Sweet! Welcome Duke! Can’t wait to see your gizmo’s and thingamabobs! Greetings and good night from Belgium!

Salutations Neighbour. Not Busy celebrating Sinterklaas i see?

Duke is just going to pull his weight in any situation.

Mmmm. No one new so far... how long should we wait? I can't help but remember that many people on RPol are not weekend players...

On the other hand, new players could always easily be added to the game later... SHOULD we start...?

I am all good for starting. Just bump the add on a weekday. I feel most sort of niche games that would fill up easy in the past are having a hard time getting a group nowadays.

Well! I spoke a little too soon! Welcome our new Psi-mage, Anchorite Tearful!

Anchorite Tearful, please choose a portrait, distribute stats (I have unlocked your character sheet), etc....  :)
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:12, Sat 07 Dec 2019.

Thank you for the welcome. I am Anchorite Tearful, one of the several Anchorites of the church. Normally, I do not leave the confines of the holy space, but on rare occasions I am sent to do pilgrimage.

(And as an aside, it's hella difficult to find an avatar that's shave-headed).

Well, I needed to sleep on time or he couldn’t come to fill my shoe right? ;)

I’m gonna guess your a neighbour from the north then :)

Also Welcome to Anchorite! Same trouble with the character portrait. I had to settle for an angry black kitty instead of a black lion :P

Welcome miss Tearful.

And im from the north indeed but so far south im more from the west unless you speak french ;-)

Do we want to establisch some background links? Though 2 of us are just uncontrolled engines of destruction it seem.

I could have sat on you Aesop at some time you where dangerous to the peoples food supplies Duke usually 'protects'

Not sure where a priest fits into The Dukes life though. On the other hand he is a Chineese volunteer for the expedition for accidentialy sitting on the wrong people a little to much. Foers doesnt complain about sitting on people while he does about hitting people of the Ziggurat.
This message was last edited by the player at 09:48, Sat 07 Dec 2019.

Well, the big thing is that Aesop just wants to have friends. Any one of you could take the place mouse in my backstory (which is basically the same story as the lion and the mouse in Aesop’s fables). Having Duke not being afraid of him would open up the possibility of friendship as well. Of course, Duke might not see it as friendship but, for now at least, Aesop would. He’s inexperienced, the poor little kitten of doom.

Also, just in case Chinese Volunteer is a Dutch idiom, it means a volunteer that is not a volunteer but the person ordered to do things when nobody voluntarily would do it.

The Duke has no friends. Everyone ignores him cause he has nothing sensible to say. Anyone willing to listen to him might be considered friendly but it takes little to let him fly of the handle to destroy you. Unless Foers his invisible friend thinks you are part of the Ziggurat and stops him from killing you.

Foers will stop The Duke from attacking Aesop (and any other actual PCs).

Foers is such a smart little Teddy.

Welcome to Grigori, the historian!

It makes me happy, because I wanted another human, and Historian was one of the three I was specifically hoping for...

Okay, as soon as everyone has picked portraits and stats, I'll start an in-game thread... (I realize this might not happen on a Sunday, but still, I'm really looking forward to it...)

Anyone who shows up after this can easily be added in anyway, but I thought it would be best to have at least 4 to start...


OH, and this reminds me... we still haven't settled if Aesop the Monster Black Lion will have an NPC as a friend, or if one of y'all's PCs will be his friend...?

Y'all work that out, please, before we start.

I don't mind playing an NPC, but let's decide if we're going that way (PC friend for Aesop or NPC) or not first, eh? (And if PC, then which?)

I'd be willing to be a friend, but it would've had to either happen -in the church- (unlikely, I suspect, but possible) or during one of the Anchorite's pilgrimages (which I'd be just fine with.)

Welcome Grigori! Do you perhaps hail from the West Marches in the realm of Rollplay?

As to my friend... while I know it doesn’t help, it doesn’t matter to me personally what gets chosen. I think the GM expected it more to be a PC, so if any of you want to have already befriended Aesop the giant black lion, then that’s surely an option. The Duke is formidable in his own right, so that doesn’t really work with the fable reference. I think the historian or the psychic would be a better fit.

Ah, just as I was posting this Anchorite posted. Yes, on pilgrimage can work. Are you familiar with Aesop’s fable of the lion and the mouse? Would you be open to mimic this a bit? I think psychic power can be a good hidden strength with which to impress Aesop the lion.

Hi all! Happy to be joining you.

I don't play West Marches, though I've heard the name before.

Very excited to be joining as a historian.

Do we have playbook moves or are there basic moves in this homebrew hack, or will you be calling for simple stat rolls based on our proposed actions?

Welcome Grigori.

I sort of expected everyone to have some special move but seems I am on of the few with my future telling.

More like the second thing. I did send you a PM last night... before you posted this... about being an Historian... but the content of that PM was about all I had in mind.

I have also talked to our Psi-mage over PM about psychic stuff...

I plan to send a clarifying PM to our Mad and our Monster later today as well...

But yeah you might be surprised how useful "oh I read something about this once" could come in handy...

Yeah totally, I read through that PM and wanted to make sure I understood right and that I wasn't missing anything on any of the other forums or misreading it. That makes a ton of sense and looks like a good, flexible way to go about things. Thanks for the clarification!

Realized I left a possible use of Hidey off the Stat Explanation thread and have now updated-- but will reproduce here:


Hidey: Go Small! This is what you use when you are trying to hide or otherwise not get noticed nor draw attention EDIT: or make someone think you're small and unimportant and not worth their time to bother nor destroy.


(If you haven't distributed your Stat scores yet, please do. Your character sheets should all be unlocked...)


Okay so my understanding is that Anchorite Tearful will be Aesop's friend? If so, that's perfectly fine... Just want to make sure we're all on the same page about that...

...I'll be starting soon, and if any new people show up, it'll be pretty easy for me to add them...

Yup. That’s good for me.

I have a feeling that on one of the Anchorite pilgrimages, Aesop and she had the 'lion and the mouse' adventure, so yeah, I'm good with it.
Also got my stats straightened out.
Anything else needs doing?

Not by you, I don't think?

(I mean you could post in the new thread but not preliminary stuff)
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:18, Mon 09 Dec 2019.

1: Anchorite Tearful, The Duke, please officially state what Stuff you're choosing.

2: It's been a week now since I posted my ad for players... Should I try to get more people? If so, how many more? Just one more? Just two more...?


2a//3: My schedule is about to fall into chaos until January. I've been able to reliably post Mondays through Thursdays. My posting times are about to be unpredictable due to the holiday season... just a heads' up (and also in case it informs your answer to question 2 above)...

Personally I think four is a really excellent number of pc for pbta. That said, there is often attrition in pbp, so having a few backups in case of unforseen dropout isnt a bad idea.

I'd be open for another 1-2 players, but don't think they're critically important