 4 ⇒ (7) + 4 = 11

craft: 1d20 ⇒ 15

hopefully enough with no bonuses lol

Ooof, first, the lever is protruding from the back of the chest, sorry!

Risk's able to discern through some true beginner's luck that this mechanism controls a hidden trap in a nearby room. It's not clear what the trap is or how it's triggered, though. It's currently in the disarmed state.

Does the group examine what's in the chest?

Tama curiously peers inside the chest...

and the chest opens its eyes and peers back at Tama lol

Risk stays a couple feet back and keeps his hands on his sword just incase

Awww, it's cute! Can we keep it, guys? Can we? XD

The chest is indeed a mimic and does

damage to the party.

Inside the chest, you find the following: a pile of coins (214 cp, 22 sp, 3 gp), a rolled-up piece of parchment which we'll identify when we have an arcane caster, and a small glass box. The box contains an emerald worth 20 gp.

Btw, I moved Grolugh to where I think we are...is the kobold on watch behind a door, or a wall?

Moved Tama and put Risk outside the door, if that is okay?

Much appreciated

No issues with moving folks to where they would logically be.

As the group rummages through the chest, they hear a quiet conversation among some unseen kobolds near the one spotted earlier. They mention "the boss's new pet" and "plans for the town above".

Anyone with the Arcana skill can try to identify the scroll.

know some magic (arcana): 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (7) + 3 = 10

Risk takes a look at the scroll, thinking as a spell caster he may know about it. However it looks like the scroll is too far out of his depths. Shaking his head he says to the others "Sorry guys, I'm pretty handy with a sword and a tale but my magical knowledge has fallen behind. I'm not sure what this scroll does."

"Quite all right, Risk. We'll keep it safe," says Grolugh. "Say, let's go greet these kobolds."

No worries, my pedigree chum! Tama grins then nods in agreement, Yes, let us introduce ourselves!

Out of nowhere, Joli huffs and heaves to catch up!

Arcana (Trained) vs DC 15: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (8) + 5 = 13

"Apologies for being late. [Village Elder] sent me to lend a hand, I slept in and, well... I'm here now" she looks at the scrolls "Hard to read"

Before the party now stands a well-dressed orc in fine clothes carrying a large stick and with several odd weapons strapped neatly to her back and sides - including a hooked sword and lots of hooked fly-blades with rotational symmetry. She speaks with soft confidence and pauses here and there between sentences as if lost in thought.

To Tama and Grolugh "Just whom are we to meet?"

Glad you could join us! Great introductory post :) Please provide a token for the map (linked under my name here).

Now that the group is together, what do you do?

Just as a refresher, we turned the wheel and heard a click, right? There is just that door to go through North there?

I think it's either the north door or the barricade as our options

The group did not pull the lever on the chest. Risk is correct that the barricade is another option, or you could do something else entirely. What does the group do?

"Hullo, ah...didn't catch your name. I'm Grolugh, servant of the goddess Mazluden. And we were going to meet some kobolds, but it occurs to me that they are probably talking about something we might have espied past a barricade, back a ways."

"...you might have seen some dead kobolds and a dead spider along the way. That was us," he says, as an afterthought. "I suppose we could pull that lever, but seeing as how it might release something untoward, maybe we should investigate it further, or get a kobold to explain what's going on." He waggles vaguely in the direction of the lever and chest.

Jo? Izzat you? Tama squints in the dim light then says with a wink, Yeah, we made some kobold friends back there and are lookin' ta make more, eh?

High-fiving Tama, they do their secret handshake: clenched fingers bumped together three times, the third an 'explosion' accompanied by sounds of 'boom' and raising both arms and jumping backwards "Old times, yeah. I forgot about that" she turns to Grolugh "Servant of a goddess of trust and community? I think. Means your word is good. I can get down with that. You can call me Jo" she does a cool 'yolo' move busting out her bo staff.

Joli pulls the lever with it.

"Guess we'll see what comes of it. Kobolds, huh?" wrinkling her nose in thought.

"Ok, so no investigation..." Grolugh shrugs. "Mayhem may shake a few things loose."

He raises his shield in case Jo has unleashed a mimic or an acid spray cannon, or an acid-spraying mimic.

Risk laughs heartily as he pulls out his sword just in case"a little chaos always makes for a good story! Let's see what may come!"

The party hears a click as Joli pulls the lever. Nothing else appears to happen. The kobolds continue their idle chatter.

Presently the main options for advancement are opening the door to the north (directly north of Risk) or deconstructing the barricade. What does the party do?

As risk hears the click and nothing happens he sighs a bit "well that was a bit underwhelming. Shall we venture forth?" risk gestures to the door, perhaps a bit more exaggerated than necessary. "I'm personally one for doing the easy route so I say north. However should you all want to disassemble the barricade I will follow along."

Tama makes a quick look at the door before checking with his companions, placing his hand on the knob...

Perception check?

Grolugh nods at the knob-knocker knowingly, preparing for a knockdown.

Knob-knocker... Sounds dirty! XD

Tama places his hand on the doorknob. He perceives the door. It is a well-made door of wood with a smooth wooden doorknob.

There are no knobs to knock, but anyone can knock on the door if they prefer.

Any sounds on the other side of the door?

Tama faintly hears kobold voices, but only because he knows to listen for them given the clearer sounds through the hole in the wall in the chamber with the chest.

Softly to the others, Tama whispers, Burst in, or stealth? There are kobolds on the other side, but they could be the same ones from the barricade...

I can do Stealth, I'm not certain how well our friend Grolugh will do in his armor though Risk says looking at Grolugh's equipment

Grolugh shrugs and mimes beating a kobold with an invisible stick.

Joli opens the door!

”Look alive, gents. Time for a little action!”

Sorry, was just waiting for everyone to chime in, but that works for Joli's answer!

Shrugging with a grin, Tama moves in with his shield at the ready!

Grolugh also has his shield ready!

Joli takes the initiative and opens the door. It swings open with a creak, revealing a massive chamber inside--perhaps long ago some ancient monarch held court here. On the side furthest from the party, a broad set of stairs leads up to where said monarch might have had their throne. Pillars throughout the room support the ceiling, high even for orcs, with banners too tattered to discern still hanging from them. A decorative tile pattern in the middle of the room is still visible despite the grim coating on the floor.

Most importantly, however, three kobolds (the ones the party heard earlier) stand guard and shout as the door opens!

Kobolds initiative: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (14) + 3 = 17
Other kobold initiative: 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (9) + 6 = 15
Joli initiative: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (18) + 5 = 23
Grolugh initiative: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (20) + 5 = 25
Risk Zil initiative: 1d20 + 5 ⇒ (13) + 5 = 18
Tama initiative: 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (10) + 6 = 16

Grolugh and Joli may post their turns. Joli, if you could update your profile like the others to have things like your HP, AC, saves, perception, speed, hero points, and so on in the status line that's visible when you post, that would be quite helpful!

◆) Recall Knowledge
◆◆) ???

Not having many kobold friends, Joli wonders what threat they might pose…

There's two separate groups of kobolds here, to be clear. Since you can't see them where you are (in fact, because of the pillar and the wall, no one can!), and thus don't know specifically what kind of kobold you're fighting, I'll limit this to general knowledge. Once you see what you're fighting you can roll again. If you'd prefer to Stride then RK to get more information, let me know and we can go from there.

Joli knows a lot about kobolds, in fact! She recalls that they tend to be fond of traps and using clever tactics, and are known in particular for moving quickly about the battlefield in ways that stymie their opponents. That said, they tend not to be very tough or tenacious.

Mechanically, this means their Fortitude and Will saves are weakest.

◆) Recall Knowledge
◆) Stride
◆) ??

Carefully advancing into the room, Joli cautions "Booby traps may be about - vigilance!"

Joli moves into the room and sees two different kinds of kobolds, two wielding spears (three each). A third, toward the back of the room, wears a necklace of eggshells and is busy handling some kind of device. She has a shortsword at her hip and some spears on her back. The kobolds haven't acted yet, but their gazes lock on Joli as she enters the room.

Good thing you cast light, otherwise you'd be groping in the dark!

◆) Recall Knowledge
◆) Stride
◆) Observe

Joli looks for winches, cables, pulleys, snap blocks, and other mechanical parts that might feasibly connect to the lever she pulled in the other room by the chest.

How might whatever trap the the eggshell necklace wearing kobold have her mits on actually work?

Well then. Joli knows everything, evidently.

As Joli examines the environment, she sees something particularly insidious: the western wall has several holes (one for each long row of blue squares on the map) whence it appears the mechanism will shoot something nasty at whoever steps on the floor tiles. It's possible to disable this trap with a Thievery check, either by manipulating the floor tiles or the holes in the wall.

This concludes Joli's turn, unless she has a free action--I imagine you'll warn the rest of the group, but feel free to make an IC post to that effect.

Joli - the "smart" monk - points to the area where there is access to the controlling mechanism.

"Disassemble it there" she warns her party "Careful there and there"

GM - where exactly on the map? Could you mark the trigger areas? Can we jump over them?

It's the three rows of grey/blue tiles directly north of Joli. I have put red squares on the map to indicate the corners of the SquareRectangle of Suffering. If anyone has trouble making out where the Danger Zone is, please let me know. You can try to jump over them, but as your speed is 25 feet, you don't quite have the movement to clear them--it'd need an Athletics check for a Long Jump.

Welcome to the game! Questions, complaints, brownie recipes, etc. go here.

Additionally, please choose an image for your character token for the battle maps. If you're technically inclined, feel free to create it using tokenstamp, with a fully opaque white background, please.

Here's a link to my token

Here is my folder with a couple token options. I built 2 in tokenstamp but my phone won't open them so I'm not 100% on how they turned out so I also included the base png.

Thanks for getting these together so quickly, folks. Still waiting on tokens from Grolugh and Tama and an introduction from Tama and then we can continue. If I don't have anything from them by the time I make my Monday morning post, I'll use their forum avatars for their tokens and move things forward.

Another thing, to make things run faster: if everyone could update their alias's profile to include the information that Diggou has (speed, AC, saves, skills, etc.), that would be super helpful. This way I don't need to open another tab to try to find your character info and I can just reference it while I'm drafting posts. Thank you :)

I'll get on that hopefully sometime today

I know this is kind of meta but is the Fishery right by the water? Is the tunnel below water level? I'm not trying to demand 'realism' in a world where Orv has like, an underwater ocean, just trying to figure out the geography.

Posting in here in case you get attrition and need a replacement Orc, GM.

I like how you set up your game!

Grolugh, thank you for updating your stats line :)

To answer your questions about the geography, this is all specified in the Game Master's Guide but none of the info is given to the players :( The Fishery is indeed on the water, immediately adjacent to a pier. The basement is below the water level.

Thank you for the kind words, Jolinaxus! If I do anything well, it is because I have liberally stolen from more experienced folks :)

I still need one declared action from everyone before we continue. Feel free to look around the room or light a torch or the like.

I can post tonight…in a pinch, Grolugh will cast Light on Tama’s shield.

I was going to run the rats by their Monster Core entry, which gives them putrid plague, a disease that can eventually kill a character if they fail enough saves. I think they're proving enough of a threat without that, though!

Additionally, I would like to be explicit that I am always open to feedback, suggestions, advice, and corrections. As I said in the recruitment thread, I'm very new to all of this. As we're starting off with a fight, I would particularly love feedback on how I'm running the fight.

With the party's first combat finished, I'd love some feedback / thoughts on how I ran it. Was there anything I could make more clear, anything I could've done better? This was a pretty straightforward fight so I'd like to make sure to learn what I can from this one to be better should there be more fights in future.

I thought you ran it fantastically!

How did you set up where people were prior to the fight? Should we move tokens pre-melee?

Thank you!

I'm not sure specifically what you mean about setting up people before the fight. I created tokens for everyone, uploaded them to Drive, and then placed them according to the marching order. As for figuring out where to place everyone, having everyone at the entrance made the most sense. If you're asking about the rats, they come out of what was in the fog of war to surprise the party. I hope this answers your question :)

Feel free to move your tokens out of combat, but please post about it, narrate where you're moving, and the path you're taking. This is pretty standard for PbP because things can happen differently depending on where, specifically, you go. If Things Happen™ based on your narrated movement, I will move you to an appropriate space if necessary, and will post about that so you know what's happening.

Oops, Grolugh didn't move to look at the barrels--I stand corrected!

Also, I didn't finish allocating skills, according to Pathbuilder, so I just did that. I'll update in a few hours as I have to go to an event, but I vote that we look at the barrels more closely and spend some time to Treat Wounds. With skill points allocated, Grolugh has a +5...not the best, but you know how it is with Warpriests.

3 action Heal is better. Can everyone update their HP? :) Also hi, I was busy being a druid and removing invasive plants this morning, and teaching kids about invasives.

There's pros and cons for both spell heals and treat wounds :) For a warpriest, yeah, spell heals make more sense until you get some levels to bolster your medicine check so you don't have to worry about failing and then not being able to do anything for an hour.

Also hi! Not much of a druid here, not even the urban type, but still appreciate the work you're doing :)

Assurance might be the way in a bit. It's refreshing--I haven't played a cleric in a while, and the 2E Warpriest is pretty neat. :) And thanks! To come full circle, I'd say that restoring the land is healing work. :)

Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi has ruined all dungeon encounters for me (and I'm a vegetarian): "could we eat those rats? can we eat those mushrooms?"

... as if I didn't have enough on my manga reading list... grmbl :)

Haha I'm the same way now

Is the spider closer to us than it appears on my map? The spider strode then attacked Grolugh, so I'd think it would be closer (plus Tama stabbed at it with a spear).

You're right, I forgot to move the spider. My apologies!

No worries! I figured since Tama could reach it, it must be closer.

One more thing and I don't mean to be all nitpicky, but do we provide partial cover against Diggou's crossbow bolts? Not that I want to!

I guess it doesn't matter, since Diggou missed and Risk smacked the spider. Now...is it edible? I suddenly have an image of Sam cooking up some Shelob steaks. I guess she was probably too corrupted by the Dark Side, er, Ungoliant Side.

Oh, Diggou's crossbow shot definitely had lesser cover. He's unlikely to ever hit (and even if he does, he does minimal damage (it's a hand crossbow)). It does give Diggou an activity for his third action.

I, too, have played a crossbow wielding wizard. *clinks ale horn*

If you'd like to determine if the spider is edible, feel free :)

Sorry, it's all due to watching Delicious In Dungeon. I am loving that show so much! It's kind of about ecology and being compassionate! Ok, also and food recipes.

Apologies for the late post, I've been pretty busy with mothers day weekend, I'll hopefully be more freed up tomorrow

Man, I feel so bad. Rolling so bad on this game, then rolling two crits in one round for the bad guys in the game I am running! It is brutal...

I was trying to open a lockbox in another game. DC 20, needed three successes. I'm +8. It took me eight tries with three sixes. Thankfully, I had to pause working on that post and someone else with much better luck did it. I'm pretty convinced the die roller is picking favorites the past few days. My rolls in that game have been pretty awful altogether recently. I even used a hero point to fix an awful initiative roll. Speaking of which, you should all be back up to three hero points; please use them!

I will remember to use them, though I will likely save them for Athletics checks and Attack rolls. ^_^

What's the plan after this game, by the way? I have considered running something (I have a few Year of the Open Road scenarios). Does anyone like round robin GMing (one person GMs a scenario, then someone else GMs the next one)?

Not sure what my plans are after this. Something more narratively-focused, for sure. The round-robin thing you're describing is how some game stores run their PFS events. I think I'm wanting to run something longer-term after this, not so much PFS stuff.

Because this is a somewhat open-ended dungeon crawl with a four person party where it's hard to predict when an encounter (combat or otherwise) will happen, attrition is a more serious issue than in a regular PbP. Diggou hasn't posted in almost a week. If I don't hear from them by this Saturday, I'll be seeking another arcane caster.

Okay.. I hope they are okay!

Diggou hasn't posted, because nothing has happened. Diggou isn't a front-liner so isn't going to burst into a room, not going to scout ahead, can't climb, can't swim, etc.

Diggou has moved to keep up with the party, though.

It seems like we have different expectations. When I made the recruitment post for the game, I tried to be very clear that I expected one post per day. If that won't work for you, that's fine, but staying more or less silent outside of combat means everyone else needs to carry the narrative forward and that's not fair to them.

Most of all, games should be fun! If that isn't your idea of fun, that's fine, but I'd like to say that not having involvement and engagement from players makes things not fun for me. What you do with that information is up to you. I'd love to see you post more frequently and contribute to the narrative more. If you decide that's not something you're interested in, please let me know. Thank you!

The Pathbuilder site gets wonky at times and won't always load with the new Load/Save options. I'm trying clearing the cache...

I may not have time to post today; just a heads up.

I'm gonna be off for a few days, I'm going camping tomorrow, I will be back Sunday sometime though

Similarly, I almost certainly won't be able to post this weekend; will be too busy with Pride stuff :)

^_^ Enjoy, everyone! I am okay with taking a little break until next week!

Happy Pride! I'll be stage managing! We will solve the mystery of the kobolds in due time.

I will be away Wednesday and Thursday.

Hi folks. Just wanted to mention that Diggou is no longer part of the game and I'll be recruiting a fourth to finish out the module. I think it was pretty clear he wasn't a good fit for what I'm trying to accomplish.

Okay.

May I ask what you were trying to accomplish that you deleted me from the game?

I was attempting to play along with your methods.

-____- Might wanna discuss via DM, folks?