Redemption - General Hangout (Everyone Welcome)

[Varen Tai]

Welcome to the Redemption OOC thread!

Rules for players:

1. The IC thread is for in-game prose only. ALL dice rolls, OOC discussions with other players, etc, will be found in this thread.
2. Each player will come up with a font color and style (nothing too dramatic, please) for their spoken text. That makes it easy to tell when they are talking.
3. Swears: I absolutely loathe anachronisms in my games. That means that most of our English swear words are off-limits. FR cultures would simply not have the same swear words we have, except perhaps damn, hell, bastard, bitch.... and I think that's it, because all those are relevant words in their cultures still. All the others are off-limits and I encourage you to be creative with your swears - make them relevant to the campaign setting or even be creative and come up with your own. No stealing from other media sources, so "frak" is right out. Feel free to take a page from Brandon Sanderson's swear styles if you are looking for examples.
4. Cultural references: Definitely try to keep obvious current cultural references out of the IC threads, though if you are able to slip in a totally IC Princess Bride quote without it sounding forced, I might give you an inspiration point. But by and large, anachronisms=bad. Unless you are very clever, and you make me laugh IRL because of your IC cleverness. Because this is still D&D and by golly, I don't think we can have a serious D&D game without jokes here and there. Just sayin'. If I feel it's totally breaking the 4th wall or wrecking the suspension of disbelief, I'll let you know and have you change your post.
5. As you write, you will be granted a great deal of creative power over the environments. You cannot dictate what any of the other players will do, and you'll need to be careful about active NPCs that either GM is actively controlling, but feel free to not be bounded by only what I say. This is a creative writing exercise as much as it is a D&D campaign. Players were picked not only for having a good character concept but also for good writing skills.
6. On that topic, NE and I will totally coach some of the writing along the way. Not in an intrusive way or frequently, but we figure you are likely open to that kind of feedback from us. NE has more writing experience than I and will likely have more to say on the subject, which is one of many reasons I have him along for the ride.
7. Have fun!
8. Each player will have TWO private threads. One will be their character sheet using the format WotC had an example of below. Players can create their own character sheet thread, just make sure to lock it so only you and the GMs can see it. If you don't know how to do this, ask BEFORE creating the thread. The other thread will be the secret conversation thread between player and GM for IC info like perception checks for secret doors, survival checks for the buried treasure chests found commonly scattered all over the landscape (unless you have Scratch along because he'll sniff them out for you), or Insight checks to catch Shadowheart's murderous intent towards Lae'zel (and vice versa) before it comes to fruition. You know, that kind of stuff. I'll move the recruitment thread here so all the info is in one place.
9. I will likely have more rules I'll add along the way as I think of them. Because I'm the GM, darn it, so my tyrannical reign begins now. Well, semi-tyrannical. Well, benevolent but still sometimes evil tyrannical reign. Because all GMs are evil. You know how it is.

 

Rules for readers:

1. For now, we will try having all OOC discussions in the same thread. If anyone feels like we are getting too much traffic here and it's tangling the discussions for the players, we will create a General Hangout thread in this topic for everyone, player and non-player alike, to discuss the game or whatever else is on their mind.
2. Feel free to comment on the game, but do not give suggestions to players about what to do or not do.
3. Don't be obnoxious, please.

Character sheets: Wizard of the Coat gave this sample for a character sheet:

Quote

Here's a link to my character sheet in one of the games I play in where this sheet is used.

Use this as a template, or something like it.

For the crunchy bits of character creation, I want the following rules to be followed:

1. We will start at lvl 5.
2. As mentioned in the recruitment thread, stats are assigned, not rolled or point buy. You go over each stat and carefully consider your character, then assign stats based on what fits for them. While an 18 intelligence used to represent Einstein level of ability in 2 and 3e, 5e has changed this up somewhat. That being said, 18 (or 20 for racial bonus) would still be considered untrained peak (since you'll gain extra stats every 4 levels). As a reference, consider that an 18 would be 98th percentile or so compared to the regular human population, with above that hitting truly heroic levels. 20 or above Dex would likely land you in the Human Olympics (elves and halflings probably have their own combined Olympics so they don't have to lower themselves to human standards 😉). Ponder where your character would fit for each stat, then let us GMs know and we will review it to see if we are agreed. We may think it needs to be higher or lower for whatever reason and we will discuss it.
3. Same goes for skills - while you should use the PHB to give you a general idea as to what and how many skills you have trained, you may end up with one or two more or less, or skills that may be normally outside the listed options. There will be compensation somewhere if you go either direction. We aren't looking to gimp or max PCs, but we'll have a general give and take if you are shorted in one area because the character genuinely feels like they would be less than normal, we will give you a compensatory bonus that fits the character in another area. Because we aren't terribly worried about balance (I can scale encounters any way I wish), we want the crunchy bits to be defined by the character instead of the other way around.
4. Equipment: Feel free to use the PHB as a general guideline, but same goes here as for above. If your character eschews wealth or powerful items as part of their backstory, then create that character's equipment list to be sparse without concern for game balance. If your character might have a magic item or two because of their history, put that in as well. Make the character, we will help do the balancing.
5. I am largely open to any reasonable source for additional char options. If you are filling out the char sheet with an eye towards the character, this should end up solid in the end, and extra flavor/variety is always a good thing.
6. We reserve the right as GMs to nudge or alter things as we see fit, but this is similar to the experience you just had in creating the prose aspect of the character - be creative, fair, and open to input from us, but take the opportunity to go outside the listed rules in order to do something that helps the character be more awesome and match their core being at the same time. People, all people, are unique in the strengths and weaknesses. Make the stats match that reality as well.

For now, any questions about these rules and such can go here in this thread, but we will continue using the other Hangouts thread until we formally start the game for everything else, including the other character selection announcements.

Edited January 18 by Varen Tai (see edit history)

[Wizard of the Coat]

Wow! I'm excited to be hear! Many thanks to our dynamic DM duo for the opportunity and encouraging feedback they've provided via this game application process!

4 hours ago, Varen Tai said:

Character sheets: I have no clue how that functionality is supposed to work. Maybe someone can explain? It didn't seem to be very intuitive to me when I tried it out, though the character sheet function is active now. We need the sheets to stay private for only the character and the GMs. Players, feel free to add your character sheet now, we will start to get it filled out.

One of the DMs on MW has developed a post format (template?) that works as a character sheet for his games, rather than use the MW Sheet feature (linked at the top of each page). I couldn't find a blank template of this homebrew sheet, which might be intentional: the way the sheet is set up, a blank version would look weird and be nonintuitive. Better to see a completed sheet as an example of how it might work for you as DMs. Here's a link to my character sheet in one of the games I play in where this sheet is used.

If you like the idea of creating (or borrowing from another DM) a post format that serves as a character sheet for this game, you can use this linked sheet to give you ideas about the layout and content that would work best for your purposes. Ultimately, the choice to use either the MW Sheet or a Sheet you create (or borrow from another DM) has to do with how you plan to use the character sheets for this game. Because the MW Sheet has only very small text boxes for all of the descriptive aspects of the character (personality, backstory...), I'm guessing it might not be a good fit for your needs.

EDIT: And it goes without saying that if you want our homebrew sheets to be private, they could be posted in the opening post of our application threads or some other player-created private thread.

Edited January 1 by Wizard of the Coat (see edit history)

[Wizard of the Coat]

Oh, also... I didn't get an invite to join the game. Will those be forthcoming?

 

[Wizard of the Coat]

I added a (blank) "test character sheet" to the Character Sheets page so that you can see the layout for the MW 5e Sheet.

[Varen Tai]

2 hours ago, Wizard of the Coat said:

Here's a link to my character sheet in one of the games I play in where this sheet is used.

This functionality works for me.

Unless someone has a better idea, I'm thinking each player has 2 private threads - one for character sheet only, and one for any additional DM/player convos. Seems easier to have the char sheet as a dedicated thing rather than getting mixed in with other things.

Editing the initial player rules!

[Wizard of the Coat]

Would it be OK with you if I use my application thread as our private conversation thread? I like the idea of having all of our conversation in one place--so that three months from now I don't end up searching through the conversation thread you've created only to find that the info I wanted was in the application thread.

[Varen Tai]

10 minutes ago, Wizard of the Coat said:

Would it be OK with you if I use my application thread as our private conversation thread? I like the idea of having all of our conversation in one place--so that three months from now I don't end up searching through the conversation thread you've created only to find that the info I wanted was in the application thread.

Yup! I moved it here. Didn't think I had that functionality, so I'll move all the recruitment threads here for each player.

[Wizard of the Coat]

Thanks!

[Wizard of the Coat]

I was really good at OGMW, but this new and improved version is still new to me. Case in point, I did not know that moving private threads would create a public "Topic X was moved to Forum Y" message in the Forum from which they are moved. Meaning that I (and presumably everyone) was (and still is) able to see the names of the application topics (threads) you moved to the "Redemption - the game" forum. I'm guessing this is a glitch the Devs will fix if someone reports it. But for now, I regret that my request led to some spoiling of the surprise you are planning for us.

Edited January 1 by Wizard of the Coat (see edit history)

[Varen Tai]

Darn it! Try renaming the thread to something less obvious?

[Zelphas]

Hello!

 

On the current topic; I renamed my application thread, but it didn't change the name of the moved thread in the recruitment page, so it looks like the cat's out of the bag there.

[Varen Tai]

Yeah, I put a support ticket into the admins of MW to see what they can do, but oh well. :) If it works, great, if not, then we'll deal with it.

[Wizard of the Coat]

@Varen Tai I'm taking a first pass at building the character. Do you want to let us know the chargen details? For example...

1. Standard array, point buy, something else?

2. The usual starting gold/equipment options, or something else?

3. Published sources available/restricted for chargen purposes?

[Varen Tai]

21 minutes ago, Wizard of the Coat said:

@Varen Tai I'm taking a first pass at building the character. Do you want to let us know the chargen details? For example...

1. Standard array, point buy, something else?

2. The usual starting gold/equipment options, or something else?

3. Published sources available/restricted for chargen purposes?

Oh, right! I'll edit the player rules for this!

Edit: Post is edited!

Edited January 1 by Varen Tai (see edit history)

[Nighteyes5678]

Just for transparency's sake, I'm going to give all of you more attention than you'll want later today and tomorrow. Right now, all of my brainz are being spent on the final character decision. Once that's made and we've committed to characters, I'll feel more free to dive in and give everyone thoughts about their sheets, stats, and the like.

If anyone wants, I've found this to be a more-or-less helpful stats quiz. When I took it as myself, I think I got pretty close to what I think my stats are. So, if you take it for your character, it might help settle things: http://www.kevinhaw.com/add_quiz.php

Feel free to take it for yourself and share what you get!

(Another much longer quiz that does class, race, and alignment as well as stats is https://www.easydamus.com/character.html -- Fun times!)