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Friday @ 12:00pm Pacific, 3:00pm Eastern, 8:00pm UK, 9:00pm Europehttp://twitch.tv/koibu
CharactersTrumpSC as Vincent Mapper: Level 6 human wizardSir Falcon Hoof as Garry Two Machetes: Level 2 human rangerKXBillbert - Billy as Ewan: Level 3 human fighterPalice as Etgard Ironsmelt: Level 2 dwarven fighter
Campaign PremiseAn old relic has been discovered. It's a memory stone, a tool from a bygone age that functioned like a notebook or diary. Its owner could hold onto it and imbue it with thoughts and visions they are presently having. Then later they can grasp the stone and relive those thoughts, visions, ideas, smells, etc. as if they were fresh.
[Overly long side note: In the modern world we have excellent paper, notebooks, and pens. We also have cellphones with notetaking apps and tools. Taking reliable notes is extremely easy. So much so that we take it for granted. We basically never have to raw dog remembering details if we don't want to. That hasn't always been the case. For most of human civilization, you just had to rely on human memory for 99% of things. Tablets, scrolls, and tomes could be created, but they were time intensive, relatively fragile, expensive, and inconvenient to use. PCs in D&D campaign often try to take notes as if they were modern day people, much to my annoyance. I try to push back, but it doesn't sink in, so I often give up and let it slide so that we can just have fun with the game, even if there are anachronisms. This memory stone would function as a better-than-present-day note taking tool. It's faster, more detailed, more reliable, compact, easy to share, and transcends language.]
After some experimentation, it is discovered that this stone may have belonged to the great arcmage Ferris. And it's not just any memory stone, this one just so happens to contain memories relating to locating and accessing various lairs, towers, bases, and research stations. Because the stone is so old, and has been through so much, the magic around it is fading and the memories stored within are hazy.
This stone, acquired by Lord Marshall, could hold answers to great secrets of the past, great treasures, great magics. The problem is that most of the locations held within the stone are in unfriendly territories. Lord Marshall could bring the stone to the Empress, try to persuade her to provide ships, soldiers, mages, and protection under arms while these locations are hunted down... but that draws a lot of attention during a time of war, in lands far from home. And then so much of the treasure/wealth/gains would have to be expended just to supply the mission, and then shared...
Or.
Lord Marshall could give this stone to his very trustworthy ambassador who can sneak around the known world under guise as a trader / mapper, and discover these locations in secret, taking what matters, and returning it all to Lord Marshall where both of them can reap the benefits.
This has to be a small team to fly under the radar. They'll need some cover as well. Along the way, Vincent is going to need disposable mercenaries that don't know what's up, or can be trusted long enough for the goods to be gotten before they spill the beans.
ProductionOnce upon a time, a long, long time ago, I ran a few campaigns where I used royalty free images as backgrounds on the stream to help with immersion. It was a bit clunky, but I really liked the idea. I'd like to revisit that idea again.
Posted above you'll see two screenshots from overlays. The overlay with the map will show sections of background when there are fewer than 3 minions (their cams and info boxes will be removed), while the overlay without the map has nice large open spaces to help our viewers vibe.
The overlays also contain a lot of character info and has the token that belongs to each player so it's easier to follow what's happening in combat.
The one thing that was hard to do was to fit the dice rolls on the maps page as well. In the end, I decided to make it way smaller than I've ever done before, and to trim out my camera space to be very small as well, because who needs to see the DM's face during combat? I'm a little concerned the dice rolls aren't very legible if you're watching at anything other than full screen, but if you're not watching full screen you're probably doing something else and relying on audio cues most of the time anyway. Since I've been trying harder to call out dice rolls (for the podcast form of things), this shouldn't be too much of a problem (hopefully).
Intraparty Conflict99 times out of 100, you want to avoid intraparty conflict. It's no good. In this campaign, Vincent Mapper is the main character, everybody else is expendable. He's many levels higher than they are, has better gear, but really needs help from the party to overcome baddies. When a PC dies, they leave the show. I'm hoping to create situations where PCs are facing a dangerous situation, and they make tactical decisions that improve their chances of survival at the expense of the other minions. I don't want them to backstab each other, but I do want them to be somewhat self serving and looking out for their own interests. The problem is that IRL TrumpSC is a really nice guy, and I don't know if he's got what it takes to send people into risky situations.
Experimental CampaignMuch of this campaign is trying out new ideas, and creating crossover potential with Floating Fortress - but considering how behind FloF is in its filming schedule, idk how well that bit is going to go. I don't know if any of this is going to work out. I've been planning this campaign for 11 months now, so I hope it ends up fun and exciting.
If it's a total flop... well... it's only months of work and thousands of dollars of development down the drain.
Better to try for cool things than to stick to the safe stuff.
gl hfNeal / Koibu
p.s. thank you patrons for your continued support. It means the world to me and lets me create new and interesting ideas for us to play with. ♥