To new readers: thanks for your interest, but we're at capacity now and aren't looking for any more applications.I'm looking for
4-6 players for a low-level, short-term 3.5 adventure (which may be spun into a longer game if the group comes together well, but the initial quest will be fairly bounded in scope; think of it as the pilot episode) taking place on
Plothook. The spark for this was a friend pining for a "classic, JRPGish, fantasy adventure", so that's the core of what I'm aiming for.
Exact details will depend on the players; I have a general idea of the game's premise, but many aspects of tone, style and content are open to change based on player preference. This means I'd like to recruit people in large part based on how involved they seem likely to be, so if you're interested in the pitch below, please stick around for some back-and-forth with myself and the other prospective players as we see what kind of game everyone's after. Recruitment will be based on how well I think a group would work together, which will depend not just on your character ideas but on my expectations of your availability and my ability to poke you when you need to post (being on AIM would be a big help here). Having played with me in the past is a bonus. Having played in other games I can see, here or elsewhere, as I'd hope you'll play in mine is another. Recruitment is explicitly not first-come-first-served.
I'm going to provisionally describe the game as:
- 3rd level;
- 32-point buy;
- standard WBL;
- all material available, subject to approval;
- no particular restrictions on character concept, so long as you can all work together in a party;
- no notable houserules to start with, except that I may trim down the skill list a bit.
My approach to character creation is not to rule anything out to begin with, but to get everyone to talk about their ideas and make mechanical choices with an eye to mutual balance and usefulness. You can reflavour to your heart's content so long as mechanical restrictions are maintained. I'm quite open to buffing normally weak classes or other options to bring them in line with the general optimization level if they serve the concept. The most important guideline to bear in mind is simply not to be a pain in my ass during play - a character with a limited list of options that can be used creatively but in ways I can plan for will be much preferred to one who slows down play or gives me brain-implody due to bookkeeping overhead.
The one thing I will pre-emptively rule out is Magic of Incarnum, due to my own lack of familiarity with the system. ToB, psionics, and ToM (or at least binders) are not just permitted, but encouraged.
The pitch:[spoiler]You start out in
a town (doom status: indeterminate). Maybe you grew up there. Maybe you're a recent arrival. Maybe you're just passing through. In any case,
something needs doing, and you're the one to do it. One of the ones. There is a
quest, and because of your status in the town, childhood friendship with those with status, or just your altruistic or mercenary inclinations, you've been charged with the quest or signed on to help those so charged. You will
travel, brave
hazards, do
battle, make
friends, vanquish
enemies, discover
magical artifacts and hit people in the
face with them. Some day, you will eat a
tree frog.
The setting is pseudo-late-medieval with some standard Hollywood gloss on things like social mores and hygeine. "Civilized" races mix in larger settlements, being subject to various different overlapping authorities outside them, with the starting town being in a mostly-human kingdom. "Uncivilized" races abound, living on the margins, but can often be dealt with diplomatically. The normal folk aren't in constant danger of being eaten by monsters, nor are they covered in excremend and dying of old age at forty; at the same time the spaces between settlements are dangerous and adventurers have a role as wandering troubleshooters.[/spoiler]
Questions on style:[spoiler]How free do you want to be with violence? Would you rather face large numbers of anonymous minions for guilt-free slaughter or should killing be something to avoid where possible? Are you willing to take prisoners? (In the latter case, you won't be punished for working around encounters.)
How subject to authority do you want to be? Are you operating with a mandate from some power - and obliged not to stain its reputation too badly - or are you entirely free agents, with no support or backup save what you can wheedle for yourselves? Note that having a patron or superior will have benefits as well as drawbacks, as will a more anarchic style.
How do you want to handle treasure, and rewards generally? Would you rather start out with your family's heirloom sword, and have it get more powerful as you do (possibly paying for upgrades, or just getting less treasure to start with), or would you rather get a series of better weapons each replacing the last? Would you like to find your gear at random and see what use you can make of it, or make/commission it to spec? Do you want sacks of coins recovered from bandits, or rare treasures or uniquely valuable items you can trade for favours or plot hooks? For XP, would you rather level relatively quickly and treat it as an OOC matter, or more slowly and only when you have some downtime?
(I should admit that I have biases here, but am willing to adapt to what the players would prefer. By default I'd run the group as operating under a lord or church's sponsorship, and you'd receive support from them - able to use their name to give yourselves authority, able to remand prisoners to their custody, etc. Intelligent enemies would be people and subject to laws, though summary execution (or less summary if you have someone in the party with the authority to serve justice) may be appropriate in some cases. Some gear could be found based on what you've told me you'd like to have, some you'd commission from your patrons or other contracts, some I'd surprise you with for novelty value.)
I intend to play this fairly straight-faced, not as a parody, but that doesn't mean grim or cynical, and it doesn't mean there's no room for humour; it just means the world and its inhabitants will act as though they're real people with real lives.[/spoiler]
Setting info / starting circumstances:[spoiler]Storm's Gate is in a pass between mountains, on a secondary trade route on the border of the kingdom that used to be more important a generation ago, before the dwarven settlement in the nearby mountain of White Tooth was abandoned. Today it's a prosperous but quiet town watching over the river valley below and the farmlands to the west, seat of Lady Drakemont, meeting place for humans, dwarves, elves and other races.
Two weeks ago Lady Drakemont went east, down the river to the capital city, to a council to discuss a brewing war between two neighbouring nations.
One week ago the captain of the town's guard and much of its fighting power went west, down the storm road, to aid the farmers after reports of raids by mountain tribes of orcs.
And two days ago, the tremours began. The town awoke to find the ground shaking, as though the gods themselves had decided they didn't like some nearby part of the earth and were hammering it in to a new shape on a great anvil. And not long after that, clouds began to gather over the White Tooth. Storm clouds, vast and black and unseasonal, and still growing.
The castellan of the Dragon's Hold has summoned you. What you can do, he hasn't yet told you - but whatever it is, you get the feeling you'd better do it soon...[/spoiler]
House rules:[spoiler]Psionics/magic transparency is in effect. Furthermore, knowledge: arcana can sub for knowledge: psionics, and vice versa, at a -2 penalty. The same goes for spellcraft and psicraft.
You can take ten on untrained knowledge checks, so that you can automatically know things with a DC less than 10 + your int bonus. (This is as opposed to the normal rule where you can only make DC10 checks for untrained knowledges, regardless of intelligence.)
Several skills have been combined:
Acrobatics merges Balance, Escape Artist, and Tumble.
Athletics merges Climb, Jump, and Swim.
Disable Device merges Disable Device and Open Lock.
Stealth merges Hide and Move Silently.
Perception merges Listen and Spot.
Each of these new skills has the same key ability and is affected by ACP (or not) as its component skills, except Disable Device. Its key ability is the higher of Dex or Int, at the player's option. When it comes to tracking synergy bonuses and the like, the simplest thing will probably be for you to leave the skill list on your sheets the same and just put equal ranks in to each component skill per point invested in the combined skill.
There may be other small tweaks for balance once players have been chosen and characters are being statted up, but these are the only "global" changes for now.[/spoiler]
Please post interest and describe your character idea; if possible, please provide an AIM contact (via PM if you'd prefer) for more real-time discussion. At the moment recruitment is open-ended until we have a reasonable pool of suitable candidates, at which point I'll start cracking the whip to firm up details and set a start date.
Player | Concept | Name |
AlisAtAn | gnomish beguiler | |
Fri | adventurous archer | |
Axinian | pacifist swordsage | |
Kanrail | dwarven cleric | Ragonaar Darksteel |
Neon Knight | runaway princess | |
Ryuuk | sage wizard | |
dougfan | psychic crusader | |
Drascin | | |
Twin Blades | reformed mercenary | |
pktt | | |
Chambers | guttersnipe thief | |
Overlord Rion | savvy factotum | |
Pyrite | paladin | |
dgnslyr | RKV | |
garter snake | elf combat medic | Innes Ienear |