Tark's Council of Thieves OOC discussion

There is such a thing as getting too close.That is why there are no half-elementals.

@TarkXT, the Only War thing sounds interesting. Especially since you plan on not making it a long lasting campaign right now.

Only problem I have is that I don't have access to the rulebook. I do have some knowledge about the system itself (as the basics are the same for most warhammer & warhammer 40k related rpgs that came out in recent times) and I played a one shot adventure once. Not sure which book it was, but we were working for an NPC inquisitor.

By the by is Poor Wandering One interested in Only War? If no one anwers the recruitment tommorrow I'll have three players which is enough for me to go with as NPC's can fill out the rest of the squad to die easily.

Maybe.... I really dislike most military/honor/nobility/warrior code tropes but I could get behind someone who plays against them.....

I'll run up a flag in the thread and see who salutes.

TarkXT wrote:

By the by is Poor Wandering One interested in Only War? If no one anwers the recruitment tommorrow I'll have three players which is enough for me to go with as NPC's can fill out the rest of the squad to die easily.

Maybe.... I really dislike most military/honor/nobility/warrior code tropes but I could get behind someone who plays against them.....

I'll run up a flag in the thread and see who salutes.

I don't see that as a problem. It helps to udnerstand that the Imperial Guard in 40k is massive. So massive in fact that the massive bureacracy whose job it is to keep it organized couldn't tell you how ridiculously huge it is.

In other words, you can easily be a hapless conscript, a prisoner sentenced to service, or if you're really unlucky a sanctioned psyker. You cna also be a priest. Priests in the guard are kind of scary.

@Hisui: That's fine I'm sort of in the same boat having never run nor played in any of them (despite desires to do so).

@TarkXT, well I'd like to give it a try.

But you kinda locked of recruitment ^_^ (as I don't want to be shot as a mutant & traitor :p)

You can go ahead and post in the discussion.

I got so few entries I'll take another without much fight if I know them.

Hopy thanksgiving for those that celebrate it.

Gobble gobble

Hope everyone enjoyed the holiday weekend. Regularly scheduled disembowelments will resume sometime tonight.

So I have been thinking about massive destruction and violent psychopaths but apart from holidays with the family I was also thinking about jumping the shield and running a PbP here.

I have always wanted to give Savage Worlds Necessary Evil* a go. I don't have a recruitment thread up yet, I am waiting on an off-board friend who will likely be playing to finish vetting the announcement post for sanity.

Strike anyone as interesting?

*Elevator pitch: Modern age aliens invade Stan Lee's four-color Manhattan. Heroes die B-list villains, the players, are left to deal with an occupied earth.

Can I talk like the narrator of JAck Kirby's OMAC?

Yes, yes you can.

Official thread should be up in the next day or so.

Actually an OMAC/Brother Eye character could work.......

Drama has all but ensured delay. I'll post tommorrow sorry.

Necessary thread is live.

@Tark/anyone interested in running a successful PbP.

A fantastic post.

Yeah so far I have been pretty happy with all my PbP's.

I've kicked a bunch of players over the course of them and maintained good speed in all the scenarios I've run, and yep I read that post and agree with what they say.

I especially agree with the 'doors' part, and frankly PbP GMs REALLY REALLY REALLY need to take that on board. Taking a week to resolve a door opening is unacceptable.

The GM really has to grab a hold of things, truncate mundane tasks and FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THATS HOLY they need to ban any scouting turn-by-turn.

Scouting (or invisible wandering) must be abstracted so the outcome takes no more than two posts.

So, after a bit of soul searching I've decided to end the council of thieves games after 73 discussion pages and over 4 years of campaigning.

This time has taught me plenty of things. For one is that pbp is really too slow to be running an AP as some of you have already learned. For two never let the group take anyone alive who'd much rather be dead.

For a long time I had quite a bit of enthusiasm for the games I had such a great cast from the start in the nobles game that meshed remarkably well even with their different forms of psychosis. The newer additions of Bejis, Bloodless, Tal, and more since have done a lot to shift the groups in different directions. Even Petronicus was memorable even though he spent much of his time not quite being trusted by the group and dying in one of the most horrible fashions I can think of.

I ahd plenty of good in-character plans as I always do to make events personal for the characters and make the prewritten AP feel more like a story their characters are directing rather than a train they're riding in.

But, life events, the torpid movement of the game even when I am a more regular poster has dragged on and shown on the players parts as well as mine. The last time I ran a game this long was a d20 Warcraft game where the players went from level 3 to 13 over the course of three years. In short I stopped making plans, stopped dreaming up ways to mess with characters, stopped envisioning scenarios where Meraxilar and Caldazar are fighting on a burning rooftop for the ehart and soul of the city, stopped thinking of the best ways for Bloodless's distinctiveness to come in and bite him, and stopped thinking of ways to somehow get BEjis's past involved.

And I do owe a special thanks to Trevor's player for poking me and prodding me constantly to get on with it. Seriously, that helped more than it should have been necessary.

But sadly I think that time for me has passed.

That being said this does give me more incentive to get the 7 swordsman moving at a much more rapid pace and to work with the group in my Only War game to get their characters up and going so I can stumble through probably get them killed by accident laugh it off and start anew as we sew the bits of the old characters back together into a screaming horror only Nurgle would love.

And, if you guys won't let it die by all means you have my blessing to find another GM for them. Three years is a long time to keep the game going and if another person feels like they should pick up the torch and run with new enthusiasm by all means do so.

The characters were pretty amusing. Sad that we won't see the hilarious misunderstandings when Trevor finds out about the cleric of Rovagug the party got chummy with.

Well I guess it is time to start looking for another campaign for Tal. Thanks for the 3 years Tark.

Maybe Tal could get his Hellknight on in Way of the Wicked!

Never looked into the campaign before, maybe will have to do so shortly.

As one of the 'founding members', I'd like to pass on my thanks for the time and effort you put in, and the taste level you brought to the game in making it a fairly tense and unforgiving environment - even the fruitloop players we had that exited in often bizare and unusual ways.

Bloodless was an oddball character who I came to like, and after four yers of content I'd rebuild him a different way - so I can see him popping up in PFS.

So thanks for everything, I appreciate it all and wish you the best :)

Well, I am sorry to see the campaign go - but thank-you for letting us know :-)

My time with you was short, but sweet. Best of luck.

Yes the world as ended!

My subtle machinations have borne their terrible fruit!

Bwahahahahahahahahah!!

Sigh though I regret missing the battle between Mr. Shiny and the Monkey for the existence of Westcrown. A pale reflection of the Cal/Merax pairing though it would have been.

But stories end, cities end, everything ends.....

Goodbye all it was a good run and I think the Monkey actually learned something.

Now where did I put that spleen?

*Puts Castor into a bag of cats*

Aw Shiny, I didn't know you cared.

*Quick Draws knife and fork*

Also sad to see it go, but I cannot even fathom the amount of work that goes into these things , and trying to imagine doing all that work when your heart's not in it.......a tough decision but probably the right one.

I'm probably one of the newest players, but this Council game was the first thread I discovered after learning pbp existed, and I was a loyal lurker for quite some time before begging and pestering for a seat. Thank you for the opportunity to play in such a great game, even briefly, and thanks for all the valuable lessons your games have taught me as a player.

And Liu might be an archer not a swordsman but he is ready to go!

So anyone know if we can rustle up a DM who can at least let us finish book 3? Snagging the Morrowfall sounds like a good ending.

If anyone has anything to add to the 7 swordsman thread go ahead and do it I'm updating tonight.

I think the monkey frightened the GM in the CoT game he and the tin-man are trying for.

Just wanted to let the other six swordsmen know that I'm still here. Just waiting for an opportune moment for my character to pop in, if necessary.

Ok, so I'm planning on reviving this campaign! I know Tal and Pollux/Castor were interested in being part of the revived campaign. Does anyone else have any interest in it? I will probably be creating a new thread and linking all of these threads into the first discussion post. I am still undecided at which point I will restart the campaign, probably near the end of book 2 or the start of book 3. If you are interested in joining the revival, please PM me and/or post here!

Thanks again for considering this. Ready to convert Tal over to whatever level and gp we are restarting at.

*waves* :-)

I joined the rebel group towards the end of this game. I am still very interested in playing.

That makes 4 counting Pollux.

Witch
Fighter
Bard archeologist and
Dax's character Inquisitor? (By the way Selena says hi to Tunder)

Throw in another spellcaster of some sort and we have almost the same as we had at the beginning of book 2

I could rebuild Harold as a battle oracle, if that would help :-)

I am not saying that at all, just ruminating on the possibilities and the previous group. Really it wont matter too much as it seems that the bases are covered mostly anyhow. Fighter class, witch covers arcane/divine along with the bard arcane spells. Inquisitor has divine spells and both he and the bard make good secondary melee characters. I say secondary as they are not full base attack nothing against how they are designed. In fact Harold can actually have a higher damage output than Tal can. He just doesn't have the hp nor the AC like I do.

Again just having fun with it.

Salm is an Inquisitor. I can work him as a melee-ist.

I would rather see people play what they want rather than fitting a mold. I like inquisitors anyways. Quite versatile and I am not asking anyone to alter anything. Just rambling at this point anyways.

As my mentor once said, "Confining players into 'party roles' is a gross violation of the roleplaying experience. Any GM worth his roleplaying salt can, with some work, make ANY combination of so-called 'party roles' work and work very well at that.". I have found this to be true, so don't feel confined to roles. You will notice in my CoT recruitment that my selections did NOT include a divine caster, which is often regarded as essential.

I also joined the rebels late but would also be interested in playing.

No worries. I don't much care about how he fights. I only want to play the character.

A happy happy and a merry merry to all!

Bah Humbug!

Now bring me some figgy-pudding,
or I'll gnaw through your ear.

Did you say piggy pudding?

No, 'figgy' pudding...you know made with bacon.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Here is the link to the private recruitment for the former players in the CoT campaign.

Wow, Just checked up on this.
I'm sorry this ended. I lurked for abit but I've been out of the hobby for awhile.
During my time here, you guys were all awesome to work with. I'm contemplating a return to the hobby in a pbp manner soon. I just hope we can group again if I do.

Special Thanks to Tark for taking a chance on a noob to PbP and allowing such awesome character concepts. Just thinking about this makes me miss it even more.

Glad to see you again god-man.
Yeah me and the monkey had a good run but is wasn't all eyeballs and giggles.

PbP's have a lifespan it is very rare for a game to go the distance. This one lasted far longer than most. At least it seems that way in my limited experience. In anycase, yes it would be nice to get the gang together sometime. Not the same characters necessarily but the same folks with their hands up the monkeys.

Actually that might be an idea. Post to recruiting threads as a party with integrated backgrounds and a visible history of working together. Have to ask Tark how a GM would see that.....