Dungeons and Devils

[BRickAstley]

[*]D&D edition 3.5, or Pathfinder. It's the version I know the best, and the version with rules available free and legal. Although I suspect forum D&D would get to be more roleplaying and less rules wrangling, it's good to have an idea on capabilities.
There's not a huge difference between the two, Pathfinder was consciously developed as 3.5 with balance tweaks.

I would strongly suggest pathfinder. It's built on 3.5, but with more balance, and more available freely and legally online in the links Mardoc gave. (Plus it has some interesting minutiae I wouldn't mind having for a character concept. )

[*]Low power level, 3-5th level or so, vanilla settings (that is, character options mostly restricted to the Player's Handbook). It's easier to DM when the party doesn't have all the get-out-of-jail free cards like teleport without error, and without monsters in the party (sorry, Tasunke)

Definitely agree. Demigod Players can wait for another campaign.

[*]The party *must*, before starting, reconcile backstories so that it's reasonable for you all to want to risk your lives for each other and you have common goals. It can work to have a group who wants to serve and protect the innocent, or a group that's looking just to get rich fast, but mixed expectations end badly. Not willing to DM for an outright evil party, though

Also agree. I can be flexible with motivation, let's bring on the role-play!

[*]No stealing from the other players, general agreement on party goals and morality, that sort of thing

Yes. Feel free to have differing interests, but roughly similar so there's party cohesion. And no being a dick.

[*]What setting do you want? Forbidden Realms, Erebus, something more generic?

Whichever. Though classic D&D sounds best now, I'm not familiar with other settings so I'm flexible.

[*]What environment do you want? City, Wilderness, or Dungeon?

Again, any of those are fine with me, I'm adaptable.

[*]What sort of quest do you want? "Adventurer, the world is about to end and only you..." or "King X seeks adventurers to explore the Louisiana Purchase" or "Local merchant recruits caravan guards for low-risk journey" or "You're at the caravan stop, waiting for your friend Godot"?

I would prefer something of a more sandbox-y feel. Don't feel like you have to plan for us to do anything humanly possible, but the ability to go about the world and story on our own motivations would be nice.

[*]Where do you want to be on the combat vs talk/intrigue scale?

Probably about half and half. Let the combat characters have their spotlight, and the social characters have theirs.

Just everyone remember that you can roleplay combat just as well as you roleplay talk

[*]How much risk do you want? Are you ok with replacing characters due to unlucky combat rolls? Due to stupid (er...heroic) decisions? Would prefer to mostly survive?

I prefer easy mode, but not devil GM either. If you tried to kill us every conceivable way you could, I'd get frustrated. But if we decide at level 1 to go pet a dragon on the nose, let us perish for our stupidity.

[Tasunke]

Probably mostly wilderness tbh, with the occasional City or dungeon.

Like maybe 60% wilderness, 30% Dungeon, and 10% city?

[DrakDarkstar]

I dont know if the DM would allow it, and it would probably depend on the base characters level being 5, but ive been waiting to try this funny idea for a while now.

May i use a 3.5 half-dragon with the pathfinder giant template and do something weird like take "weapon focus: elves" or so? that could probably change to halflings or gnomes i guess, but pretty sure elves would give me reach :P

anyway, as far as i know, at base level 5 that would leave me as a level 1 fighter so i dont think its too bad ^^

if im allowed to do so, im definitely in, otherwise ill see

[BRickAstley]

I also just had a thought. What if our adventuring party is a start up mercenary guild. As part of the backstory and reliable unit cohesion. The group is formed by answering flyers and recruiting posters for the Mercenary guild Realms Beyond. There's a shadowy guildmaster and we've all been recruited. From there the guild can recruit new members whenever someone dies, or if someone wants to join the game at any time they join the guild. Or they can leave at anytime and have their character go off on another mission to return whenever convienent. Basically keeping a stable of characters for all the players here on Realms Beyond. This also gives us an opportunity to have further missions beyond this first one and if we end up with a lot of people could be split on different missions.

I would be okay with something like that.

I totally like this idea :D

The only thing with this, is making sure that we have a clear system for characters coming in and out of play so that it doesn't get chaotic. Also, how much work we would be putting on Mardoc for being able to handle a lot of people, not sure how much this will change the requirement.


Also: If anyone wants help with character ideas or creation, feel free to PM me and I'll do what I can to help.

[Mardoc]

tbh, I may have not been expressing myself clearly, but when I was talking about having just whomever was online to go on the next adventure (or something similar to that) I was thinking along these lines. If we could even blitz some on Tinychat, at least if it looked like we could finish a certain task pretty quickly, to speed up the combat side of things, that would be awesome.

I think, with a party this big (and with people new to the rules) that's not likely to work anytime soon. I've no philosophical objection, but logistics for that sort of thing sound difficult.

How freeform <-------> restricted will the combat be btw? Not sure what that really means, but I was asked it. ... apparantly free-form can allow battles to not take forever on a Play-by-Post game.

I do plan to simplify initiative, to a simple Players turn/Monsters turn, where players can go in any order in their turn, to speed things up a bit. And in general, anything you can describe that sounds remotely feasible, you can try. It might be a harder roll to swing on the chandelier and plant your sword in the monster's eye, than to simply attack him from the ground, but you can try it.

I would prefer something of a more sandbox-y feel. Don't feel like you have to plan for us to do anything humanly possible, but the ability to go about the world and story on our own motivations would be nice.

I'll try, but that sort of thing depends on how good the party is at self-motivation, and on how many details of the world are common knowledge.

I dont know if the DM would allow it, and it would probably depend on the base characters level being 5, but ive been waiting to try this funny idea for a while now.

May i use a 3.5 half-dragon with the pathfinder giant template and do something weird like take "weapon focus: elves" or so? that could probably change to halflings or gnomes i guess, but pretty sure elves would give me reach :P

anyway, as far as i know, at base level 5 that would leave me as a level 1 fighter so i dont think its too bad ^^

if im allowed to do so, im definitely in, otherwise ill see

No, I'm afraid not. That sounds more like a monster than a hero.

Edit: Also, I'm sorry, but I really feel like the people already signed up are as much as I can handle. I can stretch to Pling, since she expressed interest a while ago, but it's just too big for me to accept any other signups just now

[Lewwyn]

Edit: Also, I'm sorry, but I really feel like the people already signed up are as much as I can handle. I can stretch to Pling, since she expressed interest a while ago, but it's just too big for me to accept any other signups just now

Can we get a post with all the signups and the basic foundation of what we're doing that can be edited as we decide on things? I just want to organize it a bit better so we have a very clear idea of who all is in and what we're looking at in terms setup that is easily found and referenced... Might be best to start a new thread for it started by Mardoc. This thread could continue and possibly if more people want in another DM could be found. I don't want to exclude anyone based on having not seen this thread yet, but I agree that we don't want to overtax Mardoc.

[BRickAstley]

Edit: Also, I'm sorry, but I really feel like the people already signed up are as much as I can handle. I can stretch to Pling, since she expressed interest a while ago, but it's just too big for me to accept any other signups just now

Can we get a post with all the signups and the basic foundation of what we're doing that can be edited as we decide on things? I just want to organize it a bit better so we have a very clear idea of who all is in and what we're looking at in terms setup that is easily found and referenced... Might be best to start a new thread for it started by Mardoc. This thread could continue and possibly if more people want in another DM could be found. I don't want to exclude anyone based on having not seen this thread yet, but I agree that we don't want to overtax Mardoc.

Also I think the list of players is currently:

BRIck
Commodore
Ichabod
Lewwyn
Mattimeo
Pling(?)
Tasunke

[Bigger]

im not going to play, but I'll lurk ya'll. and occaisonally stop in to give you a swirly or wedgie, just to help complete the D&D experience .

[Jkaen]

I was signing in as an assistant. Also the pace I have seen is about 2-3 days per round of combat

[pling]

Single digits, definitely. Probably restrict to people who've already posted in thread - I'd be ok with Brick and Pling joining yet, but I think that's about the limit for me, at least for now.

Edit: Also, I'm sorry, but I really feel like the people already signed up are as much as I can handle. I can stretch to Pling, since she expressed interest a while ago, but it's just too big for me to accept any other signups just now

I'm a little unsure if that means there's really space for me or if you're just being polite coz I said something several hours ago ... I clearly went to bed too early last night and the real conversation started later

But if there is genuinely space & you don't mind a noob (level of knowledge matches the "slide presentation" Brick linked to earlier in the thread, so I know what the game is but I've no knowledge of mechanics) then I'm in

Quite a bit of what's been said is over my head - preference for not-over-complicated. The merc guild idea sounds like it'd be easy to make up a character for (as in story wise).