Ironfang Invasion: The Last Light of Phaendar

The Pace

This is a slow, casual Play-by-Post game. I am aiming for approximately 2–3 GM updates per week. Sometimes there may be more. Sometimes real life will get in the way and  there may be less. Consistency is more important than speed.

You are welcome to post more frequently, especially for character interaction, but you should not feel that you need to be online constantly to keep up. This is a game we are  building to last.

Be a Player, Not a Spectator

I want everyone to have opportunities to contribute to the story. Take initiative. Talk to the other characters. Pursue relationships. Ask questions. Make plans. Let your character  have opinions and make decisions. You don't need to wait for the GM to provide every opportunity for roleplay. At the same time, please remember that this is a shared story. Give other players room to contribute and avoid making decisions that dictate what another character thinks, feels, or does.

Your Character Should Want to Be Here

Your character does not need to be heroic, selfless, or particularly fond of the other PCs. They do, however, need a reason to cooperate. This campaign is about a community  being torn apart and the people trying to survive it. Characters who fundamentally refuse to work with the group, abandon others at every opportunity, or deliberately undermine  the party are not a good fit. Conflict between characters can be fantastic. A character who makes cooperation impossible is not.

Phaendar Matters

The people and places you create during character creation are not just background decoration. Your family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, mentors, rivals, and favorite places can all become part of the campaign. That also means they are real people in the world. I will not treat every NPC you create as untouchable simply because they are important to your character. If you give your character twenty people they love, you've given the story twenty opportunities to make you care.

Play-by-Post & Combat

Pathfinder 2e can be wonderfully tactical, but Play-by-Post can also turn a five-minute encounter into a three-week ordeal. I will therefore streamline where it makes sense. Routine actions, obvious NPC behavior, minor movement, and situations where the outcome is already clear may be handled quickly rather than played out one post at a time. Important encounters will still be tactical. You will have meaningful choices, and your decisions will matter. The goal isn't to remove the Pathfinder 2e experience. The goal is to make sure the parts that take weeks to play are worth taking weeks to play.

Communication

If you are going to be away, just let me know when you can. You don't need to provide an explanation or apologize for having a life outside the game. Likewise, if something about the campaign isn't working for you, please speak up. I'd rather adjust something than discover six weeks later that everyone has been quietly unhappy with it.

Discord

If we establish a Discord server, it will be available for casual conversation, rules questions, memes, and general chatter. The forum remains the campaign record. Important character decisions, major roleplay, and anything that needs to remain part of the campaign's history should happen on the forum rather than disappearing into Discord.

Finally

I have run Play-by-Post games before, and I know how easy it is for them to become a second job. I'm deliberately building this campaign around a sustainable pace. I am not looking for players who can post twenty times a day. I'm looking for players who will show up, participate, care about the story, and stick around. If real life gets busy, that's okay. If a week doesn't go exactly according to plan, that's okay too. We're here to tell a good story together, not to punch a clock.