Go Badgers! (OOC Area)

Alright Hufflepuff folk, check in here please. :) If you're Ravenclaw and you can still see this, let me know that I screwed up.

Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure

Slytherin - Hufflepuff checking in.

HUFFLEPUFF POWER!

Whispers in parseltongue

Three out of four, cool, I'm sure WhiteDwarf will be along in a moment. And none of you posted over in Ravenclaw land so I'm guessing I did the separation right. :)

I'm not able to see Ravenclaw folder, so seems to be right.

Hi friends, glad to be playing with y’all!

Got one quick addition for y'all to do: I need you to pick a birthdate. :)

For reference, the campaign starts on B20N1184. This thread includes the information on how the calendar works. Don't worry about extrapolating day of the week, that's not the easiest thing if you're not me. :)

R7V1170

She a Winter baby.

Still working on sheet, will have it up asap, sorry for long wait! Making a character always takes me a long time, but I promise I’m very active once the game gets going.

I'm still wrapping up a few items on mine as well.

@Dipper, do you need the sheet to be completely finalized before I submit it? Mine is like 95% done.

Nope! You can submit now. I'm going to hit approve right away, but it's not a "real" approval til I get the chance to actually look at it and check off on it.

Okay, it's like 98% done. I'm sure I have some things missing, but I've been staring at this thing for hours, need a break.

What's up fellow Badgers. Iskwe's character sheet is all done and rolled for, I'll probably stick all the personality and appearance and history stuff in notes for it. Sorry I took so long, glad it was just in time for the game to start. Oh, for posterity, I can read the ravenclaw chat.

Will be working on mine this weekend. What is everyone playing

My character is a traumatized pacifist girl who has borne witness to death first-hand, and dedicated herself to the Lord of Mortals

Bruenor, a dwarven fellow looking to forge great things!

Iskwe is a high Elf bladesinger raised by Dwarves with a foul mouth and a short temper, very much a glass cannon dps character

Raven - human druid

looking at Sorlock Divine Soul... not sure about the warlock focus yet though. Looks like we have probably have healing and buffs covered!

Abigail is dedicated support; every single one of her abilities is a utility of some sort, with the goal of keeping her allies safe and sound. It helps that our DM has walked me through some magic basics.

EDIT: I just looked up what a Divine Soul is (that never showed up in BG3) and I think there's a unique opportunity to invest in Dipper's lore here. From where does this divine blood originate? One of the gods? And, come to think of it, what divine beings have existed in this world?

@Dipper?

Right, im going to try and integrate the lore, the gods etc... as the source of his divine spark, That said however there is also going to be a twist thrown in there. Dont want to give it away but it will be in my hidden background.

Hes also part of the Noble caste and its part of his blood line... related to second soul ritual.

I know sorlocks have a reputation for being OP... but im trying to create a good RP character and not a DPS monster. With my Cha as high as it is Im also thinking of getting the leadership feat but will reconsider if someone already has it.

Sorlocks can definitely get a little crazy depending on how you build them. I have one in another game, they are fun. I'm not OP there mainly because the beast barbarian destroys everything before I can even move :)

Here's a fun little tool for all of you, in case you're curious about how the height comparisons play out between you:
https://www.heightcomparison.com/?share=u8oHh7BrPh2



I'll add Basil to it once I've got data on his character.

We Stan a tall queen

So, Hufflefluff, what are your all's roleplaying experiences? Any horror stories to tell?

Starts a bonfire.

Jian-Roh is also a glass cannon, he's a half-elf Warlock Hexblade

No horror stories to tell really, just been playing on and off for about four decades, always a fun time. This site is particularly great.

I've been roleplaying freeform since 2017, but this is *technically* my first real tabletop game. I completed a solo campaign on RPGX, but that's it. One game at a bakery lasted 3 sessions, and another game on Discord didn't even last that long :3

I played age 10 through 30, took a few decades off when the kids were small, now back playing PbP last 5 or so months. No horror stories really, a bunch of disappointments with games failing at or shortly after launch, so hoping to avoid that with this one.

Started with the old D&D red box set. Still have it with the ugly bubble gum colored dice.

But do you still have the crayon for the dice!

I got some questions regarding this yearly pilgrimage to the Olde Crypts. Given that they do it every year, what is the boy so afraid of? Do people rarely ever return or something? Why do they keep doing it if people keep dying? And if they don't keep dying, then why's the boy so scared?

Alas, I do not

Can you tell us about any past games? Any favs you'd like to share?

Honestly the most memorable games were from college, so 35 years ago, probably 2nd edition. After finals week every semester our DM ran a one shot, all night, 20th level and pretty much any character concept. We'd start right after dinner and pretty much finish around breakfast. Didn't matter what you played, sentient iron golem, death knight, lich, dragon, full multi classed fighter/cleric/magic user - usually we were fighting a full god or demon lord, so we were constantly fighting for our lives. Things definitely get loopy after 3am when sleep deprivation really starts settling in but you've been playing for 10 hours but finally getting close to the finish.

Now days 9pm I'm ready for bed :)

And now I see all these retro campaigns to run Caves of Chaos from the box set (I'm even in one of those). The classics are new again!

Dang, even I usually go to bed around 2 am, and I'm a certified night owl. Don't really know what a "box set" is, though.

How much experience have you had with pbp? I understand, in the context of tabletop, it's rather uncommon, but all of my experience can count as play-by-post, albeit with less structure.

One of the first versions of D&D was Basic D&D which came in a Red Box which had the rules, dice, etc in it. It included the module Caves of Chaos, which is a dungeon crawl, kill everything that moves module. It is kind of strange to now see it played with modern concepts of goblins having identities where back then they were just vermin to be massacred with everything else.

I played about 2 years of PbP (via email) around 20 years ago and now I'm back for about 5 months now. I am not a naturally good writer, so PbP is definitely challenging for me. I've been really enjoying it so far, although I have not been very lucky on games as I've already had many fail. Really looking forward to this one and hoping for something with more longevity.

I dunno, bro, your OOC speech definitely passes my speech check. If you're really concerned about your writing, try focusing this into it. When I'm writing Abigail, I tend to slip into her mindset. What is she thinking? What is she feeling? What is her intent? You can express all of this through descriptive writing.

Why don't you try it? Right here. No better place to practice, if our glorious leader doesn't mind a little chatter.

I’ve done PbP since about 2013. If any of y’all have spent time on other PbP sites, including the one I think this game might have initiated from, we’ve probably crossed paths. Being a working stiff without a lot of time or gumption for all-niters anymore, this is a good format for me.

I may have mentioned this, but I've technically been roleplaying since 2017, but fast-paced freeform. 3-4 paragraphs fired off every 10-15 minutes, and only ending after a scene is closed or the participants refire because exhaustion caught up with them. I crave the heat of momentum, and dislike the long waiting times between forum responses.

You and I are like-minded. I’d rather engage a single game, with lively posting, than having to do what I and others sometimes otherwise do, which is a veritable small-stable of games to stay entertained in a few while others stall.

I've definitely noticed this. I can usually post every day, so I end up with multiple games and hope that at least one has something for me to respond to. Kind of the way it works. Unfortunately I've lost 3 games in the last week, one of my favorites among them. But this one is off to a great start, so hoping.

@Aisede that sounds cool, but I don't have the time or talent to pull off rabid posting like that. I write a lot of emails for work, so my business writing is pretty good, but my RPG writing is more challenging. I never play druid, so this should be interesting :)

All my pbp experience came from Naruto RP back in the height of the proboards era until recently with mostly RPGx and mythweavers, this one is brand new to me, but I've been playing dnd since 3.5 and pathfinder since release in person. Posts every 10-15 minutes seems a bit extreme for my tastes, but I like to think I can do relatively detailed posts in short spans of time, of course limited by the speed of the gameplay. I'd like a diverse breadth of games to play a multitude of characters ideally, but practically, 3 is probably max lol. Though I'm getting ready to run a fallout one of my own soon.

In my experience Pbp can be very very slow. A simple interaction in a tavern can take a days, Combats can go on for a week or more and single uncomplicated dungeon crawl months. Don’t get your hopes too high with lightning fast posts.

On RPGX I could expect multiple posts a day. In my Solo Campaign (an introductory campaign) I could at least expect a post+ every day. That's about what I expected, until we migrated here.

The roleplay culture I was raised in promoted fast responses, like what I described. But my roleplay experiences have also near-exclusively been one-on-one, where the only person I need to wait on is the DM. I've never really liked large groups all that much, and just barely tolerate my fellow human beings unless there's some mutual benefit involved. Probably one reason I never proactively sought tabletop games. Even when I did find something tabletop-adjacent, it was... Well, extremely fast-paced; a designated DM would post a "bounty" in one channel (this was on Discord btw) and up to 4 people would join and embark on a... Hmm... "Session" that would typically last around 1-2 hours straight. During that entire time, the party would post in a predetermined order, usually spaced 10+ minutes apart, and the custom system the fossil of a moderator made allowed for fast-paced fluid combat. It was all very exciting, and the DM's were all extremely competent and talented.

Only problem was that just about every single one of them was an amoral elitist that would axe your a** if you displayed anything less than impeccable grammar. People went to the chopping block just about every other day, and new players showed up just as frequently. Call it a high turning rate.

The server went extinct after the mods/DM's all turned on each other, and the server owner antagonized their strongest supporter, lol. I think Dipper might find such a story entertaining.

. . . Anyways, just wanted to share that here. I've never had much by way of patience, and find the wait to be borderline agonizing. But I'm also on the autism spectrum, and I have a bona fide anxiety disorder, so that may just be me.

Highly depends on the campaign. I'm in a campaign that started from level 1 and we just hit level 19 in under a year (about 11 months so far). Another game I'm in took 6 months to go through 2 levels. And all of that is if you're even lucky enough to get into a game, and then lucky enough to finish the game.

Is there something notable about Alestair's necklace? And if so, what kind of check would you need to identify it?

Ah, sorry, I thought Raven was an elf for some reason

No worries.

Is it okay for us to make micro posts? Abigail would be quick to note Raven's apparent isolation and motion him over, being the only other magic-user. (And because he's alone)

I don't see anything wrong with micro posts. I like to see activity on the thread. The only issue with that though is that if someone is only able to look at the thread once a day...there might be a lot of catch up for them. Or. maybe they are in a time zone in europe for instance and may not be able to interacte with your posts right away or post at odd hours (for you).

As far as Aleisters necklace goes, other than being unusual there is no real signifcance attached to it... make sure to use the ingame thread for ingame stuff, observations keeps everything tidy :)

Follow The Rule of Three.

For those unfamiliar with it:
The Rule of Three - This is an etiquette thing that we have in my old PbP home that I should not have assumed was universal. Basically, after you post, you should wait for at least three other people to post before you post again. The point of this is to deliberately slow things down so that people don't feel like they're being left behind or have an entire novel to catch up on reading before they post. The advertised posting rate here was 3 posts per week, and I think some people may have joined with that speed very much in the forefront of their minds. Which, speaking of...

What 3/week Means from a DM Standpoint - If YOU want to post more often than the standard three times a week, you are welcome to, so long as you follow the Rule of Three as stated above. But I will NEVER* post more often than that, and it is not appropriate for anyone to consider my lack of response before my next posting day to mean anything concerning NPCs ignoring you or passively letting you get away with stuff. If your post demands a response from me, then don't post again until I do, it's that simple. And as a reminder, I post on Monday, Thursday and Saturday.

*Except, of course, on the rare instances when I do, because I'm complicated and I contain multitudes. But no one should ever expect it.

Sounds like good guidance. Thanks for the clarification. I definitely at times find myself holding off on posts waiting for other players to get a chance to join in.

Feedback on your backgrounds has been posted to the Questionnaire thread in the main area. Please review and respond to any questions or concerns there.

Didn't get any response earlier, but I'm gonna assume if the necklace portrays anything magical, you'd need an arcana check to identify its significance

Or religion ;)

Alright, so what do I know about the Crypts?

Erwin's told us a little bit.

That question is borne of a hidden skill check and a not insignificant degree of impatience. A -5 penalty to the result of the check seems an appropriate reward for the pushiness, but as it's a first time, we'll just let it be a warning for now.

On one level, I do find the push gratifying, as the implication is investment in the game and excitement about the answer. Those are wonderful feelings and, indeed, exactly what I'm hoping people will feel, so I don't necessarily want to discourage them. But on the other hand, deadline pressure makes the whole thing feel more like work and therefore less like fun for me, and my own enjoyment is important as well. So please, any pokes about unanswered questions should happen no earlier than four hours after I've made another game post. (If I haven't answered it by then, it's safe to assume I forgot, and at that point, a poke is more than appropriate.)

Abby: alright, boys (and that's a lot of boys) time for a game plan! Magic us a solution to the spectral undead beforehand they come to kill us.

Lol

Regarding Aisede's departure, I'll NPC Abigail for awhile since her presence is sort of integral to Iskwe's for now. We'll remove her from the story whenever the next opportunity presents itself to do so.

Ugh, I'm passing out, I'll finish my post in the morning. Sorry for the lag.

No worries. Get some sleep.

Do we have a roster of what everyone is playing... at least our group? Im doing a Sorcerer Warlock - Most likely ill be concentrating on manipulation and subtrefuge type stuff.

Hello, our resident Dwarf checking in. :)
@Dipper Will there be a prompt/bump when you’re ready for players to post?
Hope everyone is well today.

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