Welcome to the discussion thread, congratulations all on making it into the game. Come in and say 'hi.' We have a few housekeeping things to take care of before we get started.
1. Please make sure that if you have not already created a profile for your character, you do so now. Make sure that your crunch and background are both in the profile. Anything not listed, I will derive from stats and the minimum known values for your class/race.
2. I will roll initiative for all at the start of any fight. In addition I will roll most automatic rolls you make (like saving throws vs enemies, or opposed rolls vs bluff, etc.). I will however let you roll your own dice on save or suck type situations. It doesn't seem fair for my luck to make that choice for you. If that happens, I will put the effects with the DC in a spoiler when I ask for the roll. All rolls I make for you will be done in alphabetical order in order to keep some semblance of order to it.
3. When you make any action that requires a roll (or might require a roll), go ahead and roll it when you announce the action. If it doesn't require a roll, I'll just ignore your roll (even if it's a natural 1). If it does I'll take what you rolled. Even if you rolled for the wrong skill (ex. you rolled disguise when the most appropriate roll is bluff), I'll just take your roll and apply it to the correct skill.
4. When I have a spoiler with a name on it, it is only for that person. Please do not open spoilers for others, and especially don't read spoilers behind a GM Screen. If the spoiler says something like initiative or will saves, that's me rolling your dice, and you are welcome to look, but there's usually not much of interest there. There will be a very few things that I roll secretly for you, as needed to serve the story, and those will be behind a GM Screen.
5. When we start combat, you may post your actions at any time. I will post a "Round Update" at the end of each round where I will resolve all actions in the most logical way possible according to initiative. In battle, I will bot anyone who has not posted 24 hours from my previous "Round Update."
6. If you have not already given me a contact email address, please PM that to me now. You should all have a PM from me that has my contact info. You're welcome to use this for anything you need to discuss with me for this game.
7. Finally, there is one small background issue we need to take care of, not a big deal, just a potential inconsistency. Talia, You'r interactions with Smiley Tawd need to take place in a different prison, before getting transfered. The game will start on your first day in Branderscar
Adjustments made and ready for execution.
A long hard life in the salt mines for me!
Heverly reporting for my death by burning. Wow. That's morbid. Thanks for letting me in, definitely excited to play this one.
** Setup Stuff **
That all sounds fine to me.
Hello, checking in for my impending neck-stretching. :) I just finished formatting the crunch on my profile, though I may consolidate and reorganize some things in the near future for easier readability. I will also make the appropriate changes to the Smiley Tawd portion of my backstory; I'll post here when that's done (should be sometime this afternoon most likely).
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Reading through the rest of your profiles, here's the long con: Talia and Crimjack are a couple toting their deaf mother, Heverly, and their two childen, Charmaine and Wocket. It's perfect. We'll be fully equipped after a brutal bandit massacre or two. Just need to escape the inescapable prison. Should be a snap.
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Hell yeah, I'm totally down for that. TBH I wasn't expecting a whole party full of deceit-capable characters! This will be fantastic! :D We'll have outfits and everything, the evilest wholesome family ever. Talingarde won't know what hit it ;)
EDIT: GM, on having a deaf oracle, what will we need to do as a party to communicate with her? Presumably writing will be the best way to start, but is sign language/lip-reading something we could invest in?
I actually checked with GM during recruitment, I already took a point in linguistics to be able to read lips in all languages that I speak, so that should be taken care of. It will still make plenty of things difficult, as the oracle curses tend to do, but I think we should be alright there.
Edit: Though sign language for more covert communication might not be a bad idea even for our hearing characters. Is that something we can take?
Thieves' Cant? (obligatory web comic reference)
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Thieves' Cant? (obligatory web comic reference)
Hahahah! I did not need a new web comic to follow. Unfortunately I have one now anyway, thanks to you.
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Edit: Though sign language for more covert communication might not be a bad idea even for our hearing characters. Is that something we can take?
Hmmm . . . Let's see:
I like the idea, and think it would be great to have, but . . .
1. There is nothing official that exists (not a big deal).
2. There were plenty of Thieve's Cants or secret languages in history, but it generally wasn't something you could just learn, it was a guild thing, or something like that.
3. You are kind of creating your own evil organization in a way.
4. I'm a conlanger, and that probably has to do with what I ended up coming up with.
Because of these things, I've decided, yes, this is something you could do, but it doesn't exist yet, so first you would have to create it.
Someone will have to take the lead, but it's the kind of thing people can help with. We'll treat it as if you're crafting, with the Linguistics skill being the requisite skill, DC of 10 for a secret language, with the silver point value of 400. You don't have to spend any money to make it, but you do have to do some time of crafting.
Once it is created you can learn it through the retraining method in Ultimate Campaign (your creation counting as the book that would work) or you can take a rank in linguistics.
TLDR; Yes, but you'll need to make it first.
Or
I could also just say that there is a sign language in Talingarde. You don't have to create it, but then it would be more like a regular language and I would give NPCs a % chance to know it as well.
Those both sound fair, I supposed we don't really have to choose until we get to that point, eh?
Personally I'm leaning towards a rank in linguistics, but I agree that we could probably cross the specifics when we get to that point.
Hmm . . . I was really hoping Crimjack would check in. That's okay, we'll give him a little longer, but I hope to hear from him soon.
Stalking their profile, the last post was via an alias on Sunday night. Their posting rate is somewhat sporadic (but overall consistent), so I suspect they might not have seen all this yet.
If we were really eager, we could see if the GM for the Kingmaker game the alias is in knows anything, but it has also been just over a day since the call to assemble.
Yeah, I saw the same thing when I was looking. I'm not too concerned yet, just hoping we'll here from him soon.
I really like the idea of building a secret language while we build the resistance. Lipreading should work while we're still getting acquainted.
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Well, while we're waiting there's one more thing I'd like to have a discussion about before we're ready to begin, and we can start that and have our last player join in afterwards.
You are all villains, the worst of the worst, really, and what some of you have done is already beyond terrible. But it won't end there. There will probably be some pretty bad things you all get the chance to do in this game. But it needs to be fun villainy. I do not want to be chasing anybody off because something becomes too graphic, or despicable. Remember these are public boards, anyone can come and read what we write here.
Therefore we need to set some quick ground rules. I'm going to start with the first few, but I need to hear from you as well, because this effects everyone.
RULE #1: Keep it mostly PG-13-ish.
This doesn't mean you can't do terrible things. Lot's of terrible things happen in PG-13 movies, but they happen off screen. You can make your intent clear and then just fade to black, or focus on a splash of blood on the wall. Something like that.
Now there will be some descriptions (especially during combat) that may go a little beyond what you'd see in PG-13 movie, because it's not quite the same when it's in writing. That's why I added the "ish." Just try to keep it tasteful.
RULE #2: Respect the other players.
This is particularly in reference to other player's comfort. If anyone says for any reason, "Hey can we skip this part. I'm not comfortable with 'X'" Then it ends there. We skip ahead to something else, or rewind to before it happened and take a different route (depending on the situation) and we respect that. We're all here to have fun, and making other people uncomfortable is not part of that fun. I will not negotiate on this, anyone who gives another player grief or argues about something after another has said it's too far, will immediately be removed from the game.
RULE #3: Speak up if you're uncomfortable with the direction we're going.
I will do my best to keep it all tasteful, and be arbiter, but please speak up if you feel something is going too far. If you don't feel alright saying so in the discussion you are welcome to PM or email me and I can speak up for you.
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Now, is there anything right off the bat that anyone has issues with that they want to make sure we stay away from in this game? Now is a good time to let us know so that we can simply steer the game away from those topics.
Again, I will offer, if you feel uncomfortable saying it to the group, you can email or PM me and when everyone has posted, I'll add in the things that were sent my way.
I will put two in now. I am not at all comfortable with violence against children. So I will likely not give you any children NPCs to interact with in order to avoid any possible sticky situations there.
Second, I'm not comfortable with rape of any kind. Even off screen. Let's just not. You want your character to get laid off screen, that's fine, just keep it consensual, or don't say anything about it at all.
I know some people may not want to start with this discussion in a game, but I feel especially in this AP, it's an important thing to go over so that everyone can have a fun game.
All of that sounds fine to me. I don't have anything to add.
That is a good discussion to have, and for my part the prohibitions against violence against children and rape were going to be my two objections as well, so I'm glad that you mentioned them. I have no others to add, though.
As for my backstory with Smiley Tawd, I have made the appropriate corrections. I had planned on finishing them yesterday, but time I had set aside to work on it was unexpectedly eaten up.
Hey everyone, sorry to interrupt this conversation, but Crimjack just PMed me and bowed out of the campaign. The problem with this is that he was the groups only full BAB class.
I believe you guys could continue with just the four characters but it would need a little more creativity. Aside from that, there are several complete players that I could check to see if they would like to join in order to fill this spot if you'd like. I will leave the choice up to you as to whether we recruit another and will take into account character preference if you would like to recruit a fifth.
Any input you have concerning specific characters should be sent to me via pm.
I think a rules/boundaries discussion is great GM! I'll third rape as an explicit boundary I do not wish to cross in this game. Nothing else off the top of my head.
I think a fifth character would be cool! Especially one with full BAB who, at least, hasn't dumped charisma. I'll take a quick peak over at your compiled list to see if any strike my fancy and send you a PM, GM.
EDIT: PM sent
I'm all for a fifth character, unless there's anyone here who feels they might be able to be on the front lines? I'll send you my thoughts.
Okay, that's enough that I think I'll go ahead and send the invite. I think I've got enough consensus on who to send it to as well. In most circumstances I would wait for a complete consensus from the group, but I think in this case, because we haven't started yet and are hoping to get through everything and started by Friday, I'd like to give them the chance to jump into the discussion as soon as possible. Beyond that, it's possible that they may not be interested anymore, and I'd like time to select another if that's the case.
No worries. I spent some time looking last night, but no one caught my eye. I don't have enough experience with Pathfinder to really have an opinion on more than background.
I hadn't looked through all of the applicants, but I agree with the need for expediency. No problems here; excited to see who it will be!
Just to update you all, I am still working on recruiting a fifth player. Once that is done, I am ready on my end to put up the gameplay.
Is everyone else ready for that? Do you have any questions for me before we start?
Lastly, one more thing I've forgotten to cover earlier, does everyone have access to roll20 already, or know how to get access to it? We won't need the map for the first little bit, but it won't be long before it becomes important.
I'd be ready, and I already have a roll20 account.
I am also ready and also have a roll20 account. No questions at this point.
Okay, I have heard from Silarsha Torvsdottir, she'd originally had a Skald ready, but had also built a bloodrager that she'd kept in reserve but let me know about via PM. She will be joining the party to take on the front line. With our full party now, I will get the gameplay thread up tomorrow first thing in the morning and we can get this started.
Thank you everyone, and I'm excited to get this going.
Hi folks,
Thanks for the invite!
I appreciate the opportunity.
Just one heads up, I'll be travelling with my wife from December 29 - January 4th.
I should have internet most days, and time to post at least once per day from my tablet, but I may miss a day or two due to the drive/ family plans.
Other than that I'm good to go, and looking forward to gaming with you all.
(Lastly, I'm male in real life even though the character is female. I think it was pretty obvious, but I don't want to shock anyone down the line.)
Welcome aboard, glad to have you!
Okay, gameplay post is up. Feel free to jump on in and get the game going.
In addition, I sent you each an invitation to join the roll20 game. I'm adding a link to the map at the top of the campaign, but that link won't work unless you've joined the campaign first.
I will be available to answer questions between now and the 26th, but otherwise, I'll likely not post again till after Christmas, where we'll get things going.
Happy holidays all! I hope they're great for you.
Roll20 is working for me! Welcome Silarsha!
I'm on the roll 20 board as well.
I'm good there too. I'll post to gameplay in a bit.
I was able to join the campaign on roll20 also. Gameplay coming later today.
A question was sent to me about changing the look of a character when they use an ability. It has no mechanical effect, just looks cool. Just so that this is out there, the answer on these questions is always yes. If it has no mechanical effect, you've got a license to use almost anything that just looks cool.
Feel free to take some liberties with the game. When you're in a tavern, go ahead and assume the barmaid gets you some food, or a man walking down the street bumps into. Go with it. We're making a great story and I want to hear your part.
The stopping point I'd say is whenever there is something opposed to you (skill in accomplishing a task, an npc trying to stop you, someone you're trying to fool to accomplish a larger goal, what's behind a given door that I've described, etc.) you can't assume those, otherwise go for it.
So, everyone's been posting, so I went ahead and posted the next part. Don't feel required to post again today or tomorrow, but if it happens, I'll try to be around to move things along.
Yeah I posted to add some filler, and when it updated, there were three new posts.
I deleted and will adjust for the new content.
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Same. My problem is in writing 2/3 of a post but not being able to finish it at the time, and then coming back later to finish it in the whole situation has advanced in the meantime. Anyway I've put out a few things I wanted to mention in this last post, and will now most likely go offline for today and tomorrow. I may pop in to add filler, depending, but I don't want to commit given the holidays. Hope everyone enjoys their next couple of days!
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Yeah, I won't be posting today or tomorrow, but have a Merry Christmas everyone!
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I hope everyone has a good holidays!
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I hope everyone had a happy holiday! Welcome back.
Yes please. Not that I'm concerned about spoilers from the other group (it's fair to assume that for the most part everyone will end up telling the others about what they saw/heard anyway), more so it makes it easier to navigate what is happening and where.
I added the veil to the top for quick reference because you will be relying on it for a bit. I'll also update it whenever it needs (whatever that means, muahahahaha).
For ease of use, I'll post this here. Though Charmaine doesn't know this yet, the remaining manacle locks are similar enough to one another that after successfully picking this lock you gain a +2 circumstance bonus on the remaining manacles. Feel free to incorporate that into trying to unlock the rest. They are all a DC 20. Feel free to roll as many as you'd like, but stop if you fail any by 5 or more for possible consequences.
I'm leaving this here just because I was thinking about it, not expecting an answer any time soon!
GM, how on earth would we have done this without an investment in Disable Device? Does the AP have accommodations for parties without the right skills?