[OOC] The tales told of heroes

Here - we can discuss the game. What would we like to see, not see, delve into, avoid? Who did something cool? Rules questions. Etc.

Where possible, let's do in-character planning as conversations in the IC thread(s - depending how long we make this run).

Greetings to everyone! Excited to get this show on the road!

Tibbius, assuming you'd like us to hold off any IC posting until we've finalised the 5th member of the group by giving Jomsviking a chance to adjust his character based on your feedback?

Actually I would be glad to see people get the ball rolling with some i/c conversation - first poster gets to set the time of day, second poster gets the weather of the day. Please download the .zip and look at the map to start making plans how to proceed, and to locate Havens. One other thing you might want to do is identify your lost homes. When it's needful to Take Courage, you could share stories of those homes to restore yourselves.

Further note: please, on your character sheets, identify the gear you have. Remember you're refugees. You fled from war with what you could carry. For example, the group might have one pack mule or horse, a partial set of cookware. Each of you has clothing, a weapon, maybe a tool, and limited food. If you had significant armor, that could give you advantage in combat; but you don't. If you think of something else that a refugee plausibly would have, please propose it here before adding to your sheet.

As far as tools go, would Flintstone be appropriate? Seems like the kind of thing a practiced cook would think to grab along with pot and pan when scrabbling to get supplies together in a hurry.

Yes, sounds good.

DM, how is this for gear/weapons:
Weapon: Small knife
Tool: Smith’s hammer
Half a smith’s leather apron (missing length)
Two tin cups, one missing a handle
A chipped clay plate
A patched up water skin
A short, frayed length of rope (10 ft.), clearly cut from something else.
Some hard tack and dried fruits.
A small back pack

yes, good

As we are running from the war. Shouldn't we know where the main battles or horrors are right now? Or the turmoil is so big that we don't know that? I mean normally we should try to go away from the danger that causes us to flee. Do characters now any direction where is this danger?

Also do we know who is this Barbarian Prince ? Are the politics, factions, parties involved even important for the characters? Or we just try to stay alive and have lost track of what "the elites" are doing or don't even care for quite some time now?

DM, about my character gear and story:
I imagine Alfred as one who comes from very wealthy family. But left his family home, to seek for treasures or even much more: secrets of the world. But that was before the war. Now he don't know if he will ever get back there and meet his family. So he is not used too much to hardships like we will probably experience. I think it can make some interesting narrating opportunities. This contrast between what he was used to have, and having nothing at all. Or even better: having things that had a great value before the war, and now are just meaningless and the simple pice of bread is more valuable. I would like also him to have a mount. A great, beautiful one, that could run in the top races of this world are be a great help in biggest battles... but now it is used as pack mule for the group. What is painful for Alfred, but he understands that this is the way it should be. Another contrast between former life - now and then.
So my gear would be:
Great horse - Fakir
Two swords with narrow blades(like in the character art), but Alfred is using only one of them for fighting - it's called "Truth".
The other one is some kind of family heirloom, which he never even pulls out of its scabbard - it's called "Justice". Maybe someday he will find out that they have some special qualities?
3 throwing knives.
Leather armor, that don't restrains movements.
An expensive and ornate carpet with an image of his great-grandfather holding a lance on a horse - can be used as bed.
Rope good for climbing, with wich he is ting his valuable carpet...
Basic tools like knife to make basic animal traps.
Small bag with:
- 10 prices of fines dried meat. A real treat. But they won't last for long...
- sword sharpener
- his mother handkerchief with family initials,

Is it all good, GM?

I am going to leave many of the answers up to you. If you think that your character would be interested in the politics and goings on before the war, please look at the setting reference documents that are linked in the Game Details. Your character can know as much of that as you like.

As far as main battles, the turmoil is sporadic and widespread. It's not so much any major battles or fronts of war, as it is a generalized risk of being caught by scavenging soldiers, pillaging bandits, or the goblins, or some other horror loosed by bloodshed.

Now let's talk about food ... in addition to writing stories or poems or songs and making a roll of the appropriate skill, you also can Take Courage for the group by describing the preparation and flavoring of a lovely meal, and making a roll of that skill.

At the outset, you have peasants' trail food: a few days of some grain, peas or beans or lentils, maybe a few small onions or turnips or parsnips. Gisela has a cookpot, and you can find water suitable for making porridge by succeeding at a foraging roll. If you want something nicer or more flavorful, you'll need to forage the ingredients.

Yes, others have the peas and grains I mentioned above, you have the good salt meat to flavor the porridge.

DM, do you have a preference for posting etiquette, apart from 3 posts per week? I mean something like do we wait for each other to get post before we post again or can we post as we have time and see fit?

I would like everyone to be included as much as possible. Obvs if somebody just ghosts us, we shouldn't all be waiting on them. On the other hand, I would prefer not to see a prolonged back-and-forth posting between two players (including me) where other players are waiting for a prompt to engage.

Posting etiquette: don't exclude others; find ways to include your fellow players, and to be included.

About rolling dice: I run this differently according to the themes of each game. The themes of this game are hard times, scraping by, desperation ... accordingly, it seems appropriate to require die rolls for actions that might have any unusual benefit. For example, no roll would be needed for Gisela to prepare an ordinary porridge; but a successful cooking roll would be needed for preparing a specially nourishing porridge that could let its eaters Take Courage. Indeed, a foraging roll would be needed to gather the proper ingredients for that porridge, if they weren't already on hand. Similarly, when trying to distinguish antipyretic flowers from hallucinogenic flowers, an herbalism roll might be needed.

Follow up question regarding Take Courage... do we declare the Take Courage action before we do them? Fx, Talayan launching into a story could be "just" roleplay or it could be specifically to pick up the spirits of the group. So should I declare it beforehand if I want it to be seen as a Take Courage worthy action?

Tell a story, or cook a meal, whenever you'd like and have time in the main story. If you want to Take Courage, roll Rhyming or Cooking.

Following up on a side question:

Just working on a post at the moment, tibbius are you happy for us to assume we can gather enough tinder for a basic fire to get the food going with the ingredients we already have? Or would you like us to make a foraging roll for that as well?

I'll let that go without rolling.

Here's what I'm thinking for the basic structure of a wilderness game day:
- move a hex or stay in same hex
- I roll for encounter (there may sometimes not be an encounter, or it may be innocuous, or extra dangerous)
- resolve encounter
- anyone who can, makes a forage roll to augment the group's provisions (disadvantage to this, if you moved to a new hex)
- if you want to Take Courage, anyone who'd like to contribute to that tells their story or poem or describes their meal for the group, and rolls Rhyming or Music or Cooking (disadvantage to Cooking if nobody had a good foraging roll)
- expend provisions
- rest (unless prohibited by the result of an encounter)

We're going to track provisions using a Supply die for the group as a whole. This is different than the Resource die in the rules, which is focused on money.

The Supply die starts at 2. When you expend provisions, you roll the Supply die. If your roll matches or is exactly 1 smaller than the current value of the die, it gets 1 smaller. When it's zero, you're out of provisions. HOWEVER, for each person who made a successful forage roll, count down from 6 to a threshold (e.g., if three people succeeded at foraging, count down 5->4-> threshold of 3). If your roll is more than the current value of the Supply die, and more than the threshold, the Supply die gets 1 bigger.

I suppose that counts as taking courage. Though I think in character Ulfheddin would only sing a song in Sindarin or Adunaic and I don't have the time to translate that right now.

@tibbius sounds good to me. It is what I felt was lacking in this game - I'm the person that needs some structure:)
I think we also need some (mechanical?) means to decide where to go, when to end discussions and what to do when there is no consensus. Or something like that. Unless this game should be mainly about "camp conversations"?

How do you see our adventures in this world, guys?

What were your assumptions for this game @tibbius as they are not clear to me? Hex crawl? Resource management? Grup dynamics in dire situations? Camp drama? :) What kind of stories you expected to mainly see with us? I know that we can create whatever stories we want, but I think it is good to know other players and GM expectations.

Yes.

Keeping in mind that the cities (and whatever farmsteads you might discover) count as Havens. Then also NPC interactions will be key.

Combat may arise out of the hex crawling.

But the four things you highlighted, yes, I think those are well-aligned with what I advertised.

(Also thanks for the good words about the mechanics and daily protocol.)

Oh important I should mention that the rivers are navigable, if you take time to build a raft or find a boat. They flow generally northward and eastward.

Mechanically and structurally I'm on a learning curve, so thank you for your explanations.
I'm here for all of it.

Thanks Tibbius!
I do prefer some structure. Initially I assumed a similar structure to the Barbarian Prince, but was not sure about it. I like very much what you just shared, and I guess we will become familiar with the mechanics in time.

As for the posts so far... The characters were suppose to know each other beforehand, we they actually didin't, so it's fun to have some initial conversations to allow to actually know each other. But I feel those doesn't really match the structure just provided. Maybe we could have another thread to introduce and comment on our character's backgrounds? Just to keep the current thread closer to Tibbius expectations...
And I totally agree with Pedrop on these..

Also...
Is this ok for gear?
longbow, arrows (20), bundle of medicinal herbs, waterskin, rope (10ft), backpack, small knife, map of the area, monk's outfit, iron hook, flint&steel, bedroll, wooden meditation necklace beads, clay dish, 10gp

Yes. ... where on the map was your temple, which has been ruined by war?

First, I'll roll the encounter of the day. You're in hills, so Barbarian Prince says there will be an encounter on 10+.

... there is no encounter.

Now, the foraging. With tools, but no foraging trait, Alfred would roll 1d6. He simply is not good at making traps. You could spend Fate after rolling to roll another die, if you would like.

Its good we had no encounter. We have very good fighting abilities as a group, but I'd rather secure food and team dynamics before entering battle...

Today, Eldar will also be hunting, he does have the shooting skill and his bow! :)
Having the skill and appropriate weapon, how should I roll for hunting?

First keeping in mind you are in the hills, rather than the forest, let me describe a bit the situation in the IC thread and then you will be rolling 3d6 for the shooting skill.

Going to make a post as I didn't really describe my contribution to gathering previously... Quick question on that, as I've already rolled to identify/gather any herbs and flowers and got a success. Are we good to use that as my contribution to foraging for the day Tibbius, or would you like me to roll again in my next post?

(Will wait for you to finish your interaction though Cathamber, don't want to interrupt the current flow! :) )

In response to the questions around what we want out of the game, I shall be fully honest - I'm mostly enjoying getting to be a player and not a GM out of this full stop(!) as of such I am less than fussy, haha!

But I'll happily lay out what would be ideal for me, then if we want to adopt it as a structure we can or we can leave it - I'm easy! :)

I feel that in general I like the clear structure tibbius has laid out for us that makes up a game day. An OOC means to quickly and easily discuss hex movement is something I am definitely behind though, as was suggested by Pedrop.
If our focus is on hex exploration, group dynamics and survival in tough times - roleplaying out the results of our actions and heated conversations around important decisions will be a lot of fun... Not having a structure to that though could lead to us getting bored of making the same posts repeatedly.

My ideal structure would be as follows:

1. Day Start/Resource update: tibbius starts the day as he has been with a descriptive post. In terms of OOC information, this post could let us know our current hex position and supply die results.

2. Movement: Everyone makes a "start of the day and planning" post. Plenty of room for RP, obviously, but the goal is to let everyone know if our character wants to stay put, move to a hex or abstain from planning and follow the majority. (It'd be great if people could list the hex in an OOC at the end of their post so there's no confusion as to where we're talking about on the map!)

We know this phase is done once everyone has had a chance to post, and we have a majority decision. This way we can leave things open for camp drama if we want to go that way, but otherwise I think it would be good if we could all agree that tibbius moves straight on to the next phase once everyone has made at least one post and there is a majority 'winner' decision.

3. Encounter: tibbius rolls for encounter and makes an IC thread post related to our movement (or lack thereof!) and encounter (or lack thereof!).

We know this phase is done if nothing happens OR when the encounter is dealt with.

4. Foraging: We all make a post either describing our taking part in the foraging or not (as the case may be).

We know this phase is done once everyone has posted at least once and is back at camp/shelter.

5. Courage: We gather in the dim dark...(!) Everyone gets a chance to make at least one post where we can discuss the events of the day, our character's state and take courage with tales, poems, songs or food.

We know this phase is done once everyone has posted at least once, and we each have a post where we indicate our character is going to retire for the night or similar.

And then everything loops back to the beginning.

How does that sound for people?

First reaction is that I love running games for other DMs!
This all sounds good to me, I'd like to know what others think as well.

Thank you for this! I’ve been floundering a bit on what exactly is expected of me in regards to mechanics /RP and decision making, since this is my first foray into something that is not 5e. Your write up makes it much easier.

It sounds good to me as well.

Yes. Very good development of what Tibbius have proposed. Now we have very well described main structure. I hope now we will stick with it - we can always change/evolve it when there will be need for this. Thanks a lot. I propose to post it in different thread naming it something like "Game structure" and GM could edit it when there will be such need.

But I would consider Foraging rolls to be made automatically by GM for everyone in one post as... I'm not sure if my creativity is so big that I will be able to narrate NOT catching rabbits for 5th time in a row... In any interesting way😀 Not even thinking about 10th time... 😀

Glad it's helped and people like!

If everyone's happy with it, I second Pedrop's suggestion - a separate "Game Structure" thread with nothing but the game structure as a post would be useful. Tibbius, if you want to just copy and paste my write-up and then we can have that available for you to edit should you get new ideas/other people suggest something alternate that we all like!

This is a fair point... Perhaps we should combine Foraging and Courage into one to help speed that up/take away the need to 'describe' foraging? If people want to, they can. But otherwise it can be as simple as "Gisela returns to the camp, no rabbits to her name" followed by talking about songs, poems, ending the day, etc.

Personally I'd prefer that to the GM rolling automatically for all of us, as... well... I like rolling for myself, even digitally. I'm sad that way. ;)

So that revised section would be:

4. Foraging and Courage: We all make a post where we confirm the results of our attempts at foraging and then gather in the dim dark... Everyone gets a chance this way to make at least one post where we can discuss the events of the day, our character's state and take courage with tales, poems, songs or food.

We know this phase is done once everyone has posted at least once, and we each have a post where we indicate our character is going to retire for the night or similar.

Of course, if more people would find it quicker and easier for tibbius to just roll foraging for us, It's not a hill I'll die on!

Good I will make new thread.

This is good. My aim was mainly to make it faster - not to wait for every "rabbit roll":) and not to expect everyone to write something about it. Combining it with Courage makes it very good middle way for everyone. You can roll for your rabbits - yourself. ( I understand that you don't want to handle your rabbits to someone else - I really do:D ) You can describe in every little detail how those damn rabbits escaped AGAIN from your trap - that you were preparing for whole day, taking into account every possibility there is, doing it for the 50th time... But: You don't have to:)

To be clear: I'm not against any interesting descriptions about someone's hunting adventures if they like to make one - I'm just mocking my last roll and my inability to make interesting descriptions for the same thing after n-th time. Especially that - in my case - it probably wouldn't move action forward even a bit. Just my strange sense of humor... :)

I will adjust the Game Sequence.

Your humour came through loud and clear no worries! 🙂 But a good point is a good point regardless! This way no one feels forced to detail a lack of rabbits over and over.... 😄

When there's a bear to wrestle Ulfheddin will leave camp. Until then hes camp steward.

The Sustenance die has rolled a 1. It remains to narrate the ways in which your supplies will dwindle. Perhaps some great feat could overcome this run of luck.

Yes we have had miserable rolls

Sorry to meta game here Talayan is quite strong and would love using her strength to do something useful instead of building boulder cairns of frustration in camp if Eldar makes it back to camp and tell his tale of his two kills :-)

I think you have deleted something from your last post? Or I've started to imagine things? (probably because of all those rabbits...)
Either way: I think someone have written something about role-playing foraging, no?
If yes: personally, I have such a suspicion... that we started to roleplay it because... well... there is nothing else to do in this campaign... so far.
I propose for some time from now on we should withdraw to only rolling for it. And only RP it when we will be prompted by GM.

Let's move already to interesting things: exploring, encounters, internal camp relations(which are possible only when something will be happening...) and to do the foraging: the Barbarian Prince way. Please.

Maybe we even should skip Take Courage step(from our structure) if there won't be any encounters AND we won't move?

What do You Guys think?

I will write my PhD about rabbit traps later... ok? :)

I think we will find that delving the details of Eldar's hunting trip, and its aftermath, can lead to interesting developments of internal camp relations.

I hope so:)

A little info about preserving meat as jerky

- you need to cut it thin (4-8 mm thick).
- you need prolonged low heat (smoky fire for 6-8 hours).

Making 40 kg jerky will take about two days, or a sleepless 24 hours, during which you can feast on some of what you're making.

- salt will make it last longer and dry quicker. You don't have salt.

I rolled a "1" for the Sustenance die, which could represent some things going wrong with the jerky-making process, so that you don't end up getting good provisions from Eldar's kill. This is not implausible. Properly curing meat, without resort to a modern kitchen, takes considerable skill - and a bit of luck. Anything from a rain storm, to a lack of fuel, to cutting the strips too thick, can lead to spoiled jerky.

Since the "1" established that your provisions dwindle, rather than increasing, I will leave it up to one of you to narrate what happens to ruin what seemed like a great bit of luck and hard work.

My PC is definitely not hunting again, I don't think we can have both rolling for specific actions during RP, and rolling for general result.

Let's just say we never find the rams when we went back to get them to the camp. And roll dice for provisions next times.

Edit: Just to be clear: As a player I'm not angry nor ironic. I do understand that these kind of misunderstandings happen as we are yet to finish polishing the rules we are using. I didn't expect for the PC to be that LUCKY to be able to kill 80kg worth of meat in the first hunt!

Edit 2: Also, I didn't know of Barbarian Prince before, so I'm thankful with Tibbius for sharing it with us.

I agree! Let's say, instead, the following:

4. Foraging: We declare whether we are foraging or doing something else to maintain the camp. If we are foraging, we make a roll for that. We can roll 3d6 if we have shooting or surviving; 2d6 if we have the foraging trait but not one of those skills; or 1d6 otherwise.

We know this phase is done once everyone has posted their action and roll. Then Tibbius wraps up any loose ends of foraging and (generally) we all return to camp.

So we are discarding WalrusKing proposition of combining "4. Foraging and Courage" into one move? Like in the top of this thread's page? I think it was really good idea - and would make things faster and would correspond what you have written here.

I agree with you both.

In the logic of the Sustenance roll, Foraging needs to happen before that. We could nevertheless combine Foraging and Courage, then roll Sustenance as suggested by WalrusKing. Let's do that, going forward.

Good plan. I'm for it.

It seems like we have a dis/agreement over the plan. Eldar wants to stay. Talayan nods, but proposes going. What do others think?

I just posted my RP - 1 vote for moving to hex 1206:)

2 votes

I think my morning tired brain must have skipped over the "stay" part of Eldar's planning. Sorry! Though, it doens't change my vote to move.

Hey all.

For personal reasons I have to drop out of the game.
I hope you all have a fun, challenging and long game ahead of you.

QUESTION: how procedural do we want to make this game?

What I mean, is that presently I'm presenting an opportunity for roleplaying the interaction with this elf you've just met. But perhaps that has bogged down the pace of game that we expected from the outset.

Would it be better to reduce the interaction to one of you makes a roll to find out how it goes, I summarize, and we continue the game day?

I think it all depends how significant is such interaction. If we get a "new solider" and his only "future" is shooting with a bow... give us a hint to end it faster. If there is something more about it, I'm not against good interaction. Somehow we have to get to know this world - and its current state.

So.... as 2 players became inactive - do we have their characters as "force" in case of a battle? Or we are only left with 3 of us + Lligarond ?

I no longer have any way to access the sheet for Talayan Stoneback, so we'll have to play that she left in the night. I can access the sheet for Gisela, so I can NPC her.

Also: does this "Barbarian prince" setting have any main plot? Aim? Or something like that? That we will be able to discover? Or do GM have such planed for us?

Or we will be wondering from location to location and see what happens?

As mentioned at the outset, the general aim is to establish a bastion of safety amid the strife and destruction of the world at large.

OK, somehow forgot about it. Thx.

Lol...:) We will see how formidable this little, old lady will be in battle... :) Thx for clarification.

Having not succeeded on anything yet, 2 5s is 2 successes with a 4 being 1 failure?

Any 5 = success, sometimes multiple successes are extra good,

no successes = failure, could be bad depending on situation

all 1s = blunder, very bad

Maybe we should make new thread with description of our shared resources/status... as I already forgot what is the name of this new elf... :) Will you make it for us GM? :)

Hey guys... from what I see, only Pedrop, Jomsviking, tibbius and me are active in the game... so, I don't really understand why are the PCs waiting for the 'sleeping' characters. Are we waiting for them to wake up? Are new players taking over those PCs? Tibbius will you be playing those while waiting for new players to enter?
I'm confused..

ok, I gather that everyone's ready to move forward ... but what do you want to do?

The wizard does not want to go to your camp, do you make him come with you, go without him?

I'm sorry, but I would like to bow out of this game. Have too much work right now in RL and it seems that hex crawl especially in PbP format isn't for me. I didn't know that earlier as I'm relatively new to playing RPGs and not only reading about them. If you need me to somehow RP my character leaving or him for something else I can stay for 1 week or 2 max. But after that I will have to leave this game. Have a great game!

Meditating gives us time to work it out. Ulfheddin isn't mad Gisela's the boss her approval is all that mattered to him.

I have decided to retire this game.