GM trade


Recruitment


So me and a group were playing through Giantslayer and having a blast, but our GM had to go deal with real life. He warned us that might happen, but the thing is this has got to be one of the best crews of PCs I've ever played with. The character concepts are pretty dang awesome and the RPing is stellar. Some of the concepts are a bit dark and gritty, which I love. Any other game I would probably shrug and move on, sadly, but not too sadly. But dang it I want this one to go on. So, I'm going to make an offer here. If you have a stalled AP out there you feel the same about, or a character that only made it though part of an AP and really really wish you could continue, have I got a deal for you!

I will GM for you if you GM for me. I don't own any APs except Legacy of Fire so I would have to buy it but I'd be willing to do so.

If you are interested, post. As for credentials, all I really want is someone dependable who has weathered campaigns before and not had to quit due to real life.


What book are you on? Can you tell me about your group? I would like to here a bit more in the words of one of the players.

I may be able to pick it up. Check my posting history if you want to get a peek at my reliability if you like. I have two PFS PBP sessions that are wrapping up so I will prep as they finish and start running fully after that.

Dark Archive

I wrapped up book 1 for them, but I can't give them high quality posts they deserve with full time grad school and teaching. I hand picked the players from some of the best ones I've played with over 2 years of doing PbP.

Grand Lodge

GM Zer0darkfire wrote:
I wrapped up book 1 for them, but I can't give them high quality posts they deserve with full time grad school and teaching. I hand picked the players from some of the best ones I've played with over 2 years of doing PbP.

I feel you. I finished my defence last March and the end of grad school was particularly rough. I was able to play a bit but not GM, certainly. I think we played together in a short run reign of winter game so I have an idea of your style so that helps. I played the too sympathetic to witches goliath druid. So feel free to DM your group to help them make the decision I won't be offended.


One of the players (posting under the PC she plays as) here!

Our group consists of:

-Little Ben and his lil dinosaur buddy, appropriately named Little Buddy. A half-orc Goliath Druid, he wields a massive greataxe in battle and generally comes across as good-natured. Closest thing our alignment-agnostic party has to Good.

-Lidia, a human ranger. Her childhood was cut short by trauma and she has been living on the fringes of society since, and is still trying to determine how much she trusts people while learning about the civilized world—and thus is understandably naïve about some things.

-Ulretha, a gnoll packmaster. Has a deep-seated hatred for giants. Takes what he wants when he knows he can get away with it, grumbles when he can’t. Has a decidedly gnollish view on society at large.

-Thyste Fox-Tailed, a halfling swashbuckler with fox ears and a tail by strange circumstance. She lives as a comedian and supplements by taking tips without her audience’s knowledge. She and Ulretha get along like a house they lit on fire for the insurance money.

Grand Lodge

I'm also open to inviting Zer0darkfire as a fifth player if they are interested/have the time and the group agrees.

It looks like I have played with some of you in the past so feel free to look back in my history.


Sure, we’ve got room for a monk ;)


Of course we would love him to join in as a player. I wish he would. But he had mentioned that he was cutting back on playing as well as GMing. I don't see how he could possibly resist but there is that dang degree and his professional career to think about.

If you want a taste for the characters, there were a number of excellent posts in the 'farewell' to our group. Just check out the last half dozen of posts in gameplay for some excellent insights into the characters and writing styles.

Grandlounge, what would you like me to GM in return?

Grand Lodge

If I'm not currently playing it or gming it I'm interested. I like playing in stable groups so I'm open to playing anything you think you can get a good group together for.


How do you feel about some house rules? I have a few ideas I was thinking of trying. Since I have the legacy of fire series, I would probably do that. That way I can tell myself I did not spend money in vain. The only drawback is that there are no chronicles to hand out. Would that work for you?

Grand Lodge

I like the idea of legacy of fire. It looks fun and I know nothing about it.

As for house rules I can go either way. I will abide by the GMs judgement but my experience has been that most of the rules I have played with, I will include material restrictions in this, have not improved balance or game play. That said I give extra skill point to certain class, use feat tax rules, give out story and teamwork feats so there are situations in which I support them. All that said overall I like house rules that improve the flow of the game (group skill checks are a good example) and improve player options (rebalancing underpowered archetype). I hope I have been clear and not come off as a fussy jerk.


The house rules I was thinking of:

Not all feats are equal: Instead of each feat costing the same, allow the players to, as a group, negotiate and figure out a fair price for a feat. Bundle feats and traits together and give points to buy with. A feat like Bouncy would be dirt cheap. Deadly Aim would cost top dollar. Similar thing for rogue tricks, magus arcana, etc. I'm hoping that will promote more colorful and balanced characters.

Most archetypes are lame: Allow players to redesign a crappy archetype with GM permission. A cool concept should not be punished like they do.

Intimidation is too easy: Make it easier to resist intimidation and make the player RP it.

In all cases I plan to take the approach that the group, including the GM, is a team when it comes to rules. If we can get a consensus on a rule change we can implement it. If most of the players/GM do not like an idea it goes into the crapper.

Grand Lodge

All of those would work for me as long is the feat buy will not require more than one feats slot for any good feat because so many pretty simple builds (say bodyguard build, or mounted builds) only work at level 5 for most nonhumans which can be a bummer.


I agree. I figure most players pick the best feats so they would cost 10 and you would be getting 10 points whenever you get a feat. Balance is pretty much preserved by doing that. Anyway, I'll go over that when I get them written out and start up the recruitment thread. I should have the time this weekend to get that done.

So it sounds like it is a deal. Do you want to start up your own thread for Giantslayer or have GM Zer0darkfire hand over the current thread? Also, let us know what level you want us to start at and if you want to do wealth by level or work with the loot sheet or something. I can point the characters at the new thread if that is the direction you want to go.

Or do you need some time to get things in order first?

Grand Lodge

Keep the loot you have, finish levelling to level 4. I will have you guys tracking your own loot.

And, I will hold a spot for Zer0darkfire in perpetuity.

I think it will be easiest if we do a hand over of the thread.

I will start posting this weekend.


I’ve never heard of doing feats that way, but I would assume it would make ranged builds (“non-viable unless you’re human until level 3”) get off the ground a little faster!

Same with Combat Expertise as a required feat, tbh.

Imagine giving out Feat Points as rewards! “Take 2 Feat points for free.” Could encourage some of the more niche and underused feats to be picked up on the cheap without slowing down The All-Important Build!

Liberty's Edge

Grandlounge, it's awesome that you're taking over the game! Thank you so much for stepping up! I was rather depressed to think that Lidia might never be heard from again.

A couple things that should be mentioned. These characters were not built according to standard PFS-style rules, and so are a little strong for their level (imo). These were the character creation rules we were using: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nscXWfq090-tVgBUEeiWKOGg3youPSN466X74d8 PYnM/edit

Also, since we didn't have a 'healer' in the group, we sort of constructed one out of a magical item. The Grand Scales of Abadar were described on September 7th in the Gameplay thread. In my opinion they were sort of overpowered since we could keep getting cleric spells indefinitely as long as we kept putting nickels into them, and they were no substitute for an actual character, narratively speaking. Now that Lidia and Ben are getting some levels, perhaps we don't need a dedicated healer per se. We probably actually need a wizard/bard type more.

I think we should decide if we're using the scales and maintaining the character rules as they existed, or if we're moving to new house rules.

And actually, although we were promised a chronicle sheet for Book 1, I'm not sure we should actually take them, since we did play the content with some very non-PFS parameters. But that's not really my call I guess.


I agree with Lidia about the current character generation rules. I want to give you the opportunity to rewrite any character generation rules and we can redesign as we level up. I'm vested in the character concepts, not the crunch.

The scales should either go or be tweaked. As Lidia mentioned they were added since we were in desperate need of a cleric and there were only 4 PCs.

As for the chronicle, I figure we played using their AP and mostly Paizo class stuff. I'm OK with applying the chronicle myself. It's not like we will be assigning the chronicles to these actual characters anyway!

If you are interested in reading through the house rules I came up with before I post them on the recruitment thread, check out this document.

Grand Lodge

I checked character creation before I agreed to run the game. I saw this was a high power campaign and I'm ok with that, if you guys are. If you want more of a challenge we can work something out, but for now let's keep the PCs how they are. We can use templates and medium XP tract if we need too.

As for the healing item I will give it a read over. For the next stretch the AP is a bit of a surival/resource game and the lack of abundant healing tends to change the way people play.


I’m good either way! Always enjoyed the idea of a survival-ish experience in a game.

Dark Archive

The healing item, the scales, were mainly to deal with conditions with the idea that they basically let you always count as "being in a town" to purchase spellcasting. Letting them be used in combat may have been a mistake, but its hard to tell at the low level of 1-4. If you wanted to continue to use them, I'd probably either not let them be used in combat at all or one person has to actually use them as their turn. Of course, you could always recruit a cleric-type. Ebonfist/Ulretha mentioned that they had someone in mind that could fill that role.

I've never handed off a thread before, so I don't know how to do it off-hand, but I can look into it. As for playing, like what was said above, I'm trying to step back from playing PbP for now. Between full-time teaching and grad school, it has lost its appeal for being "fun" to me and always feels more like work to check the boards, update the games, etc. I'm not sure if I've just gotten tired of PbP and burned out, or if having my sunday games on roll20 back is a factor, but I'm hoping that being able to take a full break will help as I have a lot of great players I love to GM for or play with, the above group included. I've also played Giantslayer books 1-5, but if you ever get to book 6, send me a PM because I'd love to finish out the story.

I still have to wrap up about 3 more floors of the emerald spire and finish the Witchwar Legacy, but other than those, I hope to see you guys in the future.

Comment about houserules: GM to GM, feel free to change the houserules, I, and I'm sure the players, fully appreciate you picking the game up and I think doing so entitles you to change the game slightly to be something you're more comfortable with. I also know that my houserule list was quite long. I'm pretty sure other than bonus "non-combat" feats everything else was basically standard with the exception of Thyste stacking two archetypes in a usually non-legal way and Little Ben using a large two-handed weapon.


Yea. I wanted to use that giant-blooded trait. When it came down to it, the crunch was very similar to a normal orc butcher axe except the great axe is -1 to hit.

Dark Archive

Oh, if anyone ever runs Hell's Rebels, I definitely wouldn't be able to resist that. My live/roll20 group had planned to play an all vigilante party in it, but then 2e came out and we did Age of Ashes instead. I've written so many backgrounds and had so many different character concepts that I would really love to use one of them at some point.


As a quick note, we have a Discord server that we sometimes use for quick questions and discussions if you’re into that. No pressure if not, though—the Discussion thread works just fine, after all!


Hello everyone!

I am very sorry that I left you guys at the beginning of the game. :-/

I have more time now and would also offer to GM for this group of excellent players! Not a competition to Grandlounge who is a great GM/player but if there is an interest to take a break between modules or whatever else I would gladly jump in as you are a lot of fun to play with! :-)


Hi all, the first post is up, but as I mentioned, I will be a little slow at the start as I'm wrapping up several games. Next, for the first little while, if you could assist me by spelling out your actions, and including any special abilities until I'm familiar with your characters, it would be great.

Finally, I am mildly dyslexic and write a lot in my professional life. That means though that sometimes if that part of my brain is taxed and I have to get a post out quickly, it may contain several errors. Most people are very accommodating, and the odd time it causes confusion, they ask for clarification. Please don't hesitate to ask if you need clarification.


No worries! If I recall correctly, Thyste and Ulretha were planning on leaving town with a whole load of loot well beyond the scope of our level’s wealth expectations, so expect some creative answers about how we managed to lose a lot of it.

Actually, speaking of which, I’m going to post a few relevant questions in the Discussion thread over there.


Noral, while we’re all set for a GM, we are still in a place where a heal-capable PC wouldn’t go amiss! (Although as someone mentioned, Lidia and Lil Ben might be able to fill that in now that we’re a few levels higher.)


Recruitment for LoF started here


Thyste Fox-Tailed wrote:
Noral, while we’re all set for a GM, we are still in a place where a heal-capable PC wouldn’t go amiss! (Although as someone mentioned, Lidia and Lil Ben might be able to fill that in now that we’re a few levels higher.)

Well, if you really still have a spot and GM Grandlounge would agree I would very much like to join you. :-)

Grand Lodge

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I am ok with adding a 5th player, if the group all want it. If everyone is cool with it DM me. As this is not truly my game at this point, I'm the newest member, I feel my job is to keep the current game going to the best of my ability therefore I will ask for unanimous buy-in from the currently players, which they can each send me by DM. Sorry if it seems a little strict noral but I came here to help preserve a game so I have to balance that and this is the fairest way I can think of.

You will here back from me when I have the votes.

Apologies again I trying to be fair to everyone.


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Thanks a lot! That is absolutely reasonable GM and I thank you for your guidance and caution as it is important to involve all the players!

Dark Archive

Just to point out, Noral was at one point in the game, but had to step out. Still, I think its definitely fine for all players to agree for another player.


Noral welcome back! DM me and we can work on getting you a character back in the game.


Thanks a lot to GM Zer0darkfire as well as you GM Grandlounge!! Also to you players of course! :-)

I was thinking about continuing to play Salaamati as Thyste mentioned that you need a heal-capable PC?

I will PM you GM Grandlounge!

Thanks again!


Heals are always appreciated! We're also missing Arcane casting... pretty much entirely, actually.


We have everyone now so we can move discussion over to the game thread.

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