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All best, Al! Hope it goes as well as it can.
We don't have a quorum, so let's put the game on pause.
Is her partner the same one I knew way back when? Yep! She and Blyss are still together. They and Kate are the players for the campaign, although I'm excited that Laurel has expressed interest in learning how to DM, so I might get to switch roles later. Blyss has no tabletop experience but loves Skyrim, Red Dead, Diablo, New Vegas, etc., so I think it'll work out.
Definitely not going hungry, but I am going to the grocery store instead of posting. Here's the encounter: So, a while back, I accidentally bought the local super expensive tofu and baked it in chunks that then turned into astonishingly good little puffs. So, I'm going to buy it again and see if I can replicate the effect... I tried with budget stuff and got no puff. If I can get the puff, I'm going to attempt General Tso's tofu with foraged chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms tonight. @Utuk: it's hard to cook for Kate when she's so good at it! But I can cheat with good ingredients (K so frugal). Also, we've been hanging with Laurel a lot lately, too (went on a one night camp for the holiday, cf. chick-o-woods). I think we are gonna start a real-table campaign with her and her partner! @Oswald I think we'll even do 2e. It will, if it happens, be my first in-person game in, like, five years. @the rest of ya, for context: Utuk taught me and Kate and Laurel how to play DnD years ago in Bellingham, WA. Super grateful. Wish we could all gather 'round the humble table.
My posts might be slow until Tuesday!
Many people quickly see the good sense in the suggestion to get indoors (belted out at full bardic volume, no less), but part of the crowd sways unsteadily and presses in towards the center of the octagon, stumbling over their erstwhile wizards. Maybe they will figure it out. Utuk can see that some streets seem to be squabbling with the squelettes, while others seem to be doing a better job of letting the flow of bones take its way down the streets of the town.
Sarea watches the celebration with a gimlet eye. She turns to Nidintu, smiling and skeptical all at once at his vision of a thriving community growing up on the frontier. "A waterwheel, and then a kingdom! If it's not hard to make them, you should--it'll save labor in the long run. It feels strange that I've fallen in with noblefolk and soon-to-be-noblefolk, but I'm happy for you all. Can I tag along and see what you make of this new land?" Then, taking Eskra and Nidintu's suggestions literally, she gingerly steps over the bodies, finds the ale, and starts pouring frothing tankards for anyone who'll take one off her hands. Taking one for herself, she savors a sip so long that a second like it will have her heading back to the casks. "Not half bad, actually! I taste rich malt, hops, and herbs. I think it's a smidge of wormwood and probably a touch mugwort to add some tooth to the bitterness. If I'm right, we'll have lovely dreams tonight. You should keep this recipe in mind for your tavern, Nidintu!"
@KStF, I think an ideal pace is about a post a day, but they don't have to be long. And of course missing a day or two here and there isn't a big deal at all. It's a little more important to be posting once we're in combat or else they can literally last a month. Combat posts are faster to write, though. I really want you in this game, so if you need a slower pace we can make it work. @Everyone: I am trying to rope in a couple local friends. I'll get you fightin' soon.
Yes, you'd likely know Dominic. I have never lived in a town as small as Morgen, but I've lived in bigger places and still had the "everyone knows everyone" feeling. You're rather a public figure and Dom would be known for cartomancy, so I think it's safe to say you'd know of each other. Level of bestiehood up to y'all though.
An eerie calm prevails for a while longer. Refugees fill each of the eight main thoroughfares of Morgen, and things are crowded enough that Ulyssia's summons to the octagon doesn't take long to proliferate to the very outskirts of Morgen. Country folk and townsfolk all swarm past skeletal rescuers, heading towards the public square/octagon, the scene of so many dramas, speeches, and fights of days gone by. Now, the drama is off the stage and in the lives of everyone. People gather in the tiers of the market stalls and wait to see what the head wizard of the W (and most influential citizen of Morgen) has to say. She stands with her faculty at the center of the octagon. In her arms is a large, glowing stone, shaped like an egg and radiantly shimmering in many colors. She speaks loudly enough to be heard by all: "Citizens of Morgen, you are now adrift, and soon you will have to make your own way on the currents of New Great Sea. Someone has made a horrible mistake. Centuries of magical stability have been overturned in some reckless error, some attempt to fundamentally rewrite the Law of the Conservation of Magic. Or maybe someone found something even stronger. "Whatever happened, our magic is now nearly depleted. We poured the last of our efforts into building you this arcane ark, but we will now depart. Our philosopher's stones are failing, and we will now die." She lifts the stone to show everyone how its colors are swiftly fading to grey. The necromancer, Seth, twitches visibly, suddenly investigating his jet-black stone intently. "Kassander, tell us what you know," Ulyssia ordered her diviner. Kassander stepped forward, holding a clear blue stone that was beginning to cloud over. "Yes! The end is upon us! But you must go on! The sea is never-ending, and the world still turns. But if this island should fail, then life itself might fade from this planet. The future is uncertain, and my vision fades. The prophecies are clear that this is the testing of Tlan, the age of the eternal sea, of the mighty storm, of the end of the ice and the dawn of wind." He shakes his head, resisting the urge to pontificate any further. "Where is the one with the gift? I have a gift for him." He scans the crowd until he spots Dominic. "You, humble one of the strands, come here." Kassander hands Dominic the clouding crystal. "I can see you might need this someday. You probably already know that, right? Guide these people to a future that holds them, if you can." Dominic can see that the already ancient elf is rapidly aging, with wrinkles spreading like tiny fires across his aged face. Meanwhile, the other wizards are each preparing for their end in their own fashion. The transmuter seems to be building a plinth of stone next to the town well. The enchanter seems to be casting extreme mind-altering magic on herself and sings, "Death can't to be feared when fear is impossible..." As she withdraws into her own fading synapses, her magic recedes from the assembled crowd, and panic begins to gnaw at the minds of many. The illusionist stands next to a blurry double of herself, chanting rapidly. The evoker sits on the ground, then vanishes in a gout of flame, leaving only a dull stone glowing with heat in a pile of ashes. The conjurer opens a portal, waves farewell, steps through, and vanishes. The abjurer speaks to the crowd briefly, saying "You will need to protect yourselves now. The island will hold." The necromancer is muttering and pacing, casting dark spells at his stone. He's not paying attention to anything else. Ulyssia, ever the teacher, says, "Please raise your hands if you have any questions! Don't be shy. We don't have long before your big test."
Buried in work and life but thinking of the game a lot! Once it's up and running (should be soon!), I'll post every day or warn you that I'm going to miss it. I am intrigued by the unchained action economy but I will probably start this campaign with the standard rules.
Yeah, congrats! Slice 'em and dice 'em and serve 'em up hot! Thanks so much for this game. See you over on Tlan!
One thing to know as you plan your roles and resources: you're going to have an entire community to work with you. But they might not always be easy to work with. One of my goals with this game is to create a campaign that I'd love to play myself. I love city sims and strategy games. I like thinking about demographics, and it bothers me when, using Skyrim as an example (favorite video game? Maybe? In the running.): Whiterun, a "city," has a population of ~70 people. And like, three kids? Morgen currently holds 680 people + you all for about 700 total. As we go, more and more people will emerge from the social fog of war and get names, personalities, goals, and struggles. I am going to reveal more in-game and especially more details once y'all have become bigwigs around town, but here's my first draft of the demographics you can expect. Edit: Oh my gods I'm bad at counting. Redoing some math. People who lived in town before the collapse (280 people):
Country folk who evacuated successfully (240 people):
Thinking of the children: 160 youngsters who aren't working yet. Some could be given jobs. - Infants (0-2 years): 25
There are non-humans, too! But I'm not going to do separate age-ranges for everyone. Assume that so-far unemployable "teenage" elves of age 40 are present. So, why bring it up now? On healing: Many members of the clergy will quickly re-adapt to the new rules of divine magic and might, with the right incentives, be willing to attend adventures as especially helpful NPCs. Of course, if they die, they are gone, and their friends won't be happy with you.
Realizing that the diviner's warnings are genuine, the wizards of the magical university quickly begin preparing the town for a new existence. Tlan would never be the same, but with luck, the wizards of the university would be able to save their neighbors. Ulyssia calmly orders her departmental wizards to use their mastery of the eight schools of magic to save the town of Morgen before it drowns beneath the waves. Down by the beach, the waters are already rising. There isn't much time. She sketches out her plan: they will set the island afloat with the power of their magic. First, the illusionist sends simulacra of runners to the surrounding villages and farms. These illusory messengers cry out their warnings far beyond the city walls, exhorting everyone to grab their most precious belongings and gather at the university. Farmers tumble out of their beds and listen to the illusory messengers, each a perfect copy of the illusionist wizard. Then, the simulacra rush on to the next stead, legs a blur of speed. Many people rouse their families and begin gathering their heirlooms and prized livestock, driving them on through the fog. As the sea rises, wagons rattle towards the university, and the wide-open gates quickly clog with traffic. The central square is soon a packed camp full of worried and panicky people. The enchanter takes charge of the crowd. Working the subtle spells of emotions, she wanders among them, exuding a sense of calm and confidence that is quite literally magical. It is a masterpiece of crowd control. All the babies stop crying. All the scuffles in the traffic jam suddenly end in handshakes and mutual aid. The conjurer begins summoning enormous earth elementals, creatures with a fundamental bond to stone and dirt and capable of passing through these solid materials without leaving so much as a ripple. She sends them swarming underneath the city with a mission: to sever the town of Morgen from the very bedrock below. Stone crumbles beneath the elementals' magic, and the city above begins to shake and tremble. The transmuter, master of changing the size, shape, and quality of material objects, shrinks himself and the conjurer. They both hitch a ride on an elemental into the catacombs that are being swiftly carved out from the bedrock. The transmuter begins working magic on the ceiling of these new caves, reinforcing and lightening them. A master of engineering as much as a master of magical materials, he directs the conjurer's minions in the art of creating a durable, air-filled lattice of magically reinforced and lightened stone beneath Morgen. Meanwhile, the evoker, master of the raw power of the elements, burns away the land outside the walls of Morgen, working down to the pan of bedrock that would soon be the hull of a massive, floating ship. Heat and light ripples from the wizard's fingertips, creating bright glowing clouds in the fog. As the waves rise, his work is occasionally interrupted in billows of steam as his magic cuts across the waters. The abjurer, master of protective magic, swiftly begins working charms to stabilize the architecture of the city. As strong as the transmuter's latticed hull might be, the buildings above were not designed to withstand the rigors of oceangoing existence. That has to change, and fast. Lines of force ascend the ancient buildings of the university and the town around it, bolstering old buttresses and adding just a bit of give to age-old stonework. Just as he is finishing up, he finds himself accosted by tiny voices: the conjurer and the transmuter requesting help keeping the water out of the part-finished structure below. The abjurer works immense spells of force to turn back the rising waves, which had threatened to fill the hull of the town before it could be completely sealed. Meanwhile, the necromancer summons a host of skeletons, with all apologies for using magic that many see as evil on the resting ancestors of Morgen. However, his undead workforce proves instrumental in saving their descendants, wading through the waves to bundle the last of the country folk in through the gates. Many would have drowned without the help of bony hands supporting them from below the waters. Soon the people were all safe inside. Under the necromancer's direction, the undead host also manages to haul a few of the boats in the harbor through the walls before the gates are slammed shut against the sea. Then, Ulyssia works the final spell, the one that will set the new island afloat. With the help of her colleagues, she puts all the magical power at her disposal into the act of raising the town above the waves of the sea. The other wizards join her in concentration. The enchanted populace feels the world shifting under their feet, and suddenly, Morgen is afloat.
Sarea steps forward so she can thrust her spear past Aikros. Sarea chants as she lunges with her branched spear, imbuing it with crackling electricity:
She thrusts the weapon home, then unleashes a shocking spell that sizzles and arcs across the branches of the spear before discharging on the Stag Lord.
She cackles witchily.
I'm going to start mashing keys on the catastrophe so we can get this party started. A little more narration--then the game begins.
Staying positive! ...and by that I mean, I'm still not able to travel. Or move around a whole lot. But every day, I'm a little better.
@Dominic: you can assume a normal high-fantasy spread of languages. Because the habitable world is so relatively narrow in latitude but very long in long-itude, there's plenty of isolation for local and subspecies-dependant languages to develop but also enough connection that people have developed a Common language as a lingua franca. @RH we have a Grippli Monk/Rogue, an half-orc sanitation brawler, probably an Adaptive Shifter (perhaps crab-flavored), and a ratfolk cartomancer. I want to recruit an old friend from my hometown and gods only know what he'll bring to the table, but I haven't gotten him on yet (and he might not be able to play at all). So we have slaps, mops, crabs, and cards.
Ok, made it through! A little tired still. Will get home on Wednesday and will likely have more for you then. I may have recruited a player from here in Virginia, too.
Maybe I'll run a separate game titled "I, Object" about animated object lawyers for y'all.
My gods--a player who wants to be a net full of crabs without the net and one that wants to be the sorcerer's apprentice, no wait, scratch that, the broom from the sorcerer's apprentice. ...more tomorrow when I'm not super tired! ...but thanks for your weird and wonderful selves...
@Dust: It looks like there are already reagents for duration for various schools and subschools of magic, and the two you highlighted are for abjuration only, and are redundant. Pesh, for instance, costs 15 GP to add +1 CL for duration for enchantment spells. I think we could easily declare either myrrh or cold iron to be the +1 duration extender for abjuration spells unless you've found some exploit... @Something: Skinwalker should be fine. I wonder if Shifter/Skinwalker might be a bit redundant, though. Were you going to be a werecrab who can change to a crab swarm, or like a werebear who has this strong connection to crabs? I am no expert on the class, but Shifter looks like a somewhat weak martial with a potential power spike at level 4, especially in a campaign where being able to fly or swim four hours a day is a huge boon. It could be a long while before we hit 4. What are you most excited about doing with the character? Maybe we can make a tweak somewhere. Putting the Lycanthrope template on a PC at level feels like overcorrecting, though. That's a lot of crunchy power. Where are you these days? Sacramento? I'm in Fredericksburg putting my turned-18-just-in-time-for-WWII granddad into Arlington. But we're living in Seattle still. @Spaz: good to see you! @Everyone: I can't figure out how to move RH's PC to the former players tab. Anyone know how?
For thousands of years on Tlan, people have huddled by their fires in the depths of the cold wind, telling stories and singing the same old, impossibly old songs. A gust of bitingly cold and dry air comes down from the landward side of town, scattering townsfolk to their hearths and homes like so many dry leaves blown before the storms of the cold. As the wind paws at the shuddering eaves and rings the family's heirloom wind-chimes, people recite the epics of wizards, gods, dragons, and the golden age of warm weather and mighty heroes once again, always with a new difference, a twist that makes the old feel fresh. And as eternal as the winters are, the stories are longer, longer and always changing even as the voices of the tellers change. The tales of magic, told with clear pride, inspire restless children, kept awake by the howling wind, to steal downstairs in the dark on stormy nights, where they try to light the fire with their minds or flash a light from their fingertips into a threatening shadow. Most fail. Sometimes, though, the spark jumps into the kindling, or a light reveals that the secret in the shadow is the same cat sitting on the same chair it claims in the daylight. Even more rarely, the families of these gifted young folk might allow them to develop their talent by sending them to a school--usually, one of the nine great universities scattered across the equatorial lowlands where the ice reluctantly melts in summer. Eight schools stand for eight different branches of magic, but all teach the same first lesson: to learn magic, one needs not decades but centuries. Therefore, the short-lived folk are set a challenge: master life itself first. Once they construct their own philosopher's stone, a source of eternal life, they are free to master their respective school of magic. Of course, a curriculum that requires sixty years for a bright pupil is more than most can manage, and most wizards are elves and other beings who simply have more time. But even they usually study the Stone first. As a result, almost all wizards are old--old men and women and beings beyond caring about such distinctions (and if they look young, you can probably assume you're looking at an illusionist). Most are committed to the school of magic that shaped their Stone. So, most of them look with some derision at the Unyversal Unyversyty, a place where magic is taught by a ragtag band of outcasts from the other schools of magic. The UU (or W) is seen as a place for dilettantes who want to try to master parlor tricks and then die, not a place for serious wizardry. Nobody could hope to shape a philosopher's stone while pulled in so many directions. Still, minor magicka is attainable there, and people would graduate in ten or so years able to mend objects, make crops grow, calm the angry, and sear the wicked. The religious orders, each devoted to an archetypal manifestation of the divine, send clergy to the W to learn something useful. Third sons and daughters might enroll to master one key professional trick--a shipwright's son could spend five years learning how to meld two planks of wood into a single tough, flexible, curved board, and those five years would pay dividends for the rest of his life. Even a small contingent of elves study desultory arcana, motivated by something other than the pursuit of perfection. None is more dissolute than Ulyssia, the chair of the UU and the world's main proponent of universal magical studies. This impossibly old elf's students invariably perish or wander off before achieving a universal philosopher's stone, but she remains, casting spells and watching the seagulls soaring over the wine-dark sea, hoping someday to find a successor. In the meantime, she enjoys harboring exiles from the other schools of magic and learning every craft a little. A master of all schools, but a wizard of none. Around the UU, the town of Morgen remains blissfully indifferent to the unyversyty's lack of respect in higher places. The townsfolk are proud of the institution and grateful for the occasional assistance that the wizards offer, even if the mages can be aloof sometimes, and other times they can be impractical to the point of frustrating arbitrary silliness. For example, centuries ago, the professor of divination, an old elf named Kassander, warned the city to build itself within a relatively small circle, reinforced with walls. It's possible to walk from one end of Morgen to the other in a matter of minutes, and it's probably not much wider than a thousand feet at its thickest. This narrow ring encircles five hundred densely packed residents: townsfolk, students, faculty, and staff. Not everyone is content to live in the teetering warrens of Morgen. Another two thousand or so people work the fields, forest, and sea, living in steads beyond the walls. When the wind comes in from the sea, people emerge from their strongly built houses to breathe in the mercifully humid air and tend to the crops before the temperatures drop again. Rain falls, people mingle under broad hats, and sturdy sheep are chased out of fields of sturdy crops. There's no safe land route to any other settlements: a wall of low, but often snowy hills ring the Vale of Morgen, and they are surrounded by cold deserts inhabited by sabertoothed cats and dire wolves. Only experienced hunting parties climb those hills. But the town isn't entirely isolated: a boat is always leaving to some other place, and another is always arriving. People go on pilgrimages to the shrine-cities of various archetypes of the gods, and some bring home husbands or wives. Kassander still throws a fit whenever someone tries suggesting that the town expand the walls or that someone could maybe build a structure outside the circle. If pressed, he will mutter about visions and a great danger that will come. While things have been peaceful for a long time, legends of outland invasions (and memories, too, among the older folk of town) keep the walls in good repair. The town grows up instead of out, with residences clinging to the buttresses established for old unyversyty lecture halls and small tower-houses characterizing the chaotic architecture. The wood-warping shipwrights and other students of the professor of Transmutation spend their apprenticeship making the impossible plausible in the stone, plaster, and wood architecture of the town. Sometimes, it feels more like a single building than a town--a useful attribute in such a cold place. Everyone knows everyone, with all the ecstasy and agony that comes with a lack of privacy and limited options to start fresh. People learn to talk through difficulties instead of holding grudges. It's more like a big family than most places on Earth, but it isn't too unusual for Tlan. The only large semi-open space in town is known as the Octagon. Outlanders learn not to call it a square. If someone has something to say, sell, sing, or spell, it's likely to be announced, discussed, performed, or cast there. No matter who you are or why you're in Morgen, seat of the W, you're bound to spend some time in the Octagon. You might be there now, standing where the streets (alleys, really) come together. At the center of the town is a fountain where people fill buckets with clean, cold water. Around the fountain is a small space planted with eight ancient, pollarded oaks, harvested yearly for poles--which keeps the canopies from growing into the surrounding market stalls, which rise on spindly, magic-reinforced scaffolds three stories off the ground, and which are reservable on a town calendar. You can get anything you need at the Octagon, and after the harvest of the pollards, the market stalls are converted to stands for the yearly theater competition, which is acted in the round. Everything changes for the theater--work is forgotten, school is canceled, and enemies find themselves laughing at the same jokes in the same market stalls. It might be just the place to imagine yourself in the world of Tlan, where this season, everything will change, even more than it does for the yearly dramas.
Sarea backs up Xavin by talking with Aikros too. She mentions what she heard from the bandits on the road quietly, making sure the deets are fresh.
I mean if we're gonna do 2e we should do free archetype. Not saying we are gonna do 2e.
Hello players! I'm hoping that I can do my recruitment for this campaign by word of mouth, and I think we're up to 5/6 players, who all know each other from prior games. As they were known, heroes of Rappan Athuk: Anzath, Bedlam, Lolly, Terapin, and Tragershen have all expressed interest. Aurora won't be joining as a player, but will likely be lurking (and if you lurk, Aurora, please feel free to post comments and hang out etc.). Talathel is a maybe.
Update: working on worldbuilding (started with climatology and plate tectonics and have moved into the metaphysics of magic and theology). I have reached out to some former players who haven't posted here yet. I'll give 'em all a bit and then I will start asking other possible players. Wavering on the shift to 2e, honestly... might stick to 1e. But haven't decided. I might make a new campaign button for the game soon, in which case I'll post it here.
It's important that the party start at level 1 in the floating islands setting (catastrophic reasons), so I don't see how we could port y'all over to it in your current forms. My whole goal here is to run a tight, low-level campaign for a while. Recapture the joy of understanding the rules. You'd be welcome to reset to 1 as one of these characters if that's your kind of fun! I would be super happy to grant some kind of thematic boons referencing this game. I'm still too new to 2e to say what they might be right now (the CRB and GMG are on the way).
As the party knocks some heads together (some using their own heads) and subdues the bandits, Sarea bends around so her hands are facing the where her bonds are tied to the wagon, snaps her fingers, and points (as best she can).
"Damnation! These ropes make it hard to aim!"
The second shot burns the rope to cinders, and it doesn't take her long to wriggle out of the rest of her bonds once she has a start. Once free, she kicks out any wayward sparks or flames left over from her spell. She anxiously pulls herself up onto the wagon and starts rummaging through it for her branched spear. Finding it, she sighs with relief. Then, she twirls around with a not-untheatrical twist of robe, hops down, and faces the party, smiling. A few seconds later, Cawsper swoops down, pulls up into a momentum-killing banking climb, and lands smoothly on Sarea's shoulder. In her Western-accented common, she starts talking: "Thanks so much, all of you! I'm sorry if I heaped too many insults on you--I didn't know you weren't bandits or that you were going to save me, and I get mean when I'm nervous. I'm Bithisarea Carnacki, a woman of Riddleport and a magus in the service of the Cyphermages. My name's a handful and a half, so call me Sarea, sa-Ray-uh. How shall I address you?"
A definitely random crow swoops low and...
...misses the "new bandit" Nidintu with a poorly released payload. "Craawp crawwp crawwp." Sarea glares daggers at the bird. Dumb bird's gonna get himself shot. Wow, I'm glad he missed--that one with the horns looks pretty fierce. Still, I can probably learn more by engaging with them than by standing here in silence. Bandits usually respect courage more than weakness... and if I have to take a punch, so be it. Won't be the first nor... I guess I hope nor the last (if they want to ransom me, I have to live, right?). As the party hails the bandits, they see that the captive is an incongruous Varisian woman who has halted mid-stride in a defiant contrapposto despite her bonds. She calls out in the common tongue, slightly accented by half a continent's distance: "Well, well, well. More scoundrels joining the ranks, I presume? Seeking fortune, fame, or merely a swift descent into infamy? Or are you lot just here for the free ale and poor life choices?" From her accent and her garments, she's obviously a stranger in a strange land. A crimson scarf wraps her neck, and she wears a shot-cut blue robe cinched at the waist with a tooled leather belt over red hose. She's just a touch under average height, and her build is athletic and wiry. Her medium-short brown hair is neatly styled, framing her face and deep brown eyes. Elven blood pushes the tips of her ears through her hair, but only just. Her olive skin is adorned with subtle tattooing on all the skin you can see (not much: her face and hands, at the moment). She wears battered but sturdy leather ankle boots. Somehow, she looks clean, especially compared to her captors. Despite her current predicament as a captive, she exudes an air of confidence and intelligence, and her sharp gaze perches above a slight smile, darting between her captors and the newcomers with a mixture of curiosity and calculation.
Sarea finds herself captive. Well, my investigation is proceeding, at least. Nice guys, these bandits, taking me in without undue violence. Much better than those pirates that one time. Maybe things aren't so bad out here. I'll hold off on roasting them to see how this plays out... and I'm not sure I could take all three at once anyway. And I want to see that magic helmet. She hears a doubly familiar CA-CAW above her and feels reassured knowing that Cawsper is keeping watch above. Poor bird is probably half out of his mind with worry. Too smart for his own good. I'm just lucky he's not already down here trying to insult the bandits into setting me free... She hears a rustle of wings and an annoyed voice calling "Cawptured again... Cawn't believe you." She hisses at the sky: "SSHHHH," potentially drawing the attention of the bandits. Trying to dodge gracefully, "Shhhssso, we're going to see the Stag Lord. I've heard he's a big deal, but I've never met him. Is he a good boss? I used to work with some pirates, and let me tell ya, they are a mixed bag when it comes to leadership."
Poking my head in here!
It's over! And I'm not currently working a regular job, either. I have a remote, flexy schedule thing that will cover the bills for now, but I gotta find something more stable than teaching writing classes.
I'd be game for either concept. Moderately more intrigued by option 1, would be happy to do option one with 2e, even if I still prefer 1e because of more years of exp in that system. Option 2 would still be super cool though! A megadungeon is a megadungeon. I think it would be elegant to let one lead to the other.
Thanks for the intro to gestalt! I've had fun imagining some wacky builds. Dust: thanks so much for this game! I wouldn't be opposed to a revival if you ever want to revisit the setting. See you at Dorian's!
Is that aimed at me? I am gradually regaining the urge to run a game, but it will almost certainly be homebrew... I mean, that sounds amazing, and maybe it would be fun to just plow under all my pulp reading of the last few years into a campaign. What I've been thinking of doing, though, has been on my mind even longer: a high fantasy based on... Spoiler for the curious, but it's a real spoiler this time, so potential players wanting the full experience might pass:
an isolated necromantic utopia that is coming to grips with a long-forgotten outside world that doesn't comprehend how negative energy is not the same as evil energy. The party would come from this outside world (normal pathfinder lands) and would in turn have to adapt to a new worldview, or try to change the culture. @Dorian it'd be 1e, almost certainly. I am facing immanent unemployment and can only allow myself to start running a game if I can be sure it won't turn into a way to avoid real life. Not feeling certain about that just now, but I think I've grown a lot since my last unemployment stint (and we're not in lockdown this time). Might be doable. Will feel more feasible once I start getting employment nibbles.
Tannakin licks a scratch on the back of her hand and grins. "That was kinda fun. I'll miss Frasier."
I'm getting better at using the maps!
Reposting my comment from our other game, but can I express this too often? Wishing you all the WIS, CON, and STR in the world right now, and all the luck stat, even though we don't use that one here.
*pushes up not-my-prescription glasses* "I dunno Julril, looks fine to me."
Time to go shopping! I don't know much about 2e items so I'll have to do some reading...
Tannakin looks up at the sky and says, "Are you sure this isn't Rappan Athuk, the Dungeon of Graves?" She then swings her blade down on the beast...
She calls out encouragement to Julril, "Don't let him get you down!" "That's not metaphorical."
Then she casts Shield and takes a deep breath.
Tannakin hangs on like a hero... barely.
Work is intense right now! I hope I can get back into the swing of it soon but my energy levels are trash and after a day of reading computers, it's not what i want to do for fun. Hope to be back though! Things are gradually getting easier.
Tan breathes a sigh of relief that fades to a vaguely draconic growl of satisfaction. "You all are the best. I think a lot of people would just attack the dragon." "Ok, here's my plan, but it's a risky one so please fix it with brilliant ideas if you have them: Airi, you know how to sneak and how to lie, as I know all too well. Why don't you sneak ahead and see if you can spot the draggo? If you do, maybe you can Hat yourself into a Kobold and use Deception to convince it that we're all friends (I mean, it's not even really deception since we're trying to save it) and we can lead the dragon to the tree fort or something? Once it kinda trusts us, I should be able to talk to it if it's old enough to know any Draconic. Or... I think my mom and dad would be ok with it staying in our shed until we find ma or pa dragon." "Oh, and we should figure out how to separate it from any last kobolds so we can kill them without being observed." She starts chucking the looted kobolds into the pit...
"Ummm... soooo... I really don't want to kill this baby dragon. It's like, my cousin? Third cousin once removed? And I don't want to remove anyone one-removed, not even once. It should be with its family, anyway, not with these kobolds. Where is its mom and dad? I bet they'd be happy to get their hatchling back and I'd get to meet my first cousins twice removed!" Tannakin bites her lip in a look of vaguely draconic concern. "Do you think we could use the Hat of Disguise to make it not want to kill us? Not want to kill one of us? I think it's time to make a sneaky plan. Sometimes you gotta lie to a baby to save its life." She does, however, pick up a potion and stashes it in her pocket.
I've DMed for dust, I've been DM'd by dust, but we've never partied together before! I've got to get to NM and especially Taos someday...
This game sure has players with serious stuff going on! Best to Ness, Dorian, Airi! ...best to Leo, too, for good measure. One of the great things about pbp is that it doesn't go stale.
I did it once before on my way out here 10 years ago (that feels weird to say). The drive east to west is nice at first but when you hit Colorado and the West (my first time seeing that area), it's pretty surreal and amazing. Our West-East itinerary: Groveland CA
Gonna try to get across pretty quickly so we catch the bday, but if it looks like we'll miss it, we'll slow down.
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