To the rest of the Realms it is the “New World”. To the Maztican natives it is the “True World”. A wild land with lakes of blood and cities of gold. A place to find glory and wealth, or escape the past.
I am going to be running a 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms module set in Maztica. My goal is just to play the game as close to rules as written as possible for a play-by-post AD&D 2nd Edition game and complete the Fires of Zatal module. If things go well, I would consider taking it further than that module, but for now the focus will be the module itself.
Character creation:
Some Additional Useful Info
For the purpose of this module, urban focused characters would not be recommended. There are some cities that the characters may visit, but there will be a lot more time in the wilderness. Animal encounters are likely to be frequent, as are encounters with a variety of humanoids. Expect jungles, rivers, deserts, and a little travel by ship.
I would expect three posts a week on average. Sometimes, especially in scenes that are mostly RP focused, I could end up posting far more frequently. Other times real life gets in the way and things may slow down. We should all try and update each other about absences as early as possible, if possible.
I can use either Google Drive to share maps/images, or Roll20. I feel a little more comfortable with Roll20, but if folks do not have accounts or prefer Google, I will use that.
When you post in combat or other round-based scenes, be sure to add the following information to your post:
I will resolve combat actions in an end of round post, feel free to flesh out those results in your next post. I will also do a brief round recap post to try and keep things organized.
Special/House Rules in Effect:
I'll copy the above list to the campaign page when I create it. That way we can add other things as required in a central spot.
Questions? Just ask! Otherwise, roll up some stats and toss me a concept. All that is required for recruitment is class(and kit)/race/stats and a general concept. I will be looking for between 4 and 6 total players.
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Hi there!
Well, I do like to roll dice:
1) We start at 1st level, yeah? What level would you say we'll go to? I'd -like- to do a human that changes classes, but that can take a bit to get going.
2) If not, do you allow half-orcs? A half-orc fighter/cleric might be fun. If so, I think half-orcs get +1 Str, and then I'll need to roll percentile:
Ooo!
3) If neither 1 nor 2 will work out, I'm feeling gnome illusionist/cleric. =)
Yes, first level to start. Obviously, advancement partly depends on class in AD&D, but I would expect at least one level to be possible. Also, depending on bonus exp and side-treks and random encounters (oh, my!) a third level is for sure attainable.
I'll allow half-orcs, however my only source at the moment is Unearthed Arcana, which is fine, but if you can find a 2nd Edition source for them, let me know.
Wow...that was a lot of 14s.
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I'll allow half-orcs, however my only source at the moment is Unearthed Arcana, which is fine, but if you can find a 2nd Edition source for them, let me know.
*Heh* Does "It's in the Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition!" count? =)
(Believe it or not I'm currently playing that, trying to FINALLY finish it. Fifth time's the charm?)But, yeah, I've not actually played 2nd Ed in so long, but BG is sort of becoming the modern incarnation of what it means now.
Oh, duh, I knew they existed somewhere, TY!. So yeah, they're pretty simple at +1 Str, +1 Con, -2 Cha, and infravision at 60'. They do have some weird minimum and maximum ability scores.
I might relax the reroll rules, I just don't want folks trying over and over again and spamming the boards with attempts, lol.
Yes, I forgot to include it above, but common + racial for free. I was considering allowing it to be bonus languages AND NWP slots, but given the "new world" aspect, having a language barrier could be cool.
Well at least you can do some sort of decent caster with those stats, which is good since right now there is a rogue and some sort of hitter being floated.
Witchdoctor or Shaman at all interesting? Too close to cleric?
Seriously, I don't mind a special case reroll, lol, I'd rather folks have characters they want to play than be too hard core about old school.
Oh, How about BARD! Hehe, folks always have such extreme reactions to them, no clue what your feelings are :-P
Can I play a travelling dog person?
Jesse, I can play something else if you want to do a plumaweaver.
I was wondering that too and might have an answer. After looking at the module's pre-generated characters, the plumaweaver does not show any thief skills (ANY). In the same bunch of characters theres a different thief that has them listed out normally.
The bard is particularly appropriate, if one considers him in the context of storyteller and historian.
That is literally the only official information I can find on the subject. Spell books are a hitch thematically, but if the only official word is that they're "particularly appropriate" then I am calling them fair game. We just need to figure out how to alter spell books.
Side question about the theif skills: what would you all think about replacing some of the lost standard ones with alternate ones like what barbs and shamans get?
Bribery and forgery don't really work out, but any of the others could work, as does the jumping thing barbarians get, the name escapes me at the moment.
I can't find any sample Maztican bards from anything 2nd edition. Since it doesn't explicitly say they lose spells, I would say they don't lose spells.
Edit/update: note I am going to look at Maztican spell lists and figure out how to reconfigure bards to be more in line with magic.
As far as I can tell its just rogues with Maztica origin that lose the standard thief skills (again just going by the pregens).
I didn't find any bard info unfortunately.
Also there's a lot more Maztica kits (3 rogue, 1 warrior, 4 priest) buried in the back of City of Gold, for example a rogue kit called the fetishist that gets thief skills (minus pick pocket and open) and the new talisman magic introduced there. The formatting of the kits is a lot more 'modern' compared to the boxed set.
Maybe a jaguar knight.
My question was more about if it was cool to be a dog person the tribes further up north.
About whether pickpockets and open locks should be available depends how long after Cordell's landing this takes place. If it were 30 years after, it would make sense that towns and cities within the colonies would have locks more prominently and members of the plumaweavers would be more familiar and might be able to have those skills. However, if they were from a more further abreast tribe not so much.
I'm trying to decide what to do as well. I chose the module partly because it was solid and partly because I have never personally done anything in Maztica previously. I'm constantly saying to myself, "Should have just done the Dales modules or something..."
So opinion. For this should we scrap the Maztica thing and do a different, more accessible setting?
FWIW, I would consider doing a more or less Zhent resistance story as open ended game using a variety of modules from or around the Dalelands area. More of my specific focus when it comes to the Realms, and easy for me to change gears. But I want to hear thoughts from folks who were already investing time in characters before I hit the reset and go back to the original point of wanting to do AD&D as close to the original tactical rules as possible but in an easier manner than the corner I painted myself into...
If folks are cool with that I'll create a fresh recruitment thread and link it here, may allow you to retain rolls from here if you're happy with them since I don't see me changing much in creation guidelines.
I was already a bit familiar with Maztica because I researched it for setting my 5e Tamoachan game there a year or so ago.
I'd be totally fine moving elsewhere.
Okay, then I'm going to go ahead and open a thread shortly. There will be a few very minor changes to the character creation rules. Specifically, no LE at all permitted and good alignment strongly encouraged. I think I will also allow for two sets of rolls and will add a note about languages.
I wouldn't need a lot of time once we have some characters up. So much more familiar with this region and these modules. I just want to take a little time while characters are being built and discussed to make some modifications.