Admin, OOC, and Launch Discussion

Fellas,

Thanks for joining the party! I really appreciate you all being willing to give this crazy idea a shot. I hope Dark Thrones: Remnants of the Ancients will be a good game. From what I have gathered talking to all of you by PM, I feel very fortunate to have such a great set of guys to hang out with on the GP boards. Hopefully we can get a cool story rolling.

So I want to talk more later--unfortunately a little short on time tonight. In the meantime though, I wanted to put up this one thread so that we can all have a chance to talk as necessary for Admin and preparatory items.

IMPORTANT: Don't talk about character builds just yet.
I do want you to submit characters electronically when you have the character sheet done, but I would ask that everyone maintain commitment to the "Blind Character Creation" idea for now, until everyone is finished and has characters submitted. I know I'm keeping up the ruse for a long time - on the brink of being annoying. Bear with me just a little longer. I think it will pay off in the long run, with everyone getting a cool character put together "in a vacuum" and then a bit more of surprise of a big reveal to pull it together for "Episode 0" as we talk through the tie-in between character backgrounds and then get ready for "Episode 1" when we kick off active story line game play.

So maintain character related questions on PM, but use this resource to hang out, intro yourself as a player (not character) if you want, and also if something else applies in the way of questions about the game, scheduling, general questions or concerns about the setting, etc.


On that note: 1 last big adjustment that I think I have communicated to everyone individually, but wanted to reiterate for clarity:
Starting Character Level is changed from Level 3 to Level 4.
So if you have not done so already, proceed with adjustments to character development accordingly. I hope there are no objections with this. After I heard some of the character ideas, I realized that I wanted to shift slightly to give everyone a little more leeway to use 1 level beyond the 3rd level Archetype marker to allow for variety or design options.


So again, can't thank you enough. I really appreciate all of the time and effort communicating in advance and working with me to get organized and plan backgrounds. These characters that you guys have are all very cool. I am really excited to get this game rolling and together establish a legit Dark Thrones style!

Best regards,
J

Also, y'all, required viewing of this clip to help kick things off:

New Game Sesh

If you have already seen it, you have to watch it again. It is a new classic -- can we all agree on that?

Nice opener, and a great way to start a game. K&P is good stuff.

Right. Introductions.

First off, I'm really looking forward to this game. For those of you new to GP and PbP, the kind of setup DMJ has created here isn't remotely the norm. All the details that bring Dark Thrones to life are the same ones that give the setting and our time in it meaning. It's awesome to be able to look through all the background sources available and really get a sense for what the setting is like, creating the sense that your character has a history and a life before you started playing it.

As far as interests, not necessarily just the fantasy(ish) genre...

Some of my influences/favorites for literature, off the top of my head: Conan, the Elric saga, Lovecraft's works (although some really do seem to border on unreadable madness, tales like 'Shadow Over Innsmouth' and 'The Lurking Fear' are classics that redefined the genre), Thieves' World (top notch realistic fantasy, with multiple characters living in a city, with short stories from different points of view; George RR Martin definitely borrowed from this writing style), Lord of the Rings (yeah it's got elves and dwarves, but it's a great adventure, and one of the best reads of my pre-teen childhood, written by a guy that survived some of the worst shit from World War I), and Game of Thrones (has a nice 'real' feel and it got me interested in fantasy again). I like a good mystery and thrillers/horror as well, and also enjoy Doyle's Sherlock Holmes in addition to Poe's works (Fall of the House of Usher, Masque of the Red Death, Telltale Heart, and the Pit and the Pendulum being some of my favorites).

On the screen, some of my favorites are (randomly stream of consciousness here) Star Wars, Gladiator, Braveheart, Alexander, Blade Runner, Alien, Aliens, The Abyss, 13th Warrior, Conan the Barbarian (and the Destroyer), Bram Stoker's Dracula, Dune, Star Trek, 300, and I'm sure quite a few I just can't think of right now.

As far as my background and taste in gaming, some of my favorite games include D&D (my first table top experience when I was 6), Shadowrun, FFG Star Wars, Call of Cthulu, Vampire, and Warhammer 40k (I have yet to play Dark Heresy though, although I imagine it's pretty awesome).

Whatever the game is, over the years I've come to realize that the common denominator is that I enjoy darker, edgier, and more realistic games, where the DM/GM is okay with killing off your character (or worse) when you screw up and make bad choices. Without that edge, that possibility to utterly fail, the game loses meaning and starts to feel like a boring ride on some guided train track tour through the fantastical land of Mundane Fluffy Rainbow Cloud World.

In sum, when you can't lose, none of your choices even matter anymore, and when that happens in a RPG, it sucks.

I doubt we'll have that problem in Dark Thrones, where I have a feeling that fools will find themselves in a pool of their own blood, sooner or later.

DMJ has done an amazing job detailing his world! I'm very much looking forward to playing this game. I have always been attracted to gritty games, and this will be my first time playing in one.

Books: Stormlight Archives series by Brandon Sanderson is absolutely amazing, as is his Mistborn series. I've been working my way through Fritz Leiber's novels with the Gray Mouser and Fafard. On Silver Wings by Evan Currie is the best SciFi I have ever read. Everything by Scott Sigler is great.

Movies: Just copy and paste Ezeriah's list here.

I'm a big gamer - lots of board games, indie video games, and even made a few myself for fun. Some of my favories are Catan, Pandemic, Risk Legacy, BattleTech, FTL, Darkest Dungeon, Hammer Fight, Quake, .... it just goes on and on and on.

I really can't wait to see what characters you all came up with. This will be so good!

Thanks for having me here! :-)

I'm Jabes, 42 years old, from Manila, Philippines (GMT+8). Besides the time zone difference I also keep odd work hours as I am a chef running my own cake business. We like making geeky cakes. Here's a D&D-themed one, and here's another.

And then there's this bad boy!

I was introduced to D&D almost 30 years ago (AD&D back then) and to this day I still play with the same group of guys, my best friends. We played 3.5E when that came out and spent 10 years on a campaign, skipped 4E, and started a 5E campaign as soon as it came out. I've been on GP since early 2015. It's been fun trying out new game systems and character concepts I would never have gotten off the ground in my IRL games.

Whenever I play I try to do something new. Sometimes that means something a little unconventional, but other times that just means something I myself have never tried before.

Echoing everyone's sentiments, I am amazed at the rich detail with which DMJ has filled this world. Simply reading through the world setting threads has been a treat in and of itself.

I'm really looking forward to getting together and telling this story with all of you!

Hey guys,

I really appreciate the opportunity to play with you guys. I saw the description for Dark Thrones and was instantly attracted and interested and here I am, so thank you for the invite.

A little bit about me, I'm a Journeyman metal fabricator and a Journeyman welder I'm 30 years old and I'm relatively new to the tabletop RPG scene. I have only been playing D&D for three years. Seeing you guys talk about playing D&D for 30 years+ makes me jealous! I was late to the party but have immersed myself in the game quite a bit. I DM for two home campaigns (one of which I convinced my wife to play in - success!) and I'm relatively new to GP, but I absolutely love it here.

Im excited to play and to get to know you guys.

Y'all, thanks for the intros. Reminded me that I did not do mine yet.

I think I qualify as an "Old School" gamer, in a way at least. I started with 1e. AD&D. I think around 1987. That was the crazy years: the wild west of mean, vengeful DMs and out-of-control house rules, especially endless expansion of critical hit and fumble description tables. "Ok, so that 1 is a fumble. Roll on the table and see what happens....Oh my god! You chop your own foot off! Idiot!" Classic.

I kept gaming with a small/medium sized group of friends for about 10 years I think, with up and down frequency. I was almost always the DM (hence the DMJ handle I have secretly carried for decades in a small circle who know that identity), because no one else wanted to do it after we all learned how from the couple of weirdo DMs that introduced us to the game originally. Mostly, I played 2nd Edition D&D, with the exception of one campaign I ran in Cyberpunk. (Did that game even exist?! Or am I just remembering some old dream...)

But then I was pretty much away from D&D until 2012, I think around a 15 year absence. I revived the habit: 1) to play with my kids, and 2) to revive an old campaign with old friends on Skype and during vacations when we had a chance to get together. It was a complete blast for me coming back! My household campaigns with the kids and their friends have been some of the best stories I've ever been a part of and a lot of good times, laughs, and some moving scenes. We started originally with 2nd Edition D&D (all I knew), then converted to 3.5 Pathfinder (I learned the whole system by the book by myself, no one helping me), then converted to 5e about a year and a half ago. All a lot of fun.

So the cool conversion that I really enjoy now, just for some background, is that the Dark Thrones campaign setting is really based on a retro game setting that is a big part of my past. I know the very first character ever created in this setting world. He was an Assassin named Ian Kane, from an inland Kortellan city called Chantuela, created by my best friend from my hometown where I grew up. That was in 1990! So it turns out that I have a lot of info on this world, it just has never been so formalized and written out for readers, more like a set of notes in several mediums from MS Word files, to 3.5 floppy disks, all the way back to spiral notebooks I wrote in the 9th grade. haha

But y'all I have never played any games online. I just heard about PbP last year and just started trying it out on GP this January. So I want to confess early that I am green as they come on PbP. I hope you will have mercy on me as I botch things up here and there. I am 100% sure I will be screwing up something very soon in this new format of gaming. I like to think I am a fast learner though, and I will try to recover quickly. I appreciate your tolerance as I learn the ropes, adapt to some of the normal practices of the online game culture, and as we develop some of our own practices that might be a little different and unorthodox.

That is it on gaming. Movies I list out on inspirations forum thread. I have read some fantasy fiction books: mostly Howard's Conan (could you guess?), Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith. Also a few of the Drizzt books and a couple Dragon Lance books in the more distant past. Outside RL interests are sports: involved to various degrees with high school football, wrestling, and lacrosse in local area. Enjoy hunting, shooting, water skiing, grilling out, drinking. I'm a former atheist converted to a Catholic. I read my fair share of non-fiction books on science, foreign policy, history, religious history, and theology, although I forget the details of most of them after about 6 months. Grew up in the South, used to be in the army, now work in DC as a consultant. I work out and run all the time but remain out-of-shape because of too much cheeseburgers, pizzas, beer, insomnia, and self-destructive lifestyle. No intention of changing that. I'm a big-time family guy. Undisclosed number and ages of kids, but it is a lot. Super hot blonde wife.

So that's it. Way too much probably, but it's a one-shot intro, so what the heck.

J

p.s. Dang, Jabes! I can't believe those cakes, bro. Your beholder avatar icon is actually a CAKE?! Holy smokes! That blows me away.

I wanted to add that I'm 37 and started with AD&D 2e in middle school when my dad randomly shipped me a ton of the books. He had been an inmate at the time and picked up the game as a way to pass time. He figured my brother and I would like it. Turns out he was right. A played a lot of Rifts in high school, '93-'97 and then didn't play anything until 2011. My coworker and I got to talking and he was interested in learning the game after I mentioned I had played before. We got a group together and took turns GMing short campaigns for the next 3 years. Then I had kids and gaming became a difficult thing to commit to. I just recently got back into it now, playing once a week (late at night online, after the kids are asleep) and started here on GP just about a month ago now.

I spend the rest of my non-free time working as a lead software engineer for a startup. I spend the occasional weekend making small games, which you can play a few of them here: http://ihazcode.herokuapp.com/

@Jabes - I realize now I've seen your cakes on Reddit! You are famous!

I enjoy reading the intro information. It's clear we have an all-pro gamer team here.

Here are a couple of thoughts to keep the Admin stuff rolling for kick-off.

On finalizing characters...
Submit characters whenever you are ready. Remember the adjustment to Level 4.

On backgrounds and story launch...
We are really close. I will aim to send 1 more PM to everyone tomorrow (Friday) to work with you in the last details of background, with angles to pull characters together in their recent individual stories to bring the group story to what I think is a believable and compelling starting point.

On starting equipment and coin...
These characters are 4th level, and each has a highly developed backstory. So no need to stick to the book exactly on starting weapons, armor, equipment, gear. I want everyone to have some leeway. Think of what the character would really have, realistically in this point of their career and story. Within reason of course--no magic items, and no plate mail armor, crossbows, etc.--just keep in mind the setting limitations that have been discussed elsewhere. On money, none of these characters seem necessarily dead broke to me, but all of them are obviously striving for more to some degree or another. Some do seem like they are a little more thin in the wallet than others by design, and that is fine. So again --pick something that fits the story that you are telling, and what kind of situation that you want them to be in financially given their circumstance, and what kind of motivations they would have because of finances or lack thereof. If you have any questions about this, about what is fair or permissible, feel free to throw them my way and we can talk it through.

On schedule predictions...
If you guys are willing to finish characters over the weekend, I think we could aim to start a real game thread next week. We might need a day or 2 of "Episode 0: Pre-game" talk that I think would be a mix of In-Character and OOC, to get the action framed up, describe the starting circumstance, location, etc. and allow for Q&A as necessary. But then I think we could be ready for full-fledged, roll camera opening scene maybe middle next week. Send word if there is any problem with this plan or if anyone feels like they need more time, or more info from me to keep things moving.

Thanks again. I'm really looking forward to going live and seeing these characters in action.

We probably can get started with Episode 0 now and make final tweaks during that process. I'll be making small adjustments to my equipment, nothing major. Not to mention that making changes to character backgrounds to tie in other PCs is pretty normal for Episode 0's.

I think as part of seeing Blind Character Generation through, we should finish our characters completely and turn them in to DMJ before we go to Episode 0 (complete everything but tying in backgrounds, of course). That's the impression I got about the Blind Char Gen, and the idea is that we don't influence the mechanical aspects of each other's characters, or personal historical backgrounds, in any way. Once those are all rock solid, I think we bring it all together with "how do these guys know each other, and how long?"

And yeah, I'm looking forward to kicking this off too, but no need to hurry it. I'm all for taking the weekend.

Calling attention to this post. Where it says "apply part or all of his proficiency towards lowering his AC" I think you mean raising his AC. :-)

Yes. Typo. Good catch.
You know I will never really escape my 2nd Edition upbringing.
Hey, Jabes, what's your THAC0?

Haha! Funny story: I made a dragonborn sorcerer named Thacogygax. :-D

THACO... so many good memories can be attached to one simple acronym.

Hi all,

Wow, this is looking solid!

I'm 37 and currently live in Toronto. I grew up in South America, and the opportunity to play tabletop RPGs never really presented itself until two years ago when a neighbor "selected" my wife and I to be his PCs. Since then we've been playing different campaigns with a few other neighbors and my son. We try for once a week, but I work the night shift and my days off are always different, so it's hard to play as often as I would like. Thanks to Google, here I am playing PbP for the first time, nervous and excited.

DMJ's world looks amazing; I'm looking forward to exploring it with you all.

Toronto? Where about? I was born in Ajax.

Mississauga. Just moved here about three years ago.

I have had network issues at the office all morning, so only access is by phone. Too busy to post during the day now, but will aim to start new thread for story this evening.

Unexpected delay but will recover.