Table Chatter

This thread is for talking about the game outside of actual playing.

DM,

(er... what do you want us to call you, Mike?)

Have you decided about where in Eberron the action is going to start?

Yes, Mike is fine hehe

I'm going to plop the party in based on what all the players decide to play. I've gotten some more work done on the other classes, so I hope to put the big announcement up on my blog later today or in the morning.

Next Question:
How much of this is going to be following the Goblinoid Rules and how much of it is going to be following the Eberron Rules?

For example, any chance of Caby having a House Jorasco or House Ghallanda Dragon Mark?

Yes, there will be a chance for dragonmarks. I'll look that up next and condense/simplify it a bit for the rules thread. As far as other things go, generally I figure on starting with Labyrinth Lord for the base, then adding the Eberron setting on top of it. So usually, I'd be trying to bring Eberron in line with LL, rather than the other way round.

I'm still undecided about allowing changelings for a PC race, but I'm pretty sure (99%) there will be no orcs as PCs. A half-orc maybe, but I would probably just say it's a fighting man class, cosmetically labeled as a half-orc. In fact, that's what I'll do.

If I did do changelings it would be a thief, just like dwarves are fighting men.

Another issue is the additional character classes, like rangers and druids, but if someone wanted to be a ranger in the context of LL, I'd probably just give them an appropriate background which would allow int and wis checks for things like tracking. Other than that, druids for example are a monster type in LL.

DM wrote:

Until then, I can do a quick edit on your dice rolls to let you know what you rolled if it's still unresolved when we get things going. Which will be soon hopefully

Excellent news! How many players do you think we'll have, then? And do you want us to post any kind of background story? Or... posted in portions in Spoiler tags? Or... what?

ehiker133 wrote:

DM wrote:

Until then, I can do a quick edit on your dice rolls to let you know what you rolled if it's still unresolved when we get things going. Which will be soon hopefully

Excellent news! How many players do you think we'll have, then? And do you want us to post any kind of background story? Or... posted in portions in Spoiler tags? Or... what?

Background story would be great! No clue how many people we'll end up with. If you want to keep part of your story private, you can pm it to me, but otherwise you can just post it in your character sheet thread.

both characters so far are pure awesome. I really enjoy that triple roll on the personality quirk table! The terms 'baseless braggadocio' and 'clueless goon' promise hours of enjoyment!

No more takers from the blog announcement, oddly, but Caby knows a couple of friends. Cole, if you know anyone you'd like to invite, feel free!

After we hear yay or nay from those quarters, we'll get started with 2+ in the town of Vulyar, in southern Karrnath, near the border with the Talenta Plains.

I have at least one friend who is interested in joining. I gave him the forum information today (Friday); hopefully he'll be able to log on and get approved and roll up his character tomorrow (Saturday).

He should be a really good addition to the game.

Still checking on the other person. If I don't hear from him soon, we can always start without him and if he is interested then we can jump him in if we're not too far along.

Oh, Mike, what's the check going to be for a dragonmark? Percentage roll? Something else?

ehiker133 wrote:

Oh, Mike, what's the check going to be for a dragonmark? Percentage roll? Something else?

I'm still thinking about that. Here's my dilemma. In the setting, which is designed for 3.0, you get a dragonmark by buying it with feat points. We don't have feat points, and I don't want to insert something like that. I also have an aversion to just basing it on a percentage roll, but that's probably what makes the most sense, since that would make it similar to how old-school did psionics. It's really not too far off from the basic concept of psionics anyway, that being 'a rare additional power that anyone might have.'

I've also thought about the action points that the Eberron setting introduced. All 4eDnD has action points now, but at the time Eberron came out it was something unique to that setting that wasn't in main DnD or any other setting. I've thought about doing something similar to how the GM awarded karma points in some of the old games I played, like Marvel and Shadowrun, where you could spend it to influence something you were trying to accomplish. It's the exact same concept as action points, just done a little differently. If I did something like that, then your karma/action point for a level (or however I did it) could be spent on manifesting a dragonmark.

ehiker, cole, what are your opinions on it? Percentage chance or spend some sort of plot resource to get it?

I like the idea of karma/action points.

ehiker133 wrote:

I like the idea of karma/action points.

I'm going to go ahead and go with that, since it's in many ways a main point of the setting. I'll put a ruling on it in the rules thread.

Also, Hack and Slash has a great post today on awarding ep and honor points...

http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2010/10/on-division-of-experience-and-honor.html

You think feat points would be done in a similar way? I like the way he awards ep; it accounts for people who actually role-play their characters in a role-playing game.

ehiker133 wrote:

Also, Hack and Slash has a great post today on awarding ep and honor points...

http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2010/10/on-division-of-experience-and-honor.html

You think feat points would be done in a similar way? I like the way he awards ep; it accounts for people who actually role-play their characters in a role-playing game.

When I DM'd live I always used to award xp for both roleplaying and experiencing something new. I remember one time a character died, went to whatever plane his deities were on, got raised, and leveled from the experience. hehe

I've been struggling with whether to give out rewards for rp in our other pbp game. It's my instinct to do so, but it would be one of the 'slowly adding house rules' things, due to the nature of the underlying experiment. The thing about the stock OD&D xp rules is that monsters are intentionally pretty worthless, and the vast majority of the xp is gained from treasure. I thing it's perfect to use treasure gained as an abstract measure of overall success and accomplishment, because it not only gives the game reward of xp, but also rewards the character in-game at the same time. The only problem in our other pbp game is that it's going slowly enough that very little treasure has been found over quite a lot of real-world time. I do think, though, that's it's definitely time to add in my usual rp xp awards.

DM wrote:

When I DM'd live I always used to award xp for both roleplaying and experiencing something new. I remember one time a character died, went to whatever plane his deities were on, got raised, and leveled from the experience. hehe

I've been struggling with whether to give out rewards for rp in our other pbp game. It's my instinct to do so, but it would be one of the 'slowly adding house rules' things, due to the nature of the underlying experiment. The thing about the stock OD&D xp rules is that monsters are intentionally pretty worthless, and the vast majority of the xp is gained from treasure. I thing it's perfect to use treasure gained as an abstract measure of overall success and accomplishment, because it not only gives the game reward of xp, but also rewards the character in-game at the same time. The only problem in our other pbp game is that it's going slowly enough that very little treasure has been found over quite a lot of real-world time. I do think, though, that's it's definitely time to add in my usual rp xp awards.

I agree it is hard to award RP EP without sometimes causing a stir...

Either way, and however EP is awarded, I'm looking forward to this campaign!

I think we're just about ready, then? Mike, are we waiting on anything else?

If we get one Action Point to spend at level one, I think I might make it a lasting one instead of using it for a natural 20 or some such thing.

I'll try to write something up tomorrow and post it. If you like it, then that's what I'll go with.

ehiker133 wrote:

I think we're just about ready, then? Mike, are we waiting on anything else?

If we get one Action Point to spend at level one, I think I might make it a lasting one instead of using it for a natural 20 or some such thing.

I'll try to write something up tomorrow and post it. If you like it, then that's what I'll go with.

Sounds good

DM wrote:

ehiker133 wrote:

I think we're just about ready, then? Mike, are we waiting on anything else?

If we get one Action Point to spend at level one, I think I might make it a lasting one instead of using it for a natural 20 or some such thing.

I'll try to write something up tomorrow and post it. If you like it, then that's what I'll go with.

Sounds good

Taking a little longer than I thought it would. Work keeps getting in the way...

DM wrote:

[currently writing the intro post.. look for it tonight]

Excellent!

Ok... wow. I'm currently sitting at 2350 words for my short story about Caby's action point. But it is mostly done.

ehiker133 wrote:

Ok... wow. I'm currently sitting at 2350 words for my short story about Caby's action point. But it is mostly done.

Impressive! I'll be giving rp awards from the start in this game, unlike in OD&D.

DM wrote:

Excellent! You have successfully spent your first Action Point!

Woot!

So... I don't have any 4e rules handy to go off of - just what I've gathered from the inter-web. Are we just calling this a Least Dragon Mark and giving it a power to cast CLW once per day?

If so, I'll just mark that on my character sheet...

After re-reading my story several times (for editing purposes) and the first few interactions in game, I think I have my alignment wrong. It should probably be Lawful and not Neutrality.

Mind if I fix that?