We want Lillie’s journal!

Woot!

Remember that you can take the key of Attention by publishing that journal in one of Ptolus’ Newsletter…

As for the backstory, I’ll come up with something don’t worry…

But my writing currently as backlog of a few items mostly lillie’s log.

Suffice it to say that there are enough Japanese tropes in that character that all my Gmail Google adds are now in Japeneese because of your comments!

Or will you go with throwing sticks in the air at crossroads and decide then?

For the sake of completeness Phil; the Japanese legend that inspired the bokken fighting is Miyamoto Musashi. While the name of the character is a shameless rip from Jubei Kibegami main character of the Ninja Scroll anime.

It’s a class on the weak side and Stef was disappointed with it.

And maybe create big tokens for him to plop on the table for all to see to remind them of all the cool auras the Shammy shares.

As far as character background, I just had a similar experience to you. A player’s character was killed (thanks to a non-healing cleric) but he wasn’t all that upset… he felt he wanted to play something else other than a rampaging barbarian. He wanted to still be a fighting character, but with some more interesting options. After looking through some books, he liked the idea of the Dragon Shaman. After talking back and forth, I suggested to him playing a Hobgoblin that his own character had killed before, brought back to life by a dragon and “shown the light.” He loved the concept, and he ran with it, writing up an interesting story for him. This, in turn, gave me a bunch of new background fodder to play with. Win win for everyone.

The “\”s come because when he hit “Submit comment”, he did not answer the anti-spam word. Because the content of form fields is lost on hitting the “Back” button, the script handily gives you a cut-and-paste box of your comment to take with you.

However, the code taking comments parses out special characters and escapes them with “\”s. It does this BEFORE checking to see if you answered the anti-spam word, and therefore when it displays the text of your comment to be re-entered, it displays the raw string to be stored in the database (including the inserted escaped characters, the “\”s).

Wow, I’m impressed at the responses!

John: While I only read the 1st Pathfinder in detail, they all have excellent production values and are customizable to fit a large range of play style.

They definitively replaced Dunegon for me as I swipe encounters, loot and ideas from them even if I don,t get to play them.

Check my Pathfinder category to see my previews of the first 3 (I still haven’t received my #4)

Tommi: That’s a great suggestion, thanks!. Yan will create his own mischief but I’ll focus on PM and Mike for some ‘pre-loaded’ in game issues

Alex: My group (myself included) has grown tired of vanilla D&D’s crunch (and I feel that we getting tired of the fantasy genre, but that’s another post) so that’s why almost all characters are non-core anymore.

Greywulf: Thanks man!

Be warned one and all that Pathfinder #2′s very creepy horror themes and ‘iffy’ haunted house mechanics have turned off quite a few people. Hacking might be necessary.

I’m re-reading Pathdfinder right now; I’m coming close to talking my group into playing D&D again, and I’ve high hopes that running Pathfinder will get them back into the game. Here’s hoping, eh?

Thanks for the comments on the pathfinder adventures. I am really tempted to pick them up. I was sad when they said they weren’t publishing dungeon anymore. I understand the benefit of the online aspects with the New DND insider, but I don’t agree with it.

Well, first a note on fluff: I don’t like to read long background stories. The argument being that neither I nor my players are published authors so if I want to read a good story, I’d better pick up a book. We’re just not that good. As far as I’m concerned, actualy play is far more important. That’s why I tell my players to write a sentence or two about their background, and run with it. What they do from level 1 to level 8 is going to turn into the background of their future character!

As for crunch, I’ve limited the races to the ones from the PHB and the classes to PHB + DMG. So there’s not a lot of crunch to pick from.

As the story progresses, I will allow characters to expand on their background if they need somehting. All I request is that it doesn’t contradict our past games and that it fits into the rough world sketches I’ve prepared. I’ll help fitting the character into the setting.

This rarely comes up in play, however. I guess because most of my players imagine themselves to be loners. And without a network of imaginary friends, it just seems pointless.

Especially the more casual or silent players should have characters who are deeply engaged in the situation. The experience, dedicated and loud players can have characters with less immediate trouble, the player will come up with something to do anyway.

Also, nice usage of the \ key there. You’re a coder by day, I assume?

Great story you got there!

And thanks for the feedback!