Before We Begin

[ice9004]

Hello monster hunters!

I'm happy to have you all here and am eager to start but be for we do I would give some more detail about how I plan to run the game.

• Characters will level up by milestones. Once you reach a certain point in the story you will level up.
• Like in the real castlevania games, you may enter an area you aren't ready for so be cautious. I won't blindside you, but there will be sometimes when the answer is to run away.
• The castle is full of many kinds of creature. Don't only expect demons and undead.

Now that I've told you my side of things, here are some questions to help make the game better.

• What level of graphic description are you fine with? Some castlevania monster are pretty graphic and I don't want to chase anyone off.
• How much combat would you like? I know PbP combat can be a bit slow so I want your opinion about how much I put in.
• Is there anything in particular you would like to see?

As a last thing I have added a Character Sheets tab, please add your character sheets there.

Edited February 13 by ice9004 (see edit history)

[rorytheromulan]

1. I am ok with any description. When a freaky monster makes a debut, I expect to be grossed out and/or horrified.

2. I would ask you to balance combat with exploration. One of the DMs in my friend group has said that one dungeon per chapter works best for us. Maybe there's a way to simulate that inside the castle? If you feel like we've probably had enough fights, you could have the monsters simply move to another room? And if the odds of a fight turn greatly in our favor against cornered/stubborn enemies comparably weaker than us, maybe the battle could auto-finish a la "all-out attack" feature from the Persona games, rather than risk attrition? Longtime members can probably give a better answer.

3. No, but I am curious to see how the adventure reacts to our characters' histories and abilities and how we react to each other.

[Ultima]

1. I'm up for it all. Be as graphic as you want!

2. I'm with Rory, would like a decent balance between combat and exploration. Atma is one heck of a skill monkey, I'd like some excuses to use them.

3. Hrmm, I echo Rory's thoughts here as well. I'd like to see each of our backgrounds being utilized.

Edited February 14 by Ultima (see edit history)

[wwaugh]

Thanks for the "be ready to run away" and "be ready for things other than undead and fiends" warnings.

1. I'm pretty much down for whatever, too.

2: I think I'd prefer a balanced approach, too. On the one hand, we're here to kill Dracula, but on the other hand, it'd be a shame if all we did was fight. Paizo did give us a whole bunch of non-combat spells to pick from when we level, right?

3: I think I'd like to see us interacting with the NPCs in camp a bit. We're not the only ones here, right? Beyond that, I'd just like to third the thing Ultima seconded about our backgrounds coming up.

Edited February 14 by wwaugh (see edit history)

[rorytheromulan]

And by moving the monsters I mean just make them mobile while we haven't seen them or encountered them. Perhaps an area with monsters we haven't reached pick up and move. Or if we've been cowards, or lucky not to encounter any monsters, then maybe a group go on the hunt and find us? Keep us guessing.

We could play out a short combat adventure on the outskirts of the region to get introduced, and to give you an idea of what to expect and how much combat you want to plan for us.

So, we head through the Borgo Pass, and either we reach our destination victorious, or we all "die" and wake up in the area proper a la Bram Stoker's novel, as if it was all a dream - or, was it...? This can just be the real-life Tihuta Pass and we get into a car together - or we can add the Borgo Pass in as a less-trodden route not fit for modern vehicles and we can instead pile into a stagecoach. Either way, some mobs attack and force the vehicle off course and instead of starting at the castle proper, we are isolated and forced to rely on each other as we journey through the forest to the castle or the main army encampment - which may be holding the line admirably, or suffering heavy losses fighting off the latest horde of skeletons/zombies... or, the main army have already suffered a grisly fate? Just some ideas.

Priela is affiliated with the Church and so she has a reason to be there already, but we could say she is arriving late from an important assignment delaying enemy reinforcements with a backup detachment of Templar knights, the modern Templars, and we can have an organization working in tandem with the Vatican to fund the recruitment of other daring adventurers, enter everybody else's PC.

Edited February 14 by rorytheromulan (see edit history)

[rorytheromulan]

14 hours ago, ice9004 said:

The castle is full of many kinds of creature. Don't only expect demons and undead.

I'll go ahead and move my non-Archetype level in Vampires Lore to something else then, I'll go with Hag Lore, we'll apply that to the broomstick-wielding bogeymen and adjacent sorcerers that the Inquisition used to purge with with blind fanatic zeal along with the garden variety of falsely-accused innocents and wise women. We'll say that today their persecutions are now tempered with a dose of skepticism.

Edited February 14 by rorytheromulan (see edit history)

[ToDream]

1. I have no problem with Milestone leveling. Just let me know when.

2. You are going to have to hint pretty hard here. Most of my Pathfinder 2e experience is in PFS, where running is almost never an option.

3. Lol, maybe I should have gone with the Bastion archetype after all.

 

--

 

1. Graphic description is fine. Or at least more cartoonie description.

2. Lastolva as a person is a crafter first and foremost, who would almost rather be in a forge making anti-demon weapons. As a character on a record sheet, his out-of-combat utility at this level is...low. He has some sure, but kineticists are not a high skill class.

3. Lastolva doesn't know much about his pre-awakening past. He thinks he is some sorcerer's personal project (perhaps a combat unit that repurposed), but he has know idea if he was abandoned days, or centuries, before he awoke.

[ice9004]

11 hours ago, rorytheromulan said:

We could play out a short combat adventure on the outskirts of the region to get introduced, and to give you an idea of what to expect and how much combat you want to plan for us.

I like the idea if everyone else is fine with it.

My initial idea was that everyone was just hanging around in camp doing stuff when they were called to action but I like this a bit more. Maybe the group is on patrol and find a group of monsters that they need to deal with. If things go south, back up arrives and finishes the job.

[wwaugh]

3 hours ago, ice9004 said:

I like the idea if everyone else is fine with it.

My initial idea was that everyone was just hanging around in camp doing stuff when they were called to action but I like this a bit more. Maybe the group is on patrol and find a group of monsters that they need to deal with. If things go south, back up arrives and finishes the job.

Sounds good to me.

[Sundust]

1) Any level of graphic works. Same goes for political correctness, etc. It's all part of the game.

2) 60% combat, 40% non-combat is my vote.

3) Encountering NPCs inside, like prisoners maybe - or traitors/spies (or double agents monsters!) - could mix in some non-combat in what would otherwise likely be more combat. Since we'll be in a huge castle, it would be cool to see things like: secret passageways (like many real castles), secret rooms behind paintings (like in Clue or Sherlock Holmes), animated objects (like in Beauty and the Beast or Bedknobs and Broomsticks), random moats/pits/etc., great feast halls and ballrooms (with ghosts dancing!), hallways of mirrors (like Versailles), dumbwaiters and (since it's 1999) elevators (Mission Impossible), parapets, siege engines(!), traps that do more than damage (like teleporting to a tower dungeon or reducing intelligence to animal level), swarms, rooms with illusory/screen views - or actual doorways/portals to faraway places (like the Merovingian's house in Matrix), and a huge mix of time period clashes (like in Doomsday, with motorcycles and guns vs. mounted knights and archers), a room with a crystal viewing ball or something similar (like Sarumon's tower), people willingly serving as familiars (like in Blade), enemies with fantabulous senses of fashion and style, unfinished parts of the castle (like real castles where the money ran out), libraries, kitchens, laundry rooms, rooms for taking in goods securely from the outside (like lifting up goods from a river below, at Chenonceau), political vampire prisoners, a werewolf contingent, music rooms (like with a grand piano and seats), a chapel or two (if vampires worship anybody), automatic lighting, a laser-trap hallway (like in Resident Evil), a sacrificial chamber (like in Alien vs. Predator), references to classic and medieval literature (like a green sash, a sword in a stone, or a wall of dancing shadows), monster groups with variety (similar to how our group has variety), some huge nova weapon we get to use once or twice, kennels and other random animal and food stores (like real castles, and noting that monsters may need feeding even if undead don't), an alchemist room, a scribe's room, an armory(!), a dressing room, a bathroom with a powder room bigger than my whole apartment (like at the Plaza Hotel), separate mini-castles near the main ones (like Versailles again or the Pyramids), undiscovered alliances between thr vampires and other organizations/races, use of vehicles (especially as Mandy nearly archetyped into Inventor just to get a motorcyle "companion" - oh and like the hot air balloon entrance in the Count of Monte Cristo), underwater passageways, a random Don Juan on some completely unrelated mission, a group of arms dealers dealing with both sides, frozen people and people turned to stone, gargoyles, one area with a pagoda or eastern asian theme, a botanical garden or plant nursery, a glass figurine menagerie of magical surprises, a generator room, a security office, parachuting, a cloisters courtyard, vending machines, a vampire who actually misses the sun and stylized her room as a beach, motorboats or submersibles (like in James Bond), a gondola or other lift mechanism connecting the main castle and some offshoot tower or mountain outpost, snow and ice, full-moon happenings, a forge area, random (or not random) journals and letters, doors that don't lead to the next room, stairways to nowhere, ventilation shafts, and a conflicted vampire fan of Velvet Mandy!

 

Those are all just brainstorm ideas. I feel like a castle opens up a lot of

[Sundust]

Sorry for that long post! I got carried away. :)