[sblock=Map Provided by Cratchen]Looking at the map, it is fairly simple. Take the road east out of town. After a day and a half, you cross a river on a bridge. After the bridge, a trail forks south east. It is about another seven hours on horse back to get to the fort via the trail or road, which ever it is. The west has a sloped entrance between two rock pillars. There is also a rolling hill approach to the south of the pillars. The fort sits on a plateau above a ridge on three and a half sides. Not close to anything, it is at least high enough presumably to see travelers hours before their passing.[/sblock][sblock=Marching Order]
Single File ...............Double Wide........................... ..Watches
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If you have a standard procedure for opening a door, we will put it in here too, so as to speed repetitive issues like that.[/sblock][sblock=Items Consumed or Destroyed]none so far
I will be tracking, when I remember, things like healing potions used here.
[/sblock][sblock=Intended Time]This adventure should probably run about eight to ten months with the characters leveling once, maybe twice. [/sblock][sblock=Adventure Rules]Liberally adapted from others who do this better than I do.
* I prefer the use of [ sblock=OOC ] instead of [ OOC ]. It does a better job of hiding the out of character commentary. And the raised grey on black just looks ugly to me.
* I write with the Legacy skin for the forum. Therefore, all of my text is assuming a black background and light colored text. Many times I will used black periods to space out text when I need it.
* Group Initiative: rolled by GM with physical dice. In the case where an individual member of the 'losing side' rolls better than all other individual members of the 'winners,' that character may act first in the initial round of combat (surprise or round 1). Otherwise, unless a players specifies that actions are to follow another character / event, actions happen in the order they were posted. More than 48 hours or so delay for posting during your turn in a combat may result in my NPCing the character to keep things moving. I also post mid-round updates, with characters that still have actions in
gold for their name, and those that have already acted are
greyed out.
* PM is liking Ditzie for mapping, but I still prefer MapTool. I have more control over lighting and other background issues with it. So, I am going with MapTool for now. I own the servers the maps are stored on, so I know they are not going to be disappearing over time like a lot of stuff seems to do from photobucket.
* Feel free to use
Invisible Castle or the
Coyote on-line dice rollers for your characters. In general, I may or may not be posting my actual rolls, or just results.
** Irrelevant now, but left in for the good info: I may use the EnWorld roller more than other GMs, so if the dice at the bottom of a post starts overwhelming, you can shrink that down to a text one liner by changing your user settings. Settings->Edit Options->Thread Display Options->Dice Roller Display->Streamlined. GM secret rolls like Perception and Stealth will be done by physical dice. EnWorld does have a dice roller back, but it is no where near what the original did. So, Invisible Castle is my preference.
* I tend to post at any time of the day or night. I may post "mid-round" combat updates as needed or "short responses" to questions more often than the characters. If you're going to be away for longer than a couple days, please let me know if at all possible so we can arrange NPCing if necessary.
* If you do not post for a week or more without notice, I may end up writing you out of the adventure. You will still receive your share of the XP and treasure earned as well as time XP and gp to the date of your last post.
* If your character gets enough XP to level, they may do so at the end of an encounter. This grants the extra hp, but does not heal damage, and grants any additional spell slots, but not spells prepared. A caster capable of spontaneously casting could use these slots normally, a cleric could only use them for cure or inflict spells, a druid for summon nature's ally, etc. Prepared casters may prepare spells in these slots as if they had left the slots blank for the day, if they are able to do so. They can go through the appropriate spell preparation as if they had already rested if applicable. If you are adding a new class that requires special materials, like a wizard's spell book, please PM me a little ahead of time so I can work it in cleanly.
PS: My PM box hovers at 16 of 20. Too many projects I have to track. So, if a message bounced because my mailbox is full, wait a few hours and I should have made some room.
* Mini stat blocks (preferably including a link back to the wiki page for your character) and a picture for maps are quite helpful. Some good
examples. It is nice if you can colorize the major stats like Total HP, Current HP, AC, Weapon in hand. When you are ready to make a new post, editing an old post for a second, long enough to do a "Select-All, Copy, Cancel" and then pasting that into the new post is a good way to keep consistency in your stat blocks. It saves a lot of typing too. The A/A in the upper left corner of the editor box controls toggles from What You See Is What You Get mode to source mode. If you need a template for a starter, it is as easy as starting a reply to a message you like, doing a copy all of the example, CANCEL so you don't go through with that post, and then pasting it into where your message will be. Strip the [ quote= ] at the top and the [/ quote ] at the bottom, then edit the example to fit your needs.
* If you have an interrupt or immediate action ability, please list it in your mini-stat block so I can attempt to weave it into the bad guy's combat at the appropriate time the first time around. If you can take more than one AoO in a round, please list that too.
* I tend to roll saving throws for the characters so the narrative of result can be added immediately instead of asking for the player to make a single die roll. I also tend to roll appropriate knowledge checks immediately so that information can be given as well. But, anytime you feel another knowledge or skill check may apply too, please feel free to roll that as well when appropriate. (ie, any time after you are no longer flat footed in the surprise round)
* I mess up sometimes. Everyone does. Feel free to point it out. I will try to retcon to fix if needed. Sometimes, I will need to use the "plot device or special circumstances overrides the normal rules" card. We're all here to have fun, so I'll try to do everything I can to facilitate.
* Sometimes I will earn the "cruel rotten bastard" title. There might be occasions where the
cause has to play out for a week or two before you see the
effect later and go, "Oh, that was worth it." I promise it will never be personal.
* This adventure is homebrew off the top of my head. It is loosely scripted, but I may tweak it along the way. It is a return to the same place that Rescue at Boar's Ridge took place at, so please do not read that game thread. It has too many location based spoilers that would make the game no fun.
I think I have overdone it by now, let's get started.
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