You have spent well over an hour coursing down the easy Matra river, taking in the sites that surround you and greeting the merchants and travelers you pass. Coming to a fork in the wide river, you turn further south where all merchant travel seems to avoid. The signs are everywhere - Warning! Jungle dangers ahead! Travel at your own risk!. But you press on. Calaak pulls out the map and rolls it across one of the benches, weighting it down with a compass and knife. We are here and need to get here-" she draws a line from the fork in the Matra through a simple maze of forking and rejoining rivers. Her finger ends where the map does. "Where everything fades, that is the Skittering Mists."
Despite having only one half-good eye, Calaak manages to guide you through the jungle river without err. The rocky plains that surrounded the Matra have begun to grow into dense forest cover. The sounds of wildlife are growing louder. You continue forward, following Calaak's guidance for almost another hour. Coming to a sharp turn in the river, Calaak stands up and lets out a large sigh of relief. Before you, the river creeps forward for almost two-hundred yards where it fades into the eerie mists of the jungle ahead. The lush forest growth has transformed from a vibrant green cover to a putrid yellow field of dying plants. The jungle still looms around you, but the stench of rot accompanies the dying mass of vegetation. The jungle cover grows thicker farther down the river, but so does the stench. "Here we are. The Skittering Mists. Prepare yourselves, for anything could be waiting for us in there."
From this point, we can assume the gameplay from the discussion thread has occured and continue from there. Happy Adventuring!
Introduction Far east of Avistan and Garund between the Obari and Embaral Oceans, lies the Impossible Kingdom of Vudra and its many gods. It’s known for its vast jungles in the south scattered with ruined temples and dead civilizations, the forsaken Narhari desert where the three-eyed dragon Trilochon has supposedly made his home, and the Sikari jungle mountains to the north where the deadly Sikari Rage disease is said to have been born and its sikari macaque swarms sow terror in a red wind. The insidious alchemists known as the Breathers of Ash, the fabled Diamond Eye of Queen Swamiai, and the hidden Jewelladen shadow-palace of the beheaded princess Chhaya are but a few of the endless supply of adventures lying in wait. Despite the constant threats that surround them, the Vudrani people have managed to develop lavish and opulent cities in attempted perfection and maintain a friendly and gregarious disposition. The monks and ascetics are focused on self-perfection in honor of the deity Irori and have mastered various martial arts forms that even Tian Xi masters seek out for guidance. The Vudrani as a whole are not content with sitting idle and have a keen sense for adventure and want to explore the world.
The kingdom of Danamsa is just one of hundreds of mahajanapadas that compose the vast country of Vudra. Here in it’s capital, Radripal, the City of Arches, a group of hopeful adventurers have struck out on an expedition down the Matra river deep into the Skittering Mists where the supposed temple Dokhamandir of the forgotten god, Dokhamaut, hides in the jungle’s thick cover. Funded by a downtrodden tiefling adventurer and financier, this is Calaak’s final expedition unless you find what you have come for - the original formula of the first generation of Ceru, known to be reliably fertile. With the low fertility rate of the current Ceru and their already high value, rich rajas would pay dearly for such a treasure and Calaak is certain that her years of research will pay off.
Now as the thick, billowing mist surrounds your small riverboat, your journey begins...
_______________________________
THE VUDRAN EXPEDITION
This will be a homebrew game focused on adventure, exploration and treasure hunting in the grandiose country of Vudra. Vudra is a country that heavily draws inspiration from India and Hindu cultures. I am looking for a party of four to undertake this journey in the Skittering Mists. I chose four because it is enough to provide balance, while also reducing my responsibilities/expectations and waiting on players. Because Vudra has not seen its own adventure (excluding the Cult of Ebon Destroyers because it was not in the country of Vudra), a lot is left up to me to fill in the blanks. There are tons of hook that do nothing but inspire, and I have poured through as much as I could that is written on Vudra in the hope to do it justice.
_______________________________
About Me:
I am a recent college graduate, working as a software engineer and finally have a daily ritual set in stone, with time enough to dedicate to a PbP. I have been playing pen and paper rpg's since 2004 with the D&D Basic Game box. Since then I have played D&D 3.5, 4e, 5e, Pathfinder, Grimm RPG and Dungeon World. I fell into the role of GMing out of necessity, but as I grew in experience and intelligence, I also grew to love it. I have done play-by-posts before, but they all died as so many do. I was instantly hooked with the medium as it gave me a chance to really think over my responses and deliver the best experience for the players that I could. I live on the east coast of the US. I treasure my beard. And I suffer chronic migraines.
_______________________________
Expectations:
First Thing's First: This is an important point so I want to bring it up early. I have been a part of several games that have died. And I won’t deny that I have been the cause for a couple, or at least contributed to. In my favorite adventure as a player, a Dungeon World pirate campaign, I got caught up in college finals and failed to post for about a week, which was enough time for the game to slip my mind. Returning to that thread to read everybody pondering where I was filled me with terrible guilt. I apologized to the the party and GM and gave it another year before trying PbP again. Then, when I felt ready, I started a homebrew campaign that I was beyond excited about. We got into a housing issue with the college that ate up my time and I contributing to the killer of campaigns, I went silent. Since then, I struggled to stay out of the forums until life was stable and predictable because a dead campaign simply isn't fair to anybody.
Duration: I am expecting this campaign to realistically last about 3 months, assuming a swift campaign.
Posting Schedule: I don't want to hold people to a rigid requirement, but I just ask that my players meet me in this: post as regularly as you can. I am looking for once a day and it is what I intend to do as well.
GM PC'ing: To keep things moving, I will GM PC a player if it has been more than 24 hours since I last posted. Stagnancy is the killer of campaigns, and I refuse to let that happen again. I will be fair and observant to your character and make simple actions that are in character.
Outside Communication: I will be requiring a forum outside of these to serve as a reliable form of communication - namely something that can be easily accessed via phones with instant notifications. The reason being, it's easy to fall out of the habit of checking an online forum (believe me, I've been there) but a notification on your phone is a much more reliable reminder. Plus it is far more expedient. I am currently looking at Google Hangouts, gmail, Facebook Messenger or player suggestions. When you post your submission, please include what applications you are comfortable with using. Note This is not what we will be using to play, but to alert others to delays, absences or other miscellaneous discussion.
Roleplay: I much prefer roleplaying to rollplaying. If all you are looking for is the thrill of combat and rolling dice, then this will not be the game for you. I want to build a story, not a backlog of skill checks and attack rolls. I am not asking for walls of text or novellas as your backstory, but simply creative thought expressed to propel the story.
World-Building: Being that Vudra is largely undefined, this gives us a great blank slate to fill in the blanks. I more than welcome name dropping and new lore. Have an idea for one of the hundreds of deities? Let me know! Have you traveled to another town not otherwise mentioned? What does it look like!?
_______________________________
Character Creation:
Starting Level: 1st
Stats: 15 point buy.
Classes: All Paizo classes except Unchained. To note, the occult classes fit particularly well here (not to imply I will have a bias to those classes).
Races: Core, Featured and Uncommon. Please know that if picking an uncommon race (see Vudran Expedition Player's Guide for population breakdown of Radripal), I will be expecting an uncommon and exceptional story to justify your presence and motivations. They are uncommon for a reason, afterall. ;)
Starting Gold: 100g + 50g from Calaak's upfront funding.
Health: Full HD to start and average every new level.
Traits: 2 Traits. Additional Vudra traits in the player's guide.
Backstory: I would like a nice backstory that reflects your ability to write well and that you have put some thought into this great setting. As I said, it doesn't have to be a novella, but enough to explain your roots, your character, and your motivations.
_______________________________
Combat:
Maps and References: Combat will be run using Google Draw with my attempt at hand-drawn maps to reflect this great style(link). I will not be focusing on grid movement, but will provide a scale to allow you to estimate things. Nitty-gritty rules slow things down, and I'd rather focus on a fun combat that fits narratively than something that will slow the game down. I will allow the players to move their own pawns and either draw an arrow from their original location or leave a placeholder to make it easier to track everyone's movements. I will also provide reference art and ambient music on occasion to help further immersion.
Initiative: I will roll all players initiatives in a lump and add their modifiers to get an average (4d20 + 13 => 48 / 4 = 12) and do the same for enemies. The highest average goes first and acts in posting order. I will end a round with a narrative and summary that includes the players' actions followed by GM-PC actions and enemy actions, finishing with a final status of things.
_______________________________
Character Submission:
Character-wise, backstory and basic character build are all I want, but more is fine.
Include a 1d6 roll with your submission.
What outside communication are you comfortable with (GMail*, Google Hangouts*, Facebook Messenger, and/or Other)? *my preferences
And answer the following questions:
What is your motivation for this expedition?
What was the last thing you did before falling asleep last night?
I have recently been attempting to gather all of the known information on Vudra and dump it all into a single document from which I can attempt to form a campaign. Turns out, there is quite a bit of information! Especially with the release of Distant Shores (which I am still going through). I thought I would share the document with you guys in the hopes of hearing some adventure ideas or finding new information that I missed. I am trying to leave a lot of the nitty gritty details out because I'm not entirely sure where that lies legally with regards to sharing and also to encourage buying their products. But I have included links to the SRDs or page references to their book locations for the most part. I have to say, this thread was the main inspiration for me doing this, as I saw the timestamps were pretty old and I figured new information had surely been published since. There are a lot of really cool sounding name drops through the various books that had no expanded definitions or details that immediately spawn adventure ideas which I tried to include (like the Night Weaver King!?) as areas for creative GM's to run wild with.
I have been working on a conversion of the World of Warcraft RPG rules to Pathfinder rules and thought I'd share it with the community to get some (inevitable) critiques. Originally, I tried converting it to D&D4e to make it feel more familiar to the video game players, but I quickly realized it was more work than I wanted and slowly seemed like a bad idea. Instead, I figured I'd do something much more manageable and reskin it with Pathfinder. This is my first attempt at something like this, so don't expect it to be great or without error.
Some notes:
I decided to do up my own custom built races since some of them simply had no obvious sibling in the Pathfinder World (take Warcraft's Gnome for example). When doing this, I realized I could basically do this for all races to better represent the Warcraft setting. It seemed more-or-less like a pre-defined Alternate Racial type for each one. I tried to flat-line everything at 12 RPs for the sake of balance since I'm new with creating races.
Originally, I was going try to translate the more unique classes (Shaman, Warlock, Priest) to Pathfinder equivalents, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt like sticking to the MMO's pre-defined classes wasn't a critical step in capturing the essence of Warcraft. Plus it seemed more fun to have greater class freedom. In the books, comics and else-where, you see characters that do not necessary fit the eight base classes of the games. How I justified it to myself was: I don't want to feel like I'm playing World of Warcraft, but that I'm playing in the world of Warcraft. That world will surely be populated with bards, sorcerers and witches and more that have never been played in the video games.
I created a Wizard archetype for the Warlock class using the abilities presented in the core rules for the WoW RPG that I felt could serve as a good alternative to the Summoner or Conjuration focused Wizard. To emulate the cloth-wearing caster priest of the games, I felt the Adamant Entertainment 3PP Priest class does an excellent job.
Shamans and their totems, on the other hand, seem to be unrepresented either in Paizo or 3PP. There are plenty of ways to capture the spiritual side of the class, but I'd like to see a well-done totem ability. I was thinking about an X-times a day ability that lets you place a totem of either Earth, Fire, Wind or Water. At first level, you start with one totem of each type (Earthbind, Searing, Healing, Grounding). At 4th level, you gain access to a new tier of totems (Stoneclaw, Magma, Mana Spring, Wind Fury) and continuing following this sort of progression. You can only have one totem of a given type on the field at a time. Something like that...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Lastly, I will probably re-do this in Wordpress or something because google sites is just too hard to work with formatting wise.
