Return to Northmoor OC - Page 3

Leif · 17th November 2008, 06:12 AM

But, then, my 'ex-point of light" idea could work hand in hand with Atanatotatos's druids. Maybe it was the city of the druids that the church allowed to be overrun, and some adventurers have been hired by the druids to recover their lost items? Or, on the other hand, maybe the druids themselves overran another city that had been built on some site that was sacred to them, and now the adventurers are sent in by the church to purge the druidic stain. I dunno.

PrecociousApprentice · 17th November 2008, 06:16 AM

I think that we are about at the edge of what I feel comfortable setting down as cannon for our game at this point. We should get going and play a little before we paint ourselves into a corner. These latest are great, but lets hold off for a bit, and find out where our game takes us.

I would like to add into the chargen assignment a little bit. Add this question to the PM of your character concept,

Who is one person not already detailed that is important to you, and what is your relationship to them?

This game has started in a really interesting way for me. I am running a very flexible setting, with a lot of ability to reskin or define how we like. This means that I am not really aware of the overall plot, I get to discover it similarly to the players. It has also started with a lot of collaborative worldbuilding, and that adds some surprise for me, I get to discover the world in the same way as the players. Very fun so far, and we haven't even started playing yet.

Charwoman Gene · 17th November 2008, 08:57 AM

This seems interesting and I think I'd like to join but the worldbuilding part was very daunting for me today. Can I put in a flag that I'd like to play, but not commit to a class yet?

PrecociousApprentice · 17th November 2008, 09:47 AM

I had a feeling that you would want to be a part of this Charwoman Gene. If you look at my earlier post, I state that anyone that had posted in this thread could consider themselves on the roster. You had posted earlier, and I had you in mind when I wrote that.

Get involved with working out a shared relationship with the rest of the group. I have no problem if you aren't ready yet. No one else is either.

Now get cracking!

Leif · 17th November 2008, 05:38 PM

For an Important Person for my character (cleric??) I'd choose his older brother. This older brother practically raised my character after our parents were killed by brigands. He inherited the family inn, which he still runs, and he helped to fund my character's education and entry into the clergy. Now my character feels that it is his duty to return the kindnesses shown to him all throughout his life, so after his expenses are paid and his tithes brought up to date, any excess funds will be sent to his brother (or, probably more accurately, put aside and sequestered for delivery to his brother at a later convenient time).

Charwoman Gene · 17th November 2008, 06:39 PM

I think i need to bow out. The RP requirements are way too steep. I'm not looking for that deep of RP. I also have a problem with the forcing of montheism onto a quasi-real-world-analogue system and then putting in place a good-guy bad-guy dynamic with the church on the bad side... nah not for me

And I'm not sure I want to deal with the headaches of boardless play. Good luck with everything.

PrecociousApprentice · 17th November 2008, 08:33 PM

I understand. I am asking a lot of players. This is just me asking for them to share the load of worldbuilding. With the nature of this podcast AP, I am unable to read through the whole adventure to find out where it is going. I have to get the players to let me know what they want in a setting and who their characters are, then bridge the gap between this information and the adventure plot I am being given. Somewhat like improv, and I am going to go with pretty well whatever comes up, and hope that it isn't too difficult to make it all make sense. This will also take some effort on the part of the players. It can be a lot though, so I understand, and I appreciate the fact that you are fourthright about it. Better than having to deal with issues later.

I also want to address the monotheism thing. I hope that we can keep it pretty generic. The "inquisitor" theme was an idea that evolved amongst everyone involved, and I feel like it has a lot of potential. I think that it gives a sense of shades of gray for the campaign, where there isn't necessarily a good guy/bad guy thing that is clear cut. That makes it necessary for characters to be a little more involved and not just one dimensional "I am a Hero" types. I think it will be fun to explore that.

I would like to differentiate between the idea of a less than pristine Church and the "diety" itself. The Church is active, has only recently become controlled by the fanatical "inquisitor" sect, and may have alienated many devout worshipers. They are a political force masquerading as a religious one, using religion to garner legitimacy. There are many religious persons who view the current Church as acting innappropriately. The "diety" is good, but uninvolved in the affairs of mortals. The Church has no monopoly on spirituality, but they would like people to think so, and it isn't even as homogenous as the statements about it so far would indicate. I hope that we can make it generic, but complicated, if that is possible.

I was sorta thinking of a Three Muskateers sort of dynamic. The Church may be an antagonist, but "God" certainly isn't, and there are people with mixed motivation on all sides. It just gives you an idea who the players are in Lindinis, what the political climate is, what their assumed motivations are, etc... Who knows how much or how soon this will come into play, or what this will evlove into, but it is background, and it helps to ground the characters in the story.

Hope that helps.

Charwoman Gene · 17th November 2008, 08:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PrecociousApprentice

I also want to address the monotheism thing.

Nah, I get it, I was semi-ranting. I still think I don't have the time to devote. Good Luck.

pathfinderq1 · 17th November 2008, 11:56 PM

Party-building II: Concepts in development

I've made pretty good headway on the background questions for my lead concepts, and I am (as usual, it seems) having a bit of a tough time picking one to run with. In the spirit of cooperative party design, I figured that I might post capsule versions here and see if anyone has a vote. I've actually gone to 3 possibilities (listed below by nickname, in no particular order):

1. "Ox": "Longtooth shifter" male fighter (MC with Warlord), great weapon build (halberd); in three words- Loyal, Jovial, Violent; he talks tough and tries to act like a thug, but where his friends (or those in need) are concerned, he can be counted on to stand up (even if he never wants it mentioned in public). Reskinning the Longtooth shifting as "Berserker rage".

2. "Otter": "Elf" female rogue (MC with ranger), artful dodger/melee rogue; in three words- Reckless, Friendly, Deadly; cheerfully sarcastic and sharp, an exceptional scout and talented knife-fighter; originally a runaway from the big city who made her way to the frontier in search of her missing "father"- she never found him, but she found a new life.

3. "Owl": "Eladrin" female wizard (MC with fey-lock), war wizard and nascent artillery piece; in three words- Weird, Smart, Dangerous; mysterious and odd, but very well-educated. Abandoned as a foundling at the outpost years ago, adopted by the captain in place of children he never had; she went away to the city as an apprentice mage and returned only relatively recently- she would only say that her formal apprenticeship was over. (Inspired by River Tam, to some extent, but not as crazy or unpredicatble- just weird and very smart; as the saying goes, she can kill you with her brain). With the eladrin sword proficiency, might be too close to a swordmage- or a perfect compatriot.

ADDED: Any word yet on character generation mechanics? I tend to do crunch and fluff development side-by-side, and it would help to be able to plug in numbers as I go.

I have been sneaking tidbits of Deadwood (for the Lost Village/frontier) and Firefly (for the itinerant riverboat)- I'm sure this comes through in the characters.

Sparky · 18th November 2008, 05:58 AM

Ooo! Ooo! Mista Kott-er-ah! Mista Kott-er-ah!

I've not read the thread in depth (I will) but I love the idea of shared world building (and am in fact making something of an experiment with it in a game that's starting up here) and what I've skimmed I dig.

Will read in full and report back.

PrecociousApprentice · 18th November 2008, 06:00 AM

Those are both great sources for inspiration. Your concepts look great.

I hadn't realized that I hadn't given explicit enough chargen info. 1st level, use a standard point buy of 22, and follow method 2 for ability scores, as well as all the the usual PHB chargen rules. For equipment, use the standard starting gold for a character, 100 gold and you start with normal cloths. Any race in the PHB, MM, of FRPG, reskinned to be human. Any class from the PHB or FRPG. I only have to core three books, but other WotC books are fine as well for material, I will just have to be brought up to speed on the rules for anything that I don't have. We will go strictly by the books for crunch, and fluff is totally up for grabs.

I think that reskinning is really cool. Any concept that you can overlay on top of the rules is great. Want a cleric that wields a sword, but don't want to spend a feat to become proficient? Describe a mace as a sword, but use only rules that pertain to a mace. Want a wizard that uses timestop right out of the gait? Reskin the Sleep sell as a time vortex that slows/stops enemies. Want a wizard that summons an elemental? Try flaming sphere with a different description. You can do this on the fly or get a set of premade ideas. Swashbuckler? Rogue or ranger. Get creative, use the rulebooks for crunch, but let the fluff be anything that fits.

Here is an example I posted for another thread for inspiration. You don't need to rewrite the PHB to reskin though. Name the powers as normally in the OC thread, describe them any way that works in the IC thread.

Time Themed Reflavored Wizard
Powers

Telekinetic Burst

Chill of Timelessness

Feel the Effects of Time

Temporal Rift

For reference this is thunderwave, ray of frost, ray of enfeeblement, and sleep.

Atanatotatos · 18th November 2008, 06:05 AM

Uhm. Flaming sphere being a fire elemental is a really nice idea...

PrecociousApprentice · 18th November 2008, 06:26 AM

I think that my game changed when I realized that the rules make the game interesting, the players and DMs creativity make the story interesting, and fluff belongs in the later and not necessarily the former. WotC fluff is dispensible. The rules are fantastic and seem to be balanced well. Keep the rules, only keep the fluff that is interesting.

I think that this is somewhat the approach that the Northmoor podcast adventure is taking. They give us a framework for the game, a decent plot, and we fill in any fluff that we like, within a few boundaries that they set out in the beginning. Their suggestions so far have been great. Sure, we are using some cliches for our worldbuilding, but the sum is an interesting world, and took us no time to set down.

By the way, how does this sound for a gridless combat system? Seems pretty simple.
Grid-less 4e?

Leif · 18th November 2008, 06:33 PM

Oh, wow! The whole re-skinning idea has already warped my poor brain! I like it, though, feels kinda.....curvy. I may need a bit of time to get through this. Gosh, going by the rules as written now would just seem like a total cop-out for the imaginatively impaired!

RE: Gridless combat -- In all my years of gaming, I can count on one hand the number of games I've played in that use miniatures. Slightly more have used a battle mat to draw tactical diagrams, but, by far, most have been handled using nothing more that the imaginations of all involved.

Sparky · 18th November 2008, 07:09 PM

Wow. Astonishing. That came together head-spinningly fast. I'm SO taking notes. A little too late for Toranthar (the aforementioned world I'm differently-collaboratively building with my players elsewhere on the boards).

I'm happy to contribute ideas to the glossary/roster, but I feel like the characters (and the sentiment of players and DM) are that they're plenty fleshed out.

So, I'll write up a concept with the questions and get it PMed to PA (is 'PA' okay?)

Good plan?

PrecociousApprentice · 19th November 2008, 12:01 AM

I have only used minis for Battletech. I was just making sure that everyone else was OK without them. I kinda thought that PbPers would be OK, but seeing as how 4e is really good as a tactical minis game, I wanted to try to retain as much of this as a strength of the system, without really depending heavily on the battlemat. Seems like the batlemat would be clunky for a PbP game.

Reskinning is amazingly addicting once you get started. The best thing for my excitement about D&D almost ever.

I got your character writeup Aparky and I like it. I looked into your PbP campaign thread. I didn't read more than the first page, but it looks interesting. I think that the difference here is that we almost completely ignored the game system and focused on the setting and character. I also set out a few constraints for design space to get the stuff going. I was totally surprised at the speed that this thing came together. I will give credit where credit is due, the prep materials for the module contained almost all of the stuff we did here. I added a few elements that i thought would be cool (reskinning, only humans, monotheism) and the rest was almost all from the other contributors. It was amazing. I couldn't have done anything like this all by myself.

Also, there is nothing wrong with sticking with the WotC fluff. We don't need to rewrite everything. I just would love to see some reskinning come out in our game. We could also add more as we go along.

Leif · 19th November 2008, 03:20 AM

Gonna have to take back what I said before. I looked at 4E 1L Cleric Powers, and I am not familiar enough with any of them yet to "re-skin" any of them. I think the "skin" that's on them now sounds plenty good enough.

Powers for my cleric are:
at-will: Lance of Faith and Priest's Shield
encounter: Divine Glow
daily: Beacon of Hope.

For a deity, I am looking at Pelor. (Obviously, my guy will be Good.)

Method 2, 22 point-buy:
S 14 (5 pts)
D 13 (3pts)
C 12 (2 pts)
I 10 (0 pts)
W 15 (7 pts) +2 (Human racial adj.) = 17
C 14 (5 pts)

Racial stuff: extra at-will power = Sacred Flame
Feats: Astral Fire + Pelor's Radiance (racial bonus)
Skills: Religion, Arcana, Insight, Healing + History (racial bonus)
Etc.:TBD

Nac Mac Feegle · 19th November 2008, 04:43 AM

I should have the writeup of the character done in the next day or so, I've been a little swamped.

Atanatotatos · 19th November 2008, 05:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nac Mac Feegle

I should have the writeup of the character done in the next day or so, I've been a little swamped.

Ditto.

PrecociousApprentice · 19th November 2008, 05:24 AM

No problem. Take your time. I have a ton to do now as well, and I have some creative stuff of my own to do for this. This went way faster than I thought, faster than any other PbP startup I have been involved with, so we are actually ahead of schedule in my book. (As a medical student, I have a schedule for everything. Sad.)

In the mean time, if you guys want to send me your email addresses via PM, I will send you an invitation to the private blog I have created for this campaign. It will be really cool.