Anyone up for some D&D with a twist?

Cafe Society
101

Same caveat as SD, above.
I am Stonys, a cleric in the service of Thoth. We are the Seekers, called by our god to search out new knowledge.

My mother gave me to the Order when I was eight, crying all the while. Oh, she was crying, not I. I laughed and kissed Adept Benlil on the nose and they tell me he went red as a fat berry.

My mother had told me I was a born Seeker, the only one of her children born with a seed of curiosity in my heart that became a grasping vine the god could use to choke the life from me. So I was to serve the god and appease him. At the order, the adepts chuckled and said Thoth has no need of appeasement. He isn’t vengeful. He’s more likely to forget humanity than strike us. More likely to shrug at her loss and make a note for his lists. But they did admire her imagery and jotted it down in the Thousand Books.

And truth be told my mother probably just wanted fewer mouths to feed, fewer offerings. A bit of poetry and a girl child and she was free.

She will never understand the gift she gave me by giving me as a gift. The adepts set me free to soar or scrabble in the dust so long as I was learning. Always learning. My head is full to bursting after twelve years of their training, and when the Guild came looking for a healer I volunteered. It’s my turn to find new things to bring to the Order, new lore for the Thousand Books.

The Guild needed a healer. I needed the Guild. Thoth has written my secret name in his Judgment Book and will give me his help if I am ready to learn it.

It’s easier to learn when you listen instead of speaking, so I’ll stop talking now.

102

Also same caveat.

I’m Reve. Hey!

People hear ranger, they think forests, plains, and big tall folk. But gnomes gotta eat too, you know? ‘Course, we have to be a bit more picky, so we’re a bit better than them in general, I think you get what i’m sayin’. Most things worth hunting down here can dig above, around, below you… when didja last see a deer launch themselves out by a human’s feet, teeth all gnashing-up their ankles?

We like our fun, us gnomes. And those that don’t, well, those tinker-heads wouldn’t stop to eat if you didn’t shove a plate under their nose a few times a day. You want to be kept in food, need your space to try out your newest hope-your-head-don’t-get-blown-off toy, you need people who’re willing to do the boring stuff. And that’s me. Get some friendly beastie types to help dig the hole, quick stab in the right place, sort out those bits ‘n pieces I can trade, and a lovely meal for afters. Three moles with one stone, you might say. But food’s been a bit scarce late… seems they don’t take too well to some of the new gear some of the others have been workin’ on. And because they want to be kept in the style to which they’re used, guess who’s been packed off to earn a bit of gold and to buy what’s needed? A couple of dwarf traders mentioned this Guild place, and off i’m sent to sign myself up and earn them a nice wage. And, apparently, “make a few sketches of any interesting trinkets I find”. Sketches! Obsessed, that lot are.

103

Everyone’s looking good so far… I made a gmail account for the game, “sdmbdd (at) gmail (dot) com”. Could I ask that everyone download Heroforge, make their character sheet with it, and send the sheet to the above gmail? It’ll make managing the statistical side of things a lot easier :slight_smile:

Also, sturmhauke… is there any way I could convince you to play something other than a psionicist? I’ve never run a game using psionics, and I’m worried that I couldn’t do a fair job of implementing it with my kind of hectic schedule. :frowning:

104

Oh yea, almost forgot: we’re going to start at level 1, since a lot of our players are new. After everyone starts catching on we might do a timeskip and jump up 4-5 levels, but not until everyone’s confident with the system.

105

What’s happening in terms of starting equipment? Do you want character sheets with that or without?

106

I can’t get Heroforge to work on my computer. I don’t have Office.

107

Add standard adventuring gear, but we can handle purchasing the rest of the equipment at the beginning of the gamtable session, when I hand out some of the atypical items.

jsgoddess, can you work out how to operate Javascript D&D 3.5 Character Generator ? It has kind of a crappy interface, but it’ll let you generat an HTML character sheet.

108

I tried that one a few days ago, and found it pretty difficult.

But not to worry. I just realized I have access to Excel at work (duh!), so I’ll use the Heroforge.

109

Heheh, hurray! That’ll work. :slight_smile:

110

Couple of questions:

  1. Who else is in the party I’m playing in, and what job classes have they chosen, if any?

  2. Is there any particular flavor to the names we give our characters?

  3. Are there any particular alignment restrictions? (Of course, I’m probably not going to play any outright Evil character, but most of the characters I have in my head are some variant of Neutral.)

  4. Would you guys have any particular preference for personalities? 'Cause I know I’d have a ball playing a cynical, smart-alecky asshole, but it might not be fun for the rest of you guys to put up with such a character.

Also, a semi-stupid question: Please explain the point system. (Previous to this, I’ve only generated character stats via dicerolls.)

111

While I’m waiting for Nightfall…

[ul][li]Each of your abilities starts at 8.[/li][li]You get 28 points.[/li][li]For each point you spend on an ability you raise that ability by 1 to a maximum of 14.[/li][li]Raising an ability from 14 to 15 costs 2 points.[/li][li]Raising an ability from 15 to 16 costs 2 points.[/li][li]Raising an ability from 16 to 17 costs 3 points.[/li][li]Raising an ability from 17 to 18 costs 3 points.[/li][*]No ability may be raised above 18.[/ul]Once you’ve done that you get to apply racial modifiers (if any).

112

I think I’m starting to figure out this Heroforge setup, but I’m still not 100% clear on what all is going on in it. I’ll run through it tab-by-tab, hoping that this and the responses to it will help myself and other newcomers with any questions and problems.

Options: I didn’t change anything here. Looks like stuff the DM would decide on.

Race & Stats: I put 28 points worth into various abilities in the 1st column under “Inherent Gains.” Was this the correct place to enter them? Doing it this way means we have to keep track of how many points we’ve got and all that. I’m fine with this (it’s easy enough) but with so much automation in here, I wanted to make sure it’s the right procedure. The only other stuff I did was select my class, name, age/height/etc, and alignment. No idea what that big yellow box is for.

Classes: I selected Monk for 1st level, and picked my bonus monk feat. I didn’t touch anything else. Didn’t seem like anything else applied to me.

Skills: I think I got this one fine. I ended up with 20 points to put into skills, and distributed them as I saw fit.

Languages: Simple enough. I start with Common and Gnomish; I didn’t change anything here.

Feats: Apparently we get to start with a feat. I picked one of the available ones, then the rest were grayed out. I think I get this one too.

Armor: I didn’t quite understand this one completely. I saw how I could choose different armor types and all that, but didn’t know what–if anything–to do with the areas under that. As a monk, I’ll be going armorless anyway, so it’s a moot point for me at least.

Attacks: This one I really don’t get. Do I fill out a new column for each separate attack I might use? For example, would I have a column for Unarmed Strike and one for a weapn (if I chose to start with one); and then two more columns for Flurry of Blows unarmed & with weapon? This is where I need the most help.

Enhancements: Didn’t touch anything here. I’m guessing this is stuff that happens during the session, and doesn’t apply during creation.

Buffs: Same as above.

Character Sheet I, II, & III: This just looks like where everything is tallied up and stored for easy reference, so I didn’t do anything here, except put my name and player name at the top of sheet I.

113

The file turned out to be prohibitively large to send via email (20+ MB! :eek: ), so I uploaded it to my webpage:

dotchan’s character sheet

Paragraphs and stuff:

Given the flavor of this character, and that I’ve played tabletop gaming before, can he start a few levels ahead? :stuck_out_tongue:

114

I’d rather everyone started at level 1… don’t worry though, your experience will probably translate into you dying much less. XD

Speaking of which, I’m curious about your choice of giving a rogue low dex and high CON… are you aiming for a combat-oriented build, or what? :slight_smile:

115

Now would be as good a time as any to try and work out a schedule, since I wanted to wait to form parties until we knew who was free when. Right now, as I understand it, we have the following nine players:

Sir Dirx - monk
brownie55 - rogue
dotchan - rogue
Paladud - rogue
Little Plastic Wizard - wizard
**Revenant Threshold **- ranger
sturmhauke - psionic wrestler (or maybe just a barbarian with great grapple scores? I hope?)
**Algher **- druid
jsgoddess - cleric

I was obviously hoping to put **Algher ** and Jsgoddess in different parties, so we could have a healer on each team, but otherwise I think schedules and personal preferences will really determine who plays where. My recommendation, schedules aside, would probably be something like:

Team 1
jsgoddess - cleric
Little Plastic Wizard
Sir Dirx - monk
1 rogue

Team 2
**Algher **- druid
**Revenant Threshold **- ranger
Sturmhauke - wrestler
2 of the rogues

Team 1 doesn’t have a tank, but they have phenomenal damage output, and very good diversity. Team 1 can heal pretty well if the druid and ranger team up, having two rogues capitalizes on the fact that Sturmhauke’s character is likely to get a lot of attention from enemies, and the extra manpower helps make up for the lack of an arcane caster.

Nope! Treasure hunters are often a ragtag bunch, and it’s not as if the Guild payed any attention to nationalities or ethnicities when they threw their teams together.

Nope, no alignment restrictions! I just ask that you have some modicum of realistic backstory in that you make characters who could’ve believably become treasure hunters and mercenaries without violating beliefs or acting in a manner inconsistent with their personality.

I don’t have any preferences, but this is something you should probably ask your party once we get the schedules worked out; it’ll be a bigger issue for them than for me :slight_smile:

116

So, about scheduling: I was assuming we would run one or two-hour sessions every other week, to begin with, and go from there. The frequency is pretty negotiable (every week, once a month, etc), but I’m afraid it’ll be harder for me to budget more than two hours at one time; I’m a grad student at the moment, so my schedule tends to be pretty hectic.

Anyway, what times and days do people think they could be online for 1-2 hours?

117

Yup. The toughness of a tank, with some more versatility in skills.

And this particular character fits the stats I gave him very well.

(Plus, loading him up in CON means he can drink a helluva a lot without getting drunk. :smiley: )

EDIT I’m in the EST timezone. I’d prefer to play weekends if at all possible, but I’m always online every day in the evenings once class begins on the 17th (starting from about 6pm ish).

EDIT the Second If necessary, I don’t mind playing either a cleric or some kind of archer.

118

I’m in EDT, and can do evenings (preferably not Wednesdays) and weekends.

119

Oh yes; I can do EDT weekends, so that’ll probably go well. If everyone’s free on the weekend, maybe we could do one party on saturday and one on sunday? Assuming everyone consented I was going to log the games and post 'em for the board’s amusement, and although the stories might well turn out quite different, I’ll try to work some of the most nefarious and clever traps into both games, so you can each see how the other party fared.

Speaking of which, I should probably say a little about my DM style, especially since we have this neat thread on GM styles. Although there exists a story I’m extremely free-form, and the bulk of my notes are on traps, treasures, and the basic storyline. As such, you should never, ever, ever feel obligated to do what you think I wanted you to do when I wrote the story: I’m darn good at improvising, and I write my notes to suit that; both parties will start with the exact same campaign, and I’ll run both games from the same notes… but chances are, within a couple of sessions one group’s game will have little in common with the other.

I just wanted to mention that; some DMs have an obvious pre-planned path in mind, but I really don’t. I have a story, but I intentionally built it to be as improv-friendly (and fun!) as possible. :slight_smile:

120

Weekends should be good for me. I’m on mountain time; and the later in the evening, the better. (I’m another grad student, with lots of lab and field work)