GM Holden's page

• 20 point buy
• 2 traits (1 trait can be from the ROTR Players Guide)
• 1 drawback if desired (grants additional trait)
• Average wealth by class
• Max HD HP+Con bonus
• All Paizo books okay (3PP disallowed)
• No evil Alignments
• No Hero points
• No Gunslingers, Ninjas, Samurai or other wildly insane character concepts (typical fantasy archetypes go to the head of the class for consideration)
• Provide a background, description and reason for visiting Sandpoint (This can be as simple to start out and developed further during play)

• I’ll be using the Anniversary edition of RotR.
• Google docs to be used for posting maps, images and other handouts.
• Emphasis on role-playing and building the narrative.
• In order to keep the game flowing quickly and to maintain the narrative, the majority of dice rolling will be conducted by me. You will be provided with results in descriptive form.
• No experience points. Characters lvl up as appropriate according to the unfolding story.
• I can post multiple time per day during the week but less on weekdays.
• I live in the Eastern time zone (Toronto, Canada), but I do tend to stay up late.

If a combat encounter is somewhat complex (ie: most of them), I will provide maps marked with features, monsters and the PC’s positions so that everyone gets the right idea about where everything is and what’s going on. At the start of an encounter I’ll generate an Initiative order. I expect each player to indicate what actions their characters are performing for each round and where they would like to move. Once all the players have provided details, I’ll cycle through the round, executing everyone’s actions to the best of my abilities (generating dice rolls as required).

I consider the first 50% of a characters HP to be a consideration of a characters skill and experience at avoiding damage combined with stamina. Once you’ve dropped below 50%, your character is actually receiving physical wounds. You will be aware of this from the narrative (but you may not know that you are at exactly 3 HP remaining for example). Consequentially, after each combat encounter once the characters have had 20-Con minutes to recover, the upper 50% of HP loss is “topped up”.

Example: Barg the barbarian has a max of 15 HP and he is a full strength. He enters combat with a group of goblins and while he emerges victorious he suffers 10 HP damage as a result. This reduces him to 5 HP. Due to Barg’s adeptness in battle, the first 7 HP (15/2 rounded down) he lost are attributed to superficial wounds and exhaustion. Barg’s Con is 16. After 4 mins of rest (20-16), he recovers the 7 HP. The other 3 HP he lost were actually telling blows and left him with minor injuries. Barg doesn’t recover these HP immediately (he must recover these as per healing). Barg emerges from this encounter with 12 HP ready to press onwards.

I’m 40 yrs old, have a loving wife and two amazing young daughters. I am naval engineer by profession employed with the military. I’ve been involved with role-playing since the first editions of D&D (the little red box with the small crappy dice. back when "Dwarf" was a class). I’ve GM’d and played with numerous systems over the years. I started playing pathfinder the first year it was released. I do not have any recent experience with pbp so this will be new ground for me. I also don’t have any experience with convention, competitive or PFS play. I would consider providing PFS credit if possible (although I need to read up more on that). I prefer more a more subdued and grounded game. I make a lot of rule decisions based on common sense and logic and I’m not adverse to contradicting the rules when required.