Game Discussion Board

This is where all the out of character comments (OCC) will take place. It is also the area for our initial discussion and preferably the player wish lists for this game that is to be.

Note: I mean what I say in the description, in that I am hoping that this will be a game created out of the player's wish lists. So the more comprehensive the wish lists that I am given (both wanted to see and do not want to see) the better I can weave a story that is much more fun for all. I have been able to, in the past, weave every element I have gotten in wish lists into the story that I ran and this includes items of inclination that occur as the game progresses. Next I go with the player flow. This means (since we are not face-to-face) that you should chat things up in this thread. I sometimes draw inspiration from player comments and speculations about this or that. I have found sometimes players enjoy it even more when their speculations come true even though those speculations initially were wrong. Still I never fully reveal my cards. You will only get to see the ones I play ;-)

Okay again looking forward to seeing everyone's wish lists. Yeah I know, getting that from players is like pulling good teeth. Extremely difficult and often very painful ;-) but you all can do it.

Edit: This post has been edited to help ease translation

Okay things as player you will need to be aware of and something I warn all new players to my arena:

1) The Game is about Fun -- if you are not having fun please speak up -- your fun is your direct responsibility. That being said there are other players and my job is to balance the fun for all but I cannot do that if I am unaware of what you feel would be fun and what you feel is not fun. Further fun can change as things progress. Also the fun may not affect your character directly such as: I think it might be fun if so-so happened to us or to that character. This is not say I ask players to wish bad things on one another it is that sometimes players can come up with very interesting twists to the story line that does prove to be quite fun for one and all. Be it a good happening, neutral happening or bad happening.

2) Okay just because the Guidelines say so does not mean it has to be so. Yes I will use the Guidelines outlined in the books most of the time but at no time do I view them as Rules. But if you want to point out what the Guidelines state feel free to do so but please do not refer to them as rules for even the designers have called them guidelines since the very beginning. Also this means I am open to alternatives if it helps one make a character that better reflects the concept a player is wanting to play. As such I have over the years tailored many a character class to better allow for the concept the player wanted to play but this concept must be expressed clearly and generally in advance as the is balance between static pre-plotted things versus dynamic on the fly things is just that a balance to keep it fair for all.

3) Everything you encounter you are not guaranteed to be able to handle part of adventuring is figure out what can and cannot handle. That being said Dragons are extremely dangerous and my best image of this is in a picture where a group of 5 seasoned adventurers that currently look very worse for the wear are holding up their combat victory which is a dragon that is only about 6 feet long (aka basically a baby dragon).

4) In relation to the above -- if you find that you are fighting everything you encounter you are probably doing something wrong and this generally means you can expect an early demise. As I will guarantee you that not every encounter is meant to be resolved via force but I will never stop you from doing so. What you do is up to you. Further I generally let the dice speak in most situations, I have had minor encounters nearly kill the entire party and I have had situations where my planned epic battle was walked over by the PCs in such a manner that they thought it had just been a minor encounter and they were still looking for the epic finale to their current episode which due the dice would now never come.

5) But we only get XP from killing things -- hog wash -- only if you do not have a creative GM because frankly I always hated that concept. I give XP for encountering things... regardless of how you choose to encounter it. I mean if you learn that is best to hide from that big dangerous dragon then you learned not only that but perhaps how to hide from a big dangerous dragon but this always depends on the particulars of that situation. Of course creative means of handling encounters can warrant more XP while poorly handling an encounter may reduce the XP -- it kind of depends on how much I felt your character's learned from a specific encounter. Further treasure is its own reward so you do not get XP for that (although I am not even sure they even do that anymore aka give XP for the gold value you gain but that ought to tell how long ago I implemented that rule)

6) If you find your character's without something to do then chances are you have been adventuring with blinders on as your first adventure will hold the seeds to at least 2 or more adventures and every adventure after that will have often have at least one additional adventure weaved into it and may have more. Some of these adventures will be time sensitive meaning if you do not deal with them in a timely manner they will either disappear or get worse. While some others maybe red herrings that dead end into nothing and yet seem extremely promising and/or enticing. Further some adventures might lead into extreme and deadly danger. For instance I had a group go out adventuring and they came across some Orcs putting rocks in a small river. They killed and/or chased off these orcs and scattered the rocks. On their way back the found Orcs again putting rocks in the same place and they again killed and/or chased off these orcs and scattered the rocks but it never occurred to them to investigate the why of it. Then later on they went on a prolonged adventure in another direction and when they returned they found the village they had been staying in had been razed to the ground and something heavy and wheeled had rolled into the village from the direction of where those orcs had been putting rocks into the small river. Yes it was a time sensitive adventure that they just happened to miss out on and there ignoring it carried the consequences of the place they had been briefly calling home along with the friends they had made there now were all gone.

7) Creatures act accordingly. This is to say if they are losing and are not fanatical they will most like break and run. Further depending upon the situation you may be able to scare them, bluff them, bribe them, or just about anything them that you can imagine. I had a party enter a place that No One returns from (hmm did they ignore the clue that it might not be something they would be able to handle) and nearly got themselves killed and barely escaped by fleeing as fast as they could hotly pursued. They were then spotted running out of that place that No One returns from. One of the players spun a grand story (lie) of how they barely escaped the death from the monsters that are believed to exist within that place. When the truth of the matter was much different but the populace did not know this and they soon became local heroes with the perks that came with that. Note prior to that they had been treated with suspicion as some townsfolk will do with adventuring types which by the way was a random roll as to how they would be accepted or not based on the those particular townsfolk.

8) Role play your character do not do something just because it might be good for the story and further do not do something that is totally out of character unless you have a solid reason for it. I only use alignments as guide posts this is your character's tendency (or average) personality. Extreme stress can alter ones normal modus operandus and you do not get penalized for that. However if you are supposed to be lawful good but consistently are acting chaotic evil we are probably going to have a chat about that. Also if for whatever reason your character becomes a villain it has become an NPC -- as I only run the heroes of the story, be they reluctant, dark, or gung-ho they are still the heroes in some way -- and Evil is not going to be heroic over time just due to its nature so PCs cannot be evil and since most players struggle with NN I tend to nix that alignment as well and the latter is just to help prevent arguments over whether someone is being NN or not. Note there exception to almost every rule with that said I have made a few exceptions to LE but only if the player outlined a specific code of conduct that the character strictly adhere's to that can allow them to function in a heroic manner for prolonged periods and that the character is on the path of redemption of some sort which they have mapped out - in some general way - for me in advance.

So what do these alignments mean to me:

Lawful : What is most important is Order/Laws
Chaotic : What is most important is Freedom
Neutral : What is most important is The Cause

The Cause if there is none generally ends up being Me

Good : Basically Help Others
Evil : Basically Hurt Others
Neutral : Basically Me

Alignment Balance Chart
Good Alignments (LG, NG, CG, LN) - NN - (CN, LE, NE, CE) Evil Alignments

Please pay very close attention to CN -- it is by this old (since the beginning of alignments) chart of alignments that denotes that it is on the evil side of NN making it an evil alignment -- so personally I feel I need to go no further and as such I will no longer argue the minutia of it.

If something else comes to mind I will expound upon it. If you have any questions about the above fire them off as the only bad question in my book is the unasked one.

Hello DM. I just wanted to say thank you up front for agreeing to DM for us. I onow it can be pretty difficult to just jump in and DM for a group of players and I appreciate that extra work.

Now as for what I persoanlly like in a game. The first item on my wishlist are nice clear objectives in my adventures and I really enjoy proactive DMs who lead from the front rather than reactive DMs. I have found that games where DMs try to be reactive don't work well here but that may just be my own personal experience and I am open to discuss it. For example, I think having a clear objective e.g. 'some goblins came into the village and kidnapped the blacksmith's daughter, go and save her!' Is better than 'you arrive in a new town, what do you do?' With a whole bunch of quests.seeded around the town.

Okay as a heads up I have allowed eyetyrant in but this is (as I mentioned above) subsequent to player agreement and no need to feel like you have to accept anyone as gaming dynamics can be greatly affect both positively and negatively by adding one more character. So eyetyrant please note your inclusion is still tentative at this time but have been allowed in so you can let the others know more about yourself should they deem they are open to allowing another player in.

Arina - I do a hybrid of what you have denoted - this is to say you will have at least an initial clear objective - but as I said unless you adventure with blinders on you should be able to stumble upon additional ones as you proceed. Some of these may even seem like part of the current objective while actually being something totally different. The key is I do my best to remember what it is like to be on the other side of the GM screen and the pitfalls and hang-ups that can occur from that much different perspective. Oh and btw unless you all just want to dungeon-monger I prefer GM to DM as I like to run Games not just Dungeons ;-)

Now nicely you all are currently working from a base of operations which can be a fairly easy mechanism for presenting things to you in a more mission based manner but I find that leading the players around by the proverbial nose tends to be less enjoyable in the long run than the more organic means of discovering those adventures on your own. So thanks for the heads up on your wish on this as I WILL take that into consideration as I plan out things and start the weaving process.

Now to be even more specific instead of -- You arrive in a new village, what do you do? -- what is more likely to happen would be -- Some Goblins came into Village A and kidnapped the blacksmith's daughter, please rescue her! Then as you are tracking those Goblins down you come across Village B whose blacksmith's daughter was kidnapped by Goblins, please rescue her! Then as you continue tracking the Goblins they appear to have encountered some Orcs. In a not to friendly manner. The groups split. Now what do you do? Aka you have a decision to make that may carry with it consequences but you will need to make a decision. Of course, you might have additional information that you garnered along the way that might help but then again you might not.

Questions that might have come up...
1) Why are Goblins kidnapping blacksmith's daughters?
2) Who has those daughters now, the Goblins or the Orcs or both?
3) Was the Goblin encounter with the Orcs just happenstance or purposeful?
4) If purposeful why?

This is just a minor example...

Still to also help more with understanding I will state I had a group once decide to investigate something and they each discovered something and one of the players was a bit miffed as they felt their endeavors were redundant. I had to explain to that player that was only because everyone else had been fairly thorough as well. This is to say if there is a much needed piece of information there will always be several ways to obtain and/or simple stumble across that information and the same is true about additional adventures.

On that note and reflecting back upon something I mention previously -- during an investigation one of the players was solidly convinced that there must be something strange about a building and that there had to be something hidden below it. Well initially there was not but they were SO convinced of it that well I created something. It made them extremely happy to be right and everyone had fun exploring this hidden space. I have often seeded adventures with meaningless things of mystery only to upon player's choosing to purse it in earnest turn that bit of mystery into a full-blown adventure. So sometimes these adventure seeds are not even of my own doing ;-) but you may never know which is the case. This is why I encourage you all to kibitz here in this thread about the game as it helps me to make the game more yours and thus more fun for you all.

The more the merrier as far as I'm concerned.

And with regards to the rest, nothing wrong with complications and surprises! You're the god here not us. We cannot see all and it would be boring if we could.

Hi, everyone, acquaintances and companions old and new!

I'm fine with another player being added, but I would really prefer the group to stay at no more than the current number of players. The bigger the number, the more jumbled and slow the game often becomes, especially if players are being descriptive, and I'd rather have a small group! Of course, it's very much a personal preference, I wouldn't be completely against new players. :D

Now, DeJoker, you asked for a wishlist, so let me offer mine! Most of my request don't really have much to do with your terms above, as I mainly count them as acceptable, but there are some things I want to ask or note.
1) Please don't take it the wrong way, but I'm struggling with reading your posts a bit. I have a very poor eyesight and my native language uses punctuation way more frequently than English, so long posts without punctuation make me miss imnportant details sometimes. Can you maybe accent the main thoughts in OOC posts, like with bold text or something? I'll try my best to read through anyway, but sorry in advance if I miss something!
2) I'm a player new to DnD. The previous GM didn't mind a newb, and I hope you won't too - I'm a fast learner, if I do say so myself. ;D Still, I'm going to be asking questions and probably making mistakes sometimes, bear with me please!
3) I don't much care for the DnD's alignments, to be honest. It shouldn't be a problem, as my character is Neutral Good, and I imagine it will be hard to mess that one up. XD But as you made it a separate point, I thought I'll mention this anyway.
4) Don't really have anything to say about the narrative style - I can do both railroad plots and freeplay investigations.
5) I'm okay with 4 posts per week, but please don't make it more frequent. I'm going to be less active during holidays, and post per day will not be very doable. :D
6) Do you prefer posts including introspective from characters? Like, should I avoid including thoughts in my posts, or will that be fine?

And I also have some questions in regards to the game's mechanic - namely, transition for us old players.
1) Should we reset health, experience, used slots, etc.? I imagine we should, since it's a new adventure in (probably?) a new world, but just making sure.
2) Are we keeping Evolved Cantrips?
3) Our old GM didn't yet made the game public, but I imagine they wouldn't mind us sharing the rules if they agreed to share the game. Do you want us to give you the survival rules I mentioned? I can copy them from old forum~
4) What is the new game's setting now?
5) May I adjust my equipment? XD

PS: I edit posts a lot, but that's often just typo corrections.

Item 1.1 of your lists
Okay I saw nothing that seemed necessary to take the wrong way. I can easily adjust my posts to be more language friendly. In fact I will go back to my previous posts and adjust them as well. This way you should not miss anything important. Note I have friends whose native language is not English and or my native language Anglish (American English) so I fully understand.

Item 1.2 of your lists
I enjoy newbies as well as those experienced and my motto is: The only bad question is the unasked one. So always feel free to ask if it is something you are curious about. Note when it comes to game specific things I may not directly answer if its a current thing. However, once it has become a moot game point I will explain things to help all get a better understanding.

Item 1.3 of your lists
Great I am glad to hear this. Always makes the game run smoother when there are not arguments over petty things like alignments.

Item 1.4 of your lists
Okay well do not be concerned here because I really do not do either extreme. I do not railroad the players but I do not do complete sand box style (You find yourself in a town what do you do now?) either.

Item 1.5 of your lists
I denoted 4 posts per week because I had no clue what you the players were wanting and that seemed a fair number. I personally tend to check a game on a daily basis as I know how slow PbP can be. Still do not stress over it just try to get at least 1 or 2 posts in during a week. To slow and the game can lose folks interests. Still whatever the pace I will not be going anywhere, unless real life intrudes on my plans.

Item 1.6 of your lists
I prefer story style narrative like posting. So yes add as much color to your posts as possible. Denote what the player is thinking. Denote what the player is physically doing. Denote how the player looks while doing it. The more details you put into a post the better the picture is for the others reading it. The more narrative (story-like) you make those posts the more fun they are to read. Note I do not expect any to be an accomplished writer but I have played with some in the past that were.

Item 2.1 of your lists
Yes consider your characters reset to their beginning states. Especially since we do have at least one new player. Is it a new world? Hmm that is an interesting question as did you know what world you were in previously? But yes it will be a new setting and you will have not memories of the old. Which leads me to a question. What were the character creation parameters that the previous game used? I need them for the new player. Oh and once I get these I will post my final parameters in a new thread as these may differ slightly, or not, to the ones you used.

Item 2.2 of your lists
I plan to keep Evolved Cantrips in some form. This is to say I am tweak those guidelines and I may not. If I do tweak them I will post those tweaks within my own guidelines thread.

Item 2.3 of your lists
Okay I also looked that player up and sent him a PM. Thanks to whomever for mentioning who they were. Still yes I can make the game public or invite Ornux to this one whichever you players wish. Still yes it would greatly speed things up if you were to share the survival rules with me. As that has been the only solid wish item for the game I have gotten thus far. ;-)

Item 2.4 of your lists
You will be in the a remote northern outpost just south of, and in the shadow of, the Great Barrier Peaks. I have a full write up on the general information for this area and the outpost. I will be posting a general map of the local region that is displayed on a wall in the outpost. I will posting a visual aid (an artist rendition so to speak as it is not exact replica) of the outpost you are currently in.

It will borrow heavily from the Forgotten Realms since someone in the group belongs to the Harpers. Still I will be posting the prospective patron's of this realm as well in order to define that list in detail. I further expect everyone to chose a patron. Further, if you wish and feel it is in character, please list any others that your character pays homage to and or placates. This is a world where the deities are actively present you would have to be insane to not pay them homage or placate them and it is very common to to do both to many. Note when I say actively presents this may mean nothing more than they have direct agents (clerics and such) that they empower.

Item 2.5 of your lists
Feel free to make any adjustments you like to your character that fall within the character creation guidelines. Which I hope to have posted soon.

Hey all, managed to jump on board this one. Feel free to catch me up with what's going on. I'm thinking of porting across an old Grave Cleric of mine whose adventure also got cut short by a busy GM.

DeJoker, as we're starting, you may also want to invite McDunno into this game. He played in the previous campaign from the beginning, and was the sole remaining player from the original group. Our characters had not yet interacted with his.

A couple of paragraphs from the original house rules thread, which don’t include any original rules:

You might use anything from the Player Handbook (PHB) or the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide (SCAG). You may also include spells from the Elemental Evil (EE), but need my approval for those.
I'd prefer you to stick to those books, but if a character option from another official published book would allow you to come up with an awesome concept, ask me: I'll take a look and let you know if I open this option.

For starting equipment, we'll follow the DMg p.38 guideline: you'll start with 500 gp plus 1d10 x 25 gp, plus normal starting equipment. You may spend them as you see fit, but the only magical items available are the consumables ones (scrolls, potions etc). Reference prices and availability are right here : Vikaastea is supplied as a Urban Locale but, being far from the Sword Coast and all its mages, magical items are priced Expensive and limited to consumables. Permanent magical items are out of your league for now.

Thanks rpgventurer can I get the "prices and availability are right here" link? Also since you seem to already know McDunno you will you please shoot him a PM to shoot me a PM if he is interested in joining. Note I generally cap a group at 5 in PbP because there always seems to be 1 or 2 more that get added and my actual cap is 7.

Okay I see some things will be changing. For instances starting money perhaps. I mean if you all are 5th level characters that is not typically what you get from what I remember. Still I will double check as I know they sometimes change from version to version and I might be remember the wrong version.

Also I am waiting to see the base rules for character creation can someone share those please. Also the homebrew rules used and any other particulars that helped set the base feel for the game.

The prices he is referring to is a pdf linked through google drive. I'll seeif I can link it to you.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V_udNPxlTk_ufSyLsZ4caIO5LqFmE5LO/view

I'll try it too: D&D Shop Catalog v1.8. (Sorry about that. I should've included it originally.)

Also, I sent McDunno a PM asking if he'd like to join us.

Great I have PM'd McDunno as well and applied to his still existing game -- still I believe we have an okay on that homebrew stuff and but its the character creation rules that we need the most right now. That way can post my version and the players can make their characters and the current players can tweak theirs if they so desire.

Also I will have a surprise (a pleasant one I hope) once all the characters have been created.

Okay what just occurred was not my surprise I was adding another Sub-Form and for some reason when I did it deleted my previous one along with all its contents. Now while I as able to reinstate the other Sub-Form it appears its contents were not restored -- how very annoying. I will recreate its basic contents tomorrow I have copied most of the important stuff out so no major loss there just probably have lost a few things. Please repost anything you want to have included once I have reinstated the threads just in case I did not get that copied out.

For the record, I received a PM from McDunno that he will not be joining us as he has moved on to other GP games.

Yeah I got a message from him saying that he was tickled you all like the characters enough to continue and would be opening that forum. Can one of you either point me to that forum or at least give me the name. I thought I knew which one it was but I guess I was wrong.

About your response - all sounds cool! Just some more notes on the topics~

1.1
Thank you! The latest posts are easier to read for me, I appreciate you doing it! Also, my own English is a mismatched mix of British and American with random Russian grammar rules sometimes sneaking in, forgive this - and do please tell me if I keep doing the same mistakes, I'll be happy to correct 'em. ("The" article is giving me a lot of trouble.)

1.2
I'll keep that in mind! I'm mostly worried about things like missing and forgetting more obscure rules, but I usually can find them with a quick search if there's any doubt. I'll be sure to ask for input if the search doesn't help.

1.5
I can check the game almost daily, but I sometimes miss a day or two in succession or just don't have inspiration to write something I feel will be worthy for a post - but I sure can do 1-3 post per week! I'll warn you if there'll be any prolonged absences... unless my network access suddenly goes down, but that happened only twice this autumn.

2.4
If we're kinda including forgotten realms, may I keep Egret's background of being from Underdark? :D

And as for the old game, if no one's linked it yet, here it is: Vikaastea Settlers: clearing out the Marsh of Tun.

And also, welcome, Bleak!