Not Dead Yet

Well, I've let this go quite a while. Not intentionally, lots of "I'll post Sunday, after all the things happening this weekend are done." Followed by forgetting.

So here's how it is:

Amtgard:
For a while there Skywatch was growing at 10-15 sign-ins a week. Now we seem to have settled at a stable  35-40 people without guests. Additionally, we had a day event in May, between the local presence and guests we had over 100 sign-ins! That's right, 50 of us, and 50 travelers for a single day event. It was insane, and great fun. Our first Coronation is July 6th, and it'll be a camping event. We're hoping for another 100+ attendance, that should be easier with a camping event, especially with Gathering of the Clans being a little off this year.

The group is really doing well. Also, Antininus is running for the first full-term Monarch position. I can only see this as a good thing, he's popular with most everybody and really knows how to make a field do well. I'm not running for GMR, because we've had a good collection of reeves and one particular who wanted GMR and I think can do a far better job than I can.

I've started a household (House Ralaar-Klhu) that will be an RP/field service household, compared to the field its a little behind on stability, but things are looking good.

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RotR: Marcello is 12th, we've had a wild time, and a rough time. Since I last spoke we've defeated a Frost Wright (the dryad's dead lover), a Necromancer, and survived a raid on Sandpoint by stone giants and dire bears and a dragon. One of the Stone Giants was captured, and after some interrogation we learned that a much larger force planed to attack very soon. So off we went to see if we could stop it.

The next session (tonight or next saturday depending on a few people's attendance) will start with the epic fight against Mokmurian, the infamous Stone Giant wizard. It could very well be the end of us, but we'll give him a good fight. (I hope). The DM has also started a session in his homebrew world that'll run if for some reason we're short a player or two.

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Other PFRPG: My Four Horseman game has hit famine, and I plan to wrap up pretty soon. We've had a lot of new characters and drops, so the party's kinda out of whack. It was never supposed to be a long campaign, so once I've got it wrapped up I'll see if this current party would like to continue.

The Kingmaker game I was invited to starts this coming Tuesday. I'm stoked to be on the same side of the table as my brother for a change. Also, Ultimate Campaign came out just in time. I'm going to loan it to the DM for looking over so that we can use the adjusted mass combat and kingdom rules. Also, a happy side effect, Brevory has a city built around an Observatory named Skywatch, so my household requirement of playing my persona in a P&P game just filled itself!

My brother's single player games where you take the leadership feat are wrapping up. He's also doing a game for several of us in the fall that will be based on the areas the leadership feat games developed. Should be fun.

I've started a Second Darkness campaign, unfortunately the original day we picked has turned to mush. I'll pick it up again once schedules start making since.

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Mt:tC, Marvel, & other:

TC seems to have died completely this time around. I'll keep Shinyai the Kitsune around for something. I really want to see that character played out. Marvel finished with us defeating Sauron and finding that the Shield base just outside the Savage Lands had been up to no good. I was going to get in on an Xmen game by the same DM as Kingmaker, but due to scheduling conflicts with another player we had to pick one game each.

Next weekend is FreeRPG day for lots of people. Our store didn't get in on it on time, but we're doing a rpgday/aarp birthday that weekend anyway. I'll be missing amtgard to help with it.

"Noble" settles in Skywatch

So this is a re-write of my Amtguard persona. Getting back in has caused it to nag me for a couple of weeks now, and tonight I had one of those "muse in the shower" moments.

So here's the "dump the brain on the keyboard" draft.

Noble was, like many who found themselves in the Duchy of Irongate, lost and astray. His name was all he remembered of his family, and it was a poor choice. He was less than a commoner when he wandered into the local temple, after all commoners had a roof, work, and food.
He spent a few days in the temple simply existing. Then the town and temple were attacked, and he found he was able to, with the assistance of other adepts and holy books, channel the same energies as priests who healed and even brought back the dead.
He decided to stay for a time. He lived at the temple and studied. He helped with injured, and even fought in defense of Irongate as he could.
Later, word of his original family drew him to the road. He traveled south, and eventually west. After years of wondering and learning, his search turned up empty. Eventually he headed back east, but when he was about to turn north, he found something very different.
The shire of Skywatch had risen along the road back to Irongate. His friend Antininus was there, older, wiser, and far more powerful. Antininus asked him to stay and help with the new village. At first Noble was hesitant, but he stayed as Antininus's guest for a few days.
It was at this point he met many villagers of Skywatch who showed promise as defenders and healers of the new village. It was then that he realized he'd spent all this time searching for a home, when what life wanted of him was to make a home.
Noble asked Antininus for some land near the edge of town. Antininus used his powers as prime minister to get Noble a land grant for a temple and a little extra for a personal home. Since then he has invited Malac, Amara, two others [sorry guys, can't remember your persona names] into that home as friends and fellow members of the temple. He's devoted himself to helping the village get on its feet, and provide healing, guidance, and protection.
Some of his new friends have helped in that regard, and show promise as protectors and healers. Antininus and the Sheriff, Kesic, petitioned the Kingdom of the Golden Plains for annexation. When the news of acceptance came so did a warning. Several Lords of the Golden Plains had decided to settle a small feud over the claim to "an as yet uncharted forest" with sword, and many had not yet heard of Skywatch's existence yet, so now the Shire would have to defend itself from many of its new brethren.

Some of this will probably have to change based on the kingdom and shire story behind the park-vs-park battle game at the inauguration celebration, and the brother's persona histroy rendition of coming to Skywatch, but there's what splatted in my head tonight.

RotR; Horsemen; and Amtgard;

Rise of the Runelords Game:

Things are getting real. Two weeks ago we wrapped up the missing Black Arrow captain mystery. He'd been remade as a frost wight by a stone giant necromancer. Destroying the wight wasn't all that complicated, the necromancer on the other hand was not.

I jumped into this campaign just before the pixie incident. Therefore, I knew that in rescuing me they fought a villain who escaped them. What I didn't expect was for her to show up so quickly. She, and a former Black Arrow were working with the Necromancer. It was a tough fight, even with the assistance of a few hags, but we defeated them. Except our cleric got within range of a stonegiant's hammer. Two crits later we had cleric goo all over the place.

After a reincarnate spell, we now had a halfling cleric of torag. This doesn't bother the cleric or her player much.

We found a note about a planned attack on Sandpoint, so after a quick wrap-up with the nymph ghost we head back to warn them. We arrive just before Sandpoint is raided by stone giants, direbears, and a red dragon. We came out on top, but, once again, at a cost. This time druid's wolf, who has saved almost everybody in the party's skin more than once... didn't make it.

Worse, one of the stone giants was captured and interrogated. If seven stone giants and a red dragon are a scouting party. I don't want to think about a recon in force, or worse a proper invasion. Except that we've been promised exactly that, in less than a month.

We're on our way to Magnimar to gather up a few remaining extra diamonds for a resurrect spell. Then its off to see if we can thwart a powerful stone giant caster/clan leader.

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Horsemen of The Apocalypse:

So, I'm now running a pickup Goloran campaign based on the horsemen making a move against the world. So far we have a Summoner, Cleric (of Desna), Dhamphir Rogue, Barbarian, and a Ninja.

It's interesting, first lesson it taught me though. Sickening the party with a truly disgusting dungeon sounds like a great idea for a pestilence themed area, and running lower CR monsters to make up for the sickened condition is ok, but pick something who's AC is low. A "trash mob", as the cleric calls them, of wererats with a couple extra levels in rogue didn't hurt them much, but were nearly impossible to hit. I cut a huge chunk of the dungeon out to keep players interested. I know now from conversations I probably could have left it in, but it wasn't my best session.

This game's every other sunday, so I have plenty of time to prep something cool for the transition from famine to the first stage of war.

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Amtgard:

The Shire of Skywatch has risen in Abilene. I'm going to be at least the interim Guildmaster of Reeves (a whopping one reeve at the moment). The field keeps growing and growing. I'll probably have to make an attempt at abducting some players to reeve occasionally soon. Last week Lubbock's Irongate field sent visitors. We had a grate time. I might stick with it this time.

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Everything Else:

I haven't even had time to keep up with RPGSuperstar. It's on its final leg. Go vote. Obsidian portal has a kickstarter to rebuild the site. I'm planning on getting into that. This month's rules demo in abilene was a bust, but I've rescheduled the same subject for next month. I've also started playing in a Marvel rpg. I'm playing Rogue... its caused me to dig for episodes of the old cartoon. It's cheezy, but still pretty good. I've found some issues with my NPC sheet at paizo.com. I'll be digging into those and updating shortly. I've done a few marauder II and panther customs and posted on the battletech board. I've painted a few battletech minis. This has been an amazing month, and with reapercon right around the corner I'm totally stoked!