Talk to Ashiel About Anything Mark II

[Zilrax]

My sister, well sister now, started transitioning in 2011, so I have some familiarity with this stuff. Nowhere near as much as you clearly, but I know that the spiro one is one she uses. She's getting the surgery in a couple months.

[Ashiel]

My sister, well sister now, started transitioning in 2011, so I have some familiarity with this stuff. Nowhere near as much as you clearly, but I know that the spiro one is one she uses. She's getting the surgery in a couple months.

Epic. Spironolactone is the most commonly prescribed anti-androgen in the US. It works really well for lots of people.

Spoiler: Personal SRS Thoughts

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It'll probably be a long time before I'm looking at SRS as an option, due to a few factors. Cost is definitely one of those factors (it's expensive and from what I've been reading, who performs it often has a big influence on just how well everything turns out), but personal concerns are another. Having looked into SRS, I'm not sure I'd be 100% happy with it how it works right now (but there are people that have been very happy with it, with some youtube vloggers providing their experiences which made me feel a lot better about it overall since it was very successful for some of them). However, since I'm not in a relationship with anyone (and probably won't be unless something unexpected happens), it's not something I need to decide on right away (since the downstairs won't be of any concern to anyone but me ).

How's your sister's transition been? Is she excited about the SRS?

[Lemmy]

I wouldn't mind hearing about Lemmy's pbp game (mostly because it's probably fun to hear him talk about it).

Me too, I enjoy reading Lemmy's posts.

Why, thank you. I'm glad you like it (and I'm taking it as a compliment, meaning that my posts are very interesting, rather than so crazy/dumb that they end up funny to read ).
And since it wouldn't be me without a shameless plug about my homebrew work... Do check my Revised Fighter for Pathfinder RPG and my Custom Weapon Generation System. I'm sincerely proud of them... Specially the latter (although the archetypes from the former do have a special place in my heart as well).

- - -

With that out of the way...

I'd like to congratulate Ashiel! I mean, it's weird to congratulate someone for undergoing a serious treatment and surgery(ies?), but at very least I can definitely acknowledge the courage and decisiveness necessary. I don't know if I'd be half as brave if it were me. I'm sure everything will go well... There are many chickens to bury in Ashiels future yet (What? Did you think I had forgotten? BWAHAHAHAHA! NEVER! ).

I don't think there's much (or anything really) that I can do to help (specially considering I'm in a different hemisphere until the end of the year, at least ). But still... I'd like to offer my support in whatever way I can help.

Well... Except burying dead farm animals... I'll leave that particular chore to more charitable souls .

Once I'm back to the US, maybe we can meet someday so that I can kick your ass in UMvC3 (because MvCI looks incredibly disappointing so far ).

Cheers to Ashiel! May the whole procedure go as smoothly as possible and then some!

PS: You still owe me a online campaign! Don't think that going through life-altering treatment and surgery(ies?) will save you from that promise!

PS2: I might be somewhat addicted to the forum's emojis...

[Tels]

Congratulations of the treatment Ash, most people don't have the courage to make such a life altering decision as you have. I know a former classmate from highschool that went through the transition, and she said it was one of the most difficult, yet, easy, decisions she had ever made. Once she made her decision, it gave her a goal to really work for, which gave her the motivation to tackle so many other things in life.

At the beginning, he said it was like going through reverse puberty. He found himself more emotional, both more sensitive and volatile. Physically he sometimes found himself frustrated because there was so many nuanced things that were different as he progressed. But, despite what she calls minor annoyances looking back, it's been the best decision of her life.

I'm hoping everything goes wonderfully for you. I for one would be interested in such a blog keeping g track of your journey. Side question, how much XP do you think you'll get for the completion of this quest?

Why, thank you. I'm glad you like it (and I'm taking it as a compliment, meaning that my posts are very interesting, rather than so crazy/dumb that they end up funny to read ).

Why not both?

[Agrippa]

Like all the previous posters I hope your HRT goes off with out a hitch. With that said, I'm not going further on the topic for fear of sounding unartful or ineloquent. But we do have similar hobbies, drawing/sketching and coming up with D&D based RPG homebrews. I guess those are things I can ask you about without choking on my own foot. If you're interested in thinking up weird crossover story ideas, then that's yet one more thing to discuss.

[Zilrax]

Full disclosure, I am TERRIBLE at figuring out how people feel and it's not something she talks about too much. Three guesses why. Frankly my mom talks more about it than she does too, so there is that, but I can only assume so? Generally speaking I try not to pry too much into private things. Usually I figure if someone wanted me to know they'd volunteer it and such. Drives my mom up the wall when I don't ask people how they are and such. Barring reason to ask like they look/I know they are/been sick or or tragedies or something.

But yeah in Canada part of this stuffs covered, though not all of it. It does require you to go all the way to Montreal to get SRS though. Gonna be some plane rides for her in the future.

Meanwhile I'm just studying the stuff they're showing in Starfinder. Has some promise at least though time will tell how effective everything works. The monster statblocks are a little confusing though. They're not concrete down but for whatever reason they've decided they only want to lsit feats that make monsters have new moves and just give the bonuses but not list the static bonus number feats... And just list ability scores modifiers instead of the actual number.

That and working on rejiggering Strange Aeons. Trying to make book 2 more... Investigativey instead of detective says go there and kill all the things then come back to be told to kill all the things over there.

[Tels]

Random dumb thought, but just picture it: Jedi baseball league.

Everyone plays bindfolded and has to use the Force to guide their movements. Uses training sabers, and a shielded/reinforced ball.

[Zilrax]

Force guide the ball into the sword clearly.

[90,000]

What about Gerald Ford?

[Tels]

Force guide the ball into the sword clearly.

Yeah, but the Pitcher, or the Catcher could be opposing you by force guiding the ball into a strike/into the catcher's mitt.

[Zilrax]

Ball sits in place in mid air due to opposing forces. Walk forward and hit with sword while unmoving. Or something I guess? I dunno, Jedi are bloody cheaters anyways.

[Lemmy]

Ball sits in place in mid air due to opposing forces.

Only if the forces are exactly as powerful as each other.

Where's Ash? Her thread gets all crowded and lively all of sudden and she disappears... That's not good hosting!

[Ashiel]

Only if the forces are exactly as powerful as each other.

Where's Ash? Her thread gets all crowded and lively all of sudden and she disappears... That's not good hosting!

At work, actually.
I got a promotion a few weeks ago, but it took them forever and a day to schedule the training hours for said promotion, so I've spent the last week (and likely next week) training. It's all gonna be worth it though (more pay, benefits, and most importantly more free time ).

I'd like to congratulate Ashiel! I mean, it's weird to congratulate someone for undergoing a serious treatment and surgery(ies?), but at very least I can definitely acknowledge the courage and decisiveness necessary. I don't know if I'd be half as brave if it were me. I'm sure everything will go well... There are many chickens to bury in Ashiels future yet (What? Did you think I had forgotten? BWAHAHAHAHA! NEVER! ).

Actually, I think you mean shoveling dead chickens, which when considered is much more morbid than simplying burying dead chickens. There was enough dead chickens that you had to collect their corpses up with snow shovels. Had I been a necromancer, it would have been the perfect moment to bring some fowl vengeance upon a local orc tribe or something (given that one of my more successful D&D characters was a necromancer who used exploding hell-chickens).

Spoiler: Chickenomancer

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Without anything really crazy going on, I just took the corpsecrafter feats from Libris Mortis on a necromancy character (cleric IIRC). Chickens are really cheap, so I'd usually snacrifice (yes, we're not wasting that tender juiciness) a chicken or a dozen, and then use animate dead to create a flock of foul fowl that exploded for 1d6 negative energy damage when they died. They weren't particularly dangerous on their own, but they made for mighty fine resistance-ignoring bombs if you set them off in a chain reaction (chickens are tiny so you can get a lot of them crowded into a 10 ft. area before your party's mage drops a fireball or something on the enemy and them).

With Pathfinder's bloody and burning skeletons, I got a little more creative. Recycling explosive chickens are better. When I found some brown bold, I kept some in a jar and would throw it into a pack of burning chickens, causing the stuff to grow at a ridiculous pace. At which point, whatever is near them is suffering 1d6 fire / chicken per round, as well as lots of cold damage from the nearby mold. It was a mess to clean up though.

Once I'm back to the US, maybe we can meet someday so that I can kick your ass in UMvC3 (because MvCI looks incredibly disappointing so far ).

You probably would destroy me. As much as I love that game, I've had precious little time to really play it, so I've never reached competitive levels with it. I'm also not really concerned about MvCI anymore. Mostly because I'd like Capcom to swim in a dumpster fire. Arc System Works currently claims all my bases. Whereas Capcom just seems to be interested in one-upping itself in the "terrible company" category, the Guilty Gear series just seems to be getting better (and it's way smoother than SF ever was).

Capcom gives the failfest that is SF IV, and Arc Systems gives us GGXrd#Revelator. Hell, it's online multiplayer lobby shames anything Capcom has put out in pretty much ever. And now it looks like they're going to be bringing out the next great DBZ game to boot.

Cheers to Ashiel! May the whole procedure go as smoothly as possible and then some!

Thanks. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to break it to my dad.

PS: You still owe me a online campaign! Don't think that going through life-altering treatment and surgery(ies?) will save you from that promise!

Well, no plans for surgery yet, but I'm psyched about GMing again. If all goes well, I should have a fair amount of time to actually start doing things again in the near future.

PS2: I might be somewhat addicted to the forum's emojis...

They're highly addictive.

Random dumb thought, but just picture it: Jedi baseball league.

Everyone plays bindfolded and has to use the Force to guide their movements. Uses training sabers, and a shielded/reinforced ball.

I loosely remember something like this being suggested back on the ol' SW boards on the WotC boards a long time ago (in a galaxy actually quite near). The idea was a training exercise where you got got some of those little floating training droids to act as a starting pitcher, then play something like Jedi Tennis as two teams continually "deflect" the beam towards some end goal (it could be to attempt to strike the other team, or perhaps direct it into a goal or something). I think it'd be great fun.

Also Soresu practitioners would likely be really good at the game, so that's a win for me as well (Soresu is my favorite style ).

Like all the previous posters I hope your HRT goes off with out a hitch. With that said, I'm not going further on the topic for fear of sounding unartful or ineloquent. But we do have similar hobbies, drawing/sketching and coming up with D&D based RPG homebrews. I guess those are things I can ask you about without choking on my own foot. If you're interested in thinking up weird crossover story ideas, then that's yet one more thing to discuss.

Thanks. Honestly, I didn't actually expect this much conversation about the HRT.
And don't worry about foot munching. I'm pretty fond of the odd foot with a bit of tartar sauce.
As to crossover story ideas, I guess that depends on what you mean. If you mean genre crossovers (such as sci-fi/fantasy or modern/fantasy hybrids and stuff like that) then I've probably got a foot in the door somewhere (other than my mouth).

[Lemmy]

So... Initiative rolls are basically a way to decide who reacts faster to the situation and therefore gets to act faster...

With that in mind, what do you folk think would be the consequences of using Reflex saves as Initiative rolls, and how good/bad would they be? (Initiative-specific feats and abilities would just apply to this particular use of Reflex saves).

So... pros of this are:

- Combat-oriented classes would get a nice bonus to Initiative (instead of always being second to the Wizard with Improved Initiative) (Fighters have good Reflex progression in my games).
- Reflex saves become more valuable, rather than a poor man's Fort/Will.
- Level actually influences Initiative, which I think makes sense.

But I'm sure I'm missing something, since I only thought of this today... What do y'all think?

[Agrippa]

Genre mash-ups are fine by me, but I mean more in the sense of crossing over two or more series. World hopping/interdimensonal crossovers would be for when you can't reconcile to settings existing on one world but would still like to have both settings and their characters interact with each other and maybe even effect the course of both world's histories. Or a merged world crossover where there's so little if anything that needs to be altered to combine two or more settings into one world. I have some interesting ones that I'm thinking about. Like Kingdom Hearts crossover idea that uses a broader than usual definition of what a counts as Disney. Broad enough to include Pulp Fiction among others.

[Ashiel]

So... Initiative rolls are basically a way to decide who reacts faster to the situation and therefore gets to act faster...

With that in mind, what do you folk think would be the consequences of using Reflex saves as Initiative rolls, and how good/bad would they be? (Initiative-specific feats and abilities would just apply to this particular use of Reflex saves).

So... pros of this are:

- Combat-oriented classes would get a nice bonus to Initiative (instead of always being second to the Wizard with Improved Initiative) (Fighters have good Reflex progression in my games).
- Reflex saves become more valuable, rather than a poor man's Fort/Will.
- Level actually influences Initiative, which I think makes sense.

But I'm sure I'm missing something, since I only thought of this today... What do y'all think?

Honestly this doesn't strike me as a bad idea. It seems like it would naturally help martial characters (who tend to have the best saving throws overall). It does mean Paladins would suddenly become initiative superstars (but that doesn't hurt my feelings in the slightest). It sort of stealth buffs a few things but not in any way that immediately jumps out at me as being terrible (stuff like cloaks of resistance or luck blades adding to initiative for example).

[Zilrax]

Though this makes the Barbarian and the Bloodrager the slowest initiatived martials amusingly.

[Tels]

It might be better to limit it to just the base Reflex save bonus + Dex mod and any other Initiative specific bonuses. That way you don't have issues with Paladins being the fastest martials (next to dex based Swashbucklers) and items not intended for initiative bumping them up. This would give everyone a scaling initiative bonus, and reflects experienced combatants reacting to danger faster than inexperienced ones.

On the upside, it buffs martials, but indirectly nefs casters. Martials are going to tend to be naturally faster than casters, which means that casters are not going to be able to get their spells off first. It makes Diviner wizards an even better choice as it gives them a huge advantage in getting to go first. It also makes certain classes, like Unchained Rogues, Monks and Swashbucklers, just leaps and bounds faster than others.

This will only grow worse at higher levels due to different baselines; currently, all characters have a baseline of 0 + dex + mods, but with the proposed changes, it could be as much as a +/-6 difference that other classes have no chance of ever closing the gap with. If you have a +10 initiative now, and your buddy has +4, you have a 6 point difference; the changes could mean a +10 and a +22 initiative respectively - a 12 point difference. In the original, the buddy has a somewhat decent chance of rolling higher than you do, but with the changes, you will pretty much always roll higher than him.

[Edit] Something to consider if you use the above suggestion is having to go through and look up the base saves of every monster, or reverse engineer them and hope you remembered to deduct every bonus.

[Zilrax]

I need to stop playing Persona 5 so much. Music plays in my head constantly.

[Ashiel]

It might be better to limit it to just the base Reflex save bonus + Dex mod and any other Initiative specific bonuses. That way you don't have issues with Paladins being the fastest martials (next to dex based Swashbucklers) and items not intended for initiative bumping them up. This would give everyone a scaling initiative bonus, and reflects experienced combatants reacting to danger faster than inexperienced ones.

On the upside, it buffs martials, but indirectly nefs casters. Martials are going to tend to be naturally faster than casters, which means that casters are not going to be able to get their spells off first. It makes Diviner wizards an even better choice as it gives them a huge advantage in getting to go first. It also makes certain classes, like Unchained Rogues, Monks and Swashbucklers, just leaps and bounds faster than others.

This will only grow worse at higher levels due to different baselines; currently, all characters have a baseline of 0 + dex + mods, but with the proposed changes, it could be as much as a +/-6 difference that other classes have no chance of ever closing the gap with. If you have a +10 initiative now, and your buddy has +4, you have a 6 point difference; the changes could mean a +10 and a +22 initiative respectively - a 12 point difference. In the original, the buddy has a somewhat decent chance of rolling higher than you do, but with the changes, you will pretty much always roll higher than him.

[Edit] Something to consider if you use the above suggestion is having to go through and look up the base saves of every monster, or reverse engineer them and hope you remembered to deduct every bonus.

That would eliminate pretty much all of the goofy side effects of save-boosters. Incidentally, it'd also be really nice for Bards who would be more likely to get off their party-wide buffs earlier than usual. As a GM, it would also make a number of monsters a bit more attractive for various situations, since there are lots of great monsters who are generally doomed to going dead last in battles (since monsters tend to lack class features, their only options are having a high Dex + Improved Initiative).

I need to stop playing Persona 5 so much. Music plays in my head constantly.

I've never played any of the Persona games. I probably should though, since I've heard nothing but good things about that (at this point rather legendary) series.

=================================

So I've been mulling some campaign ideas over in my head at the moment, preparing for what will hopefully be more free time in the near future. I've not got a chance to GM in over a year (my work schedule made scheduling anything pretty impossible, and the group I was in wasn't much into drop in / drop out games) and I've got a few in mind but haven't decided which I feel like pursuing the most, so I thought I'd troll the waters a bit and see which ones seem appealing.

Samurai Spirits
The first one is a small campaign I was throwing together called Samurai spirits. The name is a bit of a double entendre, as it's intended to evoke the idea of the samurai's warrior spirit, but also a joke about how the game is basically about samurai and spirits (with a lot of the campaign being about the spirit realm as readily as anything else). It centers around a single circular set of islands collectively known as Okurimono, with several islands named for the ancestors who ruled them, with a central island named for their "cursed" shapeshifting sibling who the original ancestors killed, believing Xiyo of being a danger to the world. The campaign is very human-centric (which could be a put off for those who absolutely must be elves or something).

The campaign has the following appeals.

• The potential for political machinations between various clans and houses across the islands.
• A waxing and waning war between the natural world and the spirit world.
• Humanocentric.
• Draws inspirations from things like L5R, MtG's Kamigawa, and (mostly) japanese mythology.

I actually started throwing together a campaign pdf, smattered with images I drew inspiration from. It's incomplete but can be found on my google drive, here.

St. Carthan's
A subset of my campaign setting Alvena (which is eternally in a state of evolution and revision), it centers around a large stretch of land in the Kingdom of Omas, known as "St. Carthan's". Named for a grand cathedral, in turn named for a great saint that eventually went mad, the campaign centers around a sort of quaint fantasy. The campaign is intended to use a number of custom mechanics, and is simultaneously a bit high and low fantasy (there's lots of fantasy elements, magic, monsters, etc; but it's neither flashy nor commonplace to the muggles of the world).

The campaign has the following appeals.

• Extra slow XP track. Players require twice as much XP as the slow XP track in Pathfinder to advance in level. This is both to make higher level characters rarer, but also to give me wiggle room to award lots of experience for things like sluething.
• A "low-magic" campaign. Spellcasters are seen as "the other", with the most common magical characters being adepts. Most potions and the like are made by muggles (see below).
• Revised Item Creation. Item creation feats aren't used, but you can craft magic items without them. Materials for magic items can't be purchased, but instead are gained via various skills (collecting herbs potions, etc).
• Pseudo-horror. Though not intended to be explicitly a horror game, St. Carthans is made up many small towns and villages that are relatively close to each other. Their populations are highly superstitious, and their lands plagued by things that go bump in the night.
• Outcast (Un)Friendly. This game is a great place to vent your brooding angsty anti-heroes. With a setting where being a wierdo gets you distrusted, undead smote, constructs dismantled, tieflings tormented, and encouraged to wander from town to town, what more could you want? It's a great place to play a character with a cursed mark, or a "monster" hiding amongst the populace (such as lycanthropes or undead). Or play an unusual race and have people treat you like it's not a beautiful cosmopolitan utopia. This is that place.
• Moral choices. Sometimes you might find yourself on the side of an angry mob, sometimes on the side of whatever other the mob is hunting. You might discover someone who's up to something illegal or unnatural for reasons you can sympathize with. You might discover secrets that could make or break people. You won't lose class features over it either. For example, a Paladin might decide that a child afflicted with lycanthropy is in need of their protection, even if it causes his or her excommunication from the moral authority; or the paladin might decide the child is too dangerous to let live and makes the hard decision to put them down. Either way, you're still fueled by divine powers.
• Draws inspiration from things like Beauty and the Beast, Dr. Frankenstein, Red Riding Hood, and lots of pulp monster stuff.

While I never got around to writing up a campaign booklet for it (since it was thrown together as a short mini-campaign), I used some pdf files of a newspaper printed in the campaign to introduce plot hooks and make it into a sort of sandboxy choose your own adventure sort of thing. Issue #0 is actually a backstory that a player and I collaborated on. Issue #1 was the introduction to the game.
Issue #0.
Issue #1.

The Wyrmspire
What began as my contribution to a persistent world my friends intended on running (but apparently couldn't be bothered to ), I've since incorporated Wyrmspire into my own works and made it a portion of my Alvena campaign. Most of the details can be found here: Wyrmspire Location. It's a mega city that spirals into the sky inside a dead volcano, the former home of a red wyrm. The game is heavily themed around urban fantasy, rival guilds and politics, as well as exploring the deep and unexplored lands below the dragon's former lair.

Yet Unnamed Campaign about Constructs and Undead
Recently I've had a mind to create a campaign where humans created semi-sentient constructs as a means if wiping out the undead, only to eventually have the constructs go rogue and turn on the humans, creating a three way crisis between the living, unliving, and forged. I had strongly considered setting it in a modern setting. After recently watching the netflix cell-shaded anime Blame!, this idea stirred to the forefront since it reminded me of it (mostly due to the film's emphasis on machines and human survival).

Basically, kind of a mixture of Vampire Hunter D meets Terminator II. I need to flesh it out more, but that's kind of the starting point.

[Tels]

The Wyrmspire
What began as my contribution to a persistent world my friends intended on running (but apparently couldn't be bothered to ), I've since incorporated Wyrmspire into my own works and made it a portion of my Alvena campaign. Most of the details can be found here: Wyrmspire Location. It's a mega city that spirals into the sky inside a dead volcano, the former home of a red wyrm. The game is heavily themed around urban fantasy, rival guilds and politics, as well as exploring the deep and unexplored lands below the dragon's former lair.

Yet Unnamed Campaign about Constructs and Undead
Recently I've had a mind to create a campaign where humans created semi-sentient constructs as a means if wiping out the undead, only to eventually have the constructs go rogue and turn on the humans, creating a three way crisis between the living, unliving, and forged. I had strongly considered setting it in a modern setting. After recently watching the netflix cell-shaded anime Blame!, this idea stirred to the forefront since it reminded me of it (mostly due to the film's emphasis on machines and human survival).

Basically, kind of a mixture of Vampire Hunter D meets Terminator II. I need to flesh it out more, but that's kind of the starting point.

These are the two that interest me, personally, the most.

Wyrmspire is mostly due to the location. Based purely on the imagery of "It's a megacity that spirals high into the sky inside a dead volcano." This brings to my mind a huge city rising up along the inside of a hallowed out volcano. The people living there could have things like suspended tramways to traverse from one side of the volcano to the other, you could have the population use gliders and thermal vents to fly around inside the volcano. I imagine a mostly fantasy, but a little bit of steampunk thrown in there. Combat could be super interesting as it would could be extremely vertically based, with people on higher elevations, while also dealing with people flying around in gliders and stuff like that. Adventures and plots in the area could be fun and terrifying at the same time. The city is very vulnerable to seismic activity, and they'd be vulnerable to subterranean threats. Like having to deal with a nearby colony of ankhegs.

The Living/Construct/Undead campaign sounds like a great setting too. If done right, it could be a both heavily intrigue based campaign, while retaining the possibility for lots of combat; the reverse is also true in a combat focused campaign retaining easy opportunities for intrigue. The Living, for example, might use operatives who willingly sacrifice themselves to be raised as agents to infiltrate the undead and learn their plans; meanwhile, they make use of spells like object possession to masquerade as constructs and learn their plans as well. Undead could be using brainwashed agents, or mind control spells, to infiltrate the Living, and make use of object possession too. The Constructs, however, would have to build some special bio-golem designed to appear like the Living to infiltrate them, while doing something similar with the undead.

You could have whole series of plots of the PCs ferreting out the infiltrators and spies, while also undergoing missions to insert their own spies into the enemy ranks. Or you could focus on crafting a plot that involves trying to gain advantages over the enemy in the three-way war; even if it's just negotiating a peace treaty.

The living and construct could make peace by forming a sort of parent/child relationship and understanding the living did wrong by creating a slave race, and the living could assist the constructs in embracing their sentience and morality; kind of like Humans and Cylons in Battle Star Galactica or the Quarians and Geth from Mass Effect. In this case, the undead are the greater enemy because the undead are, mostly, unthinking killing machines and would seek to destroy everything. The constructs need the living for their adaptability and to learn what being alive is about, while the living need the constructs for their durability and ability to rapidly replace numbers. I imagine constructs would seek to create "builder bots" that use at-will SLAs like fabricate to rapidly create combat bodies for their side; while also doing the same with a spell like awaken construct.

The constructs and undead could form a peace treaty as both are unnatural off-spring of the living and embrace their mutual disgust of the living who created them. In this case, the living are the greater enemy as the living possess incredible adaptability and cunning and can resort to plans that the constructs and undead would not normally consider. At the same time, they might work together because the living are, by far, the most vulnerable, as the constructs and undead share similar immunities that they can make use of to defeat their foes.

The living and undead could form a peace treaty as they both need the other to combat a more powerful foe in the constructs; the living need the endurance and lack of vulnerabilities the undead possess, while the undead cannot exist without the living to provide more numbers. In this case, the constructs are the enemy because they rely on nothing to sustain themselves. Constructs can be created from anything, while undead need the living to survive, and the living need time and resources to survive. They could both acknowledge that the constructs will likely destroy both sides in the end, because the constructs can replenish their numbers quicker, in the long run, than the undead or living. At the same time, many of the undeads most powerful abilities are worthless against the constructs, while the living possess the broad range of skills necessary to exploit any weakness the constructs have.

I like the two above campaigns the most, because they both offer a lot of flexibility in how the campaign can progress. They both have lots of opportunities to tackle a wide range of subjects, though I think the Three-Way War would have the most potential for some fun RP and deep choices. You could really play around with "what does it mean to have as soul?" style questions, while also tossing in some Star-Crossed Lovers plots and stuff like that. However, I really like Wyrmspire as a location, at least as far as how I envision it, so it would be lots of fun to play there.

[Edit] Also the Wyrwood are a race of constructs that were built by wizards to serve them. They rebelled and overthrew the wizards and seek to preserve their race at any cost. Seems like a perfect candidate for the Three-Way War.

[Edit 2] By the way, has anyone ever heard of Eziah? Apparently, he's a grumpy old wizard that moved to Golarions sun to get away from the petty politics. I just heard of this guy, and thought it was hilarious.

[Ashiel]

These are the two that interest me, personally, the most.

Wyrmspire is mostly due to the location. Based purely on the imagery of "It's a megacity that spirals high into the sky inside a dead volcano." This brings to my mind a huge city rising up along the inside of a hallowed out volcano. The people living there could have things like suspended tramways to traverse from one side of the volcano to the other, you could have the population use gliders and thermal vents to fly around inside the volcano. I imagine a mostly fantasy, but a little bit of steampunk thrown in there. Combat could be super interesting as it would could be extremely vertically based, with people on higher elevations, while also dealing with people flying around in gliders and stuff like that. Adventures and plots in the area could be fun and terrifying at the same time. The city is very vulnerable to seismic activity, and they'd be vulnerable to subterranean threats. Like having to deal with a nearby colony of ankhegs.

The Living/Construct/Undead campaign sounds like a great setting too. If done right, it could be a both heavily intrigue based campaign, while retaining the possibility for lots of combat; the reverse is also true in a combat focused campaign retaining easy opportunities for intrigue. The Living, for example, might use operatives who willingly sacrifice themselves to be raised as agents to infiltrate the undead and learn their plans; meanwhile, they make use of spells like object possession to masquerade as constructs and learn their plans as well. Undead could be using brainwashed agents, or mind control spells, to infiltrate the Living, and make use of object possession too. The Constructs, however, would have to build some special bio-golem designed to appear like the Living to infiltrate them, while doing something similar with the undead.

You could have whole series of plots of the PCs ferreting out the infiltrators and spies, while also undergoing missions to insert their own spies into the enemy ranks. Or you could focus on crafting a plot that involves trying to gain advantages over the enemy in the three-way war; even if it's just negotiating a peace treaty.

The living and construct could make peace by forming a sort of parent/child relationship and understanding the living did wrong by creating a slave race, and the living could assist the constructs in embracing their sentience and morality; kind of like Humans and Cylons in Battle Star Galactica or the Quarians and Geth from Mass Effect. In this case, the undead are the greater enemy because the undead are, mostly, unthinking killing machines and would seek to destroy everything. The constructs need the living for their adaptability and to learn what being alive is about, while the living need the constructs for their durability and ability to rapidly replace numbers. I imagine constructs would seek to create "builder bots" that use at-will SLAs like fabricate to rapidly create combat bodies for their side; while also doing the same with a spell like awaken construct.

The constructs and undead could form a peace treaty as both are unnatural off-spring of the living and embrace their mutual disgust of the living who created them. In this case, the living are the greater enemy as the living possess incredible adaptability and cunning and can resort to plans that the constructs and undead would not normally consider. At the same time, they might work together because the living are, by far, the most vulnerable, as the constructs and undead share similar immunities that they can make use of to defeat their foes.

The living and undead could form a peace treaty as they both need the other to combat a more powerful foe in the constructs; the living need the endurance and lack of vulnerabilities the undead possess, while the undead cannot exist without the living to provide more numbers. In this case, the constructs are the enemy because they rely on nothing to sustain themselves. Constructs can be created from anything, while undead need the living to survive, and the living need time and resources to survive. They could both acknowledge that the constructs will likely destroy both sides in the end, because the constructs can replenish their numbers quicker, in the long run, than the undead or living. At the same time, many of the undeads most powerful abilities are worthless against the constructs, while the living possess the broad range of skills necessary to exploit any weakness the constructs have.

I like the two above campaigns the most, because they both offer a lot of flexibility in how the campaign can progress. They both have lots of opportunities to tackle a wide range of subjects, though I think the Three-Way War would have the most potential for some fun RP and deep choices. You could really play around with "what does it mean to have as soul?" style questions, while also tossing in some Star-Crossed Lovers plots and stuff like that. However, I really like Wyrmspire as a location, at least as far as how I envision it, so it would be lots of fun to play there.

Well, I'll admit that I'm pretty fond of the noble outcast archetype. There's something especially wonderful to me about having to hide something that you are, and then baring that secret to do the greater thing. Such as an undead character choosing to take a bullet for a human, knowing it's going to reveal their inhumanity. Same thing with constructs, such as when the character suffers a "mortal" wound or has part of their face blown off only to discover it's actually a terminator. Doesn't have to be racial either. I've got the same fantasy boner for things like necromancers and the like. If someone needs an example, try the episode "Zuko Alone" from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

[Edit] Also the Wyrwood are a race of constructs that were built by wizards to serve them. They rebelled and overthrew the wizards and seek to preserve their race at any cost. Seems like a perfect candidate for the Three-Way War.

I actually use these mechanics for player constructs.

[Edit 2] By the way, has anyone ever heard of Eziah? Apparently, he's a grumpy old wizard that moved to Golarions sun to get away from the petty politics. I just heard of this guy, and thought it was hilarious.

I've heard of him before but had forgotten about him. I'm more curious as to why he decided to pick a star to live on. As a 16th level wizard, there are certainly more hospitable places to live that are secluded. I'm not particularly sure how he got around the soul crushing gravity or the fact he's living on the surface of a perpetual atomic holocaust.

I imagine it must get old living inside a sunscreen elemental.

[Zilrax]

Persona is a good series. Persona 3-5 are what most people think about but I like persona 2 because Hitler's in it, and for all the games containing Nazi's you so very rarely see Adolph. I can only really think of Wolfenstein offhand.

Persona 5 I think is especially interesting and they definetly knew how to hit on relevant themes. Yet I suspect it will age well despite it.

Overall Persona 3 has decent mechanics but they're a little unpolished but a pretty good story. Persona 4 I personally find the story a little weaker but they refined the mechanics a lot more so that's nice. Persona 5 I'd say took what they learned from both and really mastered it.

You don't really need to play any of the Persona games to get the other ones, they're for the msot part standalone with only one otherworldy npc and a few features remaining consistent throughout.

------

As for the campaigns, they're all pretty good to me, though I have looked at Wyrmspire before, a lot. I also have a fondness for constructs and undead. Though been on a dragon kick as of late. I blame the endless frigging tease that In the Company of Dragons Expanded has been with it's constant delays on the cusp of release hnnnng.

The spirits one amused me if only cus the campaign world I built most recently has plenty spirits in it too. Basically for mine there's not really angels or demons or anything. Outsiders amount to three groups. Elementals, Fairies and Emotions. Elementals changed very little. They're spirits of Being, the building blocks of existance. They're summoned the most often because of how blunt they are and thus easy to work with. At least, the more pure ones. They predate everyone but the Aboleths.

Fairies are the spirits of Instinct, nature and so forth. They're mostly the spirits of doing. This makes them quite helpful for getting things to happen, but they're not very good at keeping things stable or protected. Need a demiplane made, you go see fae. Need a demiplane broken, you see the fae. Need a demiplane protected, you see anyone else. This makes them dangerous since a dryad isn't likely to just be protecting her tree, she's trying to get trees everywhere she can.

Emotions are sorta the new kids on the block, and Fae hate em and elementals don't care for em. This is partially because their existence as fundamentally altered both of their natures because they allowed for morality and such. Emotion spirits are in every flavor of emotion. Fear, Hate, Love, Hunger, Desire, Lust, Defensiveness, Paranoia, Happiness, Laziness, Impatience, Secretive, Deceptive, etc etc etc. These are the spirits that mortals interact with most as they are the most "human" when you get down to it. That being said, there's still a vast gap and each spirit can only really understand another emotion on a sort of scholarly basis at best. Each is certain their emotions best and is consumed by it. Pride can't really fathom the idea that they're not the best at something, or that someone wouldn't want to be the best or not take credit for their skills. Envy can't ever be happy for anyone else and is only happy when others are not. Happiness is always delighted by everything. Even at a funeral they're just so happy everyones toghether. And might reanimate everyone in the graveyard as ghouls so everyone can be with their friends again!

Needless to say any spirit let loose on the mortal realm is trouble with a capital T. They each have their own worlds and in them they are perfectly fine. But when let loose (or worse, given a true permanent corporeal existence) they can be very destructive even by accident as they act out their natures in a world that isn't designed for them. And unfortunately this... Isn't difficult to happen. If you know the proper symbols you can summon a spirit. And if you don't know the proper rituals, they can get loose fast. (Basically anyone can use a ritualized version of the Planar Binding spells... But that doesn't mean you should :p. Though you still need to know the right methods to get it to work.)

Wizards spellbooks are basically ritual books. When preparing spells they're actually making deals with individual spirits ahead of time to do specifically X thing in exchange for the offering, which is the spell component. Sorcerors and Arcanists are a bit more complicated but operate similarily.

And so on, I could talk for ages about it :p. I got a bunch the ideas off a webcomic I read but yeah. What I'm working with right now. My favorite part is since gods are basically zeitgesits and are killable and such I can have a bunch of strange dieties that are region or species specific and of diffrent strengths. So a widespread faith has a powerful diety and a small cult might have like, an little imp as their god. Got to make fun things then, like an water elemental diety of independence who get's annoyed that they're worshipped, and an insane protective dream snake who eats nightmares and who's clerics wear blindfolds cus the horrors they face in the night to protect everyones minds burns out their eyes and leaves only clouds of roiling horror that drive anyone who looks into them insane.

[Lemmy]

St. Carthan and Wyrmspire sound the coolest to me... Nit a big fan of the threeway war concept... Mostly due to having played in a few too many of them.

[Ashiel]

Persona is a good series. And stuff...

Spiffy. I might look into 'em when I've got the time.

As for the campaigns, they're all pretty good to me, though I have looked at Wyrmspire before, a lot. I also have a fondness for constructs and undead. Though been on a dragon kick as of late. I blame the endless frigging tease that In the Company of Dragons Expanded has been with it's constant delays on the cusp of release hnnnng.

Yeah, I feel like Wyrmspire had some potential. I was writing it to be the hub for a persistent world some friends were interested in running after a series of rather negative events involving a bad GM in an online campaign they were involved with. However, despite them assuring me that they didn't expect me to run the persistent world, none of them actually wanted to GM. It's kind of hard running a persistent world when there are no games.

The spirits one amused me if only cus the campaign world I built most recently has plenty spirits in it too. Basically for mine there's not really angels or demons or anything. Outsiders amount to three groups. Elementals, Fairies and Emotions. Elementals changed very little. They're spirits of Being, the building blocks of existance. They're summoned the most often because of how blunt they are and thus easy to work with. At least, the more pure ones. They predate everyone but the Aboleths.

Fairies are the spirits of Instinct, nature and so forth. They're mostly the spirits of doing. This makes them quite helpful for getting things to happen, but they're not very good at keeping things stable or protected. Need a demiplane made, you go see fae. Need a demiplane broken, you see the fae. Need a demiplane protected, you see anyone else. This makes them dangerous since a dryad isn't likely to just be protecting her tree, she's trying to get trees everywhere she can.

Emotions are sorta the new kids on the block, and Fae hate em and elementals don't care for em. This is partially because their existence as fundamentally altered both of their natures because they allowed for morality and such. Emotion spirits are in every flavor of emotion. Fear, Hate, Love, Hunger, Desire, Lust, Defensiveness, Paranoia, Happiness, Laziness, Impatience, Secretive, Deceptive, etc etc etc. These are the spirits that mortals interact with most as they are the most "human" when you get down to it. That being said, there's still a vast gap and each spirit can only really understand another emotion on a sort of scholarly basis at best. Each is certain their emotions best and is consumed by it. Pride can't really fathom the idea that they're not the best at something, or that someone wouldn't want to be the best or not take credit for their skills. Envy can't ever be happy for anyone else and is only happy when others are not. Happiness is always delighted by everything. Even at a funeral they're just so happy everyones toghether. And might reanimate everyone in the graveyard as ghouls so everyone can be with their friends again!

Needless to say any spirit let loose on the mortal realm is trouble with a capital T. They each have their own worlds and in them they are perfectly fine. But when let loose (or worse, given a true permanent corporeal existence) they can be very destructive even by accident as they act out their natures in a world that isn't designed for them. And unfortunately this... Isn't difficult to happen. If you know the proper symbols you can summon a spirit. And if you don't know the proper rituals, they can get loose fast. (Basically anyone can use a ritualized version of the Planar Binding spells... But that doesn't mean you should :p. Though you still need to know the right methods to get it to work.)

This is pretty cool. Is the psychological aspect of it intentional? Maybe I've been watching too many of Jordan Peterson's psychology lectures, but there definitely seems to me to be some amusing subtext in the relationship between the various spirit types and how they seem to embody the development of consciousness (what with the elementals simply being, fey being primal instincts, and emotions that are the newest in the spiritual evolution and have difficulties with the previous two for overcomplicating their lives). If it's not intentional, it's a wonderful accident.

Wizards spellbooks are basically ritual books. When preparing spells they're actually making deals with individual spirits ahead of time to do specifically X thing in exchange for the offering, which is the spell component. Sorcerors and Arcanists are a bit more complicated but operate similarily.

Spells being the evocation of spirits reminds me a bit of Record of Lodoss war. It has more or less nothing focused on spirits, merely that in the anime I watched, their incantations are more or less prayers or mantras evoking various spirits.

And so on, I could talk for ages about it :p. I got a bunch the ideas off a webcomic I read but yeah. What I'm working with right now. My favorite part is since gods are basically zeitgesits and are killable and such I can have a bunch of strange dieties that are region or species specific and of diffrent strengths. So a widespread faith has a powerful diety and a small cult might have like, an little imp as their god. Got to make fun things then, like an water elemental diety of independence who get's annoyed that they're worshipped, and an insane protective dream snake who eats nightmares and who's clerics wear blindfolds cus the horrors they face in the night to protect everyones minds burns out their eyes and leaves only clouds of roiling horror that drive anyone who looks into them insane.

Sounds spiffy.

Alvena is a lot like that. Perhaps born out of my conclusion that in a fantasy world where spiritual beings of immense power can contest one another and even be defeated, there wasn't really much point in going above CR 25. Especially when you reach "godlike power" far before that point. As a result, most of the deities, demigods, and similar things in Alvena are creatures from core. A CR 8 creature may be the patron of a small cult quite easily. It might even be a human of great power. A CR 16 creature like a planetar would suffice quite well as a god that could be worshipped all over the world. In fact, the world's creation was a joint effort by the "seven true gods" who were effectively just some 20th level planeswalkers who didn't have a home.

[Ashiel]

St. Carthan and Wyrmspire sound the coolest to me... Nit a big fan of the threeway war concept... Mostly due to having played in a few too many of them.

I'll probably end up running one of the former rather than latter. The latter hasn't really been fleshed out much, and I'm less interested in running something like that like an actual war, and more like groups of distinctly dangerous things. It might be a better setting for some short stories rather than an RPG campaign.

[Zilrax]

I listen to a lot of Jordan's stuff myself but I came up with this I THINK before that. That being said, I took psychology so it's not THAT big a surprise that it might have had influence on the subject.

I mostly like doing the god thing because I want to see what happens when the orcish and dwarven gods of war get into an argument over who the better war god is, and decide to both separately start a fight with the dwarven god of war to see who can beat them the fastest. Or watching a diety develop schizophrenia because a secret sect of worshiper are deviating while maintaining belief, causing the diety to react to the secret teachings without anyone else getting it or knowing what's wrong with them. Or two diffrent species dieties having a secret affair without their cultures knowing.

Lot's of possibilities for little things like that.

[Tels]

I listen to a lot of Jordan's stuff myself but I came up with this I THINK before that. That being said, I took psychology so it's not THAT big a surprise that it might have had influence on the subject.

I mostly like doing the god thing because I want to see what happens when the orcish and dwarven gods of war get into an argument over who the better war god is, and decide to both separately start a fight with the dwarven god of war to see who can beat them the fastest. Or watching a diety develop schizophrenia because a secret sect of worshiper are deviating while maintaining belief, causing the diety to react to the secret teachings without anyone else getting it or knowing what's wrong with them. Or two diffrent species dieties having a secret affair without their cultures knowing.

Lot's of possibilities for little things like that.

This seems dependent on worshipers influencing one's godly nature, instead of one's godly nature influencing the worshipers. As in, Zeus is the king of the gods because the Greeks worship him the most, instead of the Greeks worship Zeus because he is the king of the gods. In the above, the deity is not developing schizophrenia because of a secret cult of his followers, the reality is that that the secret cult of followers is developing because the deity has schizophrenia. Side note: mainstream followers of this deity likely wouldn't see it this way and see them more as heretics to be put down.

In a world like Alvena where the gods are "more real" and down-to-earth, I could see gods being influenced by the followers' beliefs, but in a world like Golarion or Faerun? Not so much. Those gods are, more or less, fundamental forces of nature; their existence influences the world, but the world doesn't influence their existence.

[Zilrax]

Well yes, of course. I'm talking my setting where the gods ARE influenced by their worshipers. Mind you it's a sort of reciprocal relationship. Faith makes the god. But the god sorta reinforces the faith in a sense by providing miracles and support and such and a focus for their worship.

I mean on earth we have approximately 12000 different faiths throughout history all divided over about 9 general concepts that have stayed fairly consistent across humanity. And we don't even have species lines so just imagine how many war and hunting gods there are in a fantasy world. It's something I wanted to do, and sorta highlight differences between them all. Like the differences between said war gods before.

Or like two different peoples versions of a dream diety. Hysala the Goddess of Dreams, Madness and Sentries was formed in the dreamlands, which serves as the sort of the space between the four realms, by the belief of the naga in a great serpent who watched over them and consumed the dark dreams and other threats who stalked their sleep. Over time the faith spread out from them and dream stalking mad priests, fighting horrors so you don't have to have formed.

Meanwhile there is Kyasis, who was formed by the Lamia as their own protector. However where Hysala is sort of an aloof guardian stalking the dreamscape for things that don't belong and excising them, Kyasis is a diety who protects by providing a dreamscape of a paradise, pulling her faithful's minds and spirits into her dream and ensnaring them, their bodies acting out in an endless sleepwalking trance until it passes away and their spirits remain in her care forever. Kyasis thinks the mortal realm is a hellish place of pain and that it's better to come to her realm and live in peace and bliss forever without a care in the world.

Hysala and Kyasis hate each other, Hysala considering Kyasis an abomination and corruption defiling the natural order of the dream. Kyasis see's Hysala as a destructive beast and menace, like Godzilla to her dream realms. The two fight wherever they encounter each other as Hysala tries to free the minds Kyasis ensnared and Kyasis tries to corrupt the priests, turning them into breaches between the two realms that let's her draw regions physically into the dream to be hers entirely. This possibility of Hysalans going dimensional breaching charge has caused them to become secretive as many nations seek to wipe them out, despite them protecting against things like Nighthags, Animate Dreams and other dreamscape predators.

But yeah, two very similar dieties in domain, total opposites, both informed by their own differing cultures. A decadent species making a decadent diety that ultimately creates a slothful state, and an highly lawful naturalistic society creating a very unbending diety who seeks to maintain the natural order above all else.

[Lemmy]

On a different note... Since I lost my heavy metal hair locks, I've been feeling somewhat down. So I today did what any sane person would do: Getting my tragus pierced with a titanium stud. Nothing says "Heavy Metal Engineer" like a piece of metal going through your flesh!