The Pink Dice Chronicles

The entire saga of Monday Night Pathfinder Pirates has been a building of tension.  Since the party of 6 were first dragged aboard the Carrion Crow, the PCs have been targeted for abuse by Mister Plugg and Scourge.  This week the group spent some final last time making preparations by trying to befriend the crew.  Shifts continued as normal, but this day found Sarith, the Magus, on the wrong side of the dice rolls and head into the bloody hour tied to the main mast. Jacen saw it coming, shirked his duties, talked to some folks, and with the help of the half-giant who think he is a dwarf (siege weapon expert, fighter, cleric named Durgen), rigged some explosives. The bloody hour began and the crew was all placed on deck.  6 PCs took position.  I slowly counted out the NPCs into two piles -- those that had been substantially influenced as to assist in the mutiny and those who were loyal to Scourge and Plugg.  Jacen then called Scourge and Plugg out, ...

The Shadowrunners started the week off with a full group in combat with a Bebelith.  Don the magnificent talked to the Bebilith and then called forth the Contract Devil in hopes that the Bebelith would find him more appetizing.  Instead, the Devil and Bebelith strike a contract, returning the Bebelith to its home place and ridding the party of the Contract Devil's possible future appearance. In the room, the party found odds and ends junk. During the start of the battle, Zirule, the cleric, was possessed by his diety, who has a major beef with Asmodeus for affecting his cleric through the foolish Gnome's wish.  Zirule's eyes glowed blue, his weapon glowed with blue flame, and he got stronger.  In the future, any encounters with serious evil alignment will probably call this diety power in Zirule. The party went back from where they came.  They found a Vampire, and later a pair of glass golems.  They found a library full of books and scrolls. Eventua...

So here is version 2 of JINitTracker.  There is now a special circle token for keeping track of round.  A similar triangular token is used to keep track of turn.  The init scale has been aligned and ruled.  Icons now have pointers built in to point to the scale.  Alt-Click now toggles between 3 status indicators -- P for Prone, single slash for dying, and X for dead. So here combat has just begun (round 1).  River has taken her turn.  Zirule is prone and is currently delaying.  It is Corrail's turn.  There is a dead goblin enemy.  There is an enemy dragon.  There is also a neutral NPC guard who is dying.  Because the tokens are moved to cover the green scale, the red scale gives the approximate initiative of each player (within nonoverlapping). Ctrl-double-click on the background now not only piles the character tokens at the bottom for quit initiative sorting, but it also sends the round token and the turn tokens back to...

I've been slowly putting together a GM toolset for dual-monitor.  I currently run a 12" dual-core Atom Asus laptop with a 22" USB AOC Monitor.   Screenmonkey seems to be my favorite tool at the moment for displaying stuff like maps on the dual monitor set up.  The big thing I don't like is the various initiative trackers I've found thus far.  They all look like spreadsheets and seem to want to track everything.  I wanted something more like my combat pad , so I wrote a little Java app I call JInitTracker. I coded this in two nights with crappy Java code in Eclipse.   Most of the underlying code is AWT.  I haven't even gotten around to double-buffering to eliminate flicker yet.  So here it is: It starts with a single circle token you can drag around to indicate round. Double-click on the background to add one of the rectangular name tokens. Double-click on the token to change its text.  It pops up a text entry dialogue. Ctrl-click o...

This weeks occurrences: Boarding practice ended with Kyte in the drink before being rushed onto the ship. The Carrion Crow with the party intact chased down the Bonny Kate, a merchant class vessel. The party successfully boarded the Bonny Kate and killed 9 crew and an officer in a fierce battle.  The party got to do some intersting things: Jumping over sailors to flank them. Using Wind Blast to knock down an officer and send a crewman hurdling off the ship into shark infested waters Using stomp through a hammer to knock 6 enemy sailors prone. Several nice blasts of magic missile. Swinging across a deck on rigging to attack an enemy. Save the captain's life from a sneak attack. The party was well rewarded with loot and rum.  The party used their time wisely both aboard the Crow and as new crew aboard the new Bonny Kate. The half-giant spent some of his last hours aboard the Carrion Crow with Grok, his half-orc companion, and enjoyed some drinking and entert...

The shadowrunners, down 1 cleric, were discussing contract options with a contract devil when last we left them.  The bard, Don the Magnificent, attempted to outwit the devil, but instead simply scared the group away from making a deal.  Under need to meet his quota for his god Asmodeus, the devil decide to kill the party.  The party, outmatched and fearful for their lives, stopped the devil, and Ally, the gnome sorceress, offered her soul up in trade for the 3 wishes.  Her wishes were written down to ensure clarity, reviewed by the group, and then reviewed and granted by the devil: I wish all negative opinions and bounties were lifted from my friends and I, and were not replaced by any bounty ever. I wish all red wizards and Shardosferin the dragon, and only them, to be dead and never to be risen. The devil interpreted the second wish as two wishes (one for red wizards and one for Shardosferin, and granted it and with completion of the wishes, seale...

Group went crabbing, fought off two reef claws. Jaycen beat Owlbear in a fist fight for sport, but showed mercy when Owlbear was down. Kyte got the crap beat out of her after surprising the half-giant and his friend Grok during their interlude. Many friends and enemies were made. The group was practicing boarding as it was called out that there were sails on the horizon.

Ally gets turned in by Jaycoff the junk salesman and she outruns the guard out of the city. Ally and Felix sit in the bushes and drink till they pass out. Ally and Felic hide in a caravan to get back into the city. Ally and Felix steal a wagon and have to abandon it and nearly get caught. Riiver and Corrail visit Don as he his broken out and dressed as a woman to escape. Gnomes hide Don in Jaycoffs. Don learns that Lord's assets arebing liquidated so he can escape. Don tries to build a rune and fires a lightning bolt which draws attention of Corrail and River.  They scare off gnomes and reunite with Don. Party gets back together. Visit to Max Trip to cellar in western ruins.

I updated the Lilliput RPG 5 sheet packet to version 0.2 tonight.  It appeared during 1st level play that the game was too easy.  I ran the combat numbers (expected damage, expected survival in rounds, probability of hit) and with only a couple of minor changes, I was able to balance combat over all 20 levels. In general, it looks like magic will play a much larger role above level 15 or so.  I added a level 5 arcane attack spell to lessen the effect of spell block on arcane casters by giving them attacks over several levels. I also added a 'sneak attack' mechanic by allowing any stealthy creature to automatically hit on its first attack.  This should give the rogue and related classes some more combat oomph. I am changing Charisma to Chi, since it is the basis for number of spells per day.  Chi would better reflect the dual meaning of outgoing energy (charisma) and personal energy (mana).  Chi is defined as "vital energy or spirit".

So, to test Roll20, I wanted a really light RPG.  I looked a lot of them over, but none of them captured everything I wanted in a D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder kind of way, so I am writing my own.  I've picked the name Lilliput (because of its diminutive nature) and because it doesn't seem to be taken. My goal write now if to have the whole RPG in 5 pages: Character Sheet (1 page) Spells List (1 Page) Rules (1 Page) Bestiary (1 Page) All Items and Equipment (1 Page) So far I've dropped feats and skils, generalized all weapons into 4 classes, and converted all classes, races, and templates to operate only on attributes.  I eliminated 1 attribute (con).  I also made most forulas for spells, init, movement, attacks, damage be uniform, based on attributes, and fit them onto the character sheet. I have still got a lot of things up in the air, like what to do about backstab, and how to integrate perform. I hope to have a beta for testing by the weekend.

I am beta testing Roll20 now.  This should be a lot of fun. I'm thinking I need to either pull together or write a 'light' RPG to try it out with.  Something with less mechanics. Any suggestions?

New Player this week playing Sarith -- another magus -- this one is a male human. The other magus, Kyte, was absent this week. --- This week started off with the group recovering in the hold from 'the bloody hour' which got them all whipped by Mister Plugg.  He enjoyed it. The crew started trying to make friends this week: Jacen talked to Sandara, and Sadara offered to watch over Kyte who was recovering from the whipping. Jacen managed to start a sing-along with Rosie who played the fiddle. Jacen had a good chat with 'Fishguts', the cook.  Fishguts left him alone just long enough for him to grab a short sword. Sheena was able to get her katana back from Cut-Throat Grok by claiming it was cursed. Sheena was also able to snag a lock to lock up her katana. Durgen, the half-giant who thinks he is a dwarf, tried to talk Cut-Throat Grok into giving him his hammer back.  Instead, he ended up seducing her. Durgen met up with Cut-Throat at night in the quarterma...

So Yuri, the Tiger, Zirul, and Ally caught the man who took off with Ally the Gnome in a sack. "You stole me," Ally cried as they interrogated him.  They dragged him off to a nearby abandoned cabin as the rest of the party caught up to them. The group tried to intimidate, bluff, and get information out of the man, but fearing his own death, he was mostly uncooperative.  He finally called on Zirul, noting he was a cleric, to give his word that he would be released, and exchange, he would give up the location of a treasure.  After learning that the man was a bounty hunter, Zirule released him with treasure map in hand. The group gathered up their horses and camel and headed for Secomber.  Along the path, at night, four horsemen on barded horses stopped them.  A knight on a huge warhorse appeared before them and ordered Lord Rutherford to stand down and be arrested, pointing all the while at Don the Magnificent.  He went with them, and the knight warned ...