Greetings, and welcome to recruitment for a game idea I came up with: the Cycle.
Your great challenge: finding clues, unravelling mysteries and surviving battles, all for the purpose of getting you home from the strange places and distant times you will find yourself thrown into. If all goes well, there will be several chapters of your quest for home. The wrinkle: you are not all from the same time and place. The upset: you're not entirely sure where and when you're from... or even who.
When Funfair starts, you all find yourselves on -- you've guessed it -- the grounds of a funfair. This much is familiar to all of you. Some small details will seem off about it to some of you, though. Cotton candy-making machines will seem extremely odd to some, for instance. Stranger still will be the fact that you, the players, will find the fair deserted apart from yourselves.
This is where it starts. Where it stops... You'll find out as you go.
Character creation will be a bit unusual.[/b]
* You get standard 20-pt. buy to determine ability scores.
* You get maximum HP + Con. + favourite class bonus as appropriate at level 1. At all consecutive levels, you get half maximum HP + Con. + 1 + favoured class bonus as appropriate.
* Background skills are allowed; you get two skill ranks per level to determine background skills. Note the selection thereof every time you level, please.
* Hero points are allowed.
* You can select two traits from the available books, as appropriate to your species and background.
* Variant Multiclassing is allowed.
* All alignments other than CE are allowed.
* The books you are allowed to draw from are:
- Core rulebook
- Advanced Players Guide
- Ultimate Magic
- Ultimate Combat
- Advanced Race Guide
- Advanced Class Guide
- Ponyfinder Campaign Setting (but NO other 3rd-party materials!)
- Paths of Prestige
- Blood of Fiends
- Orcs of Golarion
- Humans of Golarion
- Goblins of Golarion
- Blood of Angels
- Dragon Empires Gazetteer
- Technology Guide
- Faiths of Purity
- Faiths of Corruption
- Faiths of Balance
- Gods and Magic
- Inner Sea Magic
I trust these will be more than enough books to be getting on with. :p I'd appreciate it if no one tries to ask for more...
* You get maximum gold as appropriate to your class at level 1, but you must spend it all. If you have any cash left over after buying equipment appropriate to your character concept, it is gone when you arrive at the Funfair. No exceptions. So go on, spend that last cp on a bauble. It's fine.
* Now we get to the wrinkle.
I would like you to write up your character's backstory (at least two paragraphs' worth, detailing childhood, early adulthood and family), but all your stories end with a day that was supposed to be perfectly normal... until something suddenly blotted out the sun. You looked up -- and there your memories end, until you wake up at the Funfair.
And to make matters worse, when you do wake up at the Funfair, you will not remember your backstory.
When awakening at the 'Fair, you will be without memories... and without your equipment. You will awaken with the shirt on your back (as appropriate to creature type), and that is it. Please rest assured that your equipment is on the grounds, and that you will have the opportunity to reclaim it when you come across it.
* Oh, yes. There is no Common language; fill that language slot up with a language appropriate to your racial bonus languages.
But hey, you all get a bonus language: Androffan! Now won't that be nice...?
When creating your backstory, please keep in mind that you will not all be from the same places. In fact, your choice of source materials will determine where you are from.
Obviously, anyone using material from the Ponyfinder campaign setting will be from the magical world of Everglow - but take note that you may be from any of its outlined time-frames. You could be from the era of consolidation, from the height of the empire, or from the time after its fall.
Anyone using the materials outlined in the Technology Guide should not be from Golarion or Everglow. Instead, your homeworld is part of a great Star Empire, one which has united many worlds. The Empire may not be as democratic as its predecessor, but it has rigid order and startling levels of technology. To you, magic is a fable and the gods a myth, but who cares so long as science bears you up?
If other worlds come to mind... we can talk about it.
Are you still here? Still with me? Still interested?
If so, you have until next Sunday to set up your character concepts and intrigue me. Seven will be selected to play... but how many will survive the fun and games awaiting you at the Funfair...?