Forum: Public Forum

Dear Players,

A quick post to say that the game is on this week as normal.

Laurent,

Hi all,

I'm not feeling very well today, so I'm going to go home to rest.

Hope the game goes well,
Ding

Dear players,

Game session.

Well, at long last we played with that Wendigo. I obviously could not predict the creative use of the wildshape ability, but it turned out to be fun.

Gaming day.

Ian and I have now realised that our Wednesday games have been reduced to at most a two hours playtime session. In the olden days, when Vague Connections was but a newly opened small shop, we gathered at half past six for a seven o'clock game; because the shop closed at seven.
Now, with the Yu Gi Oh card business booming, Andrew closes the shop at eight, and can barely be with us by ten past, or even quarter past; thus seriously curtailing our available gaming time. Adam must get his bus around ten, and with my having moved to The Quays, I would rather not propose to extend gaming past ten o'clock anyway.

This leads to the following proposal of finding another weekday for our Wednesday games. First, Ian and I would like to sound the idea of moving to Mondays. Please note that this is only an information gathering exercise. We would need to ask Andrew first before making any final decision.

The move to Monday is proposed for the following reasons:

• The board-game session usually starts around six and in a quiet shop.
• An average board-game play takes two hours. Even Arkham Horror tends to be lost within two hours with midly experienced players (the game is not so slow when we all know how to play it).
• I cannot do Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays.
• Thursdays are alternating one of Nick's games. Nick cannot make Wednesdays because of work, because if he could he would still be playing with us.

We could petition Her Majesty's Government to add an extra weekday and have an eight-day week, but the lazy French would veto it at the EU level. That would also invalidate some of the information contained in the first book of the Holy Bible; in other words we would be opening a very big can of worms.

I think we have had this kind of argument before, when it came to keeping Nick in the gaming group and we ended-up keeping Wednesday as our gaming night. I am not sure if we discussed the Monday option though.

Your thoughts?

Laurent,

A possibility that came to mind was:
One of the alternate Wednesday games could alternate with the Board Games night on Mondays. While the other alternates with my game on Thursdays.

Monday would be fine with me. Harper's suggestion is also good, if there is the space.

Overall, it'd be nice to get back to the three hour session, instead of what has become an hour and a half which isn't really long enough to get things moving.

Nick,

Good point about the potential double shift to Monday and Thursday.
However, I believe Andrew has been taking a Thursday off every fortnight for a while now.
This would need to be discussed. I mean the poor guy does not have much time off already, that would not be right to steal that Thursday back.

Laurent,

I agree that there's a bit of an issue being created by lack of gaming time/space, but we're also all aware that the card game players are spending substantially more money than us. I don't think my occasional dice purchases or Laurent's board game habit are keeping the roof over Ginger's head and a gaming cellar beneath his feet. And a shop somewhere in the middle. But it would be good to look at options that would give us a bit more time to play and perhaps give the card gamers more time to finish their tournaments.

Generally, Monday nights aren't good for me as it's training night. But I agree that Wednesday nights aren't really working, and that something probably needs to change. We've had discussions before about changing (or not changing) game nights, and sometimes its inevitable that someone loses out or drops out - as with the Kingmaker game. If Monday works for everyone else/a majority, then I say we go with that. I promise not to take it personally, or hunt down and kill anyone. In the short term, I'm sure I can find some other short term or one off games if I need more of a fix.

As I think most of you will already know, I've got some major life changes on the way (which we won't go into here, but you can ask me about next week if you don't know) which will mean that I need to rethink my commitments. I've not joined any new games for a while, and I think it unlikely that I'd join long term successor campaigns for either the Kingmaker or RotRL slots. I'm hoping that I'll still have time for one game (though almost certainly not three per fortnight) but I don't know when that might be. So bowing out a little early won't be a disaster.

If we do move to Mondays, I may be able to make some sessions over the summer (dunno when our 'close season' is yet), and I wouldn't mind missing a handful to finish off Runelords, having played it for so long. But to complicate things further, I'm going to be out of gaming action for about four weeks from early June.

Adam,

We are all aware of your coming sex-change operation in Argentina and we have all indeed agreed to respect your privacy and NEVER to discuss it on a public forum on the web.

Laurent,

That's an outrageous lie and a monstrous untruth. I demand that you retract your infamous allegation immediately.

Eve

Laurent as adam/eve said when he/she told us that its not a sex change it is a gender realignment process.
anyhoo back to the topic at hand i have had a word with ginga and he thinks that we are making a mountain out of a mole hill. he believes that just by not allowing the card players to use one of the rooms it will be all fine and we should start with out him to get more play time. but as this need to be a group decission, we cand discuss this more next wednesday at the legacy game

Seems like there's a few options floating around. I'm sure we can balance it enough so everyone has their government alotted amount of RPG time per month.

Dear players,

At last a session where the GM's minions showed some kind of mettle. This had not happened in a while. My rolls either majestic or pathetic averaged one another to provide decent action from my Giants.
When I think of it, six CR11 Cloud Giants pack a decent amount of punch, more than the supposedly dangerous Wendigo that got a kicking last time.

Of course, a big thank you to Andrew's new PC, Larken, for ensuring a +7 damage per hit for everyone, monsters and fellow players alike.

The "overrun" feat chain is also amazing, at least for monsters that is, as being bigger than the gnats one wants to run over helps a lot, especially as far as suspension of disbelief is concerned.

I have updated the Rise of the Runelords game page.
Getting towards the seventy fifth sessions already (only counting those that saw a game of course).

Laurent,

Dear players,

Game session.

As we have all realised, the action last night was a bit unusual as this must have been the first time we had a "range only" and "shoot and hide" battle. I am glad that the two of you who could not participate actively in the fight due to their PC built have nonetheless enjoyed the session.

Ian has mentioned that it was indeed the first time that we saw the mechanics of the Shadow-dancer prestige class being used fully by Adam to great effects indeed on my Kuchrimas.

Kuchrima monster.

This has neither been "revisited" nor "converted to PRPG" yet and there is a slight discrepancy between the adventure text and that of the monster in the volume's bestiary. According to the author (Greg A, Vaughn) in an ancient thread on the Paizo website, the Kuchrima is meant to have Shield, Feather fall and True strike 3/day. However the adventure text only mentions Shield, which I have used for the whole fight as a "per default buff". Bear in mind that Kuchrimas are only CR8, so I decided to give them this +4 to AC for free - I should have lost a round doing so.
The bestiary entry at the end of the adventure does not list any Spell Like Ability though.
I have only read about the True strike entry today, so you got away with that yesterday.

Anyway, I enjoyed running the game and it seems that you did too, so overall a satisfying Wednesday evening I daresay. See you back in Xin-Shalast in two weeks time then.

Laurent,

Hi fellow players, sorry I missed the game on wednesday and didn't post that I would be missing the game. By the time I'd remembered I should mention something I was in the middle of nowhere with no signal on my phone for texts never mind the internet.

See you all at the next session.

Considering you play a Druid in the game, the least one can say is that you kept in character!

Dear players,

Last night's session.

As I indicated succinctly, the adventure is not written in a standard way. This was the first high level adventure for the Pathfinder line at the time and it reads more like a campaign setting book than anything else. Therefore I am left with a lot of text to read and merely a few suggestions of "what might show-up if your players go here... or there...".
That being said, Xin-Shalast is meant to be sand-boxy - Is that a word? It is now! - so it is down to the players to choose what to do next.
Again Rise of the Runelords has a lot more background for the GM to read than it is possible for the same GM to possibly tell the players about, so it is hard at time not to sound like reading Tolkien's Silmarillion.

I have adapted the adventure a bit, in fact built upon the good foundations from the author Greg Vaughan, to link locations together. If not, it would definitely sound like a collection of random encounters to you. I had the same problem with Wolfgang Baur's Fortress of the Stone Giants where the monsters in the dungeon must have appeared totally random, c.f. the "It's only a Kobold" moment.
So, here you are, with a very temporary cattle business to run, unless you are extremely good at making up a story when the not so gullible Lamia Harridans show up. I have also expanded a bit on what Morgiv (the Skulk) would know so as to hint at the need of collecting at least one Sihedron Ring per PC.

Scaling a 3.5 adventure to PRPG.

On the way home Ian and I discuss the fact that it is very easy to run a 3.5 adventure in Pathfinder up to around level ten. After that, the added raw power of a Pathfinder PC shows a lot and makes encounters too underpowered. The best example I could find was the CR18 NPC you will have to fight at some point when up in the actual Spires of Xin-Shalast (the title of the adventure). Originally a CR18 for D&D 3.5, Viorian Dekanti (Human Fighter 18) had only a +23 to hit on her first attack (she was always using power-attack 10); rebuilt from a collection like-for-like feats and newer PRPG feats that fit her character's style and specialisation (scimitar and shield); now she starts her attack sequence at +37, thus a +14 compared to her initial built (+4 without the in-built power-attack).
10 of these 14 are the "always 10 points of power-attack" from the old rule of choosing "-X to hit +X to damage", another 4 come from the "Weapon mastery, (blade, heavy)" added by the Pathfinder RPG system. With the change to the power-attack feat, it gives her +32 to hit with PA instead of the original +23.
Viorian 3.5 was a serious threat to a party of 15^th level 3.5 PCs.
Viorian 3.5 would be just a speed bump to a party of 15^th level PRPG PCs.

Of course, Viorian PRPG should again be a CR18 to an EPL (equivalent party level) 15.

The numbers I gave you yesterday were off by 1, I had forgotten the -1 to hit for size because Viorian is a large Human (permanently enlarged by Karzoug).

Calendar events.

I have added a couple of Rise of the Runelords events on the calendar. As discussed yesterday, I will be away the second week of July, but this will be a Legacy of Fire game. See the relevant thread with regards to Vague Connections being closed that week.

I have updated the game page.

Laurent,

Dear players,

I am terribly sorry to announce that I am not feeling well enough to run the game tonight.

Last weekend saw me in bed nursing a nasty cold, and things have not got amazingly better since. I have only managed to crawl to work today to prepare a talk at the conference I am attending next week and I need to recover quickly.

I know, it is officially Summer and I have a blocked nose, a nasty cough and all the niceties that go with them.

See you all in two weeks time I guess.

Laurent,

Dear players,

Due to personal circumstances, I will have to be away next week.

As usual, Andrew and Ian will give you the details.

Laurent,

Sorry to hear that Laurent.

Everyone else, just wondering if we are planning on running a legacy of fire session / board game session or something else in place of the runelords session?