[Interest Gauge] Pathfinder/Shadowrun 4th ed over RPTools

I'm keeping that in mind BRO. One of my pen&paper buddies has 3 sons aged 1, 4 and 7 respectively. But we usually play at his place if we play at all. I fully understand and respect that your kids come first. I also agree it's a bit of a bummer for everyone involved if a member of the party regularly vanishes in the middle of the game (or doesn't show at all). The time investment I'm looking at is 4-6 hours on a predetermined day once every 2 weeks. With at least a 1-week advance warning to allow everyone to clear their schedules. You're the best judge of whether or not you'll be able to talk your SO into looking after your proto-geeks while you LARP with a bunch of intarweb racists.

I'm currently looking at the feasibility of drop-in/drop-out slots where players can take over a PC/NPC for a single session in case a regular player has to sit one out or the party conned a NPC into tagging along. It may be more trouble than it's worth if we have to re-teach the client every time. In any case, I fully intend to make players take turn posting a log of what happened to keep voyourists entertained. On top of that, the server should be able to handle a bunch of spectators so long as they keep comments on IRC so the players/gm don't get distracted.

I'm flattered (and a little intimidated) at the amount of interest this thread has generated in such a short time. I wish I could attempt to entertain all of you, but that'd be a logisitcal nightmare! From the looks of things, we're running a Pathfinder adventure path. They're usually written for a party of 4-5 players. I figure we'll go with 5 people as a starter. If everyone gets horribly slaughtered, we'll let a 6th player in. If encounters turn into walkovers, I'll get creative with the monsters.

Everyone else will be on a standby list. If a player temporarely or permanently has to drop out, I'll be poking them to see if we can find a replacement. If (against all expactations) it turns out I have even more time to spare, I may do a few one-shot adventures over a few sessions for intersted parties as well. But that's not what's important right here and now.

Paizo has published 9 adventure paths so far. I'll give them all a read-over, pick 2-3 good candidates, post a short blurb about each and we can bicker and argue about which one to run.

I went over the posts in the thread so far, trying to figure out who, when and what to play. This is what I got so far. Feel free to help me fill in missing fields and correct mistakes on my part.

Code:

Username       Timezone    Day(s)       Time(s)      Experience   Preferences
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ulminati        GMT+1   Fri/sat/sun  Noon - Midnight    Lots      Spectacular player deaths :D
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Azira           GMT+1     Fri/sat       Evening         Lots      Dungeon crawl
Azael           GMT+1      Sun     Afternoon/Evening    Some      ??
root            GMT-3     Fri/sat         ??            None      ??
Mrowak          GMT+2     Fri/Sat    Evening/Night      Lots      Exotic storyfaggotry
lightbane       GMT+1   Fri/sat/sun     Evening         Some      ??
Angelo85        GMT+1     Fri/Sat       Evening         None      Mystery/Intrigue
DamnedReg.        ??       Any(?)        Any(?)         Some      Dungeon crawl with some LARP
JagreenLern     GMT-5       ??     Afternoon/Evening    Some      ??
Renegen         GMT-5     Sat/Sun  Afternoon-Night      Lots      Dungeon crawl
Wetworks        GMT+1      Sun          Evening         Some      ??
Black Cat       GMT-3     Sun-Thu  Stuffies-Thingies    None      Elves, Fairies, Goblins

I place by far the most importance on Timezone/day/time. We're all smrt enough to pick up pathfinder with our prior exposure to D&D 3.0/3.5. The time(s) column assumes local time where GM lives (GMT+1).

I meant with 3.5ed D&D/Pathfinder specifically. I figure people intimately familiar with pathfinder and the various classes will shoulder some of the burden helping new players getting comfortable with the system. I put "some" with poeple who gave indication of having played 3.0/3.5 d&d before and "lots" with people who appeared to have already read through the pathfinder rules.

I'll write you down for fri/sat/sun. (No reason listing days where the GM can't show). Looks like friday/saturday are the most likely days at the moment. Once everything's settled, I guess I'll roll a d20 for everyone with highest rolls getting first picks at character slots. It seems like the fairest solution

I guess I really ought to sit down and do a quick&dirty intro to RPtools with pictures and stuffies. I'll get on it soonish.

@Black Neko-chan
Ah, I can't make any promises this early when I've yet to discover just how much of my free time GMing a regular campaign will soak up. Running two groups at the same time will probably result in my head asploding and everyone else being dissapointed. Maybe once the main campaign is underway I'll find time to run some one-off adventures on the side. But don't let that stop anyone else from stepping up and starting a GM career! I'll gladly sign up as a player if someone else runs something!

In the meantime, please have some free sekrit goblin lore!

Ten Fun Facts About Goblins

1: Horse Hate: Goblins excel at riding animals, but they don’t quite get horses. In fact, their hatred of all things horse is matched only by their fear of horses, who tend to step on goblins who get too close.

2: Dog Hate: Although goblins raise horrible rat-faced creatures called (creatively enough) goblin dogs to use as mounts (and ride wolves or worgs if they can get them—goblins are quick to explain that wolves are NOT dogs), their hatred of plain old dogs nearly matches their hatred of horses. The feeling is mutual. If your dog’s barking at the woodpile for no reason, chances are he smells a frightened goblin hiding in there somewhere.

3: Goblins Raid Junkyards: Garbage pits, gutters, sewers… anywhere there’s garbage, you can bet goblins are nearby. Goblins are weirdly adept at crafting weapons and armor from refuse, and are fond of killing people with what they throw away.

4: Goblins Love to Sing: Unfortunately, as catchy as their lyrics can be, goblin songs tend to be a bit too creepy and disturbing to catch on in polite society.

5: They’re Sneaky: An excited or angry goblin is a noisy, chattering, toothy menace, but even then, he can drop into an unsettling silence in a heartbeat. This, matched with their diminutive size, makes them unnervingly adept at hiding in places you’d never expect: stacks of firewood, rain barrels, under logs, under chicken coops, in ovens…

6: They’re A Little Crazy: The fact that goblins think of things like ovens as good hiding places reveals much about their inability to think plans through to the most likely outcome. That, and they tend to be easily distracted, particularly by shiny things and animals smaller than them that might make good eating.

7: They’re Voracious: Given enough supplies, a goblin generally takes nearly a dozen meals a day. Most goblin tribes don’t have enough supplies to accommodate such ravenous appetites, which is why the little menaces are so prone to going on raids.

8: They Like Fire: Burning things is one of the great goblin pastimes, although they’re generally pretty careful about lighting fires in their own lairs, especially since goblins tend to live in large tangled thistle patches and sleep in beds of dried leaves and grass. But give a goblin a torch and someone else’s home and you’ve got trouble.

9: They Get Stuck Easily: Goblins have wiry frames but wide heads. They live in cramped warrens. Sometimes too cramped.

10: Goblins Believe Writing Steals Your Soul: The walls of goblin lairs and the ruins of towns goblins have raided are littered with pictures of their exploits. They never use writing, though. That’s not lucky. Writing steals words out of your head. You can’t get them back.

The RPTools guide is going to take a little while before I can get it done. It seems the pathfinder framework I was eyeing has succumbed to massive bloat. I'll try to find a more lightweight one to make things easier on people. Worst case scenario we can dump the framework entirely and just use RPTools and seperate character sheets.

In the meantime, impatient types can peruse the various guides at http://www.rptoolstutorials.net/ to get a feel for how the base client works. (Quickstart guide Is here).

Code:

Username       Timezone    Day(s)       Time(s)      Experience   Preferences
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ulminati        GMT+1   Fri/sat/sun  Noon - Midnight    Lots      Spectacular player deaths :D
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Azira           GMT+1     Fri/sat       Evening         Lots      Dungeon crawl
Azael           GMT+1      Sun     Afternoon/Evening    Some      ??
root            GMT-3     Fri/sat         ??            None      ??
Mrowak          GMT+2     Fri/Sat    Evening/Night      Lots      Exotic storyfaggotry
lightbane       GMT+1   Fri/sat/sun     Evening         Some      ??
Angelo85        GMT+1     Fri/Sat       Evening         None      Mystery/Intrigue
DamnedReg.        ??       Any(?)        Any(?)         Some      Dungeon crawl with some LARP
JagreenLern     GMT-5       ??     Afternoon/Evening    Some      ??
Renegen         GMT-5     Sat/Sun  Afternoon-Night      Lots      Dungeon crawl
Wetworks        GMT+1      Sun          Evening         Some      ??
Black Cat       GMT-3     Sun-Thu  Stuffies-Thingies    None      Elves, Fairies, Goblins

Judging from player feedback so far, it seems the time most people can agree on is saturday evening. I propose a bi-weekly session going from around 18-19 GMT+1 to 23-24 GMT+1. I'll present the intro blurbs to the adventure paths that look promising sometime tomorrow. I kinda got sidetracked reinventing the wheel in maptools.

Well, I intend to run the AP with minimal modifications. If people decide to cheese über-munchkin builds they're really only ruining things for themselves. Unless they're the kind of people who like regenerating health and played Quake on easy. The only thing I really haven't got patience for is DRAMA. As long as noone's overly disruptive, noone throws tantrums and we can at least agree to pretend to follow the spirit of whatever adventure path we end up selecting, I'm pretty chill about what people end up playing.

Like I've said a few times earlier, once everything's just about settled, I'm going to roll a d20 for everyone with highest rolls getting first picks at the 5 player slots. That seems like the fairest way to pick players. There's probably going to be some dropout because a) not everyone can play in a given timezone, b) we end up picking an adventure path that rubs some players the wrong way and c) people realize 1-2 sessions in that they can't really commit to showing up one night every 2 weeks. Taking that into account, there's a pretty good chance I'll be able to accomodate everyone.

Right, decision time people. Which campaign looks the most interesting to you? I'll list the various ones available from paizo that I've been able to look over along with a few thoughts on them. I'm thinking everyone gets to pick their top 3 favourites and list them in order. Top pick gets 3 points, 2nd gets 2, 3rd gets 1. Whichever path has the highest sum will be the one we run with. Most of the paths have had a low-spoiler player's guide published intended for players about to start playing the given adventure path. You can download the PDFs from Paizo's site for free. If you'd rather not give out a dummy mail to the jews at Paizo, I've provided some hotlinks to my dropbox folder. Pretty please don't raep my bandwidth <3
My personal preference is
1: H 2: A 3: F
But I'm willing to go with any of them if the Kodex Kritikal Konsensus demands it.

I figure we'll let the vote run until sometime thursday. Then I'll figure out how to get us started. I can probably prepare enough to run character building and kick off the adventure on dec 3rd, which would set us up to run on the weekends the kodexian Dark Heresy campaign isn't.

A: Rise of the Runelords (Player Guide) (Dropbox player guide)

This is the first campaign Paizo released for their setting. It's been getting mostly positive reviews, although some encounters have tendencies of causing total party kills. The premise isn't too ambitious - save the sleepy coastal village in the most generic fantasy part of Golarion, but picks up as the path goes along.

B: Curse of the Crimson Throne (Player Guide) (Dropbox player guide)

An urban intrigue setting, still in one of the more generic parts of Golarion. The campaign has gotten good reviews from players, but I'm not too stoked myself after having skimmed through the first few adventures. Although the tyrant queens handmaiden does have some pretty badass armor later on. Personally I feel like Council of Thieves does the same thing but with a more interesting setting.

C: Second Darkness (No Player Guide @ Paizo) (Dropbox player guide)

Yeah. It's the deep elves, riding gloomspiders out of the undermurk. I was never terribly thrilled with drow. The early adventures look ok(ish), but the more the adventures push towards getting the players underground, the more cliche it gets. I'm not thrilled about this one. :/

D: Legacy of Fire (No Player Guide@ Paizo) (Dropbox player guide)

Arabian niiiiiights! The actual dungeon-crawly parts seem to come sooner and more frequently than in the other adventure paths. Player reviews complain that the difficulty curve is way out of whack and non-optimized parties get slaughtered out of hand. It seems to lose a little steam around level 5-6 though. I like the setting, but I'm not sold on the plot and encounter design. (although it is the path most likely to deliver hilariously unfair total party kills).

E: Council of Thieves (Player Guide) (Dropbox player guide)

Urban intrigue in a nation that worships demons. A lawful evil "paladin" order of hellknights. This arc is a lot more LARP-heavy than the previous paths. It has fewer dungeon crawls and more rat diplomacy. It's probably not what people have expressed interest in so far. It's gotten a lukewarm reception from players, although one of the 6 adventures in the path is more or less universally considered a masterpiece.

F: Kingmaker (Player Guide) (Dropbox player guide)

A sandbox-style adventure where players eventually end up overseeing the development of a small kingdom. It has some pretty interesting mechanics, but definately isn't dungeon-crawly. It's gotten decent reviews from players on the net. The one group I know personally that ran it had some reservations about it. I'd like to run something like this someday, but I don't think the adventre path is what people here are looking for.

G: Serpent's Skull (Player Guide) (Dropbox player guide)

I've played this path as a player before. It starts off brilliantly with what is one of my favourite lv1 adventures. But soon enters a rapid decline. Once the players hit the mainland around level 4, I really struggle to reccomend going further with this.

H: Carrion Crown (Player Guide) (Dropbox player guide)

I've played the first half of this as a player and really quite enjoyed it. Each of the 6 adventures are built around one of the classics of gothic horror. (Haunted mansions, Frankenstein, werewolves, cthulhu mythos, vampires etc). The 2nd adventure is pretty weak, but loosely enough connected to the plot that I could probably swap it with another published adventure in the same level bracket without anyone noticing. I quite like this adventure path.

I: Jade Regent (Player Guide)

Enh... A road-trip adventure with the players following a caravan across the continent. I'm not really thrilled about this one. Aside from the first adventure, all subsequent parts of this have been ripped into by people on the net. We should probably give this one a pass.