GM_Wormy's page

1. First off, I’m not a native speaker of the English language. So I’ll probably make one or two mistakes along the road. I hope that won’t disturb the reading experience too much, but you’ve been warned beforehand.

2. I used to play and run several PBPs on a german board, the longest running for around four years, but that was some years ago and in the meantime, I haven’t played or run too many PbP games at all. Here at paizo.com, I participated in one successful PFS game and tried my hands on running a WotR campaign that I eventually had to end prematurely because at that time I wasn’t able to be the GM the players needed. So this is kind of a fresh start for me and I thought you should know that before you decide to participate.

3. I live in Germany, and while I won’t restrict participation according to time zones, this might make for a slightly slower game. Also I’m a nurse by profession working at an emergency station. That means that I work in shifts and regularly have to work 24-hour shifts at the hospital. So while I pledge to post daily (several times if necessary) I can’t guarantee fixed times where I do so. And there will two to three days per month, which I’ll announce beforehand, where I might not be able to post at all

1. In general, I'm more the storytelling type of GM. Doesn't mean that I'm prone to railroading (quite the contrary, in fact), but to me, role-playing is mostly a type of collaborative storytelling, which I think lends well to PbP games. Also doesn't mean that I'm the storyteller, and you're the listeners. I expect you to tell the story with me.
What it does mean, though, is that I’m not concerned too much about things like mechanical optimization and inter-party balance, especially in the context of PBP games, where a lot of the spotlight is created by the players through their very own posts.

2. I value the input of players. Be it in the form of background stories, in-game or out-of-game suggestions, if you offer me hints at what you like to see in the game, I try to include it. That means that I don't feel slavishly bound to an adventure’s or AP's plot. Those plots are the base idea of how the game will go if everyone acts as suggested by that plot, but if you don’t I’ll certainly not put you on rails just because the plot says so. Instead, we’ll make our own plot together. This also means that I won’t mind if – within reason – you add little setting elements here and there that allow you to add to the narrative. “Within Reason” obviously means that I won’t accept you to abuse that to power game me or your fellow co-players or to turn the Forgotten Realms into Eberron.

3."Think the rulebook has all the answers? Then let's see that rulebook run a campaign!" Mike Mearls said this and I totally agree (I could also quote Monte Cook or Gary Gygax to the same effect).
That does not mean that I don't value the rules, it especially does not mean that I cheat (I don't and I won't). But it means that especially in the world of PbP that I won’t insist on RAW everytime I could do that, when in the end, the only thing I’d achieve with that is interrupting the gameflow all the time. I trust you won’t abuse that leniency to do things that the rules wouldn’t allow you to do and promise not to abuse it myself to stop you from doing things that you possibly should be able to.

We’ll use the PF 2 rules for the foreseeable future, and as this is my first try at this system, I might mess up from time to time. Thanks to the PbP format, I can read up on the rules before making a decision, so I hope I can keep mistakes to a minimum, but if one slips through, please hit me with the Rules book and I promise to make amends as the situation necessitates.

Generation Method: as per the Core Rules

Material: in general, I’ll allow everything from Pathfinder and most 3PP material as well. There might be special conditions or restrictions depending on the kind of game I offer. I’ll announce those in the Recruitment thread . Also, if you want to use material that has no direct representation in the setting we’re using, or if you want to use setting material that has not been covered by Pathfinder rules so far, you can, as long as we can come to an agreement about how to modify the rules stuff or rewrite setting stuff if necessary. (as an aside: I kinda love doing that stuff, it’s just that it can be time consuming, so I’ll appreciate if you can tell me how your exotic race/class combination came to be or why the exotic class or race is even a thing in the setting we’re using.

Alignments: I’m mostly good with everything from lawful good to true neutral. I had bad experiences with chaotic neutral and lawful evil, so please be aware that if you want to play those alignments, that might lessen your chances to be elected (unless your character concept is extra awesome and the interaction with you is so that I trust you’ll do it responsibly), NE and CE alignments don’t have a place at my table. I don’t like alignment related intra-party conflict too much, so if I have to pick between several equally awesome character suggestions, I might chose the character who fits best into the group alignment-wise.

Experience: standard advancement speed, though this is mostly for me being able to keep tabs on when you should level up.

Races and Classes: your prerogative. I don't mind having to adapt the adventures, if not all roles are covered, but given the recruitment process, your chances might increase if you find a niche not taken by another player. In the end I’d rather have two awesome roleplayers playing characters from the same class/role than having two not-as-awesome players just because they cover roles “needed” to make a well-rounded group.
Also, I don’t like to restrict your choices, and as we’re playing Realms, it doesn’t make that much sense anyways. Depending on the adventure/campaign, I might comment on what would fit best, but that will always be a suggestion, not a restriction

Hero Points: You start with 1 Hero point and can gain another one when offering me a bit of a background story for your character before the game starts (no panic I don't expect a whole novel, just something I can work with)

I generally expect party members to get along with each other. At least I expect you (and your characters respectively) to be able and willing to solve conflicts in a mature and peaceful way. There are enemies enough out there to fight against. See also what I wrote in the alignment section.

I also expect you to be able to write one post per day at minimum on weekdays. If you can't participate during weekends, that's fine, but please take the time to inform us if that's the case beforehand. Same goes for interruptions during the week, I totally understand that real life can and will happen, but please tell us, if you have to stop posting for some days. I’ll try my best to run your character, if necessary, the way you probably would have, and if you want to offer me advice on how to do so, I’ll thank you for it.

If you're not posting for 10 days without informing the group, I'll go looking for a new player. Meaning, that you're out in this case.

I'm used to writing in simple past, but it seems that simple present is the predominant time used in PbPs, so we'll use this instead. Also 3rd person limited seems to be the best choice (if everyone says "I", I'll probably have to scratch my head constantly ;) )

If you speak aloud please use bolded text with quotation marks: "I'm talking to you."

If you think, use italics: She thought, so she was.

For ooc talk, use the ooc tags and for things directed at specific characters that other characters wouldn't know about, there's the spoiler tag. I'll trust that anyone goes about those spoilers in a responsible way, meaning that if you are so curious that you can't help but looking, please don't use this if your character wouldn't have any idea about it. Best way would naturally be simply not to look first but I know how hard that can be. :)

I’m generally fine with letting players do their own skill checks. Now PF 2 embraces the idea of hidden checks made by the GM, and while I understand the reasoning behind it, I haven’t come up with the way I want to handle those in my gamesyet . So suggestions to that regard are more than welcome, and the way of handling things might change during the time we’re playing until we’ve found something we’re all comfortable with.

In combat situations, I have often found that it can become quite tedious if you have to wait for a specific person to post their character' s action because of initiative. So what I used to have in former campaigns was something I called “initiative groups”, meaning that everyone would roll for initiative and then all players whose initiative was between two enemies were allowed to post regardless of their actual initiative order.

As an example: Orc 1 has init 14, player 1 (P1) has rolled for a 12, P2 for an 11, P3 for a 7 and Orc 2 for a 6. So after Orc 1 acted on his init, P1, P2 and P3, being in the same initiative group, could act disregarding the initiative sequence within that group. Again, I'm not trying to punish you, so if it actually would be better for P1 to act first for whatever reason (let's say because he wants to buff P2 with Protection from evil first), we can still wait for his action (or, if P2 has already acted, add it to her action if it was deciding for her success afterwards). But in general, it might accelerate fights a bit and I'd also accept if P3 should post first and buff P1 with some spell, so it should rather be to your advantage.

Apart from that, the three-action system comes with reactions, and like with skills, I’m still thinking about how to let players use those without slowing the game down to much. So again, your input on that matter is appreciated, but maybe we have to go trial and error before we settle on a method everyone can agree to.