Hotaru and Carthrat

[Anastasia]

I'm putting this here since we don't have a forum yet. This is purely a setup questionaire and setup to that long term Ravenloft game I've been planning, so please answer these when you have some time. Also feel free to reply to the statements, too.

Still second edition.

When/where do you want to diverge from Weekly? Either at the end of the last dungeon and take those stats directly, regen/degen from an earlier point, or just draw the characters up from scratch?

Mechanicswise I want to keep this simple. I'd rather not deal too much with Del or baggage NPCs. Rules where needed will be imported from Weekly, I'll sort all of that out later. Any particular nitpicks?

I'm probably going to be sparingly using fear/horror checks as needed. If your RP requires them, I will, if not, I won't. Dark Powers checks will go on regardless if you do something to warrant them. If you don't know what these are, don't worry about it.

A fair bit of my dicing is going to be done behind the scenes without the players seeing it. With Ravenloft I feel this is both encouraged and needed; I'm going to have an invisible forum attached to our game forum to keep track of these for recordkeeping or after game viewing.

Do you guys have any particular gothic theme you like? Is there one you'd like to avoid if reasonably possible?

IRC or boards?

I think that's all to start.

[Asrana]

Divergence? I kind of liked our characters as they were, or a little later. (Okay, I want dragonscale armor, I'm greedy, leave me alone. ;_;)

I don't have any personal rule nitpicks that I can think of, no. With only us three, though, modding of rules won't be THAT difficult if we need to later.

Gothic themes? Hmmm. I'm more a fan of cities than I guess most of Ravenloft might be. This isn't huge, just a prefference in mental imagery when it comes to medieval horror.

IRC or boards? Hrm, good question. I preffer IRC for environment, but all things considered, boards might work out better with schedules, we'll see.

[Anastasia]

Divergence? I kind of liked our characters as they were, or a little later. (Okay, I want dragonscale armor, I'm greedy, leave me alone. ;_;)

Well, Ravenloft is fairly mid powered to low powered. It would be easier to trim the PCs down ab it or do 'em from scratch to match better. I can just beef it up, but I personally lean to some medium between that. More later once Rat posts.

[Asrana]

I'll express my desire to keep my hands on Sun and Moon if possible then. >_>

[Anastasia]

That's fine and so noted. I may adjust them a bit(It's freaking Ravenloft). but yeah. Noted.

[Carthrat]

Before I say anything, we seriously need to wait on this for a couple of weeks at the least. My schedule is very unfriendly. Y'know, exam prep and all.

I don't really care where we start out, as long as I'm at least level 5/5. Do whatever you think creates the best atmosphere.

[Anastasia]

This isn't going down until at least Halloween, so no hurry. Just answer the questions, I'm looking for prep feedback.

[Carthrat]

Alright, let's see...

I think we really need to start with a clean slate. When it comes to playing horror settings like this, I think I prefer a minamalist approach. The trick is to feel both empowered but scared; I figure a big part of that is to not have effectivelly all the spells I'll ever need for any given encounter. So most of my sheet would just get thrown out, leaving behind only the bare bones, maybe a couple scrolls, and potentially the awesome amulet. In fact, if I had the signiature items of Del+amulet, and Seryf has Sun+Moon, we'd be cool.

Any gothic horror game, if it's to be engaging, needs a solid plotline. Weekly was about wandering around and doing 'stuff'. I don't think that'll work.

I don't think this game needs to be very long, as well. A single story will do quite well, no matter what it is. It might take place over a single day at a single place, or it might be a little longer, but either way, I don't think it should stretch out and have that sort of convoluted buildup that D&D is so want to give. Suspense, buildup, twist, climax; setup the story as you see fit.

It's gothic HORROR; horror works if we have a little time to get attached to what we're doing, so give us some time to get IC and whatnot before we delve into the horrors that lurk beneath.

As far as themes go, amaze me. I like not making us roll fear checks. See if you can actually scare us! (And on that note, if you're going to fuck with our brains, it's awesome if we don't know you're doing it until halfway through. >_>)

Use.

Fights.

Sparingly.

[Anastasia]

Okay!

Now that Jungle is wrapping, what times in about 1-2 weeks time are good for you two? I'd rather do this in a few shots on IRC than linger it on the boards due to various unanticipated factors.

[Asrana]

My schedule at that point will be the same as it was for Jungle, and what it's been for this whole semester.

You -might- run into 'group project do panic omg', but that's not really predictable.

[Carthrat]

Dunno. Most times. Until I'm employed.

Then... still most times.