RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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I've decided, as already mentioned in another thread, that it is high time i gave something back to the community, and decided to do that in the way i arguably know best: By DMing a PbP here. :)
I've been around the block a few times when it comes to these games, and therefore am going to change a few rules as regards posting etc in order to avoid both the "3 months conversation" and the "2 years fight" syndrome.
Here's what i had in mind:
* Curse of the Crimson Throne AP, you need not take a background trait, but i heartily recommend you do so.
* Pathfinder Alpha 3 Rules (probably will upgrade to Beta once it is out). I'm just itching to get my feet a bit wetter with the system.
* Character building as per PF-Alpha, 20 point buy, Starting gold as per 3.5
* No online rolls. I'll trust you on this.
* No XP. I'll tell you when to level up.
* (relatively) complete public combat stats. Keep knowledge of these OOC, please. Allows you to handle your actions yourself.
* Group initiative: In combat, initiative is averaged for each party in the battle (simplest case: Group and Monsters), groups with higher initiative go first. Makes sure turns can be handled in bulk, instead of having multiple message cycles.
* 1 day timeout. If the group is in combat, and i don't hear from you for a day, i may NPC you for the round. Don't worry, i understand "bad days" and have them occasionally, as well. :) No, you may not DM the turn unless i ask you to, if i fail to post.
I am still taking suggestions how to best handle long NPC interactions (the other "massive timesink"), but keep drawing short straws. Any suggestions?
Other than that, i will be taking up to 8 players, up to and including August 8th. This is not First Come First Serve, but i might close up earlier if i have 8 players who really blow me away.
I'd like to try out for this game. I do not have a whole lot of PBP experience though, is that acceptable?
Ditto to what King Bob Said. I would really like to get involved in a game and am busily brainstorming concepts. How should we proceed to audition or whatnot?
Fair enough.
I would primarily like to play a wizard, I guess. I have in mind a downy (dewy?) innocent, naive girl-character I would like to play. (I really need to get away from the "brooding CN w/ personal or substance abuse issues" sorts of characters I have been doing way too much lately at home.)
I imagine she would be an initiate just beginning studies at the Acadamae (or one of the other colleges) in Korvosa, and would probably not be local. I'd like to try having her be an Abjurer by specialty.
I am still pondering which background traits would work best for her story. So far the "Lost Sibling" option feels easiest, but I am not sure how well that jives were her not being a local. I'll have to give it a think for a bit longer...
I would love to join in if there's any room. Personally I only have some PbP experience, so I hope that a lack of it isn't a problem. And I haven't looked at CotCT yet, so it'll be a new, fun experience.
I'd most likely be playing a cleric, but an more offensive oriented one than a pure healer, worshipping either Desna or Shelyn. He'd be light-hearted and aloof, heavily interested in the arts (such as music, painting, dancing, etc).
The cleric would probably be a newcomer in his church, ready to start proving himself to his deity (whichever one I eventually choose). For the background traits he'd take Widowed, as it fits well with the history I had been thinking up for him.
It's all just concepts, but even though I'd like to keep most of it the same, I'm up for changes if needed!~
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I would love to join this game.
I was thinking of a Cleric of Pharasma - Human Female, of Shoanti descent but culturally Korvosan. She was captured and sold as a slave as a young child (to Gaerden Lamm), then escaped and joined the temple of Pharasma at about the age of ten or eleven. She is now about sixteen, and lives at the temple and works in the graveyard. Although she is young, she is hard, having had a tough life on the streets as one of the Little Lamm's. She would have a backgound trait of Unhappy Childhood-Religious
Could I join, as a happy-go-lucky halfling rogue, who has just come to Korvosa from the disant Lethori halfling tribes of the Deepwoods, many miles away. Always looking for some fun, this jubilant character enjoys cutting drunkard's belts, cutting noble's purses, cutting away at the leashes of animals in the market... Basically anything that involves a dagger and the smell of adventure is perfect for this little terror.
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I wanted to try a Half-Orc Cleric (probably of Gorum) who would be more of a morale booster/buffer than a fancy spellcaster. Melee would come before implosion to him. He would be outcast, driven to the wars for it was all he knew. Yet he would long for something more...
Note - I don't know anything other than strict mechanics about the pathfinder gods. Is there a lore directory of them somewhere?
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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For more info on pathfinder gods, you can of course use the short descriptions in the Gazetteer. Generally i consider all books except for the adventures themselves "player readable" - and even then, there is little reason you can not use the article on, let's say, Zon-Khuton as background material.
So, we have 3 interests for clerical duty, 1 prospective wizard, and 1 rogue. While this certainly is an interesting setup, I'd like a bit less competition on the cleric spot. If we got at least two more players of different classes, i think it should work out, but as is, i would prefer at most half the group (rounding down) to be clerics.
So far, though, some interesting ideas here.
Would one post per day fall short of a healthy amount of interaction in a PBP game?
Yes, I'm another complete newbie to this style of play.
Shoanti barbarian or fighter, I think. A "hired muscle" type mixed with "wide-eyed tourist". With so many clerical candidates a paladin might be pushing it.
I'd also love to try out for this spot. I have years of gaming experience but little to no Pathfinder experience and have yet to do a PHP game. I'm eager to learn though.
I've been working on a unique character concept I'd like to try out here too. A Druid who casts spells intuitively as a sorcerer does. Think 'Orphan waif, left to her self in the wilds, Nature (or the nature gods) take pity on her and use her sorcerer blood to train her in Drudic ways'.
I've actually already worked up a working character you can check out if you wish in my Alisebett alias I'm waiting to play in another PBP. If this works for you great, I can easily modify her for your campaign. If not, please let me know as I have lots of other great ideas to try out.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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Due to the Divine Caster glut I'd rather like a few more martial- or arcane types. Also, I'd rather not tinker heavily with the Alpha rules while they are still being tested. Falsified results and all that. So I'd rather appreciate you keeping more or less to the alpha material.
As for posting frequency, the "combat clause" is there chiefly to make sure combat is handled in a sensible timeframe. I may occasionally put a few words into your mouth if the whole game is held up, but i will try to do so very sparingly.
One post / day is usually the best most PbPs get after a month or so, so no worries on that front. Some games even manage to scrape by on less, but in my experience, that is not a good thing to aim at, but rather a sad reality.
Due to the Divine Caster glut I'd rather like a few more martial- or arcane types. Also, I'd rather not tinker heavily with the Alpha rules while they are still being tested. Falsified results and all that. So I'd rather appreciate you keeping more or less to the alpha material.
I was figured that'd be your response but I thought I'd try and get my Druid in there anyhow ;-) Actually, in reading up about the Crimson Throne AP I don't think she'd fit in too well anyway. Next idea: A Rogue who MC's to Sorcerer.
For the rogue/sorcerer think a young Varisian dandy fallen on hard times and forced to resort to petty larceny. Yet he's not very good at it(and/or was set up) and when things went horribly wrong and he was faced with his first ever truly life-threatening situation his heretofore unknown arcane gifts pop out. He will be largely a battle sorcerer, using ray spells to sneak attack and the like. (oh, did I mention cowardly as well?)
He'd take the Framed background. For you see his father, an up & coming merchant had been framed for a horrible crime. He knew his father was innocent and swore to get to the bottom of it. He eventually found the info he needed yet it was too late. The shame and thought of the ruination of his career caused his father to take his own life. Jadsen had never had the head for business his father did and rather rapidly, through poor decision making, proceeded to eliminate the bulk of his father's wealth. As his mother had passed away when he was but a child, before she could have any other children, Jadsen is all alone in the world now. He blames all of his problems on Gaedren and has sworn revenge.
In case you still have openings I'm interested in running a human fighter, some sort of good-hearted thug with the Widowed trait, possibly even multi-classing as a paladin, depending how the story works out.
I'm rather new to both PbP and Golarion, but I'll try to keep up.
So from what I see the applicants are...
3 clerics
1 wizard
1 rogue
1 barbarian or a fighter
1 rogue/sorcerer
1 fighter
Looks semi-balanced to me, thought I'd post a list.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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Yeah, looks like things actually worked out pretty ok. Turns out 8 slots get taken quickly as hell. I'll keep this open for a while longer, though, since in my original post i put a very generous deadline. However, unless someone totally blows me away with something never seen before, i think i have a group. :)
I went ahead and made an alias for Katryala, the wizard I came up with, and put her backstory on the profile. Please advise questions, criticisms, general hate mail, etc...
Quick question about background traits:
In the rough sketch my character grew up on the edge of the Storval Plain with the rest of her tribesmen, members of the Hawk Clan(I need to look up the proper name again) who interacted and traded with the other cultures of Varisia more readily than the other clans. Her father would take her travelling down to the beginnings of the lowlands along with the other tribesmen during these trading sessions. Not many Shoanti children would come along on these journeys.
On the first trip she takes with her father, at the age of eight, she meets two Chelish children close to her age: the son and daughter of one of a Korvosan merchant who made these long trips in order to sell to Shoanti actually willing to buy from a Korvosan. The merchant and his wife were relatively well off, though he often seemed harried by worries back home. The children were nothing but joyful and outgoing, as curious about the Shoanti girl as she was of them. They shared their cultures stories and games with each other for a fortnight each summer, and the Shoanti girl came to love them as the closest of friends despite the worries some back home had with her growing fascination with foreign cultures.
At the end of the fifth summer, she gave them necklaces she made of hemp and bone as tokens of her friendship. In return, the boy gave her his medallion, a cheap tin piece bearing Korvosa's emblems of no real monetary value, though to the Shoanti girl it became a precious keepsake.
The next year the merchant and his family were not among those who came to trade. The Shoanti girl never saw her friends again. Her father was never able to find out why he stopped coming.
Through the next several years the girl found herself dreaming of exploring the world beyond the Storval and became something of an odd duck in her tribe; always a bit too curious and questioning when foreigners arrived. She swore to herself that Korvosa would be a destination on that journey as she studied her medallion one night. She had to at least try to see her friends one more time.
So on her nineteenth year, she leaves the plateau to step into the wide world outside. She joins up with one of that summer's merchant caravans as a guard and eventually made her way to the strange city of Korvosa, trying to find her friends having only their names and having a cheap necklace to guide her.
You can guess what probably happened to her friends after their father's troubles caught up with him.
The problem is that none of the background traits are an exact match. That and she doesn't even know she's been wronged by Lamm yet. She's fairly innocent in her expectations at the start.
Definitely going barbarian too if there's room for that kind of character.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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As i said, i would prefer you having a Lamm connection to start things off, but it is not mandatory. You'd probably have to connect your story with one of the other players, though.
SPOILER FOR Valkyrie Paine
There is a number of possible connections to Lamm here, thought. One might be that the Korvosan boy who had such a profound impact on your character might have been "Framed", with you extending the Family Honor trait to him. Alternatively, he could be an "Addicted Friend". Both would mean finding out a little about him, though not necessarily finding him proper (right away, at least). If you want to go the ultra-tragic route, and think you can justify it, you might even go for a "Missing Sibling", if your character feels it is worth the effort.
As i said, i would prefer you having a Lamm connection to start things off, but it is not mandatory. You'd probably have to connect your story with one of the other players, though.
SPOILER FOR Valkyrie Paine
** spoiler omitted **
On the Missing Sibling possibility, would constant questioning and coaxing of information out of visiting merchants and craftsmen every summer justify Gather Information/Sense Motive bonuses? It wouldn't be something she could do constantly while on the Storval Plateau. Meanwhile a Korvosan resident, or even someone that just lived near the city, could dedicate much more time to their search. I think I could justify the emotional attatchment to the children, but it's the investigation that seems the biggest hurdle to taking that trait.
I was originally thinking of being new in town and possibly linking up with another PC's character when their goals turn out to be related, but if it would be better to have been in Korvosa for some time in order to get those traits, I'll go with that instead.
Gah! I haven't been able to check up on this. Is there still room for me at all?
By the way, concept would be a Dwarven Ranger. Think sniper with a crossbow and possibly a couple other tricks up his sleeve.
Let me know, and I will flesh out a fuller background.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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Gah, post got eaten.
I made a snazzy list of 9 people who expressed interest. More than my initial limit, but I'll go with it, since usually there are more losses than you expect. So, King Bob, you go ahead and work out your character.
Create characters as an Alias in your account. Post a short background sketch here, and spoiler every part not for general consumption. Feel free to connect your PC to the larger world, but do not go overboard with it. Generally, everything up to nobility and underworld ties is ok, but once you start having a name (either way), check back with me first.
Here's a rough draft of Nayr, I hope everything's in order, looking forward to this!
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As I said, I'm fresh to the Crimson Throne world. Can anyone point me where to read up about it? I did a similar thing with a RotRL PbP not long ago, and it worked out just fine.
The Player's Guide PDF is a free download.
Great, thanks for looking over it, please tell me if there are any mistakes, I'm prone to making stupid blunders on this kind of stuff. Also, it's not quite done yet, because I wasn't sure on how much of it we could finish?
Valkyrie Paine:
** spoiler omitted **
Hey all, I'd like you to meet a new friend, Zalen
Looking forward to trying him out with you all.
Question for TerraNova
What Pathfinder HP format are we using? Standard, Double, Racial, Flat, Constitution.
For TerraNova:
Zalen in not 100% finished yet, I know I need to change and fix a few little things here and there but no worries. Also, I know I can't afford a master-work rapier yet, but I was wondering if you'd let me keep it, just for story's sake. Maybe you'd let me just not include the +1 bonus to hit until such a time as I would be able to afford it(Just wondering, please let me know)
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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We'll be using standard HP for this game. While i am a bit tempted by the racial option, i don't feel dwarves really need anymore boosts.
As for your spoiled bit:
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A curiousity: Does anyone know if Paizo has lore about their deities out in more detail than the snippets in these 20-page releases? The PHB had only purely mechanical information, and the little descriptions of how the gods interact with the townsfolk in Korvosa is a bit sparse for me. I don't even know what my deity's sacred symbol looks like!
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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I think (think does not mean know) the Gazetteer had a short rundown of the dieties. I'll send you a writeup as soon as i get some free time at home today. For Gorum, an older blog entry identified his symbol as an Iron sword thrust into the side of a rugged mountain.
Alternatively, i think pathfinderwiki.com has information on most of the dieties.
We'll be using standard HP for this game. While i am a bit tempted by the racial option, i don't feel dwarves really need anymore boosts.
As for your spoiled bit: ** spoiler omitted **
Thanks TN, and sounds perfect about the sword, I'll go with that.
Alright, here's the tricky, little rogue. Check the backstory, stats, etc. see if she's ok
Okay, background's up. Stats, appearance, etc. incoming.
Ok, well with your approval TerraNova, here's Zalen. Any changes needed just let me know.
Jillian:
Just in case you didn't know, there's a great Pathfinder RPG Alpha Release pdf file you can download for free that will catch you all up on the changes made to the 3.5 system that Pathfinder has made. It's mostly the same but there are some important differences (eg No more Tumble & Jump, it's all Acrobatics now and that kind of stuff). I didn't know anything about PF until I read it. :)PS Unless I'm wrong, shouldn't she have a BAB of +1 due to her size?
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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Ok, let's see if i missed anyone. If that is the case, please scream. I found only 6 links to sheets while looking through the thread:
I will start to go through the sheets now, and check them. Once everything is cleared up, I'll post OOC and an intro IC thread. This will likely take a while, and the game is not "closed". It only means i am a bit overwhelmed by your enthusiasm, and therefore starting my part of the work early. ;)
By the way, i will be using this alias for my official GM posts. Hope you like the Hag ;)
DM and Zalen:
I am sorry, but I will have to drop out of this game. Real life is getting a bit overwhelming at the moment and I have to cut back on commitments. I hope that there won't be any problems, since we haven't got started yet.