Game System
Detailed Description
[An Introduction]
The year is 837 since the Great Flood. From his high-walled capital, cruel Prince Horace Bar-astan drives his growing empire with an iron fist, levying crushing taxes and conscripting men and women by the thousands to fuel the fires of conquest. His aim is nothing less than to subjugate the other princes of the Crimson Veldt and be hailed as king of the world.
In the streets of Astangard, life is hard and the tax collectors harder. While no official tax rates are published, it is generally accepted that paying half is getting off easy. Corruption is rampant, and the tax squads are known to demand a little extra to line their pockets. Those who will not--or cannot--pay are conscripted on the spot.
You are one of the lucky ones to have been spared the whips and the forced marches, the blood-drenched charges and slaughter-filled stands. For now.
Some people, of course, seem to have managed to avoid both the army and the taxes. But they aren't just the wealthy nobles you'd expect; many are just ordinary tradesmen, even some farmers, who all seem to have much more in the way of houses, food, or clothes than their peers. Curiosity gets the better of you one day as one of your well-off neighbors walks past you in the marketplace near dusk, heading for the seedy side of town. Keeping a safe distance, you follow them to a dark alley near the northern wall, around the back side of a fishmonger's warehouse. There, illuminated by the light of a single torch, is a reinforced wooden door underneath a hand-painted sign reading, "Odd Jobs". Your neighbor quietly opens the door and slips inside.
Is this their secret to success? You have little chance to ponder before the sound of a passing patrol sends you scrambling for cover. You worm your way among the piles of refuse in the alley, your nostrils twitching at the pungent smells of rotting fish guts. Best not to be questioned by the Prince's Guard about your presence in an area rife with crime.
After waiting ten heart-pounding minutes for the guards to leave, you consider your options. You can go home and slave away until you are forced into the army, or you can take your chances that your first step through the door might be your last.
[Game Type and Setting]
This is a D&D 3.5 game set in a standard home-brewed medieval fantasy. Magic is common but distrusted by many due to the fact that most powerful wizards, sorcerers, and clerics are in the employ of Prince Bar-astan. Also, most magical artifacts are valuable and have been taken by the tax squads as payment.
[Game Master(s)]
I (Mordae) am the only GM at this time. I have about 18 years of GM experience with pen-and-paper games, plus about 10 years running a role-playing MUD. This is my first shot at PbP GMing but I think I can hold my own 🙂 (I know, I know... famous last words...)
[Game Explanation]
Players run "odd jobs" for a shadowy gangland taskmaster in the medieval city of Astangard. Those who play by his rules have opportunities for greatness (or at least a little peace and prosperity), but inherent in the calling is a high degree of personal risk.
The game will involve a substantial amount of role playing, some hack-and-slash, and a little bit of (sometimes complex) puzzle solving.
[Application Process]
Applications will be accepted until we have 4-5 players (4 would be ideal, assuming the balance of character classes is right). I have one player (an old pen-and-paper friend) who has asked for a skill-type character; other than that, the board is open.
[Character Creation]
Characters should be created at XL1 with a point buy of 28 and maximum die roll for hit points. All classes (except druid) and all races are acceptable; multi-classing is allowed (assuming your character survives long enough to level up). All alignments are acceptable, but I reserve the right to reject TN or CN unless you really know how to play it. All equipment and funds will be provided by the scenario.
[Acceptable Source Material]
Core and PHB II are acceptable. Other rules (prestige classes, feats, etc.) will be considered on a case basis.
I'll personally be using http://www.d20srd.org for convenience.
[Any additional information or requirements]
I would like to see a one to two paragraph background story that describes the character (particularly description and point-of-view/motivation) and their family members (at least their names, ages and occupations). All characters start in or near the large city of Astangard.
OGMW Game Link
- What's new in this game
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I enjoyed the game. Brynna is rather a coward, so would have loved to get out from under the Crocus if it could have been done safely. My recent problem is that I have usually accessed MW on my p[hone, and the new system is not really very phone-friendly. But I enhoyed playing with all of your.
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Yes, indeed, on multiple fronts. But Byll himself was one of those runners that the organization would like to get rid of, too. A common tactic is to pit multiple runners against each other on the same objective--so it was intended not to be 100% clear whether Byll was trustworthy or not, and whether his former associates were trustworthy or not.
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So I suppose I could peel back the veil a bit here too. Byll was meant to be a bit of a thorn in the side of the party throughout this little underground adventure. He was your babysitter, after all. But there wasn't much buy-in or buy-out from anyone, and so it mostly just became something I dabbled in when I wasn't annoyed about writing it. The end goal was still there though. I wanted to either make Byll annoying enough that the party felt comfortable breaking the promise to the rebel group or somehow subtly convince them that it was a good idea (and that it was their idea). I knew I couldn't do both because motivations would contradict, but I thought I'd be able to eventually catch the pulse of one or two PCs enough to jump headfirst into A or B. My Plan C was a bit more chaotic and it was just Byll going rogue, taking the items himself, and then leading a Benny Hill style chase out of town. Then deal with the mistrust he'd created with the group somewhere outside city limits when he allowed himself to get caught (*or just after he got caught). There's a reason this was Plan C. Good game, Eric. I like that you offer layers to your plots and genuinely interesting in-scene problems to solve. There was probably a ton of details in some of those rooms -especially those last few- that we totally missed that made you shout at your screen.
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Enjoyed the game (and I read the reveal thread) - I think Karn would have wanted to escape the Crocus and move on. Don't know anything about those other systems.
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Friends, I hope everyone got a chance to take a look at the . If there are any reactions, questions, etc. I will be glad to answer! I'll leave the game open another couple of weeks for this purpose. As for my future gaming plans, I'll probably be focusing on systems other than D&D for my immediate forays. If Risus, Blades in the Dark, or Legend in the Mist sound exciting, stay tuned! I hope to game with you again someday (Basil and Login already know there's no escape from me 😀), and don't hesitate to reach out if there's anything I can do to make your weaving better!
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From the beginning, then... The journey, for this group, began when they each individually walked through the door under the Odd Jobs sign back in Astangard. Once inside, they learned the doorway was a front for an operation called the Black Crocus, a sort of mafia-esque shadow gang of criminals who were able to work outside the authoritarian constraints of the Astan war machine. The characters were all read into a sort of security agreement that said, in essence, "we know you're desperate to make money for survival, and therefore we expect you'll do everything we say. If you don't, or if you talk about our existence at all, you're dead." Each of them probably suspected, at the time, that the organization was not really what it claimed to be. If I did my job correctly, those doubts should have grown over the course of the game as the group found itself in increasingly obtuse, pointless, difficult, and just plain nasty missions. Whether it was rooting out a dragon in an obscure mine distant from the city, or looting the catacombs beneath the Temple of Water in Stony Ford, burgling a noble's manor with intent to harm, or breaking through the army's lines to deliver a message to a Crocus operative in River Forge--even to the current mission of tracking down ancient Elven heirlooms from a ruined palace in an occupied city--none of these really seemed like they were going to be money-makers for the Crocus. All true. The Crocus was in fact operated by the government as a means to identify and silence dissidents. While this was ostensibly the purpose of conscription into the army, the Crocus work was aimed at particularly capable dissidents, the type who might be able to pull off actual partisan operations or even outright rebellion. Those that were slightly capable would probably end up dead over the course of their "jobs", while those who were significantly capable (such as your group) but few in number would eventually be given a join-or-die ultimatum. Naturally, there were some of those capable dissidents who made it moderately far into the organization as job-handlers or -runners without realizing what the game was. The Crocus encouraged that, since it helped keep others in the dark. This was intended to be reflected in the sometimes confusing and/or contrary directions; it also allowed the party to subvert the assigned path, such as when they managed to turn the tide of the battle for River Forge by disrupting the Astan army's infiltration tactic. There were also those who knew the game and were playing against it, such as the Water priestess in Stony Ford and Karn's drunken buddies in River Forge. Assuming the group completed the current assignment to loot the ancient Elven crown jewels, it would have been choice time: (a) Finish the job as assigned, bringing the items to the Crocus. In this case, the cloak-and-dagger would have continued, with the party headed back to Astangard for another prove-your-worth funnel mission. (b) Take the artifacts to the Elven court (a course Layna would have recommended). In this case, the party would have learned from a third party about the Crocus's duplicity, and then could choose whether to try to escape the Crocus's reach permanently, or to start the revolution.
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I'm not leaving until I know the blue prints for where the story was headed.
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Unfortunately, I'm feeling like I agree with Basil. While Odd Jobs survived a whole lot of changes, at this point there are so many fits and starts and gaps in knowledge that it's never going to really get going the way it used to be. Do we want one last battle hurrah, or shall I just spill the tea on where the plot would have headed, and we can all ride out to our next epic adventure?
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I think the pace of this game and the overall buy-in has left me a bit lost for the character and the plot. I might need to bow out unless there are other ideas from the table on how to resolve either of these issues.
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I'm around, what happened when I stuck one of them through the gate?
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Still here
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Layna wrinkles her nose. "I like them where they can't get to us. But if we're not going around them, then better take them out now."
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Greetings, all! You probably all saw the security notice and said to yourselves, "Great, Eric's going to be sidelined for a bit." "A bit" turned into "a good long while" on account of previously scheduled RL stuff that all bled together to keep my free time firmly in negative territory for the better part of a month. If you're all still around and kicking, great--I shall be resuming presently.
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Karn had noticed that the skeleton's chains went into the wall and then noticed that when they moved the portcullis started going up and that when we killed them it went down again.
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My apologies, I can't tell if Karn is having a moment of realization that about the nature of the portcullus or not. I'm happy to have the scene where it dawns on him that the consequences of his actions have hit, but I don't know if that was the intention.
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Have a great time!
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Yes, it would be possible to lift the portcullis by using the chains. Karn could Take 10 and pull up the portcullis to chest height in four rounds. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone! My family will be spending next weekend in Pasadena for the Rose Bowl. Routine posts will come back on the 3rd.
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Karn says, "Maybe if we pull on the chain like them bones did, it will lift them bars up?"
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Astaban looks at the portcullis and then back at the now-slain skeletons. "I bet we have to go in there... it's going to be harder to raise that thing now..." He takes a step forward and checks the portcullis and the ghouls. He takes his short sword from his belt and tries to quickly get one of the creatures on the other side of the portcullis if they are close.
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Between Brynna's fantastic canine and Karn's flurry of fists, the long-decayed skeletons are quickly dispatched. The portcullis slips down the couple of inches it had raised, landing on the stone floor with a resounding BAM that echoes through the room. The ghouls trapped behind it continue to grope through, though it appears the bars will keep them from breaking through for quite some time.
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Yeah, I went back and read a few pages back too. I missed where the ones on the other side of the portcullis weren't chained as well, which then led me to mentally lumping them altogether. So I had visions of one group of undead all on the other side of a lowered portcullis. I was trying to figure out how we were going to slow down chained undead here from opening the gate while also trying to figure out what gate was also being opened by the others.
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They’re going after the bound skeletons that seem to be responsible for lifting the portcullis that would let the ghouls get to you. 😁
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I'm confused as to what's happening right now. We're attacking the things, after just talking about not attacking them? Also, how are you getting close enough to them to attack them?
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Karn decides to put his fists where his mouth is and moves in to attack the same skeleton that Brynna did. His fists move very fast <Flurry of Blows> Attack 1 Damage 1 Attack 2 Damage 2
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Brynna nods and casts a spell, summoning a large dog, which she directs to attack the skeleton on the left. (Summon Monster II, celestial riding dog, +4 to STR and CON due to being a conjuror attack:1d20+5damage:1d6+5
