Gaurwaith's page

To be honest, rolling dice and killing monsters is often not the most interesting thing that happens. At least, not to me.

There are all sorts of reasons why you might not want to have a group of 30+ lightly armed and moderately trained militia go in place of three to six well trained and highly competent adventurers. Probably the most important is that the adventurers are less afraid to die.

In The Children of Hurin, Glaurung the dragon is crawling towards the forest of Brethil, where Turin lives. He's just successfully mobilized the inhabitants of Brethil and repeatedly defeated invading armies of orcs quite soundly. He decides that it's a very bad idea to take his army to go fight the dragon, because then it will just breathe on them. Instead, he and two friends decide to do it like adventurers. One of his two friends gets scared and runs away before they do the killing.

Goblins are very different from an invading army, they have green faces and pointed teeth, and all the townsfolk tell tales about how they like to eat babies. Everyone has a lot of hatred for goblins, and the natural instincts which make it hard for humans to kill each other aren't nearly so relevant. Likewise, the goblins are naturally evil and actually enjoy killing. When those thirty militiamen march off to the goblin's cave, there aren't going to be any prisoners, one side is going to be killed to a man. Likewise, both sides are going to fight to the last, because they know if they surrender they'll be killed anyway. In a normal battle, both sides meet and soldiers on both sides kill each other from time to time until one side gets scared and runs away, at which point the other side kills a lot of them and either takes the rest prisoner or else scares them off. In a battle with goblins, everyone is already scared, and everyone knows that running is useless.

In other words, a fight with goblins is way more lethal than the sort of thing a militia is cut out for.

This is to say nothing of the fact that the militia are going to have to attack the goblins in their cave, where whatever natural defences and traps they have will take a terrible toll. Adventurers are prepared for those sorts of things, and will have an easier time slipping in unnoticed. They aren't as good in an out and out murderfest as the group of thirty militia, but they're better at dispatching the threat efficiently and with no loss of life.

A good theme song should be distinctive and easily recognizable. It should also be fairly simple and easy to remember, the sort of thing you can play over in your head.

Personally, I don't really understand the lyrics in most songs.

Based on those two factors, I think this song is a good candidate.

I think it fits well with bard. At first, it's easily recognizable as that song that plays in the background at comedic moments in movies. But then it keeps going, building slowly and steadily, until it becomes almost anxious. You realize the bard is more than they seemed at first, someone with a deep personality and a lot going on beneath the surface. It keeps going, still using the same old patterns to grow in new ways, and you realize that beneath the veneer and the charming comedy of the bard is actually the scariest thing in the room.

Also, I feel obligated to suggest this song for cleric. Johnny Cash's singing is a bit like a spoken poem, which makes it easy for me to understand. I also think it's a quite distinctive style. I like this song in particular because it makes being religious seem like the most badass thing ever. It's not, "horay, I get to go to heaven!" It's, "no grave is strong enough to hold me down. Death itself will bow before me."

I like this one for skald. I'd die happy if I died a foolish death charging against hopeless odds as long as that song was playing.

There are some classes, like wizard, that don't really have much of a flavor component. I chose a theme song for a wizard once, and it was based on their backstory and personality. They could've been a barbarian and it would've still been fine.

It would be helpful if you could try to narrow down your question a bit.

Also, you'll find that there is dramatically less information on what happened in, say, 900 then there is on what happened in 1360.

Behold! The Pommel Launcher!

Now we are all sons of...

Not only was throwing your sword an actual technique, throwing just the pommel was as well.

Edit: I started to watch Braveheart.

I realized this guy was talking about game mechanics. Then I started to write out a discussion over the mechanics of sword throwing.

Thinking about it a little more, it seems like it would be extremely hard to throw a greatsword, because the big hoops on the guard would force you to grip it all the way back near the pommel. If you're holding it like that sideways, it takes a lot of forearm strength just to not let it fall.

You'd probably be better off throwing it like an axe and hoping to end someone rightly...

Or maybe you could grip it on the blade near the point of balance? It seems like a bad idea to me.

I'd suggest giving a glide speed for the first few levels and then a fly speed starting at level five.

I also think a breath weapon is generally a mediocre use of an action in combat, so I wouldn't worry about it being too unbalancing.

With a longsword, you want to grab the hilt backwards and upside down, then throw it like a spear.

A greatsword has quillons that would hit the back of your head if you tried the same thing. I'd suggest either trying essentially the same thing but leaning to one side and extending your arm out, or else grabbing it by the blade and throwing it like an axe.

With a greataxe, you should grab it by the bottom of the handle, hold it behind you so the head touches your lower back, and throw it over your head with both hands.

I don't exactly know what a greatclub is, but I suppose it's a long staff with a small lump at one end. You should probably throw it the same way you throw an axe. If it's too long for that, and would touch the ground when you hold it behind you, consider starting from a different position, as otherwise it will scrape along the ground, which would be detrimental to the throw.

Or you could just get a spear.

This was mentioned briefly earlier on, but I'd like to expand upon the point that "nature" is a fairly arbitrary concept.

When white settlers reached the northwestern united states, they assumed the region was totally natural, and untouched by civilization. In fact, Native Americans had been living there for some time, and regulated the land in interesting ways. But that didn't fit the understanding of nature and civilization at the time.

Who is more in touch with nature, a farmer who grows corn all day or a man who goes hiking regularly? The farmer spends most of their time carefully regulating an environment for the benefit of humans, so you might argue that they do not really interact with a naturally occurring environment. Or maybe, because they mostly interact with plants and animals, they are automatically in touch with nature. The hiker probably has a good appreciation of what a forest is like, and likely regularly interacts with an environment that doesn't show a lot of human influence. But then, the hiker also probably doesn't have any close connection between their livelihood and the natural world, and maybe he has a desk job. Neither the farmer nor the hiker are likely to be able to survive if they were suddenly transported back in time ten thousand years to a remote area of the world. But is that really the best way to assess who is the person more in touch with nature?

Let's make another comparison. A member of a tribe that has remained mostly out of contact with the rest of the world, deep in a tropical jungle. He spends a lot of his time worrying about how to hunt animals, and most of his possessions are things that he made for himself. The other person is a heart surgeon who spends most of her time worrying about heart surgery. She interacts with a huge range of humans from a wide variety of backgrounds, uses expensive, complex machines that are designed by humans, and eats food that typically travels more than a thousand miles to get to her. But she also spends most of her disposable income maintaining a stretch of forest which humans never interact with. One is clearly doing more for nature, while another interacts more with the natural world. Different people will make different judgments about their comparative level of connection with nature.

Some questions. Does being a hunter make you more in touch with nature? Can you appreciate nature in Central Park, New York? Are there any really untouched virgin forests which show no human influence? How is human influence on two forests categorized? Could you compare different tracts of two forests and state that one is less influenced by humans when both are extremely complicated environments with tons of factors you are incapable of adequately studying? Does being a vegetarian make you more or less in touch with nature? How does that compare to being a vegan?

If in the real world I decide not to ride in a car, not to eat meat, or not to wear metal objects, none of those things influence how in touch I am with nature, because being in touch with nature is something that we define in a subjective way.

I don't know if nature is subjective on Golarion. On Golarion, gods definitively exist. It seems fair to compare the subjective aspects of morality with the subjective aspects of nature (although I'm not a philosopher), and we know that on Golarion evil is a thing that can be defined. I've always wondered about the implications of druid's metal armor, because it seems to suggest that there is some objective definition of what nature is and what being in touch with nature means on Golarion. Unfortunately, as others have pointed out, this is a key part of the core rules. If I want to make a homebrew world where interaction with nature and an exploration of what "nature" means to the players, I have to change the core rules, because I detest their implication that nature is somehow an objective thing that all druids are naturally more in touch with.

If I ever ran a campaign, I'd want to do away with the alignment system. I'd probably have to ban paladins. If I ever ran a campaign focused around civilization and the way humans interact with nature, exploring themes about what is and is not subjectively "natural", I'd want to do away with the implications of some of the druid rules text. I wouldn't have to ban druids, because the bit about metal armor is much less central to the class than alignment related rules are to paladins, but I'd change the rules. I'd change the rules to do away with their implications in game.

If I ever played in PFS, those rules and their implications would exist. When I play in other people's games, they exist. In games I'm a part of, nature is a thing, and wearing metal armor seems to me to be a thing that makes one less in touch with nature. I don't like that.

A little further reading.

Good and evil are things on golarion. A balor is evil because it is a balor, not because of what it does. Outsiders in general have a set alignment which is prescriptive.

Characters, on the other hand, have descriptive alignments, which best describe the character's actions without forcing them to do things a particular way.

Still, good and evil are things. A person on golarion has alignment, it is a possession.

I'd be inclined to say that you'd have an evil alignment if you cast raise dead a lot, but you could still have personality traits that make you a functional and well adapted member of society who mostly benefits others. The gods might hate you, but your friends probably wouldn't.

I guess you don't believe in sense motive or someone taking burn damage to grab the baby out of the fire.

This is not a video game. Nobody is frozen in place during plot exposition.

Fair enough.

I'd think that 1) they'd take a penalty to sense motive, especially if I'd foreshadowed racism against hobgoblins, and 2) the baby would probably die pretty quick. I was spurred to write this by reading a story about PCs getting tricked by a hobgoblin who ran in with a bear cub, tossing it into the fire, and then ran away while the mother bear attacked the party. There's obviously some opportunity for the PCs to interact and change outcomes, but I think what I wrote is most likely. They did save the cub by taking burn, so maybe the baby lives. But with burns, and the villagers are definitely still angry. Maybe some go home, and they just toss the hobgoblin in jail, and it's sad instead of scary. There'd probably be some debate over what to do with her, and the villagers would probably still ask the PCs to solve their local monster problem. Without the feeling of unity and power that comes with the crowd, I doubt they'd threaten them with a delay from the noble. The PCs would probably move on.

But you're right, I did make some assumptions while writing that that wouldn't necessarily happen in game. There's not really any way of knowing exactly how things would pan out, and it's less interesting if the PCs don't end up facing that choice at the end, which they don't unless the villagers are mad at them. I also don't think it'd be a waste of prep, since you still want to know about the forces in the region, and the local baron is probably going to interact with the PCs at some point.

I think there'd be something interesting.

60) A dark but moonlit night on the edge of a foggy and foreboding forest. It's time to camp, and to set a watch. As the fire wanes, shadows grow taller and eerier, and the inescapable nighttime chill makes it impossible to get warm. The grassess hiss, bending and writhing in the wind. Was that the sound of someone in the woods? Sticks crack, cries are heard, and there is a faint glow far off.

The party is roused, having a few rounds to prepare. It sounds like a mob is charging headlong through the woods. Suddenly, an old hobgoblin woman bursts through the underbrush, carrying a wailing bundle in her arms. "Please! You have to help me, they'll take my baby! Please!" Turns out nothing's black and white, and sometimes the boogeyman is a racist mob armed with torches and pitchforks. As the party gives way, she races forward, tossing the young one in the fire.

Nothing's black and white, until it is.

When the mob catches up, they make sure she pays. The wind picks up, carrying her cries far into the night, and the clouds follow after, covering up the moon. It is afraid to illuminate what happens that night. The villagers are angry at the adventurers who didn't save the child, but aren't suicidal enough to try to kill them. Instead, they offer a deal: help us with a local monster, or we'll send word ahead to the baron that there are adventurers in his lands who could help him get ahead in the power struggles of the land. The PCs might be able to outrun the villagers, assuming they're willing to steal their horses, but if they don't, well, they'll have a major delay to contend with.

Could you name them?

Okay, let's be honest, like half the classes in Pathfinder are primarily about killing things. What makes the assassin special is that one of their entry requirements is literally "must kill someone for no other reason than to become an assassin." The issue isn't the killing, it's the reason for the killing. And the question here is "are the reasons good enough?"

Which classes are not primarily about killing things?

Friendly reminder to everyone, the ideal encounters to post here are ones where the PCs are in a hurry because they're doing something else.

56) The best beer in all the land, that's what they said it would be, and that's what it is. It looks like one of the PCs has somehow been slighted, and their pride is on the line in some sort of drinking game. The local who's winning keeps trying to keep the game going by offering higher stakes, and by drinking even more.

It's just might be a long night and a slow, skull splitting morning.

I tend to be of the opinion that there shouldn't really be anything that can't be avoided. If it can't be avoided, then whoever created it is god, and that's kindof weird.

Also, I feel like a comedic penny would be out of place in a dark and morally testing warzone, though I could see it if the contrast were played up. That's also a matter of opinion to some degree.

54) The penalty for treason is to be beaten to death publicly. Four army officers are smacking around a treasonous individual when the PCs arrive. It's brutal, be sure to describe it in heart wrenching detail, so that the PCs know without a shadow of a doubt that at least one of the four men is a sadistic bastard who deserves to die.

If they do nothing, the man pleads and begs for the PCs to help. His family members accost the PCs with a variety of different tactics to try to get them to.

If they intervene but don't kill the sadist, then everyone's angry, because what good is that? He'll still be there next week, by which time the PCs will have moved on, since they're busy saving the world (or whatever).

If they do kill him, saving the traitor, then maybe a year later, when they come back, the village elders are hanging from a tree. The women say that, after the traitor was saved, more people became traitorous, and there was a general uprising. A general mutiny is different from traitorism in important ways, so there was a different punishment than death by beating. One which involved the young men getting sent to one of the more dangerous portions of the battle and the old men being executed. Alternatively, the uprising was successful, but then bandits/the other army/monsters came and, without an actual government with professional soldiers, the villagers got subjugated again.

I suppose if the PCs have some way to make sure that saving the traitor doesn't set a precedent of traitorous behavior getting rewarded then nothing bad happens. A realistic world isn't always doom and gloom. But someone should probably still be angry.

The aforementioned Tomorbataar checking in. I'll be joining you quite soon, I've been reading through the existing thread and it looks like fun.

As I understand it, there are three characters.

An investigator/magus multiclass.

The most intelligent bard ever.

And Howard Philips Lovecraft.

Soon, I'll be finished with a bladebound magus.

Looking forward to joining you.

45.1) Bonus points if the PCs do some sort of quest to help out the villagers the first time they see it, and feel good about themselves. Perhaps they get back a dowry and help a young couple get happily married. Maybe they deal with a local goblin or kobold problem. Something quick that makes the villagers happy and lets the PCs learn some names.

46) A well off looking girl of about twenty approaches the PCs and begs them to take her with them. She's been married off into a very unhappy situation, with a tyrant of a stepmother and an alcoholic husband. This was all well and good, the world isn't all roses and honey, but she's just learned that she's pregnant, and doesn't want to have a child in this situation.

If the PCs do help her, she proves to be quite able bodied and helpful. She slows them down a bit, and they'll probably wish they had that extra time because someone else later down the road will need help and they won't be able to provide it, but not too much, and she's got other family in the nearest city.

If they don't help her, they find her a few months later traveling with a hooded cloak and a bruised face, no longer pregnant.

47) A man with a club foot wasn't conscripted. He says he was wounded it in an accident splitting wood a few years back, and neither side is desperate enough to start recruiting cripples. So the soldiers left, and left him behind. Despite his hurt, he's still one of the most able bodied individuals in the town, and folk young and old look to him as a leader. He's taken to wearing a sword, and is a true patriot. It's still early enough that the war is popular.

Well, it's popular with everyone but the soldiers. They've just been smashed in a decisive battle which killed about half of them. The lone survivor of the company which set out from the company has just returned, with a broken arm and a gash on his head, to find closed doors and cold shoulders. His only family are dead, and the rest are shunning him as a deserter, which he is.

Things have escalated between the cripple and the injured man, and it looks like they're about to come to blows. The rest of the town looks on with bated breath.

48) An isolated homestead, it's about big enough for one family. The only son is in the process of robbing his sobbing parents, who are loading up their only cart to which is attatched their only horse.

The father is giving the son his blessing, saying, "Live, son, prosper and be happy. My greatest hope is that you will surpass me in every way, taking everything I have to give you and building yourself a happy life." The son keeps screaming at him to shut up, becoming increasingly shrill, until finally he accidentally smacks the horse, causing it to start running suddenly. This breaks his mother's foot, causing her to shriek, and sends the horse running in the wrong direction, right into a pothole, which breaks its leg and flips the cart.

If the PCs still haven't acted, the father approaches the son cautiously, intending to help him.

The son refuses help, though he's obviously hurt, and keeps threatening his father with a sword even though he's clearly on the verge of unconsciousness, and his father could probably easily take it from him. If the PCs do nothing, he will gather a random assortment of goods from the back of the cart and stumble towards the woods, bleeding profusely from his head and waving his sword futilely at his father, who will follow along patiently. His mother, however, now enraged by her broken foot, will hobble after him screaming and in a rage.

If the PCs still do nothing, the mother will draw a dagger from his belt and try to stab the son, who holds out his sword to stop her. She is undaunted, and charges straight onto it, impaling herself. Stepping back in shock, the son drops the sword and looks at his father, who in turn draws his own dagger and murders the son he was just giving his blessing. He will then try to kill himself.

Also, their dinner is burnt.

I'm also still here, and have been figuring out my character a bit more, but haven't been able to do much work yet. I'm prioritizing other games that I'm already in, and I had a fun opportunity for some more creative writing, so I took it.

The character I'm making is a human bloodrager.

use some of or most of them in my upcoming campaign.

Let me know how they turn out. I'm always interested in learning.

44) The PCs have lost their map, and have to ask for directions. The man they ask eyes them for a moment, then gives them directions to the next town. "It goes right past the Bird and the Baby, you'll probably want to stay the night..." after a moment, he adds, "or you could take a short cut I know of..."

Agreed. A firehose's stream definitively does not stay one inch wide for very long.

#38 is my favorite so far. I've been having trouble making a purely good encounter that leaves the PCs with a good taste in their mouth, and this one does that literally and metaphorically. It's important to include good things as well as bad, because humans are social creatures with strong motivations to act for the greater good. The first world war is way way way more interesting because of the christmas truces than it ever could be as a world where everything is horrible for no reason.

Also the inn could eventually be destroyed. Though I like to think it wouldn't be, and the local bandits and villagers would set aside their differences here. A flower blooming in a field of mud has to actually be a flower, not just more mud.

Dot.

You seem like the sort of person who can actually run a PbP well, which isn't everyone.

Also the setting looks interesting, and that song was wicked. Which is a word I very rarely use for anything.

Do you often use theme music? I think it's always amazing in a PbP, and recommend you do often.

There's a friend of mine whose personality I am inspired to try to put into a character. I've only ever really used myself for that, so I'm not sure how well I'll do, but we're reasonably similar people, and the character can be a bit different from either of us in some ways.

We don't know nearly as much as we'd like about the etymology and history of swear words, mostly because people in the past didn't want to write down things about them.

However, I can tell you that, broadly speaking, there are three categories.

1) Scatological Words - most of the swear words we use today are in this category. They mostly have to do with poop and sex.

2) Slurs - these are generally considered much stronger than scatological words, because they're more targeted and hateful.

3) Profanity - these are generally considered much weaker than scatological words. They are religious in nature.

Throughout history, the relative intensities of these groups have changed dramatically. Chaucer, for instance, used a four letter word we generally consider to be the most intense of the scatological variety quite casually. When Shakespeare has a character say 'slid (god's eyelid), for example, it's a bit like someone today making an exclamation with a scatological word.

Obviously the relationship of an individual on Golarion with the divine is quite different from the relationship of an earth individual with the divine, but there is historical precedent for profanity having high intensity.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely that profanity has been used throughout history the way it is today. It is very unlikely that profanity was ever as versatile as some scatological words are today. The F word can be used multiple times as an exclamation, adjective, noun, adverb, and verb in the same sentence, and I do not think this was the case for profanity.

So there is historical precedent for people to use profanity, which is generally considered more acceptable in a PbP, with the intensity we today ascribe to other more taboo words. If you explain that to the other people in your game, you can portray a vulgar character without saying things we today find offensive. Of course, this creates other issues.

Consider, for example, the fact that people have at various times throughout history killed cats for sport. Today, we mostly interact with cats as pets, and have more abundant food to give them. But in the past, some people did things which we today would consider sociopathic, and it was accepted as normal behavior. Much like issues of profanity, this creates a problem where what means one thing to a character in a historical setting probably means something different to someone today.

I don't know how to resolve that problem.

All decanters will produce equal force, thus canceling each other out.

37) The PCs are on their way to a city when they encounter a number of refugees moving in the same direction. These seem rather well off, perhaps because they're young men. They say that they're the survivors of a raid on a village, trying to make it to the town where their money will be worth something. One of them apparently had a secret stash of treasure hidden away. They are generally friendly, helpful, and trusting.

They're also bandits, but it'll take a perceptive PC to notice that. They aren't going to attack a group of adventurers since they value their lives, and they plan to open a legitimate business with the money they stole from their friends and relatives once they get to the city.

If I know my group, they'd go for Option A because they think it will give them more XP.

I think Pack is asking them to do all three.

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Not sure how that one ties into a war zone, but I like it.

Was that about my previous one, # 28, or a different one?

To elaborate a little, 28 could theoretically take place in any reasonably governmentless society which needs adventurers to take care of problems, but I think it's best in a war ravaged land.

1) That's why they can't just ask the local noble to take care of it, like he would most other places, since he's off fighting/been killed/out of soldiers etc.

2) It means the local villagers are at the end of their rope. This makes them more likely to hire fake adventurers since they're more desperate and less likely to be able to recover from the loss.

3) It means they're already angry at something, like having their friends killed. This makes the inn the PCs have just arrived at much more of a powder keg. Furthermore, there's less government authority to break up a fight, and the local militiaman was, in my mind, more likely to join the violent types at the bar if a fight did begin.

These factors make it hard on the PCs, because they probably are aware of those things, and are going to have to be careful. If they're sharp, they'll remember the old lady who mentioned how she wanted to literally kill the cheats herself and won't escalate things so as to cause a fight which kills the cheats just for being cheats.

Unless they're mean to criminals, in which case they might try to start a fight and get the villagers to kill them. But even then, some villagers probably die or get hurt, so presumably the PCs want to avoid that outcome.

Which makes it a tough situation to handle, where a lot could go wrong.

Of note, by the way, I don't personally have any particular interest in the actual armies occupying the warzone and their relationship with the PCs, I'm more interested in encounters involving the PCs and the area near where the armies are or have been. The changes in society resulting from recent war, in my opinion, create a very favorable environment for interesting and immersive encounters.

I'll admit that encounters with bands of soldiers can also be interesting.

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I was thinking of a town surrounded by minefields, but I'm not sure how to fit it to the topic.

I have my own preferences, but there's definitely something there. Lots of armies have used traps of various descriptions which could create some predicaments.

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I've been wondering about another thing, which is how much these encounters force players to engage. It seems like they work at different levels and I wonder which ones people thing would be best for a group of murderhobos.

The very nature of the encounters on this thread is supposed to challenge traditional RPG tropes, where players take every quest they can get in order to maximize XP. Instead, they have a limited time frame and have to decide what to do with it. Furthermore, because of their nature as diversionary activities, the expected treasure values are lower, which is supposed to emphasize the moral component and increase immersion.

But I don't have the capacity to predict player behavior.

17, for example, is an encounter where I can't imagine what murderhobos would do. True, full on, pure murderhobos would actually just take the loot and not care about the NPCs. I think most people are just on a murderhobo spectrum, though, and I don't know how people who are 75% murderhobo would react. They are, however, being forced to consider the moral implications of their treasure grabbing actions, which is at least something.

18, in addition, and somewhat similarly, aligns character and player thinking. They're both thinking about how to get the treasure for themselves. Once engaged at this level, will further in character thought occur more frequently?

Would murderhobos even care about 1? Suppose she's poor, like most people in this devastated land, and nobody can offer any real reward. Players might still be moved by the sheer moral shock value, but that isn't going to particularly facilitate in character thinking. Or maybe, once morally and emotionally engaged by the shocking nature of the encounter, they'll be primed to actually respond to it in character? I genuinely don't know.

I wonder about other encounters like this, for which the unifying theme seems to be lack of out of character reward like gold or xp. How does a murderhobo respond under those circumstances?

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11) The next village the PCs are planning on visiting, where they will stay the night, is entirely abandoned.

16. At a small village near the battle lines everything seems quiet, but several villagers act very nervous. Everyone is trying to rush the PCs through town.

Three foreign soldiers are hiding with several hostages. They've stolen a significant amount of loot and are trying to flee the fighting, when they saw the PCs approaching they assumed they were military officials sent to look for the soldiers and took hostages to assure the villagers compliance.

Cattleman has stated that they think these suggestions are not specific to the setting specified in the thread. I think this raises an interesting point about the broader topic of this thread, which is why I've given this a separate section from the previous one and not included it in a spoiler.

I thought both of those encounters fit the setting quite well, actually, and I wonder how others feel. The reason for this is that the setting characterizes the encounter.

If you were in the civilized heartland of an empire, finding an abandoned village would be a very different experience from finding one out in a warzone. There seem to be many more likely causes of villagers abandoning or being forced out of their homes in a war zone than in a civilized area. Finding an abandoned village in a warzone, the PCs might conjecture that citizens left because of an approaching army, or were driven out by bandits or some supernatural monster of the variety that thrives when organized government is busy doing things like fighting a war. Most importantly of all, an abandoned village makes sense in a warzone. It tells the same story as the rest of the world. Lawless and evil forces are growing, villagers are suffering, and the land is becoming ravaged. Things are falling apart.

I think this same reasoning applies to encounter 16, making it also fit the setting. In encounter 16, we see villagers suffering at the hands of the few soldiers who exist in their world, and struggling to avoid a conflict by rushing the PCs through.

Does this make sense? Do you think that these reasons really make the encounters fit?

Obviously, this is somewhat subjective. I'm asking for your opinion, and the reasons why you have it.

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32) Nobody else seems to recognize it, but the fellow getting sloshed across the tavern from you has the characteristic facial features, hair color, and accent of nobles on the other side of the war.

Now the other patrons are beginning to sing a song in the name of their dead soldiers.

26.1) For possible bonus points, depending on the game, make the NPC who offers them help one whose services/association they refused on moral grounds in the past.

28) The PCs hear a tale in a village about another group of adventurers who passed through not long ago. The villagers scraped together enough gold to pay them to kill a bandit lord, but that was almost a week ago, and they should've been back by now. One local woman grumbles, "If I'd know they were going to take our money and run, I'd've killed them to spare the next village myself."

A few villages down, the PCs encounter an inebriated group of adventurers in an inn. A group of villagers on the other side of the room are talking about an evil wizard holed up in an abandoned fortress in hushed tones, and eyeing the NPC adventurers with admiration. A few other seats at the establishment are occupied by violent looking patrons, and there is a militiaman standing in the street.

What could go wrong?

By right answer, I mean one that preserves their Paladinhood. As GM, I am describing the game world to the players. Within that game world there are things the characters would know that the players may not. If the GM has engineered a scenario that requires the paladin to fall or kill their character then he's being a jerk and all the players should leave.

If the player asks about whether a specific action will cause their paladin to fall, I agree that a reasonable GM should tell them and not be a jerk.

I'm not sure what your opinion would be, but I think that a paladin can get put into morally grey situations and not know what to do. If I were the GM, so long as their intentions remained reasonably good, I'd probably not cause them to fall. Within reason.

What do you think about that?

As GM I always remember that impossible moral quandaries always have a right answer. Even if the player doesn't know it the character would and the player can always ask me what their character would know is the right choice.

There's no clear right answer to a lot of situations.

Lots of people want to do the right thing in the real world, but behave differently. The paladin ought to behave with nuance.

pally's are LG which means in any one scenario over half of your options are removed for decision making. Lets use the pally and barb, so you beat the bad guy and your options are take a bribe and let him go. Kill him, he cant be redeemed. or turn him into the police. Well you have one option because of the pally, because all other options are "wrong."

If the world were more immersively real, it wouldn't be so clear what is right and wrong. Adventures might present you with a set of choices, some of which are "good", and some of which are "bad", designed to appeal to different classes, but real dilemmas are often more complicated. What if the fellow is really evil and deserves to die? What if he's likely to escape prison, or could still do bad things from within a cell? What if he's a son and father and brother, and if he goes to jail it will place additional strain on his family? What if he has no family but is taking care of his grandparents, and there's a famine on, so they'll die if he goes to prison?

What if instead of a generic bad guy who exists so you can beat him and feel good about having overcome an encounter, it's a real person with actual motives that make sense? What if those motives require actual understanding in order to make a moral decision?

Suddenly playing a paladin doesn't take away options, it forces you to be engaged with the story because the gameplay and story are integrated.You're genuinely concerned about acting in accordance with the moral values of your character, and have to write a real person for whom those motivations make sense.

23) In their travels the PCs meet a charismatic local baron. He doesn't really seem like a warlord. In fact, he seems to be a better ruler then any nobleman they've come across, he resolves several disputes fairly, treats the PCs as honored guests who deserve a good night's rest and a hot meal in the morning, and seems generally well liked by the local populace. But something seems somehow...off, as though he's hiding something. You're escorted to your rooms and told not to leave in the night.

Three days later, you find a village that has been utterly ravaged. The bloodstains tell a terrible tale of rough men who came in the night to visit violence upon unsuspecting farmers. There is a pile of corpses in the centre of the village, whose grisly details do not bear full description. One lone survivor, now raving mad, can be found still hiding in his house. It's difficult to determine exactly what he's trying to say, but one thing can be sure.

The baron needs to be stopped.

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but the above suggestion isn't quite what I had in mind. It's just an encounter with a moral component, and not too specific to a warzone. More importantly, and the reason I say this, is that all of these encounters are meant to be for PCs who are doing something else. They aren't soldiers or hired guards, they're adventurers. Even more, they're adventurers who already have a quest, and who are making a very real decision about if they even have the capacity to accept new quests as they pass through the area. This makes a much more real and full world, where the PCs aren't the only ones solving problems, and in fact very clearly don't have the capacity to do lots of things they wish they could. They can't stay and help the villagers repair their wall, but someone else will, because there are other real people in the world who are working to better themselves. Instead of the PCs struggling against the evils of a world, it's the PCs existing in a world that has different sides already engaged in different struggles, which the PCs are only a small part of. This gives much more agency to the NPCs, which I think creates a more immersive experience.

Again, I don't want this to come across as hostile, thank you for posting what really is a very interesting and hooking encounter, even if it doesn't align exactly with what I wanted from this thread. I'm just taking this opportunity to clarify the circumstances which I want the 101 encounters in this thread to conform to, and this isn't meant as a personal attack in any way. I hope to see more contributions from you in the future.

20) The horses were spooked by something in the night. They're long gone by now, probably eaten by whatever foul creature scared them in the first place. It's slow going by foot, but the PCs manage to reach the next village by nightfall...only to find that there are no horses for sale. Increasingly lucrative offers to buy the only four in town are turned down, the villagers citing the facts that they can't sow their crops without the animals, can't go to market since the nearby towns were all wiped out, and can't eat gold.

Of course, it would be easy to take the horses by force.

17) The PCs discovered the soldiers, and their loot. A fight broke out, killing half the hostages and the soldiers. A few of the villagers could do nothing but sob at the death of their loved ones, but most are more pragmatic. With the loot the soldiers had brought they can afford to hire soldiers and build walls, which will protect the town in the future.

The PCs didn't expect to get payed, did they?

11) The next village the PCs are planning on visiting, where they will stay the night, is entirely abandoned.

12) On the trail the PCs encounter a band of warriors from one of the armies. One of them had a few cryptic notes, which seem to indicate that the next town on the road will be attacked tomorrow. When the PCs arrive later that night they find a lot of wounded and ill who can't walk, with no way to easily and quickly move them. The sun is sinking.

9) Terrible, stark, nightmarish: Dark Rock Tower. It was the site of the most recent battle, but one the fighting was over neither side could hold a garrison there. The piled corpses were left to rot, and the wounded to scream all through the night. Now a fell light can be seen glinting in the windows, and the roof seems to have been repaired. Woe to any who stay out after dark...

4) A local noble has become something of a warlord, collecting stiff taxes and raising a private army. The people hate him, as he regularly does somewhat sadistic things to the population, but can't do anything about it because of his soldier's loyalty. Simply killing him would only destabilize the local region and allow someone else to come to power, but a more nuanced solution would take a long time.

The PCs are in a big hurry through a ravaged war zone, probably doing something involving saving the world. How can we make them wish they had time to stop and help the inhabitants?

1) A woman with a bruised face accosts the PCs as they settle in for the night, telling them that her drunken husband has taken their kids and run off to god knows where. It'll take all day to track him down, and everyone in the village is scared to venture far.

2) A group of bandits has taken control of the area. Their tax collector is in the process of beating an old man when the PCs arrive, but he begs them not to help. If they did, it would only provoke the rest, who are hiding somewhere in the hills and will take several days to deal with fully.

3) There's a murderer in the hamlet. Bodies are found at the end of every week, and it looks like they've been tortured before being killed. There aren't any professional government authorities around to help, and none of the locals have the capacity to solve the crime.

Is this Golarion?

A priory surrounded by supernatural woods is exactly the sort of thing I'm interested. As is good creative writing and a fairly short campaign.

I just might apply...

I'm not professor Olsen, indeed, I don't actually know as much about Middle-Earth as I should like. But I am an avid fan, and I suppose I'd like another game.

It's a big commitment to join a PbP. I wouldn't want to do that unless I was interested in putting in a significant and sustainable amount of effort down the line. How much effort do you think you'll be putting into the writing? Will you include things like concept images or music? Do you tend to push players towards faster play, or do you let us take however long we take?

I'll be looking over the gameplay section already extant to try to answer these questions myself, but anything you provide me will be helpful.

Still not certain I'll apply. How do you feel about me writing a character who's a lot like me?

Got the weekend free, I'll be posting here again.

Mae govannen!

I'm wondering if I should apply for this. I think I might be too much of a purist...hmm.

I know a way to decide. Is there a monster statblock or something like that for Balrogs? I'm not familiar with the system.

Specifically, do they have a fly speed?

I'd have a hard time convincing my GMs to let me shatter someone who high fived me with shocking grasp.

All from me.

I will put it on the table so my brother cannot get it.
-Said about some toy that he wanted.

I'm not tired I'm just thinking.
-Before falling asleep. Said exclusively in the car.

Mom's an as
-First words ever written. I've never been a good speller.

We used to play a racing game on the Nintendo Gamecube which frequently used the song "Get Low" by Lil' John. It was censored I assume. Anyway, the start of the song sounded like:

Gnome. Gnome gnome gnome gnome gnome gnome. Gnome. Gn Gn Gn Gn Gnome, gni gna gni gna gni gnome, gni gni gnome gnome gnome.

Pretty sure I still thought that it was a song about gnomes when I was like twelve.

Well as it turns out, I was accepted to a different game. I'm apprehensive about adding too many games to my plate at once, because I don't want to get overwhelmed and end up being a bad player.

So I guess I won't be submitting a character. I had some pretty interesting thoughts about one, maybe I'll use him somewhere else.

Alrighty then, I'm glad that's over with.

Thanks a lot for the selection, GM, I'll do my best to make frequent high quality posts.

Congrats to everyone else selected, I read many a backstory myself and liked the creativity.

Good luck and my condolences to those who were not selected, I hope you find good things elsewhere. May the wind beneath your wings bear you to where the sun sails and the moon walks.

I've only gotten about 1/3 of the way through the player's guide (and don't think I'll be able to finish before recruitment ends), besides undead & devils, is there anything else major I should plan for?

There's an underground river, and some amount of climbing. There's also a city of goblins, and everything is very mazelike. Several people I think described teleportation at certain points, but you don't know where it goes or even if it's not just a disintegrator, so uh...that's kinda tough to prepare for.

How many posts are in a page?

Edit: whooo! Fifteen pages!

I officially withdraw my submission, since everything I wanted is now complete.

Oh wait no I don't, I still want to get selected. Damn, forgot about that because the other thing was just uh, so much more important.

Wow, we'll definitely make it to fifteen at this point.

Also GM is in my time zone, will make for some sweet synchronous posts if I get accepted.

I had a dream last night where I was investigating some person. I think they were a teacher at my old highschool, but then they turned out to be a murderer, and I think there was something about a weird piece of art made of different colored blocks of wood arranged in a 3rd spiral pattern, which was like a code that said I killed like x number of people. Anyway, me and a person I was with (I think they were on my side, and there were some others maybe? Dreaming is weird.) got stabbed, me less deeply than the friend, by a pocket knife.

And then we're just like hanging out, waiting for the ambulance to show up, but instead it's just a group of paramedics. And they took us out to a weird lobby area and started stitching up my friend, and I just stood around and watched, and kept looking at my stab wound, which was leaking blood. I thought to myself I've heard that a stab wound has like a 50% chance of killing you if you get help right away, and I'm just standing around. This is incorrect, but dreams.

Then I was wandering around in a New England style forest, still leaking blood. And then I got the sense that I had been doing that for like, a whole day, getting weaker and weaker. Then I was arriving back home from a walk in said forest, still bleeding. And then I just wandered off again without getting help, still thinking about that 50% chance to die.

I had worked out pretty hard before going to sleep, so my abs did hurt, which likely explains this, but it doesn't explain how I felt. I stood around and watched myself bleeding out and I liked it a lot. I liked the fact that I wasn't incapacitated by my pain, and I liked that I just wandered around without getting stitched up. I felt tough, even though I knew I was dying.

Is that normal? Has anyone else had a dream where you got a potentially fatal wound and liked it?