General OoC discussion

GP in general. I regularly roll below average.

If there needs to be an extended discussion of whether to stay or flee, we can talk about it here.

As I mentioned, Aanbo feels as though he should stay because he doesn't want our absence/silence to be a tacit agreement of the setup. He believes that the villagers will make up reasons for the presence of the troglodyte and it's better if someone is present to say otherwise. He's willing to split from the group if the others think it's better to flee.

Chase would stay as well to see what Ramne has to say about us killing one of the green men. Also can't leave Aanbo by himself.

I was thinking of telling the villagers that the rest of the party went to hunt more of the troglodytes, as a way to explain their absence.

That sounds good I will stay for back up. Hopefully Ramne is upright and helps us out.

'Hang them high' seems to be a common thought among the villagers probably. Seems that they have already dragged off Jospeh. (Shorter life of a NPC)

The time pressure here is doing wonders to increase the narrative drama of the scene. I love it!

Strategically, I think we should either all leave or all stay. Splitting the party here seems like a dangerous proposition. Do we at least all agree we have to get rid of the incriminating body?

If the two of you get captured, we’re down to half our numbers and less able to set Joseph, or you two, free. I fear you’ll end up just like the dead guy Myrtha and Reptile are getting ready to carry away.

Reasoning with the villagers isn’t a lost cause, but a highly risky one. Assume 10% of the mob are actually in league with Bertram, with their talking points all prepared in advance. Their intent is to sow doubt and suspicion, poison the well. Even if there are mostly honest folk in the mix, we’re still a bunch of strangers who picked a fight with nice ol’Bertram and nearly killed him for no reason — and there’ll be plenty of testimony in that sense — and then, after spending the day loitering around for no good reason, came back for some more bloodshed the next night, probably in league with the lizard people. It’s a very deep hole we have to talk our way out of.

And our most likely ally, Ramne, made clear he hides his real persona because he — a local person well-known to the other villagers — is suspicious of all of them and is trying to remain unnoticed by the bad folk infiltrating his community. I wouldn’t expect him to want, or to be able to do much to help us in these circumstances. He clearly wanted us to prove our commitment by leaving town and defeating some reptiles, rather than staying here and killing some villagers…

Reptile will run with Martha with the body for sure. Might be hard to convince them otherwise. Neither appears to want to be fingered with the placed dead body and rather risk running with it then the 100% get nailed with it being there.

The player in me also dislikes splitting the party. But in-character, it feels like running will only make things worse. We'd have absolutely no support and everyone in town, innocents included, will be after us. And us potentially fighting our way into the Golden Grain Inn will look as though we're acting as they think we are. We'd have a harder time explaining ourselves after they've all gone some length in thinking otherwise.

I wouldn't expect Ramne to vouch for us. He has to protect himself lest the entire village turns on him. And he might have to consider that with our absence, maybe we were in league with the troglodytes and left because one of them was killed.

All this makes me think that someone ought to stay behind and lend a voice in our defense. I don't expect it to be easy and like people have said, the villagers may be unreasonable and may not understand what's going on. But even if Aanbo is put in jail or something, maybe that will buy you all some time to infiltrate the inn and find something that implicates Bertram's Buddies instead of us.

I understand your reasoning and I think it is quite sound, but I fear for your character.

It sure is a good thing that you will at least put a different spin to the whole situation by being there and explaining what they'll see. And I think the absence of the bandaged body and teh presence of the reptilian one might undercut the narrative of the infiltrated folks in the mob.

That being said, this whole kerkuffle puts into question the strategy we had hammered out : we thought we'd handle the whole thing through violence (first by ambushing folks in the barn, then by striking the GG inn), and it is now obvious that the wrong-doers have at least one hostage, and that the villager (+some troublemakers) might get a hold on two more hostages.

If we go into the inn and start bashing heads, we'll be reinforcing the narrative according to which we're foreign troublemakers come here to shed the good people's blood. But I think we need to go into the Inn to see what there is to be seen and, eventually, to grab the culprits. That being said, we've given them an entire day to clean up their operation at the Inn, so we might run into a situation that doesn't resemble Theran's experience at all. Going there might be, in itself, a trap. Then again, we suppose they don't know that we explored the Inn's underground and secret portions, and therefore would have no reason to clean up their base of operations.

On a related note, and assuming that the splitting of the teams is going to happen, I have to say I'd rather not have the slightest idea of what goes on with Aanbo, Chase and the villagers. Don't know if it is possible to split the threads, or to hide the threads from the different groups, just to ensure that we don't rely on OOC information to strategize IC (unless, of course, we overhear stuff IC, or get second-hand accounts of what went down with the other party). I'll be fiercely tempted to check out what's going on with the other team, but I think that would compromise my ability to stay in fiction, in Myrtha's (now enraged) mind.

But I would love to read the other thread once all of this is over... :-D I'm easy to please this way...

I will happily create two new threads; I think the conclusion of the battle in the abandoned farmyard is a good occasion to wrap up that thread anyway (it's grown quite long).

Sorry I haven't posted yet; I'm doing work that I should have done previously, in figuring out who all is in the search party that comes in the night. One of the fun and celebrated things about this adventure is that information about every single resident of Orlane is provided, including their location, disposition, profession, etc. So I've been figuring out who all the specific people are that could hear the magically-amplified yelling and would come running. I'll be posting in the threads soon.

OK, so the people running away with the body - Reptile, Theran, Myrtha - should read and post to the Getting Away with It thread.

The two PCs who are staying to face the villagers - Chase and Aanbo - should read and post to the Suspicion in the Starlight thread.

No problem! Chase and Aanbo are off to a wonderful start!

The splitting subs looks nice. No idea what is going on with the others.

Hey, I just want to apologize for the change in my posting behavior (particularly for the people in the "Suspicion" thread); normally I like to make separate posts as each NPC, with pictures, so that you get a better sense of who's doing the talking. But there's TWENTY NPCs here, and there's a LOT of talking happening. So I've decided that, for this stretch, I'm going to post in blocks of text as me, rather than individual posts from each speaker. It just saves time and page space.

No worries from me. I can appreciate the work required, so whatever makes things easier for you!

Same here, I think it is working well and thank you for all the work you are putting in to it.

I'm eager to peek in there, but trying to avoid it for now.

Sorry for the slow posting rate this past day; each thread had the possibility of affecting the other, so I was waiting to see what each was doing.