"Into the Haunted Forest" OOC Discussion

[Pvt Minsk]

Gentlemen, let’s kick off the planning! I’m hoping that before making full character sheets, everyone would mention their plans for their characters so that there’s no unnecessary overlap in classes (unless you guys want to have multiple characters with the same classes, just saying). But since that shouldn’t take long, here are rules and guidelines for character making.

Everyone starts off at level 1 for Into the Haunted Woods. Ability points are generated with standard point buy (DMG pg. 169), 25 points to spend. Everyone has the average amount of starting gold for equipment (PHB pg. 111).

Anything in the core SRD is perfectly legal for your character’s creation. If you’ve got a feat, spell, class or etc. from a WotC or even third-party splatbook (I know Kaeam’s always got crazy feat-spell combos on his mind), gimme the details on the book it’s in before using it so I can check it to see if it’s balanced and alright. But I’m pretty easygoing with extraneous stuff like that, I love me some Oriental Adventures myself, so 6 times out of 7 I’ll be alright with it.

For dice rolling, you can of course link to Invisible Castle if you want to. But you can also just roll on your own table and post the results on the internet. I’m positive everyone will be playing fair, after all. …I think.

The game will be set in Paizo’s Pathfinder campaign setting – but it’s a generic setting with every fantasy trope represented so no need to know the fluff. Specifically, this adventure’s set in the northwest of the nation of Andoran:

Everyone will be on the road through Arthfell Forest heading north. The northwest part of Andoran, and the northern end of the Arthfell, is known as Darkmoon Vale, a Germanic-style countryside fraught with peril, superstition and scared peasantry, so there’s plenty of need for adventurers up there. Everyone should hopefully have some motivation to be travelling north. In fact, optimally, in case we do want to continue after this game, then one or two characters could be heading for the lumber town of Falcon’s Hollow where we can set a following adventure.

At the game’s start, everyone will be meeting towards evening on the road at a Wayshrine of Desna, an hour’s way from a known inn. Some or all characters can know each other from before, I don’t mind, but being so close to an inn should be motivation for even a group of strangers to travel together in these dangerous woods at least until there (should all go well, there’ll be more motivation at said inn for the group to stay together).

One more note on the mechanics of the forums – the character sheets need to be able to be frequently edited, what with characters levelling and getting new equipment and such. But there’s the unfortunate feature of the forums that posts can’t be edited after 15 minutes. I think that the first post of a new thread can be edited afterwards (at least by me, but not sure if it’s admin only or thread-starters also), so maybe what should be done is that the final character sheet should be made an individual thread. If that still doesn’t work, we’ll have to think of something else. Blog posts, even?

If I forgot something or if you need clarification, gimme a ring. Otherwise, have fun making your characters, guys! When everyone has an approved character we can look to start this train wreck adventure.

Cheers,
Minsk

[Monkey King]

Hi, I just wanted to say that Myth weavers linky is a fairly good website which has character sheets online. which means you can start a reply here and link your character and then amend it as you go since the link will send you to the latest character sheet?

I can play the cleric or whatever is going, I have a ton of characters on the go in my head and can take any of them...

[Pvt Minsk]

That's an excellent idea, let's do that. I was thinking of putting the character sheets on another website, but didn't know any appropriate sites for that. Once everyone has their character sheets done, I'll edit the links into the top post for ease of reference.

[Lottel]

I'm going to throw this out there.
I've never played a real game. I've played some fake games with "the rules are something like this" And I've created lots of character sheets for the actual rules... But I'm gonna have a rough time here possibly.

Is that ok with everyone?

And I'll play whatever is needed for the party to be semi-coherent.

[Monkey King]

All good man, there are a number of us here who can help, that and the rules for the core books are on the internet. The hypertext

That has all the core classes and races and spells and equipment and stuff....that and some people have all the books on their computer....from sources and stuff....coughImmapirategarcough.....so if you need any other stuff, I am sure one of us can help....

my msn is [e-mail].....

Im usually on it

[Lottel]

I'd like to be a rogue though.
If that's not a problem .

[Pvt Minsk]

Like Mr. King said, it's no problem at all. I understand Ziadan's in the same boat as you, and really I myself only have a year of playing and half a year of DMing experience, so this isn't a pros-only game. If you know how to create character sheets for the game then the hardest part's already done, I'm sure the rest of the gang will help out when rules queries come up.

[Luca Stefan]

Dibs on the bard.

[Ziadan]

*raises menu*

I guess i will have one "D&D for dummies" please...

I guess since rouge is already taken... i go for either Monk, Fighter or Ranger ..... i need some time to decide...

[Pvt Minsk]

I used to have a link to a step-by-step character maker on the internet that Kaeam gave me a while ago. Kaeam, can you post the link here for everybody? I think that it coupled with the d20SRD would help you out, Ziadan.

Oh, and there is, in fact, a D&D for Dummies. I haven't checked it out, I don't know if it's any good.

[Ziadan]

I'll wait for that step by step Char maker then...

Kaeam, post it... NOW!!

[Ziadan]

I guess... but first i need to decide what kind of char i want... :P

[Pvt Minsk]

So right now the group has the cleric, rogue and fighty person (all of Ziadan's choices are inevitably damage machines), and we've got a bard in the roster too. Should you guys want the archetypical balanced party, that leaves an arcane caster to Kaeam. Should you guys want a dífferent kind of party, then go crazy there, Kaeam.

While you guys work on the characters, I've got a query on how I should run the rules. Lottel's "the rules are something like this" comment reminded that I'm sketchy on some of the rules too. During all the games I've played with my mates, we've never done the miniatures thing, i.e. moving figures on top of a battle grid. We've always done the freeform thing where I judge how far they can go and what they can do in a round. So I've only got a basic grasp of the movement rules, enough so my rulings are fair.

I'm checking the rules on moving in the combat grid closer now, but I've heard from at least one source that they'd actually be okay if this game was also run without the squares. So I want to check with the rest of my players how they want to handle it. If we play freeform, I'll just rule stuff like "in this room you can move up to the goblin and still take a standard action" or "your friend's already fighting with the dire lemur, so you can move to flanking position." If you want the miniature movement rules, then in each fight I'll give the room's coordinates ("this is a 4x7 room, lettered A to D on the north-south axis, 1 to 7 on the east-west axis") and we'll have more tactical fights ("I move to C5 and attack the pizza golem").

Which kind of game do you guys want?