"It has been a century since the immortal witch Baba Yaga last visited the world, and the hour draws nigh for her return. But when she fails to appear in the frozen realm of Irrisen to usher in its newest ruler, pockets of winter begin to grow throughout the Inner Sea region. After 1,400 years of perpetual winter, the icy curse of Irrisen is spreading! What links do these strange blizzards and swaths of wintry landscapes have with Irrisen, and is there any truth to the growing rumors that the Witch Queen Elvanna has taken full control of the realm? Can her plans for the Inner Sea be thwarted, or will the Reign of Winter engulf the world?"
This campaign will be run as a play-by-post following the Reign of Winter Adventure Path created by Paizo. Gameplay and die rolling will take place on this forum; Roll20 will be used for mapping purposes.
Participants will generally be expected to post at least every other day. If something comes up and you are unable to meet that quota, it's not the end of the world; depending on what is going on I may declare an action on your behalf to keep things moving. If you are going to be gone more than a few days please let me know in the discussion thread. I'm sure there will be times where I will have to be absent from time to time too; I will make sure to keep you posted in the discussion thread as well.
We will begin with the first adventure in this campaign, The Snows of Summer. I have run this module with a live group before; unfortunately I never got to do the second adventure before I moved back to the USA.
Play by post games always take far longer than face to face. There are some things we will do differently to mitigate that as much as possible. Below are some general guidelines:
1. If you are declaring an action and you know what skill or game mechanic is used, go ahead and roll it at the same time as your post. Make sure that you label your roll so I know what it is for.
2. If a roll needs to be made and there isn't a decision for you to make, I will make the roll myself. This includes saves, perception checks as well as anything else you have forgotten to roll yourself. Waiting for players to make passive rolls slows things down too much.
3. If you are making an attack roll, make a damage roll at the same time. Don't make assumptions about whether you hit or not.
4. If you roll a 1 on an attack roll, make a second roll at your highest attack bonus to confirm a critical fumble (I am using critical fumble rules). If you forget to do this I will roll it myself, so no worries.
5. When real life happens and you can't post for a while, please let me know so we don't wait for you. If you don't post after 2-3 days and we are in a non-combat, non-critical situation, you just won't say/do anything and we will move on. If we are in a combat or other critical situation and you haven't posted after 2-3 days, I will declare an action on your behalf and move on.
6. We will not be using normal initiative rules. At the beginning of each combat I will roll initiative for the players as a group, using the party's average initiative bonus. The players will act in whatever order they post during the party's turn. This will help to reduce delays because you don't have to go in a specific order.
7. Play by post is a medium that makes it easier to do deeper roleplaying. Feel free to include internal character thoughts in italics. Anything your character actually says should be in "bold text with quotes." Describe your action in detail, and when talking to NPCs feel free to ask more than one question at once. OOC (out of character) questions go to the discussion thread.
Character Creation Guidelines:
First and foremost, I want interesting characters that will do more than stab everything they run into. I had a great live group before I moved that was far beyond the "you see something and..." "we kill it! yeah!" way of thinking. They tried to talk people down instead of just trying to kill everything, and often found creative ways to defuse encounters. I really like that style of play, so I'm looking for a less hack and slash type of game. I think this style of play is particularly well suited to PbP. Don't get me wrong; I love combat too, but killing everything in sight shouldn't be the default behavior. We can't all be Belkar ;)
For your application, please include:
1. A brief background explaining why your character is in Heldren and what drove them to the adventuring life, what their motivations are, etc. Two to three paragraphs is plenty.
2. A brief description of the personality and mannerisms of your character. You should try to put enough information here that it could serve as a guide for running your character if you were unavailable.
Please put your information in spoiler tags so we can keep the thread nice and neat.
Crunch:
Ability scores will be generated by 20 point point buy. All Paizo core classes and base classes are permitted. All characters start at level 1 with average wealth for their class. Core races are ok; other races may be considered on a case by case basis. All official Paizo materials are ok to use for making your character; third party materials can be considered on a case by case basis. In addition to the normal starting feats characters may begin with two traits, either general traits or Reign of Winter campaign traits. See the Reign of Winter player's guide here.
In general I believe in giving players as many choices as possible. Game balance is my primary concern; if you want to do a weird character I'll probably allow it as long as it won't break the game for everyone else.
Applications are open until Sunday, August 25th. I will make the final decisions on who will get to play as soon as I can after that, but it probably won't be as fast as I would like as I am in the process of getting ready to move out of state. I've been craving Pathfinder too much lately to wait until I moved to get the ball rolling on this though.
I look forward to reading your submissions.
