BJ Back From the Beyond

Calendar for the next session is up: http://whenisgood.net/g2i8xjt

Okay, so the party is done enough for me to share it with everyone. There are still a few little things to hammer out, but I think we'll be ready for the first session. That said, the first session is Saturday 20th, at 6:00 PM EST (or more likely, whenever we're all ready to proceed). The server name will be SW_Path_of_Shadows, and the password will be "leaveyoursanity". If there are any problems, I'll (try to) be on AIM before the session starts so you can contact me there. For anyone not familiar with connecting to a MapTool server: To get there, you'll need to fire up MapTool, go under File, and click "Connect to Server...". Then type in a username, basically whatever you want to be called on the server, and the password I gave above. Then scroll down until you find the server with the right name, click it, and hit "OK". If this doesn't work, contact me ASAP and I'll get you the address and the port number for the server. Now, allow me to introduce what is likely to be a very interesting party. Basidiratus, played by Lilith: Jal-Phol-Phorami, played by Sarachim: Luanda, played by BM: Henrietta Mariot, played by Nioca: Quinn Keromont, played by Nikki:

Put me down as a gazer, or even better, an eyebeast. I'm smart, like to say weird things, and am annoyingly observant.

Sweet. That makes five players. I'll send a PM to everyone who's playing shortly. If anyone else wants to take the sixth slot, you've got until the day before the first session to contact me and submit your character. After that, I won't be accepting any new players. When the characters are ready, I'll post them here and announce when and where the first session will be.

Okay, so there's a bit of an issue. So far there's I've only gotten four replies on the calendar: Sarachim, Lilith, Nioca, and BM. That's enough for a bare-bones party, but I was hoping for something a little more robust. This leaves us with a couple of options: 1. Go ahead with the campaign with the number of players we have now, keeping in mind that once the campaign starts it's going to be very hard to add any new PCs. 2. Wait for someone else to become available before starting. From what Triumph said above, I doubt we'd have to wait any longer than until the beginning of August. I'm fine with the second option if it means having a larger party (plus it gives me more time to prepare), but I'd really like to know what the players think.

Introduction It's been six months since the most recent conflict between the cities of Actan and Sactorria began. Ever since Sactorrian forces liberated the allied city of Revossa from Actani occupation in a surprise attack, fighting has broken out all along the border between the two territories. Because of this, Theris has become a very dangerous place to be, and yet it is during this time that you find yourself, for your own reasons, in the city of Actan and in need of work. While visiting one of the local watering holes, you spotted a flier requesting the assistance of skilled adventurers. The flier didn't say much beyond giving a meeting time and place and promising a high reward. Intrigued, you attended the meeting. The one who posted the job was a wealthy merchant. He explained that the fighting in the Fort Tels area has made it too dangerous to travel through there in recent months. Merchants traveling between Actan and Eidrisk to the north always take the long way around the mountains, right past Fort Tels. However, it wasn't always that way. There used to be a more direct route through the mountains: a pass known as the Losknia Trail. It was relatively safe until a few years ago when shadowy creatures started appearing in the pass and attacking any travelers they happened across. It wasn't long before the road was abandoned and the trail earned a new name among the populace: Shadow Pass. In the hopes of making the Losknia Trail safe to travel once more, your employer has hired you and five others to enter the pass and deal with the source of these shades. You were each given 25 gold coins as an advance, with the promise of twice that amount once the job has been finished. After taking some time to prepare yourself for the road ahead, you set out from Actan with the others toward Shadow Pass. For those of you familiar with The Eternal Flame, you may recall that in the first session the party traveled through Shadow Pass to get to Eidrisk. It was originally my intention for them to return at one point, but that campaign ended sooner than I thought it would. Rather than let a really neat adventure go to waste, I decided to expand it into its own mini-campaign. So, I'm looking for six stalwart adventurers to embark upon this quest. I estimate the campaign will run about 5 or 6 sessions (depending on how fast the players go), and I'd like to do one session a week if at all possible. Now, there are several things that you're going to need to know as a player, so hold on tight. The Rules We'll be using Nioca's QuadHack for our rules. If you're not familiar with it, that's okay. I think this rules set has only ever been used for a single one-shot, and that was a long time ago. Even if you are familiar with it, you'll probably want to look again since Nioca updated it recently. I'm sure there's going to be a lot of questions, so feel free to post them here. QuadHack Rules MapTool Some of you may remember that Lilith used MapTool in the City of Hope campaign. Well, now it's back. We'll be using MapTool 1.3b89 for this campaign. If you don't have MapTool, you can download it from the link below. If you've never heard of MapTool and are wondering what I'm going on about, click the second link and check out the videos. You'll get the idea real quick (note that we won't be using all the features listed in the videos). MapTool Downloads MapTool Video Tutorials Player Selection If none of the above scared you off and you want to play then all you need to do is fill out the calendar below. That's it. Players will primarily be chosen on how available they are. You don't need to worry about character creation yet. If you want to send me information on your character, that's fine, but I won't need it at this point. We'll finalize those later. The latest that I'll announce the players is July 7th, and I'll do so here. Calendar Character Creation Once the players have been announced, I'll send a joint PM to each of them and request that they share their characters with each other (this is assuming I can message 6 people at the same time; if anyone can confirm this for me that would be great). The players can then discuss them and make changes as needed. I'm hoping to get a better balanced party from doing this, rather than trying to put one together from characters the players hand me. Once all of the players have finalized their characters, I'll post them here for all to see. Should you be selected, you'll need to come up with a level 5 character. In the QuadHack rules, that gives you 60 Attribute Points, 22 Skill Points, and 4 Feats. Also, we'll be using the old Motian magic set: Evocation, Abjuration, Conjuration, Enchantment, Transmutation, Divination, and Vitamancy. WARNING: Despite my best efforts, there's not likely to be any use for the Streetwise skill. Take it at your own risk. That's it for now. I eagerly await your replies.

Today is the last day of my Wesnoth for a Week experiment. I'm in the lobby right now for those interested (note I'll need to log off later tonight to go have dinner with my family, but I will be back). So far, the only people I've seen more than once during the week were Trenton, Nioca, and JamesMighty. A couple of others stopped by, but never with any regularity. While I did have lots of fun doing this, it hasn't exactly made me confident that Wesnoth is ever going to have a strong following here at Spiderweb. I for one would love to see a weekly game of Wesnoth put together, but I'm not going to bother doing that myself unless I see an increase in interest. If anyone else wants to try doing that, you can count me in. In the meantime, I think I'll just go back to logging on ever once in a while.

In the hopes of drumming up more interest (and for the sake of saying more than just "I'm on now. Please play with me."), I'm going to try to be on every evening this week (probably about 4 MST at the earliest, though it's probable that I'll waltz in later than that). Everyone is welcome to stop by.

I'll be there as well.

I'm still into it, though I haven't played much recently. It's not as much fun when there's no one else around. Edit: Looks like Sy's server is down again. Oh well. I'll be on the official server for a bit tonight.

I think it's high time Hix got in on the action. Count me in.

Count me in. I think I'll be bringing Lyn back for this (after some serious revision), so you can count on at least one healing/support character. By the way, where is this going to take place? Will we still be using the RPG channel on the CalRef chat, or are we going to switch to AIM?

I almost always play casters in rogue-likes. I like the versatility they can have, and if there's a class that's a warrior/mage hybrid, they're usually my favorite.

I probably should have brought this up earlier. We extended the current phase in the first game while waiting for Nioca to return. Nioca, if you're still interested in playing, it's not too late.

*expresses interest in doing both* There ya go.

I've been playing Angband as ever since I was a kid. I wouldn't say that I'm a master, but I have played a number of variants and have gotten very good. I'm particularly fond of SAngband. It has a classless system similar to Exile/Avernum, where you spend your experience on skills rather than accumulate it for levels. Right now I've been getting into EyAngband, another good variant that puts its own twists on the game. I have to say, though, that even with all my experience, I feel like I've only scratched the surface of rogue-likes. It's probably one of the biggest, least-known genres out there.

I've played this game at a couple parties before, though each of those times the story was centered around the mafia. It was pretty fun.

Eh, that's okay. I think the last people to use it were Nioca and I, and that was a while ago. There doesn't seem to be much interest in Wesnoth around here anymore. Makes me kinda sad.

I'm fine with it. You're the one who has to organize it. (So not envying you right now. )

Nioca just CDed in the second game. If anyone would like to take his place, now is your chance.

15 hours to go, and we still need one more person. Anyone interested?

I've set up another game with a different map. Anyone from the other game is welcome to join. Password is "gifts". http://vdiplomacy.ne...hp?gameID=12193

Do you mean a general game of Diplomacy, or that map in particular? I could set up another game. There's nothing that says we can't have two running at the same time.

The 36 hour phase length just means that everyone has 36 hours to enter their orders before the game proceeds to the next turn. However, if everyone hits the Ready button, that means that everyone has entered the orders they want and the game will proceed to the next turn early. The Draw, Pause, Cancel, Extend, and Concede buttons let players vote to do certain things. If enough players vote, something will happen. If all the players vote Extend, then 12 hours (I think?) are added to the current phase. This is useful if one of the players knows they won't be able to get their orders in on time, they can request an Extend.

The map is a pretty recent one, yeah. I think it was released a few months ago. There are now five people in the game, and it's a six player game. Just one seat left to fill.