Thread just to talk about 'stuff'.

Anything goes.

Just literally decided to start putting this together today on rpol, and appreciate that i have nibbles already from former players.

All welcome.

This works in my favor since i can have a partial clue in the direction i'll be going and a base start of characters in the party to have a better clue of what needs to be added.

The prologue was originally used in the campaign as a light roleplaying chapter to introduce all the players and characters and will exist for use for players with characters to get their feet wet through the character generation process.

I'm only looking for six to eight players.  In the original campaign i was looking for eight players and it grew to ten cause i have trouble saying 'no'.  So i'll be good to start at six players with the expectation that perhaps growing to eight with a few extra people won't be terrible.


I already have a brave player throwing much of their plot points into a gamble.  That's going to be... interesting.  I have two key concepts that are tentative for those mystery slots, so it'll be interesting to see what the players do with them in the campaign.

I have starts for Aeron and Clotilde, have to deal with dinner so no start for Zander but will get something up shortly.

Character concepts slowly forming, i know what i'm sort of dealing with.  Character stats certain to follow.

For a bit of meta gaming...


Clotilde ~> 2nd Level Fighter / 1st Level Rogue  {Somehow... still looks 16 though...}

Aeron ~> 1st Level Ranger

Zander ~> 1st Level (?) Spellsinger (Bard)(?)

Well its been a pretty groovy day for the campaign.

I have another returning player of old, so that brings us to four players.

All i did was start posting the infra structure and i have four quality players joining already.

It's nice to see that i don't have to look to hard for players, cattle calling the want ads was never something i enjoyed.

Returning players are always nice, theyre familiar with the campaign world, and just need to be updated with the new rules in play.

Zander was actually in the first two renditions of this campaign where were preludes to the twilight campaign.  His bard... and his frevor to play him is the reason spellsingers exist in the campaign.  Though... that means he has a lot to catch up on as far as house rules are concerned.... o.O

Assigning Zander Sol's avatar, because i always thought of Sol as the rock idol of divinties, and gave him the avatar i always pictured for Zander so... yeah... you can have that avatar cause it'll be good for the mood to channel Zander.

Yep.  Good ole' mmc386.jpg  That was his pic back in the day.  Zander would be honored that some god wants to look like him.

Who knows... maybe youre the mortal avatar incarnate of Sol... he is the patron divinity of rockstars, nobles, and corrupt politicians everywhere?


I'm going to limit my in campaign roleplaying updates to one a day.  This is because... i still have things to do like character sheets and concept shake downs for new characters.

I have a very definite direction of where i want the campaign to go, old player characters of note will even show up here and there which is good cause they'll have preset personalities i wont have to think too hard about.

I just realized everyone from the Musketeer campaign rejoined this time around.  I was tempted to reboot that campaign too.  I really liked all the characters from that campaign but decided the scope was too limited and short sighted to maintain.

Just a reminder, the Prologue thread is open and official for campaign roleplaying....  that's where those post should go... not in the private messages to me.

Old methods to share maps are not going to work.

I've given up my webspace, old galleries are gone, and while improved, i'm still not impressed with RPOLs map functions.

We have my battletech campaign to thank for the solution of finding free cloud space to use to share maps.

A folder has been set up for this campaign.

The link is https://mega.nz/folder/AWFCXDgK#9PZ7jF-hc7tI_ifdLMC8fQ

It ... might (?) require you to create a login to see the folder, but then again it might not (i forget to be honest).  It's not terribly hard to do, so i encourage you to.

The Misty Valley is the 'Campaign Map' where most adventures will take place.

'Northshire' is the base of operations where most of you will 'live' when not adventuring.

You all have (1) rank of a profession of your choice for free.  You are limited to how many professions your character can have.  You are allowed to invest skill points in new professions equal to your skill modifiers.

In some cases I will assign a profession for this free skill rank.  If i do not, you are free to select any that you deem appropriate.

I suggest selecting a profession useful for 'gathering' might be a good things... Herbalist, Butcher, Tanner, etc... will have functions to gathering things while on adventure and providing contacts to sell them in town.

When in doubt, you can always ask me how useful a profession will be.
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:02, Mon 10 Apr 2023.

Aeron, Victoria is back in the campaign, and like Aeron will have some minor tweaks.

She will actually be the exception and while not an unknown, wont be a close childhood friend to everyone.

Instead she'll be an acquaintance of Aeron, who she has met you all a few times in the past.

She will actually be showing up to 'crash the party'.

Most of you will remember her as the little kid that use to show up once or twice with Aeron in the past.

Aeron will known Victoria for who she is... the crown princess of the Euro Empire.  While he will know this, he won't know what the hell she's doing showing up in the Misty Valley for his reunion.

I think it's nice that under used characters get a second chance at exploring their potential.

^.^
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:21, Mon 10 Apr 2023.

Exciting!

Welcome back Victoria.

Victoria is our second mystery character, and arcane, so we have those checked off on my party list.

I have an open invitation to one player which puts our player count at five, if he accepts.

We have at this time, three slots left.  We currently need a divine caster, but i'm not sweating it.

If we get to the point where we are in danger of not having one, it'll be an excuse for me to roll up an NPC to join.  So that if i take  a break and hand over game mastering to someone else i have an actual character ready to go to play.

Not that i'm complaining but i'm a little surprise everyone was okay to just make human characters with minimal fuss...


Well except for Zander... but he's Zander, that's to be expected.

We are close... to having all the current players together.

I'm inclined to not expand the campaign further at this point and to work with what i have.

It will let me cut the red tape faster since there are less players, and the campaign will move 'faster'.

It won't be anything earth shattering since i'm still piecing character sheets together, but it'll let you stretch your roleplaying muscles and warm to the personalities of the slightly modified characters.

we can call it a day 'early' perhaps and this is the day before the actual reunion, which would explain why people aren't all here and together just yet.


Victoria has already given me the greenlight to start filling out her character sheet to concept, and Zander is familiar with D&D 3.5 and not pathfinder, so i'm just going to go and do most of the heavy lifting and ask them about the fine details when i get to it.

Clotilde has been pretty proactive, and Aeron just got moving which for a second day of unscheduled activity puts use well ahead of the curve.

If we can have everyone settled and full character sheets on the table by this friday i'd be pretty oky with filling out the rest of the party.

The next two players to join can still pretty much play whatever they want, but if we dont get any divine casters, the last two will have to be mandatory casters.  (i would play one as an n/pc, but the other should be a PC and will be put in as a mandatory aspect for joining.)

Thats where we are at the moment.... so... character sheet grinding for me.

I'm just going to hand out equipment and magic items that i deem 'useful' as i go.

It's going to be a really short and abbreviated list... mostly  masterwork items of note, and maybe some magic along the way, we'll see how generous i feel when we get there i guess.

In reply to Aeron Bennett (msg # 12):

Hey Aeron, great to be here.  However, Victoria is vexed at you, so we'll see. ;)

Off to a great start I see...

I personally think we are.

We've gone from... i think i'll start putting infrastructure down for the campaign... and maybe in a week put a want ad out when i feel ready to...

oh... we have half a party so that's grounds for the prologue of a campaign... right?

Who knew?

Worked hard today, and have started character sheets for everyone.

Some player input for things like faith and alignment would be nice.  I'm making presumptions there.

Default 'Favorite' classes have been selected, and default bonus will be an extra hit point.  If this is not what you want you should speak up.

Character hooks have been 'tweaked' a little.

Character Handicaps have been added too.

Characters have spent between 4 and 7 points on character/plot hooks.  That's only a 2 or 3 feats you may never see and a starting trait.


Explanation of some of the things there...

Some characters have 'compulsions'  Hardwired inclinations to do things that might not be in their best interest.  Usually a drawback for something useful to balance the cost.  These compulsions accumulate on the character sheet and go away in one of two ways.  They role play the compulsions and if particularly exceptional and entertaining, the points are reduced or... you accumulate too many of them (over 3) and a compulsion will happen in the campaign that you will be mandatory to follow may occur and you wont have a choice but to follow your nature.

Some characters have 'Manifest Destiny'.  This is the opposite of a compulsion.  You accumulate these over the adventure, sometimes you are rewarded with a point here and there if you do something related that's really impressive.  When you do something related to your Manifest Destiny that you REALLY want to have happen cause its important, you expend these points to make it happen.  Expend enough points and you dont even bother to roll dice, it just happens cause... either it was meant to happen or someone important was listening, heard you, and thought it was a good idea to have it happen too.

A sample of Manifest Destiny in play might be...
If Clotide really needed something to hit, or Zander really wanted to get this really cute groupy as a follower, cause ... well she's really cute.

it might be a 2 point cost, to have Clotide 'True Strike' or Zander 'Charm Person' effects come into play.  No actual spell... no cast time... no notable effects... They just want it to happen really bad and it happens.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:19, Mon 10 Apr 2023.

Something i learned from 4e and thought would be neat to apply is the notion of 'class modifiers' for ability scores.

Not going to go to the depths they do, but i thought it would be nice to apply.

Class modifiers are applied based on your Favored Class.

I will allow characters to add an ability bonus of some sort, based on their class.  (This bonus can not cause the ability to exceed 18)


Aeron   +2 bonus to one physical ability {Guessing Str?}

Clotide +2 bonus to one physical ability {Guessing Dex?}

Victoria +2 bonus to one mental ability {I suggest Int, but if you're not looking to power game i can see Cha too}

Zander  +2 bonus to one mental ability  {Guessing... Charisma?}

Will start looking at racial abilities... Traits... and feats tomorrow.

Everyone is a High Human, so they get to pick two racial perks from being one.  Go read here if you dont know what i'm talking about...

Message #3, Race Quote, High Human
link to a message in this game

Then everyone gets their level 1 feat, a bonus feat for being human and at least one 'trait' (Zander gets two).

You can give me the above information here, or send it in PM.  I'll be updating the public character sheets with the information so its pointless to be shy.

Victoria will have both Scribe and Brew Potion, from being a Wizard / and her blessing so she can actually spend her feat as she likes.  No clue what makes for good wizard feats, if nothing else comes to mind toughness might be good to keep her alive...?

Thanks for all the work on characters.  We appreciate it.

Indeed, thank you for everything.  And yes, she would put that stat in Charisma.  Sorcerers do that, because they use Charisma instead of Intelligence.  But in her case, she's a Princess, so of course it is Charisma!