Ghosts of Gauntcliff: OOC

[ewancummins]

XP awards-Thom-
3625
Petrie (he gets XP as a PC, since he started as one and Max might play him again someday)
3675
Benn
3825
Jürgen
3125 (It would have been closer to Benn’s total, but alignment shift penalty ate his RP bonus. He will still level from this, though.)
Primeiro
3475
Dorgio, Everline, Eustace= 3425

SPECIAL INDIVIDUAL BONUSES-
+100 for most heroic action/s
+100 for best character development /role-play
These bonuses can only be claimed once each. You guys should vote or discuss amongst yourself and let me know which PC ought to get each bonus award. I will adjudicate ties.

NOTE that all PCs begin at base XP for the level that they started this game-- except Dorgio, who begins with 12,500 xp instead of 10,000 xp (partial from last campaign, after which he never leveled up).

Please record your new total on your updated sheet. I’d like to get a full roster of updated sheets, at your convenience.

WANT MORE XP? NEED MORE TO LEVEL UP? WANT MORE LOOT?
You can earn it by archiving the campaign. I’m talking about Ghosts of Gauntcliff, Devil’s Dreams, and Mists over the Musarde. IC, OOC, tangent threads= it’s all worth XP or gold.
Here’s how that works-
EDIT-

ordinary type/tangents= 100 XP
italics/main IC chapters = 300 XP
bold/main OOC threads= 600 XP

You can take that in XP or in GP. If you end up with extra XP, you can spend that to level up your minions, allies, etc with DM permission. [/list]
If you take it in gp/treasure (not magical items, unless your PC can actually make one by paying the xp and GP cost) just provide a little backstory. I gave examples earlier.

VERY IMPORTANT- Please do not step all over each other. Only one guy can get XP for any given chapter/thread, so you should coordinate. It may be that not everyone will want to take part. That’s fine. Let people know which chapters you will archive by placing a post here in OOC. Don’t bite off way more than you can chew. Take your time, do it right. You don’t get any of this XP or gold until I actually have the archives ‘in hand.’ Unless someone has a better suggestion, I would like Word documents. I use Windows XP. If I can’t read it, it’s not much use to me. I will keep track of awards for archivists, and you are welcome to track it as well.

Lord Skybolt may take part in this, if he wishes, as it’s bigger than just Ghosts of Gauntcliff.

If JMaytr wants to get some XP either for Zandor Blacksong or a certain brothel-owner PC, he may do so.

Tarlyn may add this bonus XP (only that gained from archive work) to Franz if he likes. That PC went off on his own tangent, but he didn’t die, become a villain, or anything of that sort.

[ewancummins]

Note that a PC may not level up more than once from the awards.
You can get as high as midway into the next level though.

Excess points from archiving may be converted to $$$ or transferred to worthy NPCs, as I have noted.

[Ail]

Hey, Ewan, nice nice story. I was feeling last night that the campaign might end while I was in bed and so it did. But I definitely need epilogues, I'm a freak for proper denouement.

So, what is going to happen to Everline? Is she going to recover her sanity and health? What about Sancerre and Gauntcliff? Is he going to forgive us somewhat for having stirred up the trouble? I got the impression he blamed us for all of this happening, and that if we hadn't gone to the ruins nothing would have touched his spa.
What about the mysterious waters? Did they have some particular power? Were they rejuvenating after all?
Did Sancerre have some bad designs on that trip with Everline into the waters? What was the dog-like creature that attacked Juergin in the house?
Those sighting of goblinoids since the first day, by Juergin, Petrie and Dorgio (goblinoids or their marks) were they connected to Juergin's creatures? They seemed to be able to come freely to this earth.

Well... I guess that's it for now.

As for votes, I would vote for Everline on best character/development and perhaps on Benn for most heroic action while in the nightmare city and in saving his child.

Regarding the archiving: what exactly are the rules? What is a readable doc document? Would you take quoted and repeated text or are you expecting to have a properly readable document?

I would apply to some chapter of this campaign, but not the others, probably.

As a final note, let me say I enjoyed this one much more than the one of Delapore estate. Eustace could come into his own and even change from a support-type of cleric to an offensive one, which was not in the initial plans. I still don't feel very free in role-playing and I couldn't yet give him a distinct voice and personality traits, but I've had great examples of how to do that. Maybe I'll dedicate some time in the future to develop those.

Also, the setting seemed more gothic than Delapore, even if not exactly at the start. But Dodds was a great villain.

Yes... I guess that's it. I've had quite a ride these months with this. And it's good time to finish now!

[ewancummins]

The Devil's Dreams was a Ravenloft micro dungeoncrawl+ murder mystery with Gothic backstory.

This one was a full on Gothic horror haunted island adventure.

Mists over the Musarde was almost Flim Noir in spots, dark fantasy in others.

That's how I'd class 'em. YMMV of course.



Some of those questions will be answered in the epilogue.

I always leave a few things hanging or undisclosed.


Properly readable to me means:


Every post quoted and pasted in the order it was posted.

[ewancummins]

Hey, Ewan, nice nice story. I was feeling last night that the campaign might end while I was in bed and so it did. But I definitely need epilogues, I'm a freak for proper denouement.

So, what is going to happen to Everline? Is she going to recover her sanity and health? What about Sancerre and Gauntcliff? Is he going to forgive us somewhat for having stirred up the trouble? I got the impression he blamed us for all of this happening, and that if we hadn't gone to the ruins nothing would have touched his spa.
What about the mysterious waters? Did they have some particular power? Were they rejuvenating after all?
Did Sancerre have some bad designs on that trip with Everline into the waters? What was the dog-like creature that attacked Juergin in the house?
Those sighting of goblinoids since the first day, by Juergin, Petrie and Dorgio (goblinoids or their marks) were they connected to Juergin's creatures? They seemed to be able to come freely to this earth.

Well... I guess that's it for now.

As for votes, I would vote for Everline on best character/development and perhaps on Benn for most heroic action while in the nightmare city and in saving his child.

Regarding the archiving: what exactly are the rules? What is a readable doc document? Would you take quoted and repeated text or are you expecting to have a properly readable document?

I would apply to some chapter of this campaign, but not the others, probably.

As a final note, let me say I enjoyed this one much more than the one of Delapore estate. Eustace could come into his own and even change from a support-type of cleric to an offensive one, which was not in the initial plans. I still don't feel very free in role-playing and I couldn't yet give him a distinct voice and personality traits, but I've had great examples of how to do that. Maybe I'll dedicate some time in the future to develop those.

Also, the setting seemed more gothic than Delapore, even if not exactly at the start. But Dodds was a great villain.

Yes... I guess that's it. I've had quite a ride these months with this. And it's good time to finish now!

The Devil's Dreams was a Ravenloft micro dungeoncrawl+ murder mystery with Gothic backstory.

This one was a full on Gothic horror haunted island adventure.

Mists over the Musarde was almost Flim Noir in spots, dark fantasy in others.

That's how I'd class 'em. YMMV of course.



Some of those questions will be answered in the epilogue.

I always leave a few things hanging or undisclosed.


Here's what I will accept:
Each cahpter or thread has its own Word file, clearly labelled.

Every post quoted and pasted in the order it was posted.

Like that, only ALL of it. Don't worry about color not working, or stuff like that. I just need all the text, with something close to the original format (readable, in other words- no Notepad files that are all scrunched and unformatted). It is imperative that I know which posts were made by which players (or by me).
Timestamps aren't super important. Text is.

If you have ideas on how to improve the archive, though, fire away!

[Ail]

That said, I also want to thank all the other players. They made this for an excellent story and although I gave my rp-ing prize to Rock, I've seen exceptional moments from all the others, especially in how unique their characters sounded. In no particular order, I loved Benn, Primeiro, Juergin and Dorgio.

And in the end, I liked how we managed to come out on top and actually achieve to conclude the campaign with no major losses. No PC died and if one seems to have been lost, it looks like it was his own choice. And that makes it great!

I came to root for Sancerre, actually. In the end, he seemed a good man and very patient after all. I'm hoping he'll be successful.

I could also say that Eustace has somehow become attached to Everline, and he wants to see her recover. If necessary, he'll spend some time with her and try to develop his hypnosis skills to help her overcome any trauma she might have. I'm thinking after that he may look for work in some asylum where he can study madness and horror and how to treat with hypnosis, but that could end up being a major shift in career for this character, which I'm not sure I want to do yet.

For the future, anyway...

[Ail]

Like that, only ALL of it. Don't worry about color not working, or stuff like that. I just need all the text, with something close to the original format (readable, in other words- no Notepad files that are all scrunched and unformatted). It is imperative that I know which posts were made by which players (or by me).
Timestamps aren't super important. Text is.

If you have ideas on how to improve the archive, though, fire away!

Do you also want quotes and spoilers? Especially where some player copied text from a previous message into his own message.

[ewancummins]

Like that, only ALL of it. Don't worry about color not working, or stuff like that. I just need all the text, with something close to the original format (readable, in other words- no Notepad files that are all scrunched and unformatted). It is imperative that I know which posts were made by which players (or by me).
Timestamps aren't super important. Text is.

If you have ideas on how to improve the archive, though, fire away!

Do you also want quotes and spoilers? Especially where some player copied text from a previous message into his own message.

Yes. You can box the quotes or shrink them or do something like that. Indent the quotations, perhaps?

You can unspoil the spoilers if you like. Whatever. They need to be readable.

[ewancummins]

A wiki, do you think? We could use Wikispaces. Upload all word docs to one site. I can then save the docs to a flashdrive and a disk as backup.

[ewancummins]

http://mists-over-the-musarde-and-other ... paces.com/

[Brock Marsh Runoff]

So if Elianna wasn't a werefox, what attacked Juergin when he tried to get back to the Chateau?


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XP Bonuses

I'd definitely vote Adam for most heroic actions . Ever since Jonas was born, Adam knew Ewan was gonna put the lad in serious peril someday, and Benn handled the whole thing like a f'n trooper.

VIEW CONTENT:

(Of course, the whole party could have been wiped out if a certain Gundarakite hadn't muscled his way into the abbey chamber... )

I'm torn about best roleplaying, there were so many great moments. Everline had to go through some dark, dark stuff, and I have know idea how I'd handle any of that IC, so kudos. But I see a case for Juergin, too. You've really gotta feel for him as far as evil kids go. Not everybody would just let a dude get eaten by a shark, but not everybody has a creepy sociopath shadow literally sitting over their shoulder convincing them to be evil.
-----------

I dug the return of the Three Mikloses (Mikloi?). My initial concept for Dorgio was something like "If Hamlet grew up during the Hungarian–Romanian War," so indecision is one of his big character flaws. The Mikloses help keep that in check, I think. Actually, I think this campaign saw Dorgio turning into somebody more prone to seize the initiative rather than the more reactive character from Mists or Dreams.

After the events at the Abbey, Dorgio's immediate concerns are going to include searching for any sign of Juergin, looking for that Lorna girl, and buying Benn a couple of pints for tuning up his face.

[steveflam]

ewan, can I mention anything I want here? (You know what I am talking about....)

[Adam]

Also, was the stuff that seemed to imply that JMaytr was on the island just a dream? Or just you screwing with us? I seem to recall getting the words "JMaytr haunts your dreams" sent to me through various venues.

I think the waters with Everline at the beginning was just that, Ewan messing with us. The antagonist was completely hidden from us at that point, no one knew where the threat was, so it COULD have been anyone.

To give you an idea of how effective the game has been, I found myself one night while I was doing the dishes after dinner pondering just exactly what to do about Denys throwing Jonas down the ravine. So, on my free time, with no context surrounding it, I'm spontaneously debating whether, even though he knew Dodds could take over people's minds, if it was possible for someone to realistically forgive a person for that sort of thing and if, in truth, some part of Denys really believed that blood for blood was justice. Another testimonial was just how much I cringed when Denys finally snapped at the end, and felt honestly guilty for hurting a character who has been so good to Benn over the years.

Everline should win the rping award in a landslide. That character went through easily the darkest stretch I've ever seen in an rpg, and she rolled with it like a champ. It seems like kind of a tool move on my part, but I kind of want to add my voice to the chorus of Benn for heroic actions. There was a couple of times I was already mentally rerolling my character after I posted something that made sense for Benn to do, but I was sure would result in the characters' death.

Finally, I've had a feeling for a while now that Benn and Eustace have a bit too much of an overlap in skill to fully benefit the group. I've felt that we were stepping on each others' toes more than once, and we have a definite lack of arcane anything in the party. Maybe when we pick things up next I'll see if I can retrain a feat to Leadership and hire a sorceror of some kind as an "assistant" for Benn. After all, I have a feeling Gehrman Supernatural Consulting will only grow from here. I have a fun mental image of them becoming almost a Pinkerton detective agency for dealing with various boogiemen.

BTW: Benn's offering of employment for Juergin still stands. Presuming the kid isn't currently bound to the island, that is.

P.S. I'll start archiving Mists over the Musarde Chapter IC Part 1. I'll do a couple pages and send them to you, Ewan, so you can let me know if I'm formatting them the way you want.

[steveflam]

Vote for best roleplay/character development: Well all of you[us] did extremely well, but I vote in the end for Everline. I do not vote for myself.

Vote for most heroic actions: Hmm, I would have to say Benn. Though in all actuality Jonas was the bravest of us all but an npc

[steveflam]

Adam, as for Benn's offer, thanks. Jürgen has already has a course of action chosen, however. And Dark One was right, there is treasure on the island. The boy found it. Oh, unless ewan is saving a surprise for Jürgen he is not bound in any way to the island. He may have considered Benn's offer seriously but he is not alone anymore and who would accept a shark toothed, catfish moustached boy [yeah, he got that later and noone saw it cause of his bandana. He feels responsible for those boogeymen and considers them his family.

I did a sailor check with ewan and Jürgen is headed somewhere he thinks he would fit in. I mean it would have been nice to go to Pont A Museau but he has no reason to go there. He is headed, or trying to head for Blaustein[sp]. He has heard of this place during his travels
on his fathers ship. He knows he can not head back home again.

ewan, what about those hot springs? They affected Denys, didn't they?