I'm not really in a good position to add more long-term games to my plate at the moment so letting this one lie works for me too. But I did enjoy it while it lasted :)
Glad to hear that things are finally looking up for you Rav! Things are going well here but I'm pretty sure this particular campaign is done; no word from GM Zed, Zoreck's player has also recently stepped down from PbP due to life busyness, and at this point I've detached enough from things that I (personally) am not really interested in looking for a replacement GM.
Sad but at least it gives folks a little more bandwidth to invest in other games that are still going :)
Palo shrugs. "Hey sure, if it'd just be easier to head straight there then we can head straight there. As long as we've got enough rations then I'm not too worried about the rest of it."
"Well okay then...how are we doing on supplies? Are we good enough that restocking what we can here would be enough?" Palo asks. "I'd rather not waste as much as we can buy by traipsing all over the countryside looking for another town or podunk village!"
"Yeah, it's never anything easy is it?" Palo grumps as she packs away her parchment and pen. "Looks like we've found everything we can down here in this hole so yeah, let's go back and talk to the mud-freak leader and see what she thinks of all this."
Palomia stares up at the star field for a moment and then her eyes narrow. "So...is this supposed to be some sort of map or just a pretty picture?" she finally asks. "Either way, Bubble Boy is right - we should try and uh...draw this or write it down as best as we can."
She quickly digs into her pack for some ink and parchment and begins attempting to do just that...
"Um...I think we need to dig out whatever's shining under the dirt there," Palo sighs with resignation. "Just...cover me and Relas, okay? If it's anything really dangerous then maybe you guys can blow it away before it eats one of us. Come on, Relas!"
And with that, Palo moves to start trying to unearth whatever lies behind the mound of dirt by whatever means is most handy and expedient...
"Seems pretty cut-and-dried that there's magic involved if whatever's under that dirt is lighting up like that, but sure, we'll confirm it," Palo remarks as she begins scanning within the room for magical auras...
Spellcraft:1d20 + 11 ⇒ (7) + 11 = 18
...and attempting to identify the nature of any auras she detects.
"Hey, Drancis, you've got a shard right? Why not see what happens when you toss it in there? Seems like whatever's under there reacts to the shards, may as well test it out!"
"This just keeps getting better and better," Palo scowls at the sight of the humanoid-shaped mound of dirt. "Is this the real Saint or should we just sculpt our own out of all this dirt? Those mud-freaks upstairs probably wouldn't know the difference!"
"Huh...you're right, that didn't click first time around," Palo remarks as understanding creeps across her features. "Hopefully you're right! And even if you aren't, that's a damned good theory."
Rolling up her sleeves, Palo begins to examine the walls and floor of the chamber for any signs of incongruity. She even takes her longspear and occasionally raps it against the stone, listening to see if anything sounds hollow.
"So...is that it?" Palo asks after the ugly creature is felled and they take stock of the treasures it guarded. "Like, more supplies and money and stuff is good but there's literally nothing else down here that'd shed some sort of light on things??"
I don't know about firing all the IT people but I definitely hope this finally makes the Powers That Be at Paizo sit up, take notice, and devote the proper resources/funds towards their IT department and website. If nearly a full week of lost sales and other grar doesn't do it then I don't know what will.
"I didn't do anything!" Palo hisses at Rav as he retreats back and sets up a sniping position, apparently sensing the frustration radiating off her goblin friend. "We've all been talking and moving around!"
"Yeah, I'm not about to touch anything in here," Palo grumbles, still rubbing at the knot on her head. "But I'll see what magic auras I can pick up from here, if there's anything to be picked up."
As per usual operating procedure, Palo casts her Detect Magic cantrip and scans what she can of the small room ahead.
"No...Relas...just...don't say that, okay? That's a guarantee that we'll run into trouble before it's all said and done," Palo sighs as she moves to follow the others into the hole...
"Leeeeeet's...just try and walk on by but be ready for trouble," Palo suggests. "We know there's something in them so we won't be caught off our guard if they do come busting out!"
"Sure, maybe these will be magic mystery murder tubes instead of mechanical ones," Palo responds, surprisingly without snark but also without a lot of enthusiasm. Still, she conjures the desired effect and begins to scan the room for magical auras.
That would work for me, especially since I know our GM has been pretty busy lately so anything to make it easier for him would probably be a good idea! While Relas could still technically help scout ahead with Rav his stealth really isn't super great right now comparatively. He can see in the dark though so it'd make about as much sense to have Relas bring up the rear in case something tries to get the drop on us from behind.
As soon as Palo spots the mud cylinders rising from the floor, she shakes her head. "Oh no, not this again! Cylinders mean two things - prisoners or something that wants to paint the room with our organs. Sometimes both in the same package. I want some distance if we're going to try cracking one open!"
Palomia begins to try and inspect the hieroglyphics but stops as Rikkan quickly brews and chugs down what looks like a potion. "Huh...so you can just whip those things up in a jiffy? That's not easy to do. I'm impressed," she remarks as she pauses to lean against a nearby wall.
"I've done some studying of language - kinda had to for my old job - but your magic is way more reliable if it does what I think it does. Let's see what Rikkan comes up with and then I can try to fill in the gaps, if there are any."
__________
Palo has a pretty good Linguistics score but she'll hold off to see what Rikkan learns first :)
"Okay...so, is the glass something that we can look at or maybe someone scribbled down a paper copy of the markings...?" Palo asks hesitantly, not really sure how any of what they've just heard helps them in the short term. "Or maybe you could tell us more about these mysterious signs?"
"Um, yeah..." Palo replies, awkwardly scratching at the back of her neck. "Baron Yacob in Treblebet said you folks here might know more about all the weird structures and crystals we've been seeing on this planet. That's why we're here. Is that true?"
For anyone that's interested in reading about my convention experience:
DieCon Stuff (Spoiled for Holy Crap That's A Lot to Read):
So, DieCon 18 - my second DieCon to date - went great. My brother and I hit the road around 8:30 or so Thursday morning and, even with making a couple of stops to hit up a game shop, use the bathroom, and eat, we arrived in Collinsville, IL just after 4:00 pm. We met up with friends Chris (who lives a couple hours north) and Becca (who flew in from Las Vegas and was crashing at Chris' place), got checked in to the Super 8, and then loaded up and headed into downtown St. Louis, MO to have dinner at Blueberry Hill. While there we also met up with another guy that Becca & Chris know from their time in World of Warcraft. This was the second year I've met him and he's a rather odd duck, but nice enough. After dinner we went down the street to the Snow Factory for some Thai-style ice cream. While good and also a rather novel experience, I'm not sure it was worth $8. I'd have been just as happy to go across the street to Fitz's for shakes. After all this the hour was getting late so we headed back to the Super 8 to get some sleep.
Friday morning, we got up and headed to the nearby Denny's for breakfast before going over to the Gateway Convention Center to get ready to sign up for games! Normally registration and sign-ups open at noon but for some reason they started about a half-hour early. Since I'd already preregistered I was able to get my t-shirt and convention booklet and hop right into the registration line.
Event signups for DieCon are interesting in that, with the exception of Organized Play programs like PFS or DnD AL, you sign up in-person and the events tend to be something of a first-come, first-serve basis. You have a card and you write down three sessions that you really want to get in to (first choice) and then write down two alternates (second choice) and then go through the line. The people at the desk then look at your paper and go to see how many slots are still open for the events you want. They then give you stickers to place in your booklet for the events you're able to get into. One limitation they *do* impose for Saturday and Sunday events is that they only give out maybe half of the tickets for those on Friday and hold the rest in reserve for folks who can't get there to sign up until Saturday or Sunday. Luckily for me I was able to get into all of my first choices right away and for the PFS/SFS I'd signed up for, my tickets were held in reserve and waiting for me since I'd done my signing up via Warhorn.
After a quick walk over to the nearby Mexican place for a drink (no lunch since several of us had just eaten) we then filtered back over to the convention center for Session #1, which started at 2pm. My event for this was a board game called 'Mansions of Madness' - gameplay seemed somewhat similar to 'Betrayal at House on the Hill' except with a heckuva lot more Cthulhu creep factor. The rules were a little complex and took some getting used to but the game itself was quite enjoyable and it came right down to the wire on whether we, the players, would win or the GM! I enjoyed it enough that I would've shelled out money for my own copy but none of the vendors seemed to have one. Sadness :(
Each session has an hour-long break before the next session starts so those are good times to hit the restroom, grab a bite to eat, go smoke, wander around the convention hall, etc. I brought some of my own snacks and flavor packs for my bottled water (which I just kept refilling using the canteens placed around the hall) because the snack bar is crazy expensive.
Session #2 was my first foray into playing Savage Worlds. What I didn't know, because the blurb for it didn't mention this part, is that we were going to be using the 'Pirates of the Spanish Main' setting for the game. So when I sat down and ended up being the only one at the table who hadn't played before, the GM grinned at me and said, 'Okay then, you're the captain' and tossed said character sheet my direction. Pretty sure I had an 'Oh god' look on my face but hey, it's good to try new things right? And actually, it turned out pretty good! I mean yeah, we narrowly escaped being executed only to have a rival run off with our ship (after having 'repaid' me by helping to bust us free) and had no navigator and like 5 NPC crew and no money or supplies but we did manage to take a merchant ship (using our persuasive smooth-talk and the one sword we had between 6 characters) and made it to what amounted to Tortuga. The session ended right as we'd finished negotiating a deal for our cargo and making some preparations to buy supplies and start tracking down leads on where to find some cannons...but the rest will be detailed further down for I'd also signed up to play the second part of this little adventure during the middle Saturday session! I also received a copy of the Deluxe Explorer's Edition of Savage Worlds - hooray for free swag!
After a decent night's sleep, we all got up early Saturday morning and trooped back over to the convention center for moar gaming! Session #3 was a game of 'Call of Scooby Doo' using a game system called 'FAST' that was developed by brothers Larry and Woody Babb. Larry himself ran our game and the best way to describe the experience is like a standard Scooby Doo mystery (including special guest stars as playable characters) mixed with puzzle solving and some Cthulhu-style horror. I played this last year, where the scenario was called 'Wednesday Mourning' and featured Wednesday Addams as the special guest star. This year's scenario was called 'Cereal Killer' and featured Count Chocula (or his daughter, the Countess Chocula) as the special guest star. I played Velma, same as last year, while my brother and another con-friend reprised their usual roles as Scooby and Shaggy. The player of Shaggy even brings Scooby Snacks to the game each year! Much fun was had by all and we solved the mystery and defeated the crazed Sonny the Cuckoo Bird, who was the villain for this year's scenario.
Session #4 saw the continuation of Friday's Savage Worlds game and most of the same players returned, including myself. For those of us who played both sessions, we actually got to 'level up' our characters before getting started, which was nice. More pirate hijinks were had wherein our fence wound up murdered and our money stolen...along with someone's daughter? I suspect that said daughter was originally supposed to be my character's daughter but see, I hadn't paid close attention to my character sheet during the earlier session and had given my captain a female name and gender...which in the real world setting and time period the game was set in, would've been really unusual. Oops. But it did lead to some amusing comments from the rest of my crew. At any rate, we raced off to Haiti to try and rescue our money (and the girl, I guess) from the clutches of Baron Samedi and encountered storms, hostile locals, and a bloodthirsty shark along the way. Unfortunately we kinda ran out of time after the shark encounter and the GM had to narrate the rest of the adventure and conclusion but I had a surprisingly good time with the whole thing and would definitely play with this GM again at future DieCons.
Session #5 is where I finally sat down and played my first ever game of Starfinder! Starting with the very first published scenario, Claim to Salvation, which is run using 4th level pregen iconics. Most of the other players had about as much experience as I did, which was none, so it was nice to be more or less on a level playing field with everyone else. I also saw a familiar face at this table, a kid (probably 14-15ish) who was at all of my PFS tables at last year's DieCon. He seemed to have grown up a little in that this time he didn't try to go all murderhobo right off the bat and also didn't keep interrupting the GM as they were trying to talk. All of the other players, as well as the GM, were super friendly and helpful and we all had a great time playing through the scenario. While I think Pathfinder will remain my main squeeze, I definitely enjoyed Starfinder enough that I plan to make my own character for SFS play.
Sunday morning rolls around after another night of adequate sleep and this is the day where my brother and I are in all of the same events together. Session #6, our first of the day, was a PFS game playing the scenario 'Scourge of the Farheavens'. We only had four people for this and had a really weird level split with one 5th level character and everyone else being 1st level because most of said players either only had those characters to play (the 5th level shaman and the 1st level fighter) or just really wanted to play a particular character (my brother and his 1st level druid). I can't say a lot about the particulars of the scenario itself as I want to avoid spoilers but it was highly amusing and surprisingly challenging in certain parts. It was also pretty straightforward and we finished with an hour to spare so it'd probably be an easy one to run for anyone contemplating GMing PFS scenarios.
Since we got done with plenty of time to spare, my brother and I actually hit up the nearby steakhouse for lunch and had the first proper meal we'd had since Friday morning. Afterwards, we went to Session #7 which was a homebrew game of Deadlands titled 'Large Trouble, Small China' wherein we had to solve some issues with gang violence occurring in San Francisco's Chinatown. Oh, did I mention we had to fight an evil wizard and his nigh-invincible henchmen? That was a thing. I've played Deadlands before and would actually like to play it more in the future, if our home group can ever finish some of our Pathfinder campaigns.
Last but not least, our last game of the convention was Session #8, where we played another PFS scenario titled 'Beyond the Halflight Path'. This one is a 3-7 evergreen with multiple story arcs that can be played and it was my first time playing it. The beginning has plenty of social stuff happening and then the latter part was more dungeon-crawl than anything, but that's okay. Once again, we just had 4 PCs but at least this time there wasn't quite as much of a level gap. We won and survived, but man we had one or two tough fights! Our ectoplasmist spiritualist was the MVP of the scenario and I'm positive that without his assistance we would've wiped on at least one of the encounters. On the other hand...what's up with characters not having any ranks in any knowledge skills? Some classes that are skill-starved I can understand but otherwise, I mean...really? Especially when you're 5th or 6th level? I've seen this several times now with live play but I don't know that I've ever seen it in a PbP game. I try not to tell people how to play but sometimes some decisions leave me shaking my head a bit. Ah well.
Anyhoo, that's pretty much the tale of my experiences at DieCon 18! Had lots of fun, picked up a little swag, and managed to survive through all of my games. I'm totally looking forward to next year :)
Also, apologies to those of you who will see this posted across several games!
Hey guys, just a quick check-in to say that DieCon was a blast and that normal operations should resume tomorrow afternoon/evening once I've gotten home and had a chance to get settled in :)
Hey folks, I'll be heading out of town to DieCon 18 from today through Monday the 11th. While I'll have my phone and Kindle with me, I don't anticipate having much time to catch up on posts so please bot Palo & Relas as necessary!
"Okay, sure, sounds good," Palo shrugs, casting a spell to unleash Relas from her physical presence for a short time. "There, you've got about an hour Relas. Just keep track of the time, alright?"
Once their plan is set, Palo takes a deep breath and begins strolling back towards the temple proper, as though she has every right in the world to be there.
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Palo casts Unfetter, good for 10 min/level so 1 hour.
"Okay, okay, geeze..." Palo mutters as she turns and quickly hustles back to where the others are lying in wait.
"So...you all saw that, right? They didn't budge an inch," she repeats to the others. "There's a bunch of drawings and patterns inscribed on those rocks they're sitting on and they look a lot like the patterns we've been seeing on those shards. Not sure what it means but Drancis thinks we should just waltz on into the temple and see what's what while they're singing to the mud-gods."
Glad to hear it! I'm more and more tempted to try and plan to go next time myself, especially the more I get involved with PbP Pathfinder Society stuff! It's just a little intimidating since it's a trip I'd probably have to make by myself if I ever *do* go.
"Wh-why do I have to do it!?" Palo hisses, gawping at the mud-caked worshippers. "Do I look like some sort of goodwill ambassador??"
Still, seeing all the expectant eyes upon her, she finally throws her hands up in the air. "Fine! Let's go say hello to the mud-freaks then!"
Turning on her heel with a huff, she begins picking her way along the dried riverbed towards the chanting humanoids. As she gets a little closer, she coughs and then clears her throat loudly.
"Um, excuse me? Yeah hi, is this where the monastery I heard about is?" she calls, loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to be a shout. "See, my friend and I, we've come all the way from Treblebet and boy are our feet tired! Can we stop here for awhile?"
There's definitely some site weirdness happening; posts are 'there' then 'not there', it keeps telling me I have new posts to look at when I've already looked at them all, etc. Just remember to keep calm and for all that's good and holy make sure you copy & save whatever posts you're working on!
"Hey, just making sure," Palo grumbles in reply. "And I can see they outnumber us, I'm not blind! Believe me, I'd rather wait and let them stroll on by too - it'd make my day a hell of a lot easier!"
"So...does that mean we're going to just wait and see if they keep on going or does one of us need to get their attention and start talking?" Palo hisses, understanding Rav's plan but not the lead-in.
"I wasn't asking if we could borrow any from them," Palo snaps at Drancis. "Just wondering where you'd buy them! They'd probably be much more fearsome than the camels...maybe not as practical for a desert trip, but sometimes fearsome makes a big difference," she huffs.
"On boars? Where the hell do you get boars to ride? Why aren't we doing that?" Palo grumbles, always ready with the most important of questions. "But sure, let's see if we can hide. If they seem like they're looking for or following us I can probably dump a few of 'em into the ground if we can get the drop on them."
"He can go have a look from the air, sure, but trying to hide when there's nothing to hide in or behind is another story," Palo says, gesturing to the scrubby, open desert terrain. "But maybe if he's up in the air then they won't notice anyone creeping along on the ground...if they look like they're unfriendly, anyway. What do you think, Rav?"
________
If need be, Palo can hit Relas with Unfetter so he can get some distance up in the air without poofing back to his home plane.
"Maybe we can come back to this place later, once we have better materials," Palo suggests, actually being quite sincere. "It's not as good as being able to do something right now but any help is better than nothing, right?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah...without me around who'd drop idiots into pits for you? That makes your job almost literally like shooting fish in a barrel," Palo 'grouses' back to Rav during their breakfast pow-wow the next morning. "Anyway, I'm not really sure what you think Relas needs with money but if it makes the math work out better then sure, give him a share too."
