Ragnir Brightaxe's page

Here's the discussion board.

First item. I will be creating tokens to use with the maps, and I can use the Alias thumbnails you're using for the game, or if you want to send me a link to a piece of artwork you want to use, I can use that. Just let me know.

Here's the discussion board.

First item. I will be creating tokens to use with the maps, and I can use the Alias thumbnails you're using for the game, or if you want to send me a link to a piece of artwork you want to use, I can use that. Just let me know.

After a short while in the Warm Respite, sampling the fine drink and fare, the trumpets blare, marking the start of the jousting tourney. The starting rounds are to begin, and many of you are not in the lists till some of the later rounds, but certainly scouting out the competition, or just taking in the majesty of the tourney is too tempting and you move towards the Clydwell Plaza, in the shadow of the Cathedral, and too your pleasant surprise are able to get places very near the front of the crowd.

You see the trumpeters with their long silver, banner draped horns blasting out the fanfare. Nearly a dozen of the trumpeters bellowing out a clear clarion sound. The listmaster announces the first two competitors and you watch as Sir Kuranith steadies his charger on one side of the field, readying to meet Sir Yasek Balron on the other. The flag is dropped for them to start...

Everything is dark. You're on your back. You take in a deep breath and find you have trouble breathing. Dust fills your mouth and nose, and your head throbs with a monstrous headache. After a moment, the ringing in your ears subsides and you can hear the sound of clattering rock, along with moans of pain. Feeling around you, you can feel rubble and rocks, along with softer items that you'd rather not identify and realize that your are covered in dirt, but seem otherwise unharmed...

After a short while in the Warm Respite, sampling the fine drink and fare, the trumpets blare, marking the start of the jousting tourney. The starting rounds are to begin, and many of you are not in the lists till some of the later rounds, but certainly scouting out the competition, or just taking in the majesty of the tourney is too tempting and you move towards the Clydwell Plaza, in the shadow of the Cathedral, and too your pleasant surprise are able to get places very near the front of the crowd.

You see the trumpeters with their long silver, banner draped horns blasting out the fanfare. Nearly a dozen of the trumpeters bellowing out a clear clarion sound. The listmaster announces the first two competitors and you watch as Sir Kuranith steadies his charger on one side of the field, readying to meet Sir Yasek Balron on the other. The flag is dropped for them to start...

Everything is dark. You're on your back. You take in a deep breath and find you have trouble breathing. Dust fills your mouth and nose, and your head throbs with a monstrous headache. After a moment, the ringing in your ears subsides and you can hear the sound of clattering rock, along with moans of pain. Feeling around you, you can feel rubble and rocks, along with softer items that you'd rather not identify and realize that your are covered in dirt, but seem otherwise unharmed...

*closed recruitment*

Wrath of the Righteous. Even the name says it all, and in that name is the promise of the hero rising from the ashes to battle the odds with righteous fury. Or at least that's my take on it. The theme of the epic adventure is one that all of us know, and many hold dear. Arthur and Camelot, The Lord of the Rings, The Belgariad, Sword of Shanara, and the list continues enough that I could fill this whole space. They all hold one thing in common though, the fight between good and evil. Wrath of the Righteous has the same feel to it, and I'm looking for a few epic heroes (in time ;) ) to come take that trip with me, and see what kind of tale we can weave.

That being said, I am looking for four, and only four characters to join this game. I am looking for good aligned heroes, with outstanding backgrounds that have been given thought, with enough drive for the character, and enough dangling threads that I can use to weave into the game itself. I am also going to be doing things a bit different. I am going to have a prolonged recruitment. The first week or maybe two are going to be for character submissions, after which the next week or two is going to be roleplaying the festival Armasse in Kenabres so I can get a feel for how the characters are portrayed, writing styles, personalities so I can put together a group that meshes well. At the end of the two weeks, I'll start the campaign, and may even have a surprise or two.

Character creation details:
-20 point buy
- 2 traits, one of which must be from the Wrath of the Righteous player’s guide. We will be using mythic adventures so chosing the trait is key.
- No Summoners, and no firearm wielding characters
- All core races, tieflings and aasimar
- Divine spellcasters need to have a specific deity that they get their powers from
- All the Core books are in play for feats, spells, etc
- Good and Neutral aligned characters only
- Max starting gold for you class
- No 3rd party material
- I tend to err in the side of a better story than strict adherence to the rules, so if you want something tweaked, let me know and I’ll try to accommodate.
- Please have a well thought out backstory giving history and motivation, as well as a good look into their personality.
- I’ll run combat by rolling initiative and then allowing characters a chance to act, after which I’ll post a narrative recap. If characters don’t post that day, I’ll act for them, in order to speed things along.
I’ll expect that each character post at least once per day, and then once again on the weekend. If posting more often is warranted, we’ll proceed. To make this even clearer, I’m looking for strong role-players with strong characters, which like to have fun within a story.
-Once I have all the characters, I use Hero Labs to keep track of combat, buffs etc, which helps speed things up.

Expectations:
1 post a day minimum during weekdays, 1 post per weekend. I am able to check the boards frequently, and do my best to reply quickly, so a person that doesn’t post daily runs the risk of falling behind
Players that are engaged in their characters, who in turn are engaged in the story. I fully believe in cause and effect, so any actions that characters take may have reprocussions.
I expect the recruitment to be tough, the characters to be somewhat complete and complex, and the roleplaying to be engaging and fun, but I believe through that crucible that the game will wind up with four heroes ready to take on the challenge whose players post often, but with quality

I look forward to finding my four. Who’s up for the challenge?

Port Peril. The hub of scandalous activity in the scandalous "nation" of The Shackles. There are many reasons to come to this city. You're looking to get lost, you're looking to get found, or find something, or someone. You're looking to sell something, or have something sold. For whatever reason, you've all found yourselves in this place, waiting, and wanting something to happen. Maybe it's just an itch, or maybe your divine contacts are telling you that something is going to happen, but you all have a feeling that things are coming into play. The anticipation is something that Port Peril is good at providing, but this is different, you feel better about this somehow, as if things are going to turn for you. It's with this feeling that you made your way to the Formidably Maid, a raucous tavern in Port Peril, where you've either entertained or have been entertained in the past.

Once everyone posts here, I'll move on.

Congrats all, you were the best of a really good bunch, and think that you'll fit well together, even with a little bit of friction at times. As the game starts, you've all been in Port Peril for a short time, so may have had interactions with one another. I'll start gameplay on Monday to give you time to talk over how, if at all, you might be intertwined.

If you get that all hashed out earlier, I'll start the game earlier

The story is the thing that makes a game, and the setting helps make any story. A pirate ship forms a grand setting for a great story, but it needs the right mix of characters to really make it shine. Those characters are what I’m looking for. I’ll be running the Skulls and Shackles Adventure Path, and I’m looking for between 4-6 exceptionally strong characters to run.
All manner of characters are acceptable, but I am looking for characters with a strong background, and strong motivations.
Character creation details:
-20 point buy
- No Summoners, and no firearm wielding characters
- All core races, tieflings and aasimar
- Divine spellcasters need to have a specific deity that they get their powers from
- All the Core books are in play for feats, spells, etc
- Good and Neutral aligned characters only
- Max starting gold for you class
- No 3rd party material
- I tend to err in the side of a better story than strict adherence to the rules, so if you want something tweaked, let me know and I’ll try to accommodate.
- Please have a well thought out backstory giving history and motivation, as well as a good look into their personality.
- I’ll run combat by rolling initiative and then allowing characters a chance to act, after which I’ll post a narrative recap. If characters don’t post that day, I’ll act for them, in order to speed things along.
I’ll expect that each character post at least once per day, and then once again on the weekend. If posting more often is warranted, we’ll proceed. To make this even more clear, I’m looking for strong roleplayers with strong characters, that like to have fun within a story.

I'll leave recruitment open for a week, or until I've found the right group of characters.

I saw Nullpunkt's post detailing how he ran the City and it gave some great insight for me, and helped me formulate my campaign, so I figured I'd do the same:

So first, The players:

Davos: Male Human Fighter, who's wielding Scarlet Bane, a greatsword of some historical significance, which they haven't delved into yet.

Xelana: Female Halfling Bard/Rogue who describes herself as "Neutral Greedy"

Imani: Female Mwangi Oracle: Fled an undead child-god thinking that this was not as the spirits intended (will incorporate more of that story as time goes on.)

Aileanna: Female Elven Magus: Scimitar wielding, quick to anger that has a penchant for making things fry using electricity

Trianna: Female Elven Sorceress: Celestial blood Sorceress who isn't fully sure of her background, who throws fireballs around like candy

Twitch Tinkerfoot: Male Halfling Inquisitor/Ranger: A halfling that likes to instigate. His bow has gotten the group out of many a sticky situation

Next, some prep work:

I created a random number generator in excel and rolled out all of the defense, exploration and supply rolls for the month that the PCs are in for the Golarion calendar, so it's easy to check to see what camps are damaged, how many disc points etc they have. I also did the same for all the wandering encounter rolls the pcs will have for the same span. It was easy for me at that point to start piecing together encounters and having them make sense. I also marked the weather for each day to make that easy on myself as well.

Further, I created an encounter mini/dungeon for Savith's Crypt.

I also created a much larger list of discoveries for the PCs to find, and tailored them for each district. That way I could have the PCs find items, journals, etc that would deliver the broader information that the book gives. (ie journals that are diaries describing the days that led to the downfall of Saventh-Yhi, or frescoes that depicted Savith killing Ydersius. Ledger books showing what was stored or transactions in the mercantile district, etc.)

The party met the week before this and figured out the campsite information, which I told them if they could do it in character, I would give them an RP bonus. They managed to discuss it in character, only breaking character to apply actual numbers to the stats.

Now for the adventure:

The PCs started, unlike so many other GMS are saying, by heading directly for the military district. So I played up the spartan nature of the buildings, describing them as very Aztec in nature (never understood why people would have them be greco roman in the jungle). With frescoes and paintings along the doors and walls. The PCs then wanted a better look. The fighter, Davos, specifically wanted to find a map, and maybe some kind of military deployment schedule. I used that for the first discovery roll for the party, and they rolled high. So I gave them a very old map, that they had to be careful with due to its age (I determined that the preservation magic worked best on buildings, not so much on material items, or remains). By describing the rooms as almost dormitories, and describing oddly shaped armor (form still remaining, but useless), the PCs started to put together some history. I embellished some, and they started trying to figure out ranks from the different armor. I rolled with it and ad libbed some, but it made the discoveries more interesting for the PCs. They did this for about an hour and a half real time before it started to lose some steam.

The whole time that they were searching the ruins, I kept rolling perception checks at a high DC, to see if any patrols, or some of the 100-200 Charau-ka living there would notice, adding a +1 to the roll for every in game hour they spent still searching. Eventually, after the party had taken a break for the heat in the middle of the day, the party decided to investigate the "fort on top of the hill", but ran into a patrol along the way. The Charau-ka (who my party has grown to HATE) started their shrieking frenzy, and as the fight went on, I had the fort come alive with watchers. The fight actually took some time, and Davos took a goodly bit of damage, but having 105 hp already (high con, + toughness, and taking the hp instead of the sp), made it so he really wasn't worried. When the Charau-ka dropped, I described the fort as having a LOT of watchers, trying to discourage them from going after Olujimi right away, since I though he might be a bit for them to handle. The sorceress, Trianna, decided to lob a few fireballs into the place, "just to see". Out came Olujimi, his dire apes, and a decent retinue of Charau-Ka. The sorceress thought this was great, and cast another fireball at Olujimi, who resisted the whole thing.

The party came up with a different tactic...RUN!!! Away they went, but rather than running back the way they came, they decided to run for the plaza..... So, out come the Girallons from the plaza, and a screeching halt by the PCs, who made a turn and are now heading due south. At that point, I called it a night, since it was already past our quit time, and I knew that a battle with that many combatants was going to take time.

So, next week, I'm going to begin with a skill challenge for the pursuit. I figure I'll add in some damage from the buildings, since they're going to run right through the area the book says most of the Charau-ka are housed. So they'll get pelted with paving stones, roof tiles etc as they run. I figure acrobatics, climb, or CMB will be some of the skills (dodge, jump over, climb to roof, or simply bull through obstacles), and if the PCs manage 6 successes vs 3 failures, they'll elude the pursuit. Unless they veer towards another encounter area, at which point it'll start all over again. Either way, the military district is now on alert.

IN the meantime:

The other factions will start arriving in three days, which was the lead they had coming out of Tazion.