Discussion

[AdellRazh]

Discord
Can your laptop not run Discord? That seems like something that could present the biggest barrier against its use.

Discord is the easiest way to contact me. If I close the Weave for whatever reason there's a non-zero chance that I will forget to open it back up again for days. Even if it's not an active forum, I think it's useful to see where people stand, and I like the idea of creating an easy mechanism for everyone to confirm they feel no need to post in reply to the current thread. Whether that mechanism is on Discord or elsewhere, it seems a worthy include.

Mythic/Epic
I have no interest in either. I am not fundamentally opposed, but nor do I have any motivation towards them.

Character Plots
I have an interest in character-specific story arcs, particularly for characters other than Spark. I have not spent enough time with Spark to know how she's going to evolve, so I can't speak to that yet.

Three Magic Items
Spark is largely item-agnostic, with one notable exception: I will need a +2 (or better) Int item with Knowledge (Planes) at some point before level 15 in hit a particular point on my build. Ideally, this would be attached to whatever her current +X Charisma item is. Notably, I'm pretty sure this is a request Danika can already fulfill, so we can craft it in-party as soon as resources permit, level 15 not being an especially pressing milestone. If you're looking for Christmas presents, though, GM, a +6 Headband of Mental Superiority (with Planes and... let's say UMD and Spellcraft) can fulfill all of Spark's fairy dreams.

Beyond that single item, Spark is so specialised, conceptually, that items can only offer her a versatility that I feel is better put into the hands of other player characters. There's very little a magic item can offer her than she can't fake with illusions, and I think that faking is more interesting on Spark than simply gaining the ability to throw fireballs or whatever. There's still the obvious, boring ones; I'm not going to say no to the standard +X implement, AC, and save items, obviously, but those fall under standard progression.

With the mission-shaped nature of this game, and how powerful Sphere-crafting is, perhaps your best bet is to just let us craft whatever horrible abomination items our hearts desire, resources and caster level permitting.

Initiative
GM-rolled initiative is fine. I like Rudra's suggestion of batch initiatives, but am not ride-or-die on it.

Passive Checks
I'm comfortable with rolling for myself, but not opposed to having the GM roll when they believe it is appropriate. As Doc said, a hybrid model.

Lines and Veils
My opinion on this is simple: We have a safeword, or perhaps a red card. Simply, if someone says "I'm not okay with this," about the content of a current scene, storyline, whatever, there is no discussion. We roll it back to before that content was introduced, no matter how deep into that content we are, rework things, and then either skip that scene or return to it changed to account for avoiding that content.

Trying to plan ahead for every potential trigger is a fool's errand, simply because a person cannot know what will be a bridge too far for themselves ahead of time. It is better to embrace a willingness to lose some work for the sake of party comfort. That's not to say one should intentially push into material that others have said is a no-fly area, but rather that one should be willing to adapt when new territory makes someone uncomfortable.

Personally, I do not have any lines that could realistically be crossed on Mythweavers. If we got there, we'd already be so, so far into the red.

Fudging
I have walked the Wyld Halls of freeform roleplaying. Nothing you do can hurt me. On the other hand, I do not fear party death. Ultimately, my answer is: Run the game you want to run. You seem to have a well-worn GM style that I am fully on-board with experiencing.

Another question you missed
@Ratpigeon (I think, it's been a few days) was proposing crafting items for the party using their own starting gold, and I suggested that, at that point, we might be better off simply pooling our resources. However, that level of itemcraft optimization falls to the GM and how coked-up you're willing to have your party start out.

Edited February 12 by AdellRazh (see edit history)

[Phechan]

Control + C, Control + V for everything expressed by Adell.

 

I'll add that Eosi's character arc would largely involve him returning to his home plane, which he hasn't gotten around to returning to yet (10 years in mortal form has been an exciting blip compared to several centuries in ethereal/storm form). He still feels connected to his species, but that might be him convincing himself that he is, as his flighty spirits don't talk back. It's very possible his entire race got sucked in or absorbed when he first accidentally Gatewalked, or that it caused them all to become mortal, creating sudden chaos and instability on his world. Not knowing the truth myself as the plane's creator, I'd certainly be interested in encountering any kind of story option back there, but it certainly doesn't need to be explored in this game if plot remains elsewhere :)

 

I try not to look at magical items that are above the starting character level because then I'd end up daydreaming about them, so I am happy to be surprised by whatever we encounter, rather than have a wishlist myself. I would point out that Eosi's masterwork true ice spear is now ready and waiting to be enchanted, but that's a crafting issue, and more to the point, one another party member can handily resolve.

 

16 hours ago, Rudra said:

The starting relationship with Eosi should be fun as they seem so different.

I'm looking forward to this interaction in-game a lot :D Especially so because whenever Biara gets too close to Eosi in a weapon form consisting mostly of metal, his spirits get the heeby-jeebies and actively try to prevent him from physically carrying her, so a pantomimed tug of war could happen at any moment, lol

Edited February 13 by Phechan (see edit history)

[Davkas]

Lack of Discord isn't a dealbreaker for me, I just think it (or some kind of similar chat) makes keeping things moving (and deciding if/when to move on) much easier.

I'm pretty neutral on Mythic/Epic stuff - I don't think I've ever actually used either before. If you find yourself interested in delving into it I wouldn't be opposed to exploring it, but I don't have any particular expectation of doing so. (Body Control is going to let Olympia do a bunch of impossible stuff already.)

I am definitely on board with character-specific plots. (I put in that bit about Olympia not having worked up the nerve to go back to her home plane yet on purpose! She's got plenty of reason to be worried about what happened to her vampire friend or what else is going on in Onyx City.) Although plots not connected to home planes that still strike a chord with certain characters in particular might be a thing, too - for instance, Olympia would probably take that example contract with the android from the cyberpunk occultech plane a little personally.

As far as magic items go, I'm a lot like some of the others and tend not to make magic item wishlists. But I understand that's not very helpful, soooo... Practical/boring request: combo strength/dexterity ability booster. Fun request: some easy teleport item, like the Dashing Cloak, because teleporting is a big movement-type thing Olympia's not likely to be able to do on her own soon and she is a frontliner, more or less. Alternatively, Shoes of Lightning Leaping are basically the same sort of deal and that effect is always fun. #3: some kind of implement, probably best for Destruction or Nature, because Olympia is still only a 2/3 caster (but Protection works reasonably well even at lower CLs). Obviously I'd probably prefer slotted implements or ones that are also weapons to implements Olympia needs a hand for, since that means she can't hit things with that hand.

I'm on board with GM-rolled block initiative or the kinda smaller-blocked init Rudra was talking about where we get rolls for everybody and then put them in blocks; strict initiative order doesn't tend to play nice with PBP. For passive checks, Mister Doctor's hybrid setup sounds like a good idea, but I am not averse to you rolling for us for sneaky reasons (or just to save time).

I don't have any serious squicks I can think of that wouldn't fall foul of the MW TOS anyway. Having a safeword/red card/x card seems pretty reasonable to me, since like the others have said, sometimes it can be hard to know what's too much for somebody unless you stumble across it.

I have no particular issues with fudging if the bare-dice result doesn't make for a good story; this is one I'm willing to trust you on.

[Rudra]

Biara has and grant the warp sphere, you simply need to wish to get somewhere and she'll taxi your body there on her turn, or let you teleport as standard action on your turn

Edited February 13 by Rudra (see edit history)

[Saberfan]

On 2/12/2024 at 12:18 PM, AdellRazh said:

Can your laptop not run Discord? That seems like something that could present the biggest barrier against its use.

Oh no, that's not what I meant. What I meant to say was that I can only use Discord on my laptop, seeing as how my phone is so old that it's practically a historical artifact at this point. So, while Discord might be a good method to poke other people, it's probably less useful when it comes to getting in touch with me.

On 2/12/2024 at 12:18 PM, AdellRazh said:

(I think, it's been a few days) was proposing crafting items for the party using their own starting gold, and I suggested that, at that point, we might be better off simply pooling our resources. However, that level of itemcraft optimization falls to the GM and how coked-up you're willing to have your party start out.

I'd prefer to just keep things as they are with crafting, as it raises a few too many wrinkles otherwise.

@Mister Doctor @AdellRazh @Phechan @Rudra @Davkas @Ratpigeon Do you all have any other topics that need hashing out pre-game? I just want to make sure that we have everything covered. It seems like the party more or less agrees on nearly every question I've posed thus far. If there aren't any more topics up for discussion, I'll go ahead and list the initial bout of contracts and get the first gameplay post down so that we can get this party started.

[Mister Doctor]

I'm ready to rock!

[Davkas]

22 hours ago, Rudra said:

Biara has and grant the warp sphere, you simply need to wish to get somewhere and she'll taxi your body there on her turn, or let you teleport as standard action on your turn

Yeah, I know, I just think being able to zzzooop! around is fun. It was a place for my brain to go while trying to figure out what to actually put on a wishlist - there are so many items in PF that it can be hard to settle on "what would be useful and cool to have" and there's probably stuff I would love to have that I don't know about, since as a non-instrumental bard Olympia using some of the classic bard magic items gets weird. (If she has to, Olympia can arrange to be able to fly - Body Control has a lot of weird niche talents and one of the ones I have on her studied technique list right now will let her make herself so light she can fly by flapping a piece of fabric like wings.)

 

6 minutes ago, Saberfan said:

Oh no, that's not what I meant. What I meant to say was that I can only use Discord on my laptop, seeing as how my phone is so old that it's practically a historical artifact at this point. So, while Discord might be a good method to poke other people, it's probably less useful when it comes to getting in touch with me.

tbf I mostly only use Discord on my laptop too (my phone refused to load it for a long time for reasons that remain obscure to me, and now that it's working again I hate the new interface on the app). My feelings about being easier for communication are to a great extent my own peculiar set of brainworms.

I don't have any other concerns off the top of my head, so I think I'm ready to go when everyone else is!

[Phechan]

Let's go~

[Rudra]

No more questions, at the moment, I'm ready to begin

[Mister Doctor]

Just realized I've got more than double everyone's initiative outside of Olympia. I feel like there's going to be more than one encounter that starts and ends with the GETE's ancillaries just all snapping to attention and concentrating fire on a nearby target.

[Ratpigeon]

On 2/13/2024 at 2:19 AM, Saberfan said:

So the general consensus seems to be yes to Roll20 maps, a 4-5 day wait before nudging inactive players, 4-5 posts a week but more if we can manage it, and for the contract-based game to dovetail into a full-blown storyline at some point. I have been thinking of a few new things that I'd like to ask over the last few days as I've worked, spent some time on maps for each contract, etc.

My first question is one that has been brought up in a few posts and it pertains to whether people consider the addition of Discord to be a dealbreaker or not. I myself haven't used it in years and generally only get online on my laptop, so it may not be as useful for contacting me. That said, I'm not against the idea and think it could probably be a useful tool for you all.

Are you all wanting to dip into mythic or epic as the campaign starts reaching a crescendo? I'm very familiar with both of those and have a lot of experience crafting scenarios and antagonists for them, having converted large portions of the Epic Level Handbook and the Immortal's Handbook: Epic Bestiary to Pathfinder for my own personal use in home games. I know that reaching those fabled heights will be something several years down the road, but it's probably best to get that out of the way as early as possible considering that the consensus is for the game to gradually transition to something more story-focused. After all, it's hard to determine just how crazy I can get with antagonists and the stakes if I don't know where the projected endgoal of the game lies.

Since Rudra brought up the possibility of tying in character-specific subplots into the greater narrative, would any of you like to take advantage of this? Maybe Danika would like to delve into whatever is causing planes to collapse or GETE may want to delve into the circumstances behind their birth, for example. Now these would be for later on, of course, but it's always best to plan ahead whenever possible. If you don't care to explore anything character-specific with your own character, that's completely fine as well.

Next is a question that I like to ask every player, yet somehow neglected to ask my last post. What are three magic items that you would like to find before the game is over? Most people have at least one thing on their wishlist and, while I'm not Santa Claus, I do like to make sure that people at least get some of their non-artifact wishes fulfilled at some point.

How would people like to handle initiative? The way I handled it in my old Discord games with my scattered player group was to simply roll for both PCs and NPCs myself, only applying modifiers as necessary. It saved quite a bit of time when I could just roll for everyone.

Similarly, how do people want to handle more passive uses of skills, e.g. Perception, Sense Motive, or Knowledge checks? I could either roll for you and then you could choose whether to retroactively apply any bonuses you have to it or you all could handle those yourselves as normal.

Is there anything in the way of content that you would consider out of the question in this game? Obviously there's the sort of things covered in the site's ToS being out of the question, but that doesn't quite cover everything. I'm not looking to add any Book of Vile Darkness levels of content or anything like that, but I just like to get those lines in the sand drawn before someone inadvertantly trips over them. Some of the contracts may have content that is not to some people's taste and I'd like to know if some need warning labels put on them for content that may not be acceptable.

How do people feel about the occasionally fudging of a roll or two in your favor from my end of things? I normally have a policy of only fudging a roll every so often to prevent a senseless TPK, but don't really exercise my GM privilege much more than that and usually let the dice fall where they may.

I think that's about all that I still needed to ask, but I'm off for the next week and will be checking back in multiple times a day, so I have ample opportunity to pose questions that may have slipped my mind.

Discord: Not a dealbreaker, but a very useful tool. I will post faster with a discord to let me know when posts happen.

Mythic/Epic: Leaning no - don't much care for the systems, and they add complexity that isn't neccessary here. We'll be plenty powerful without it.

3 Magic items: I'd like to get a Specialists' Staff for Fate (I just want the base specialisation ability, without having to spend a talent on the sphere), maybe an Implement for Dark (maybe Light/dark, but most of my key light effects will be used through Night Sky and key of Dark DCs)... And then I'm just a big fan of things with interesting utility uses I can apply creatively.

Initiative/passive rolls - I like block initiative. Roll once for the opponents, and then each player rolls. The ones who win go first, then the opponents then everyone goes then all the opponents etc. I'm fine with you doing initiative and passive rolls to speed things up.

Lines: I'm not interested in a romantic subplot or anything for Danika, with NPCs or PCs. No problems if anyone else is interested in that, but its not for me.

Fudging: I'm fine with your policy.

 

What are your lines re: content, Saber?

[Rudra]

3 hours ago, Ratpigeon said:

Lines: I'm not interested in a romantic subplot or anything for Danika, with NPCs or PCs. No problems if anyone else is interested in that, but its not for me.

I kid you not, i was considering a prank where Biara would suggest Spark to sign Danika for the Nexus equivalent of lonely hearts column, guess i'll shift it to GETE, there must be another wraith-thing out there.

edit. he would probably use it for recruitment lol.

About party initiative, Biara should function well even without high value, most of the times she should already be in weapon form and wielded when combat start, better to let the casters go first and nuke/crowd control.

 

Edited February 14 by Rudra (see edit history)

[Ratpigeon]

I felt like Scion of Nobility for CHA to initiative would be overkill. Fits for the flavour, but I already get it for spells, attacks damage AC Saves and Know (planes).

[AdellRazh]

On 2/14/2024 at 12:07 AM, Saberfan said:

Do you all have any other topics that need hashing out pre-game? I just want to make sure that we have everything covered. It seems like the party more or less agrees on nearly every question I've posed thus far. If there aren't any more topics up for discussion, I'll go ahead and list the initial bout of contracts and get the first gameplay post down so that we can get this party started.

Nope! Good to go.

[Rudra]

I do have a little question about rules(and one about Lusinga)

Does the save to disbelief illusions from the illusion sphere benefit from saves vs mind-affecting effects? what about the other will saves of that sphere(es. overwhelming sensation talent) ?

Is Lusinga an illusion even for mechanical purposes? what i mean is, if an enemy attack him, would the foe get a will to disbelieve?

I'm trying to understand how easily Biara would recognize illusions, when interacting with them.