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TL;DR; Seeking one character for a narrative heavy, long running, high level, interplanar campaign. Please NO “I’m only here for the melee” characters. Maybe a cleric or a character with insight into “the divine” (add your own ideas). Read more than this.
Sample/Recent Post: Armaund assumes the form of a bluff human trader, straightening his jacket and looking slightly embarrassed... The party then feels the typical disorientation of entering a portal... You find yourself in a softly, magically lit stone corridor facing a group of Tarnuviens, some dress similarly to Duwei Kulamber, others with arms and armor and in a more military regalia.
The person heading introduces herself as Dina Mulender - "It is very rare to have anyone come to this fortress - it has been at least a century since it was even sought out and it is well defended. Duwei claims you are enemies of the worms and we have decided to take the risk of allowing you into our safe point. You may tell me now what you think is relevant if you wish. But we will have a council in three hours and you will have to repeat yourself then. Meanwhile you may rest" After you say what you wish, she shows you to a rest area. As she takes you to the rest area, you notice out a window that this demi-plane includes an outdoors with pleasant pools, waterfalls, some crops growing, all lit by a soft glow (no visible sun). It is like the inside of the cubic mountain was empty with this complex carved on the four sides of it..
After you rest or explore the fortress a little, you are taken to a fairly austere council area where Dina Mulender, Duwie and several others sit in a semi-circle facing you. Dina opens. "I understand you enemies of the worm. My people have battled these creatures for nearly a thousand years since my Oblen Navien first divined their nature and created a system to restrain them. Still, their baleful influence seems to have subtly spread over the world, leaving us the only opposition. What can you tell us about them and what is you motivation here?"
Description: In a multiverse based on the Planescape setting, using PF1 rules plus custom “caper”/world-building rules, you will be an agent of an ad-hoc group of wizards, priests and occultist aiming to stop plane-destroying effects, unleashed by various mysterious forces. Your employers are sophisticated interdimensional operators who understand many kinds types of magics and technologies operating on a variety of planes (with their own personal agendas too? Of course!). The operation still resembles a group of gentlemen adventurers than a true bureaucracy and you will operate as part of a cell of adventurer, the cell making its own choices on the ground, though guided by your mentors/handlers/comrades.
Style: This campaign began as an effort to use some ideas from the Blades In The Dark system. I am creating/evolving an approach of investigators who make their choices and add their own narrative. This is still a work in progress (after two and a half years). At this point, it mostly involves me outlining a situation and anyone can make a choice for the group (within reason but still). A lot of the initial thread following action involves; narrate what you do, maybe add a little improvised detail about the situation or world, and roll a skill (standard Pathfinder skills). It gets more defined as each character’s threads get more developed. The campaign has gone on for nearly two and half years with 4,000+ posts. Look at current posts for what’s happening.
Group: We currently have a pseudodragon rogue, a occasional damphir sorcerer, a psionic android and Satyr bard. Given the campaign, every character should sort of expect to be something like a "skill monkey", a researcher in some field and a social character (or be prepared to role play slightly awkward).
Inspirations: The Black Company series (especially Shadow Linger) by Glen Cooke, Nightwatch/Daywatch Sergie Lukyanenko, The Elder Isle series and other works by Jack Vance, The Dark Tower by Stephen King, Dilvish The Damned and The Amber series by Roger Zelazney, The Cornelius Chronicles and The War Hound and The World’s Pain by Michael Moorecook, The Earthsea Series by Ursula LeGuin and a number of others.
Campaign Parameters:
Start at 13th Level, standard character wealth for magic item buying. 25 point buy. No dumping wisdom, intelligence or charisma below 9. Don’t maximize for initiative (I’m doing ad-hoc initiative for speed – party-goes, monsters go, repeat). Alignments between lawful-good and neutral. Standard wealth by Core Rule Book. All Paizo books allowed, third party books might be OK but only psionics or hi-tech or other classes/races not duplicating things in Paizo books. Magic users probably shouldn’t lean on teleport/dimension door since it’s hard to handle in play-by-post. Monstrous characters permited. 3rd party stuff OK but be prepared for some modification if it gives some weird power imbalance.
Campaign Traits (choose at least one of these and one standard trait):
Interplanar Travelers(s); knowledge planes is a class skill.
Minor magic awareness; Can cast detect magic once per day as a spell-like ability and spellcraft is class skill.
Minor technological knowledge; Can use knowledge engineering to determine the principles powering a given technological device. If you are trained in knowledge history, you can use it determine the sort of society which would produce such a device. You may make a Wisdom check to determine how to activate a given device (this does not imbue the character with any skills in the use of the device. It doesn’t teach to use firearms or welding machines, etc).
What's the post rate? One post per day with periodic exceptions. If your character is absent during combat for a bit, I may act for you (keep in mind combat is rare). If you vanish, your character might become a regular NPC. Bonus points if you tell me your situation.
Posting approach: Most of the time, anyone can start posting after I’ve posted (In melee, anyone can take act first once I give the go-head, just don’t act twice – fair warning, this may initiative-feats less valuable). To a reasonable extent, you can post actions that the entire party takes part in (we enter the room). Don’t be shy. Always be thinking about how you can post to move forward the action – and feel free to send me suggestions on that as well (I’ll required saving throw levels, AC the monster hits + potential damage etc. You will too).
Learn the standard narrative style – write in the third person present tense, etc. Don’t just name a game mechanic, don’t just narrate what you are doing, combine the two. Don't ask whether you can roll a skill, just roll it. I encourage everyone to improvise little pieces of plot as we go along (but exactly how much you do that is up to you, since it’s fairly personal, each continuing player has their own style here). Still, we are creating are creating a story together. I hope to find people excited to help shape this world. I like to move actions quickly and give the group suggestions. Feel free to push back if things seem to fast for you, you don’t like a suggestion or for any other reasons. I try to be very open to constructive criticism (obviously there are limits). Did I mention “work in progress”? It is a continuing work, with stuff happening, however.
Applying: Describe your character concept and give an example of something you’d improvise in the process of acting in the world. (see above for allowed classes etc). I’ll answer questions and ask questions and then show me a character sheet. I will decide after three days, longer if there aren’t enough applications. This is a demanding campaign so if you are busy or already are in many campaigns, think if you can make the added commitment. Expect to read a fair amount, reach each day even you can't post. I put some effort into my narrative, plot development and world-concept. I'm looking for one more players who that appeals to.
(apologies for creating and removing the thread a few times before I remembered how attaching a recruitment thread to a campaign worked)
I am super interested, as I believe I may have posted interest for one of your prior recruitments.
*However* I am about to leave to go work new york comic con on Tues(the 4th) and won't return till Mon(the 10th). Meaning I won't be able to really work on my PC before then. If this is problematic, and means I can't apply, I absolutely understand.
That said, I believe your pseudodragon rogue is a good friend of mine, and it would be fun to play alongside him!
I am super interested, as I believe I may have posted interest for one of your prior recruitments.
*However* I am about to leave to go work new york comic con on Tues(the 4th) and won't return till Mon(the 10th). Meaning I won't be able to really work on my PC before then. If this is problematic, and means I can't apply, I absolutely understand.
That said, I believe your pseudodragon rogue is a good friend of mine, and it would be fun to play alongside him!
If you can put together a complete "application" before that, I would consider it. Sample posts and discussions of approach and character idea matter more than filled-in character sheet.
And if no one has applied before you get back, of course it's possible too.
This sounds interesting, I'm a fan of The Black Company - it's been a few years since I last read that, probably time for a re-read.
There's a lot to take on board and building a 13th level character is kind of intimidating =)
I believe in you, Fang Dragon!
Because of the allowance of beast characters, I am tempted to repurpose my tooth fairy here, just tryna figure out how it would fit in your world. Only worry I have with it is it has no connection to the divine, so I feel there may be better fits.
GM Hansj allowed my character a monster template with reduced levels. If you ask nicely and present your case well, he might allow it.
Monster characters are certainly allowed. They're at least half the party currently. Naturally, the important thing is to do it well.
I am interested, and am a reliable daily poster and am in very few campaigns at the moment, so I could definitely commit. Am working on a concept and will post once I flesh it out (or will post a withdrawal if I can't pull it together in time). Sounds like a very fun campaign.
It most certainly has been enjoyable!
Hope to post something tomorrow. Writing those introductory narratives always takes more time than I think it will.
Dressed in a simple robe with sturdy armor beneath it, she looked perfectly at home in the barren meeting room.
"What insight can I provide?" she begins, for she had remained silent when asked the same information some 3 hours earlier, "I am an enemy of the "Worm" as you call it, it is true. On my home plane, we called it "Simplification," for that is the shape it took there. We didn't notice it at first you see. It started small, repeated patterns of the cobblestones of the street. Finding yourself repeating the same phrase over and over again in the marketplace. Shadows not quite lining up with the position of the light." She stops, wetting her lips with a dry tongue. "No one spoke of it you see, because we all assumed it was a figment of our own imaginations. That we were overtired, overworked. How wrong we were." she adds bitterly.
"It got far worse. People began to lose their depth of color. Grass became as an oil painting, and our thoughts became slow and sluggish. We prayed of course, and our gods spoke to us, and told us that they would find answers, wizards practiced their most powerful spells to restore things to how they should have been, but to no avail. I still remember when we lost our depth. I would have said day, but by that point we had lost all track of time. It was a horrible thing you see, realizing that you could no longer see in the third dimension, and worse yet, that there was no more third dimension. It was at that point that most people fell to total despair, or at least I assume so. Due to our new shapes, we couldn't talk as we once had. Still, more died by their own hand during that time than any other that I can remember. Not me though. I still had hope my goddess would save us, although I had forgotten the word for goddess."
A long pause this time, as if she was girding herself.
"Do not ask me her name, for I do not remember it. It no longer exists. I continued my blind existence, doing my best to perform whatever I could of my priestly duties, confident that one day soon, my goddess would save me. And so even when I noticed the second dimension beginning to crumble around me, I did not despair. Perhaps I should have."
"My goddess appeared to me then. There was no more time, not really, but I'm sure it was only for the briefest of moments. And in that moment, I could see as she saw, and felt as she felt. There was nothing left. A speck or two of what used to be grass, clinging to life. A cockroach perhaps clinging to whatever existence it could eke out. And a tiny flame of consciousness, ready to go out. Me."
"She spoke in my mind, not with words, as the concept of language had long since been Simplified away to nothing. My lady had no power left, no worshippers to fuel her, and no holy places to call her own. Our world had ended. And in her final act, she threw me out of our world, with the last dregs of her power within me." Alashki maintains eye contact with Dina Mulender as she continues onward. Indeed, she hardly seems to blink.
"Can you imagine? She must have been a very powerful goddess in her heyday, as I've been using her strength ever since then, and haven't even dented it. Can you imagine all that power surging within you, forcing you back into the shape that you remember yourself having, as you hurtle between worlds? Can you imagine seeing your entire plane of existence simplify into a single point? If you can, I must congratulate you, because even though I saw and felt those things, I still cannot imagine them." She finally breaks off her eye contact, instead looking down at the floor, almost abashed.
"My form is... impure. Inexact. It was shaped from the base of my essence after all, and forced into new worlds. But you ask me what my motivation is here? My motivation is to avenge my world, to avenge what I used to me. My motivation is to live the life my Lady would have wanted of me. My motivation is that my home is gone, and my Goddess is dead. But yours' isn't yet. And I'm here to try and keep it that way."
Thought I might throw my hat in! I don't have a complete character sheet yet, but I figure a wrecker(Possessed? Promethean? Shadowbound?) oracle might be a good fit for your game! The overall concept I had was a plane of existence's last hurrah against the endtimes. Haven't picked the race yet, but I'm thinking a battlefield control/buff party member type caster. I will avoid the endless spam of summons and undead for the sake of everyone else's enjoyment, you all don't deserve that.
Fair warning, I am a college student in my final semester of undergrad, so sometimes my availability plummets. Hope you like the sound of Alashki! That's almost certainly not her original name, but that can be discovered through more RP! I'll get a character sheet up and running ASAP. I look forward to your questions!
Initially I had wanted to be a words of power oracle, but there just isn't enough content there for it to work, which is very disappointing.
Although further exploration leads me back to Halcyon Druid, the druid architype that gives up the animal companion, wild shape, and spontaneous summon nature's ally for poaching some spells off the wizard list, and being able to spontaneously cast the good domain cleric spells. Let me know which you think would work better in the group, and I'll pursue either the time oracle, or the caster druid!
Are we using elephant in the room, background skills, or variant multiclass?
So a character with the touch of the divine in plane hopping spy thriller of a game. There's something I've seen done before that might be appropriate here: a shaman fond of using Blood Money + Akashic Communion to learn things that by rights they have no business knowing. They'd be a methodical planner, using the lore spirit to select the 'right' spells for the day. Not much of a melee combatant, they'd have excellent knowledge and social skills with a penchant for battle field control. Of course if things don't go they way they expected they'd be the sort to get a little flustered.
I blinked as the vision faded and stammered, "Er... Wow!" My eyes adjusted to the darkness of the tent and to the customer in front of me. I needed a moment to pull myself together as the spell's after wash coursed through my system. As spells go communing with the Akashic Record remote as it is wasn't particularly advanced, but I didn't make a habit of carrying squares of polished silver and had used by blood instead to fuel the spell.
"Well?" demanded my customer, "Did you witness the last moments of Prince Azzimond?"
I studied him/her/it for a moment, the hooded cloak was so all concealing I couldn't tell the race let alone the gender of my client. The androgynous voice had little in the way of emption, I wondered if they might be a technological being.
Taking a breath I replied, "Yes... Squished like a bug I'm afraid. He was a brave man, at least it was quick."
It was hard to tell with the robed but I believe my client nodded before asking, "You saw the worm yes?"
I blanched as I nodded.
My customer leant forwards in an oddly deliberate motion and asked, "My question is this, how would you Azzim Bin Farouq fight such a thing?"
My heart lurched and I felt prickling sensation as beads of sweat formed upon my brow, "Fight it?! Madness! I just witnessed the end of a civilisation! You might as well have asked me how to stop the tide from coming in!"
I felt my voice rising, surely he/they were not serious. An uncomfortable silence filled the room as my client waited, motionless.
I peered at them curiously, "Er you're not kidding are you? You actually want to fight those things... Damn."
My client nodded.
I ran a hand nervously through my hair and thought, fighting a thing of that size head on was suicide.
Rather tentatively I replied, "Well... It uh seemed somehow biological.
It must have a life cycle. If I'm correct I'd suggest trying to capture a small one to study, find out what makes them tick. Perhaps there's some substance inimical to them, or maybe a type of energy or a pathogen, or gods help us a predator..."
I stopped with that line of thought, I was describing a lifetime's work, possibly many lifetimes.
"But that's not what you asked. You asked how I would fight it. I wouldn't not head on, I'd cheat. Given how dangerous those things seem it stands to reason others, possibly entire societies of others, have devoted their lives to figuring it out. I just need to find out if any were successful, even once. Armed with that knowledge I could pay the Akashic Record a visit and find out how exactly to fight such a thing."
My customer nodded once before replying in a monotone, "Very good. Proceed."
I am submitting for consideration an yaddithian oracle of dark tapestry, possibly with the seeker archetype. I want to fluff dark tapestry to be more Astral Plane related than physical Outer Space if that is okay (although given she is yaddithian a connection to space isn’t inappropriate and am open to suggestions). Her name will probably be Shanava. Two word concept is “astral archivist.” General gist is she traveled with planeswalking family, got “touched” by something while traveling the Astral Plane she found wordlessly enlightening, and has since had gifts inspired by the endless expanse . Always yearning for knowledge and enlightenment, she became a collector of both her people’s history as well as of various mysteries and oddities and had built a library on a rock floating through the Astral Plane. The “worms” of the Dark Traders destroyed her library and now she seeks both to stop the Dark Traders from doing more harm as well as recover an artifact she believes was stolen during the attack.
She isn't a typical "spy" type character but certainly would have the curiosity, bravery, and experience to support the Organization's cause.
Note: It’s been a gajillion years since I played in Planescape or anything connected to it so my memory of it is deeply fuzzy. If there are particular references you recommend I’d be interested.
“Yes, yes indeed it was a beautiful place, my library, I and Ferdinand had nearly finished building the orrery,” Shanava sighs into her firewine at the Inn of Last Sighs in Sigil’s Market Ward. The small mote of light sitting next to her sets off a series of dim and bright glows.
[b] “What? Of course an orrery belongs in a library. What good planar library doesn’t have a planar orrery depicting the Wheel?” She dips her snout into her glass and sucks down about half her glass. “Ferd couldn’t get the transdimensional cogs quite right. Oh, poor Ferd. Anyway, it was my home, and there’s no going back now.”
The creature to her right—she believes it is called a “half-elf,” although she is not sure what its other half is—tugs at her sleeve. The bartender kept calling him “Prime,” and she guessed he was a newer arrival to the planes, perhaps accidental, even. “What’s it like, the Astral Plane? I’ve heard one can go mad if one stays too long, even trying to walk in a straight line requires the utmost of concentration.”
Shanava shakes her head. “Oh no, my dear, not at all. The trick really is more to yield than to concentrate. Of course one can gaze into the farthest reaches and get lost a bit in the mind, but it can be quite enjoyable if you let it. I could show you, you know. What it’s like. Get a sense for how it feels. That way you’re prepared if you decide to go in, corded or otherwise…”
The half-elf’s ears perks high. “Oh, you would? That would be wonderful.”
The light mote glows a long, orange warning. Shanava nods. “Of course. You’re sure you’re ready. It can be a tad disorienting. You must relax. If you’re not ready, just say so.”
The young creature nods. “I am ready!”
“Are you sure?” She was eager to show him, but while she was only going to show him the tiniest glimpse into the endless depths of eternity, she was aware the effect could be disorienting for some. She even heard some bodies call it “the gift of madness,” but that was sheer hyperbole.
“Yes! Please! Show me!”
She points at him, summoning upon the Ancient and Wise Astral Minds to share their wisdom with him.
He stood up, screamed, and then vomited. He turned around three times and then walked through the door into what should have led to the back halls of the public house, but there was a glow and a poof that suggested that the poor dear had just opened a Door into another land.
Shanava’s tiny ears flattened against her head. “Oh dear. That could not have gotten worse.”
The glowing mote threw an angry series of rednesses at her. “Well, I didn’t mean to. And if he can’t survive that, I doubt he would have lasted for long. Here, let us have another drink, and you can tell me about this book you’re looking for again.”
Well now, I have an embarrassment of riches here.
So I will decide tomorrow (or the next day if I'm slammed by work). Feel free to add anything extra you think will be of use, though I'm already very impressed with the three applicants so far.
Best of luck to everyone! They all sound so creative in so many different directions!
I have selected Silas Hawkwinter - as noted, sorry I couldn't choose everyone.
Congrats to Silas! Keep us in mind if you ever need another replacement!
Congratulations to Silas.
To the GM, for the original application process, you said, "I’ll answer questions and ask questions and then show me a character sheet." So I had been expecting the initial submission to be only part of a larger application process, which would eventually include sharing character sheets, before an applicant was chosen. For whatever it's worth, I must say I'm disappointed in the disparity between what was communicated and what was reality, and in not having an opportunity to share more. I need no response to this, but as your initial post said you are open to feedback, this is my feedback for whatever it is worth on future recruitments you might hold.
Congratulations to Silas.
To the GM, for the original application process, you said, "I’ll answer questions and ask questions and then show me a character sheet." So I had been expecting the initial submission to be only part of a larger application process, which would eventually include sharing character sheets, before an applicant was chosen. For whatever it's worth, I must say I'm disappointed in the disparity between what was communicated and what was reality, and in not having an opportunity to share more. I need no response to this, but as your initial post said you are open to feedback, this is my feedback for whatever it is worth on future recruitments you might hold.
Oh shoot, I apologize. I copied from the last recruit text I did and failed to edit that.