I am going to run a playtest game. If I can find the players, I want to run it on discord voice chat on saturdays 20:00-05:00 central time of the US.
Thus, I'd like to run voice chat before then to figure out how to work it, overcome any unforseen issues in the format, etc.
Even if I don't get the voice chat players, I still want to get a playtest group together beforehand, so the group can iron out the wrinkles and learn how I intend to run the the game.
My goal for the playtest is to test the system's flexibility by running a group in the "play the story" playstyle. The game will be Test of the Starstone, hence "playing the story" is vital to the game, not only because that will really test the flexibility, but because it is a campaign that expects the players to lose (winning is possible, just not likely), not to mention that passing the test will not depend on surpassing mechanical challanges.
This makes getting the right group together for it very important. It is also why I want to run it in voice chat, since I'm much better running live games than pbp.
I'll be taking on 9 people cause I expect to lose some, but even if I don't, it won't be beyond my capacity.
So any questions? Any interest?
So, why is everyone not interested? Can you guys tell me what turns you away so I might make a more appealing game?
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I think it may be that the playtest release is five months away, as I understand it. I'm sure you'll get plenty of interested people once it goes live.
The second thing is that live games don't do so well in recruiting on these forums, in general.
Yeah, the live game is what makes it so I can't. There's a reason I pbp.
Yeah, the live game is what makes it so I can't. There's a reason I pbp.
Did you notice that I still want to get a group together even if I can't get a live group?
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Thanks both of you for your responses. :)
I would love to playtest via pbp. I'm pretty excited about the new action economy and the way they do critical successes and failures.
Agreed. I'm 150% ready to jump into the playtest, so if we do PbP, I'm in.
Hmm, I had hoped for more, but it is still pretty early though.
I'll check back this weekend (my best days for posting).
With pbp I'll say I'm interested, though I don't know for sure if I can commit to it yet.
There are three here, and a potential someone who might join up from another forum.
Next weekend I'll start pms to work with each individual on building characters for the pre-playtest game.
Everyone will start as a resident of a small rural town called Winthrop on the frontier borders of a wild forest in the mountains.
You aren't adventurers, not yet at least. Adventure will come to you.
Common races* including the monstrous ones are available. The town is fairly well mixed with the various races, but with a singular culture of farming, hunting, and mining, as well as lots of trade as many other similar but smaller towns can only be reached easily through the valley.
A handful of monstrous race tribes hold a truce with the town and trade there.
*Note: By common races, I mean the ones that are easily found. Rarities and one off races, like tieflings are not available. If you're unsure about a particular choice, just ask. Character construction will be a back and forth process anyway.
Hi There, I need to figure out how to do all the Paizo Forums stuff for PbP, but I'll be joining you all here for a PbP pre-playtest game!
So we are all residents of a small town called Winthrop on the frontier. I like it!
To clarify, I want character concepts first. Afterwards, we will use the mechanics like a language to describe your characters and their abilities.
A bit unusual for some, but this is part of the alternative style I want to use to really push the flexibility of PF2, so doing it now to familiarize you all with the style.
How would you define concepts here? It seems like if we aren’t adventurers, we will be townspeople and would fall into a couple of categories:
Farmers
Tradesmen/women
Hospitality/service industry.
I am thinking long term of either a sword and board fighter or a sorcerer (which could be concept agnostic, so I am going to go super cliche and have Jin be the son and apprentice of the local Blacksmith. Sound ok to everyone else?
Guardsmen (both town and caravan), trappers/hunters, and entertainers are available choices as well.
Magic is pretty common, at least the low level stuff anyway, so casters are plenty available.
I would like to be in the group if we are doing PbP... if you still have room.
I have plenty of room.
Send me a pm with a character concept. Just narrative, no mechanics yet.
No need for it to be complete nor fleshed out, I generally consider chargen in this style of play to be a discussion.
How would you define concepts here?
To finish answering this,
A concept is the idea of your character, who they are, what they do, and their bg from the narrative standpoint.Also, no particular need to worry about matching your choice with others, I'm a primarily spontaneous gm, I'll fit everything to the group.
Turns out some folks have had some trouble with detailing and fleshing out a character.
I recommend watching this youtube video. Questions 4 and 5 that he presents will be answered in this first adventure, but those answers will be based on what you start with, so you need to have something there already to answer those questions when the time comes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhkYSLOMmTs
In any case, I went and found one of my trusty books, in this case The Hero Builder's Guidebook. (Great stuff, you really should read at some point.)
The book does make some assumptions, but most of it is still very applicable and so I'm using that as a bit of inspiration.
Thus, here are a few questions to be answered in developing a character. You don't need to answer everything, but most of this should be thought of and shared in developing your character and their bg.
If you can find a copy of the book, you can actually roll for this and much more randomly.
Environment is obviously the same for everyone, Temperate Mountainous/Forest and a town of around 1800 permanent residents, but often several hundred transients pass through the sizable market.
The questions I'd like to have answered by players, are these,
Family;
What is your family's,
-Wealth level
-social status
-ethics
-reputation
-freeman, guilded, serf, nobility (only one noble family, but some other may be of genteel birth having distant relations to nobility somewhere but without many benefits save social respect and preference)
-family tree, parents, siblings, grandparents, children, spouse, etc.
Relations;
-friends
-enemies
-mentors if any
-did anything of note happen to any of them, or your family?
Education;
There are no organized schools, those rich enough will hire tutors, everyone else is stuck learning what they can from family and neighbors, and in some cases clergy, though there is a library with an unusually large selection and most folks in the area can actually read and are thus slightly more educated than medival era people. Magic is usable by anyone with the right knowledge, and is very useful to all people, and is often one of the first developed topics of knowledge, for the poor it is often their highest level of education to cast a couple cantrips, for the middle classes, it is often left at novice cantrip level unless their occupation heavily relies on using magic.
However, characters will likely know more about certain types of topics based on family occupation, wealth, and other factors.
So which core topics have your characters learned as children?
What trade/occupation have they learned?
Events;
Any significant events happen in your character's life to shape who they became?
Send me a pm with a character concept. Just narrative, no mechanics yet.
No need for it to be complete nor fleshed out
So, I am not sure if what you posted above is the second stage of this process, and if you have invited certain people to do that, or if we are all doing it. Also, did you want us to start building the crunch, or just making really detailed backgrounds?
did you want us to start building the crunch
There is no crunch to build with. The playtest rules won't be available until August.
Yeah, that's what I thought at first too, but the GM said this in a private message:
"The characters are for a short game before the playtest, to get a group familiar with each other and me. This pre-playtest game will be using pf1. That said, this is playing the story style, so mechanical build is not the same as normal."
So that's why I asked. It's okay if there really is no crunch, but seems like there will be something.
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Crunch will come after we build the majority of the character concepts and bg. Crunch may add or alter details, but the concepts are intended to be the foundation of the character.
I'm specifically separating them as when you do them togather, people tend to latch on to just the mechanics alone, such as decribing a character as being race+class, which really is more a gimmick than an actual character.
This is kinda important, because when we do get to play the pf2 rules and play the Test, the mechanical challanges are merely the survival part, but passing the test is all about your character, not mechanics.
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Another adpect of note, when building crunch, folks tend to just use whatever flavor is already attached instead of making new flavor.
So, if you have a character first, you are more free in crafting them precisely because you don't have a list telling you what you can use.
The mechanics can have their flavor warped or even entirely overwritten, so you can basically pick the mechanics that best represent the character regardless of the default flavor for those mechanics.
I put it all in spoilers since it is long.
Zandora is an Aasimar in her early 20s whose parents are craftsmen mostly supplying the local hunters, although they take whatever other jobs there are that fit their skills. Dad is a carpenter / bowyer and mom is a leatherworker, making sheaths and saddles and light armors. They moved to Winthrop when she was 4 or 5, so she barely remembers anyplace else, but she has heard them talk fondly about the fishing village where they used to live, and where she was born.
She works as a guide for the hunters that come through. They come to her parents' shop for gear, and she offers to lead them to the best hunting areas for a small fee, and tries to protect them if they do anything stupid like trip over a large predator.
She's grown up learning archery, and that seems to come easily to her, but many other things don't, maybe because she is an Aasimar and she is different, or maybe it is just her personality or individual inclination, but social things don’t come easily to her. She's smart and she can be charming when talking about things that she loves, or in social situations she understands (in the family shop, with the hunters that she is guiding, or in the past when she was at school), but she's often too blunt and too apt to say what she is thinking, which you can't always do in a smallish town where everyone knows everyone else.
She isn't good in random social situations or when something comes up that she wasn’t expecting. The intricacies of etiquette, or flirtation... there are so many undefined rules going on there that she mostly just doesn't try, or really care. At 21, she is an old maid in terms of what the town thinks, but she just doesn't like anyone enough to marry them, and isn't good at small talk and flirtation, which seems to be a prerequisite for that sort of thing.
Instead of hanging out with her peers, Zandora enjoys practicing magic in her downtime. Not really something her parents approve of, but there is an old woman (Hazell) in town who used to be an adventurer, and they are friends. She brings the old woman groceries since it is hard for her to get around now, and she hangs out with her a lot when she isn't working.
Zandora enjoys listening to Hazell’s stories, and tries to get all the information that she can out of her about her adventures. The stories resonate with something within her that feels like she was born for something more than life in a small town. There has to be a reason that she was born an Aasimar, and she doesn’t fit in here, and she wants to go out and find where she DOES fit in, and do something that really makes a difference in the world. That’s one reason that she can't just settle down with a townie, or be content with her life here. She wants to be more, and feels like she was destined to be. Listening to Hazell helps her feel that there is hope that she can be more than she is now.
=== Family ===
Wealth level Middle class merchant
Social status Generally respected, but not noble
Ethics Generally lawful and don’t cheat customers, go along to get along, but Zandora differs from her family somewhat on this… she doesn’t break laws, but she is more of a rebel, not fitting in just to fit in, but needing a reason, or just refusing to.
Reputation
Ties to groups Her parents are members of the merchant guild, but just because it is expected; they aren’t very political.
Relatives Her parents, Marilee and Simon, a little brother Simon Junior who is 6 years younger, no grandparents or other relatives that she knows of.
=== Relationships ===
Friends Hazell, and her parents, and somewhat her younger brother.
Enemies Some boy she dumped along the way might harbor ill feelings, but honestly Zandora is just oblivious to all of that. Symbolically perhaps, the town; she does want to escape it. Definitely wouldn’t walk around in a “I [heart] Winthrop” T-shirt.
Mentors Hazell
Did anything of note happen to any of them, or your family?
Well, the unknown reason that her parents fled their own fishing village may have been noteworthy, and Hazell in her day did many things of note, perhaps saving the world a few times or fighting a dragon or two, but nothing really of note in Zandora’s life. She is curious to experience something like that.
=== Education ===
Zandora’s parents taught her what they knew and arranged for additional schooling for their child at the local library. Hazell used to volunteer at the library, and that is how they met. Zandora is a voracious reader and would ask tons of questions about almost anything, and Hazell would find her books to read about whatever she asked. She taught her a few cantrips, and then started teaching her in her off hours as well. Although Zandora was never officially her apprentice, because her parents wanted her to focus on something that would help the family bring in money, that is how their relationship developed, and they remain friends in a sort of a teacher-student way to this day.
=== Events ===
Any significant events happen in your character's life to shape who they became?
Again, perhaps the unknown event that caused her parents to come here. She certainly would have had a different life growing up in a fishing village, but Zandora doesn’t think that anything significant has happened to her. She wants something to, though.
On the other hand, someone *else* might think that something Zandora was involved in was significant (like a relationship or a friendship), but Zandora was too oblivious to notice, or value it in the same way.
Characters in pms please. We'll share once we start looking at mechanics, which is when we start finalizing finer details.