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And yet the Count of St Germain seems to have done precisely this, repeatedly, all across the courts of Europe in a way that suggests that travelling nobility would get a presumption of good faith. Hangers on as guests at stately homes are a fairly common character in Austen and similar period...

I actually had something like this in a recent campaign, but more a "vote on what you think everyone else's alignment was at the start/end of the campaign" as we hadn't made a big deal of it at character generation Bard started at CN, ended at NG Rogue started as CN, ended at CG Druid started...

One way of looking at this that erases the distinction is whether we are playing a character that is fully defined or whether we are playing and discovering facts about the characters - in a way we are always playing our characters "correctly" - the actions they take are what defines them, their...

Yes - this is really what I was after with the setup for running the game the first time. I've been playing a few short games over the last year and having a (relatively) relaxed get-to-know-you session first to rough out character relationships and setting assumptions in play has been...

Thanks for the feedback on this everyone - I think the overall suggestion to kick things off after the mutiny is probably the best one, a flashback would probably be nice but not necessary. Regarding the social contract/session zero concerns - yes, I think that this is covered by the original...

Some time ago, I ran a short campaign (very) loosely based around Treasure Island. The PCs were a naturalist expedition to a mysterious island and shortly after their arrival to the island a mutiny left them stranded and the adventure became dodging the treasure hunting mutineers, uncovering...

Abilities that have a minor mechanical impact but are explicitly called out in a heritage or class writeup. Dwarven ability to know whether floor is sloped, that kind of thing

For what may be an interesting example about whether players would play non-human characters without mechanical effects, in the UK LARP Empire there are seven non-human options : Lineage - Empire https://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/empire-wiki/Orc The six lineages offer very minor mechanical...

Amusingly, I rolled something very similar to this for a currently running game and am playing a 4 STR fairy wizard. It's not been too much of a handicap so far and has been a source of a lot of amusement, but I really wouldn't want to try it on a non-full caster.

I've had some success with asking one of the players to give a summary of the last session and then following that up with a "opening crawl" giving some scene setting to get people back in the mood.

I'll occasionally round a couple of hitpoints down to dead, mostly for pacing reasons when a fight is already decided

Randomly generated scores can be interesting sometimes when you are after some inspiration for a character - if I've got a character in mind then I'd prefer to use an array - one +3 and one +2 after lineage modifications is probably sufficient. Random generation for a recent character gave...

I've found very small to be good - the most successful game I've run recently had 90% of the action take place on an island about 10 miles by 4. Limiting the scale meant a more focused experience.

They can do, particularly if you are making use of combat manouevers - if you open with Trip attack then the subsequent attacks will have to take that into account, or the use of the assorted critical feats that apply penalties may affect your attacks. Rolling out all your attacks in one go...

There are a couple of problem areas that can slow things down if you aren't prepared for them which are worth being aware of. 1) Summoned monsters - if your players are planning on using these ensure that they have their stat blocks available and understand them. Particularly if templated...

When I ran this, I made quite a few tweaks (mostly to allow it to be run in one long session) As for why the stone is wanted - using up all the stones would open up a planar gate at the heart of the town, allowing assorted devils to get out. This was part of a long term plan by the Architects...

Is speed dating a substitute for a commited relationship? This is what I'm seeing Encounters as. Something you can pop in and do on a whim with a low level of commitment that puts you in contact with like minded people. I don't think that the idea is that people play Encounters and only...

There really isn't any dicotomy here. Roleplaying your character (as in portraying their personality, goals and so on) is pretty much orthogonal to character optimisation. Whether my character has a +5 or +7 to hit has pretty much nothing to do with how likely they are to stand up and make a...

Hmm, depends. By having play begin with some change in status of the PCs, then they can both be new arrivals and embedded into the relationship map. For example, the game could start with (or shortly follow) a "coming of age" ritual of some sort, so while the shape of the relationship map...

I think there are some interesting edge cases here Its relatively common for a group to have a character creation session before play proper starts, building their characters together in order to achieve some desired starting condition. I imagine that you do something similar, if only to avoid...