[MapTool / Mumble] First Steps—Part I: In Service to Lore (Tier 1) - Monday 26th of August 2013 @ 18:30 (UTC)

[勝20100]

An introductory Pathfinder Society Organised Play scenario proposed to you by 勝２０１００.

There’s a lack of online GM, particularly in Europe, so I’ll give PFSOP GMing a try. I spent some time getting used to maptool. I also hope language won’t be a problem, I’m used to play in English but that’s nowhere the same level needed to be the GM.
I choose this scenario because it is free and I played it several time. It is also friendly to new characters and players.
I think I’ll have more chance to find players by posting one week in advance and will have time to prepare everything.

When
Monday 26th of August 2013 @ 18:30 (UTC)
That’s 20:30 CEST UTC+2 (CEST stands for Central Europe Summer Time).
We’ll probably starts from the listed time if everyone is there. Usually PFSOP scenario runs for 4 hours, but adding prep time, game time and potential problem, it could run for 5 hours. Please plan to be available for that time.

VTT
We’ll be using MapTool 1.b89. For that game I won’t use any framework.
Please try it before game time at least once.

Audio
I’ll try hosting a mumble server. If it cause problem, we’ll switch to either Teamspeak 3 or Google+ Hangouts.
If someone knew some hosts or has a server for 7 players, please contact me.
Please try to configure it before play.

Sheets
As is mentioned on those boards, you need to have digital character, chronicle and inventory tracking sheet ready to show to your GM.
I don’t need the chronicles, but I’d like the character sheet to take a look at what characters can do and know which rule I should be reading again if needed. If it is not indicated in your sheet, I might ask you where a feat/trait/spell comes from. (for new players, you need to own a book to use something from it and it must be listed in the Additional Resources page).

Public
Because of the time of the game, it is primarily targeted at people residing in Europe.
The scenario is for new Pathfinders, and I’m fine introducing new players to PFSOP but I’d ask you to read the Guide to PFSOP if possible.
I’d also like to have a player that didn’t run this scenario, it will be funnier this way.
This scenario is Tier 1, meaning it is only for first level characters.

Signing in
For new players, you need a Pathfinder Society Number. You also need a first level character if you don’t have one. You can also play a pre-generated character and apply credit (XP, Fame, Gold) to a newly created character if you don’t know what to play. You can also make changes to your character freely between session while the character is not level 2; so don’t worry too much if it is your first character.
Once you have this, reply to this thread with your PFS#, character name, class and level.
A little description or in character text to sign up (just post as your character) would be welcome. The character completed their training at a similar time so they might know each other, having probably met in Absalom’s Lodge.

If you are interested, but the game is a bit too early, 19:30 BST might be too soon for some, that might be arranged, just indicate it in this thread. If I don’t find the minimal three players to start, I’ll probably try to give it a try at another time.

Sorry for the long post, I wanted to be clear to potential new players too…

[Laethen]

My wife and I are both interested. 1930 BST works great for us. At the moment my wife has only played once before. I am trying to get her more involved. I have played enough to have three different characters at this point (levels 1, 3, and 5).

[Furious Kender]

I'll be happy to play. Level 1 dwarven fighter

[勝20100]

I’ve been ill a good part of the week but I’m starting to feel better.

We have three players interested here, and it’s just the right number of people to play. There was also another player interested that didn’t seem to have sign up there.

Laethen, this scenario can only be played by first level characters, that’s what tier 1 means.

I’ve just saw that the rptools.net website is down. So if you didn’t download maptool yet, I can put it somewhere for download; this is fine because MapTool is free software.

[Laethen]

K, I'll play my level 1 then. No problem. I will be bringing a Zen Archer, and my wife is playing an alchemist.

[Taiyou]

I'd like to join as well, if there's still room.

PFS#96585-2, Taiyou Natsugi, samurai (sword saint), level 1.
He's a tall, young man who likes to keep to himself and values law and order above all.

Never done this scenario before so it could be very interesting.

[勝20100]

In case one of the player is not available anymore, please warn as fast as possible.

Also note that rptools website (where maptool can be downloaded) was fixed yesterday. Please install and try to run it at least once before the game. If you have time or are interested, http://www.rptoolstutorials.net/ has video tutorials. Both of those site have information on how to launch the software.

The list of character so far:

1. ?, ? alchemist played by Ms Laethen
2. ?, ? (zen archer) monk played by M. Laethen
3. ?, Dwarven fighter played by Furious Kender
4. Taiyou, Human (sword saint) samurai played by Epin
5. <open slot>
6. <open slot>

If there is three players, we can play; if we have four, I won’t need to play a pre-generated character that would accompany the party. We can have two more players.

I asked before for character sheets. If you have one (HTML or PDF), or a statblock, just send it or a link to it (like that character sheet) to me using paizo’s website. If you don’t have a digital version (and you have to, but those characters are probably in their first adventure so you might have lacked time to do that), just indicate to me what is non-Core (and from where) in your character’s race/class/archetype/feats/spells/etc. I’ll use that info to read the information in advance and prepare the game better.
I’m the kind of GM that tries to do the perfect game and feel it never goes well enough. I also tend to be a bit of a storyteller.

I’ll send a link to the VTT/mumble server using this website so check in you messages (click on Welcome <your name> then Private Messages).

[勝20100]

I’ll send link to servers around 20:00 CEST (6pm UST), in a bit less than two hours.
Praise Desna so that we don’t get any technical issues :-p

[Laethen]

Sent you our character details via private message.

[Laethen]

勝20100 wrote:

I’ll send link to servers around 20:00 CEST (6pm UST), in a bit less than two hours.

Praise Desna so that we don’t get any technical issues :-p [/QUOTE

Hmm.. so what time zone is UST?

[勝20100]

I should have written UTC. As in Universal Time Coordinated. I’ll send links so we have time to figure technical issues if people are already ready.

Edit: link sent via private messages.

Edit2: Removed password on maptool, sorry.

[Furious Kender]

I am running out of time, so whatever is going to happen needs to start soon.

[勝20100]

I’ll send everyone their chronicle sheet in around 12h. Edit: I did the reporting, and I hope it went fine, contact if there is issues.

Thank you all for putting the time for my first experience at GMing PFS. I GMed face to face, but it was a very long time ago (more than a couple years). I also never GMed Pathfinder, even if I did some D&D 3 a long time ago.

GMing

I tried to give character to the town and the NPC. Doing accent is hard in a non-mother tongue, I probably failed in there.

Scenario elements:

The third encounter has no map, and I didn’t found something for it. Doing it by voice seemed fine thought.
I was worried by the last fight, it can provoke TPK. It’s also a group with a great variety of abilities, not nice for new PF GMs.

I felt not prepared enough. I’m sorry about that. I never had the time to read those bombs rules. I should have prepared all those block texts; and I think I missed one I prepared.
I think it was a good idea for me to read block text when you were loading images.

I completely forgot to do a break. I feel I didn’t drink enough.

Technical side

Maptool seemed ok, except some of my macros. The health one looked fine, I only used it at the end because I thought most of them was broken, which was probably not the case.
The only issue was the disconnection on zone load. I put the resources on a web server and you downloaded from it. I think it would not have been good if I hadn’t done that.

Mumble Well it seems a bad idea for me to run the server. I played using Mumble before and it was fine. I think the server was separated or something.

Scenario elements:

I had a macro in the last fight that did all the sense motive and perception checks and put the surprise state if needed. I feared it was not done correctly so I didn’t used it. Should have I think.

I’m not sure it was a good idea for me to put my microphone always on. You grabbed every bit of keyboard, or mouse sounds.

Conclusion

This was a first game, and I wanted to see how it went before thinking about being the GM again at another PFOP online game.
It felt a bit hard to juggle between the GM role and the technical part.
Did I had fun? Yup, but it was quite stressful.
Did the player had fun? I hope you had some, please send/give me feedback.

I also wanted to try to have a more European friendly time but it’s not easy in the week. I don’t think there’s enough player.

[勝20100]

Up after some sleep. I need to go somewhere and once I get back home will do the chronicle sheets as I wrote before.

more scenario info:

I remembered playing the orphanage bit mapless once, probably the first time I run it. I think I was surprised when the other GM had one.
I should have created one, same as I did with most of them; with online gaming it is necessary to provide visual information lacking from not seeing the GM.

[勝20100]

Sorry, I also forgot Day Jobs.

I’ve sent questions for the Chronicle Sheets to Laethen. Got the answer from Furious Kender, so I sent him the CS and sent it to Taiyou before.