RPG 101 Newbie Game, Saturday, December 8th, 7pm-10pm Eastern Time.

[ <a href="https://app.roll20.net/join/58494/ekdRvw" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/join/58494/ekdRvw</a> ] Link Added! I will be running a game this upcoming saturday for anyone who is new to rpgs and unsure where to start or what to do, is hesitant to join a game with experienced players, or has experience and would like to volunteer to participate and share the load of getting the new guys up to speed. We will be playing Pathfinder as it is very similar to the popular Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition, and has (IMHO) a very nice SRD (system resource document) site with anything a player will need to start playing (with some guidance in making sense of it). The SRD site may be found here: <a href="http://www.d20pfsrd.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.d20pfsrd.com/</a> The rules: 1. Be excellent to each other. Put the considerations of other players first and endeavor to benefit others rather than be a burden to them. 2. Keep it clean. Imaginary violence aside, this is going to be a relatively tame game that is solely intended to introduce new players to roleplaying games (of the DnD style specifically) and I don't want to see anyone miss out on an incredibly fun form of entertainment because they are offended by another player's words or actions. :) 3. Be ready to go. I can help people who ask questions in this thread throughout the week, but when I post the link to the game on Saturday afternoon it will be first come-first-served and a spot will not be reserved just because we discussed a character sheet. The first 4 players to join and be able to maintain a mostly reliable connection will be the ones playing (I want you to experience a realistic party size, but it will also take time to help you sort out loose ends on your character sheets and the more people we have the longer that will take). Additional players may be added, assuming that they are experienced and willing to help out one or more of the newbies (offsetting the workload of managing more players). 4. You will need a microphone, webcam with integrated microphone, or some form of speaking as we will be communicating through the integrated Tokbox system that roll20 uses (I don't expect everyone to have skype or vent, and I really don't feel like setting up a vent server and corralling everyone into it). If you would like to play, but have some sort of physical disability or lack of computer hardware that would prevent you from being able to communicate through voicechat then let me know and we can work something out. Just be aware that it can be hard to keep up with the text chat when everyone is talking and I wouldn't want anyone to feel ignored. The game: I am limiting the choices to core races ( <a href="http://www.d20pfsrd.com/races" rel="nofollow">http://www.d20pfsrd.com/races</a> ) and core classes ( <a href="http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes" rel="nofollow">http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes</a> ) for the sake of simplicity and efficiency. Player characters will start at level 1 so that it isn't too overwhelming (don't worry, we will be going over leveling up after we've played a bit). I will be adding basic starting equipment for all core classes soon. Players should at least attempt to write a short background for their character. For example, "Bob comes from a pious family of farmers and sundry merchants. He avoided confrontation for much of his life until his small town came under attack from the raiders of a mercenary army employed by a neighboring kingdom. After a season in the town's militia he enlisted in the king's army to help drive the invaders from his lands once and for all. His large frame and sturdy hands suited themselves well to martial combat and saw him into action in some of the most grueling battles of the war. Where others frenzied and fell, his quiet confidence carried him and his closest comrades through many rough scrapes. After the war Bob discovered that he had trouble settling back into the farm life and left home to see the world and make his fortune with his greatsword Hearthguard ever close at hand." Or something shorter... "Irenae Vjardenhaeil is an enigmatic and playful woman with a subtle hint of elven ancestry who is more likely to ridicule an opponent for their lack of good hygiene and garment coordination than she is to rush into combat. She enjoys games of chance in the dark corners of inns frequented by unsavory types, always having a blade up her sleeve, and a bit of... magic." It's not absolutely necessary for gameplay, but you should at least give it a try and see if you like it. If any other experienced DMs/Players would like to weigh in with some advice/suggestions then I would appreciate the input. I wanted to start doing this a while ago, but I got distracted with work and now I'm trying to pick it back up. Also, I may have completely forgot until a reddit discussion reminded me that there are always new people who are just encountering these worlds of imagination for the first time... but that's just hearsay and you can't prove a thing. Link added <a href="https://app.roll20.net/join/58494/ekdRvw" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/join/58494/ekdRvw</a>

I would like to join in. I played back in the 80s, but am pretty much a newb now. I will try to be ready to join on Saturday when you post the link. Also, in case you fill up too quickly and I cannot join the group, would you consider allowing me to join merely as an observer? Thanks!

Observers will be fine. I just want to make sure that the channels will be clear so that I can focus on a core group of players and run them through the basic mechanics and give them a short one-shot game with a bit of RP, a bit of combat, and a bit of puzzle/skill challenge without a lot of distractions. Passive observers are fine as long as they don't interfere with the experience of the participants, and it would be nice if observers could type any questions in this thread so that they can be answered without disrupting the game experience. I hope it will be an educational experience for any newcomers who have a chance to participate or observe. I will leave the link to the board on this page so that public observers can pop in and check it out. I've never actually messed around with booting people from games so I guess I should start looking into that in case people join just to troll. If you'd like some help with a character just let me know. I'll be online here and there.

I can help as well, I have played a lot of it, I have my last bit of training, so I won't have the focus to actively play, but I can help with stuff.

Thanks for the offer Ygmir. I'm mostly looking for people who are willing to sit in on the game and help with last minute character creation as well as the occasional pulling a player aside for Q&A if everyone starts asking questions faster than I can answer them, but any help with fielding questions in this thread would be appreciated as well.

I can sit in the game too, it's at home training, whatever you'd like me to do.

"Body is 3290 characters too long." Well, so much for editing a guide into the first post. I may have to break this down a bit...

How to make a character (a step-by-step example using the links above): Either race or class can be a good place to start depending on what you have in mind for your character, but let's start with race for now. We will choose a human for this example as humans are the simplest choice and are flexible enough to be good at just about anything. We need to note the bonuses that a human gets (these will not change with level): 1. A +2 bonus to any single attribute. 2. Medium Size. Humans don't receive any benefit or penalty due to their size. 3. Base Speed of 30 feet. This determines how much ground the character can cover when it takes a move action. 4. Languages: Common (this is assumed to be the most widely used and accepted language in the game setting) 5. A free bonus feat. This is a very nice feature of humans as it gives you more chances to specialize in what you like earlier than others, or to have a wider range of abilities. 6. A free skill point at level one, and another one every time you level up. You'll be able to have an extra skill that you are very good at, or be able to dabble in a few things. Now we need to pick a class. Let's go with something pretty straightforward like a Fighter. Let's write down the bonuses that being a fighter gives us at level 1 (these may change as the class gains levels): 1. Hit Die is a d10. A hit die is what you roll every level to determine how many hitpoints (how much health) you have. These range from a d6 which will add 1-6 hitpoints each level to a d12 which will add 1-12 hitpoints each level. Generally, classes that expect to wade into combat like Fighters, Barbarians, and Paladins have the larger hit die and can take a lot of damage as a result, whereas classes that attempt to stay back and cast spells, shoot arrows, or otherwise support the team tend to have a smaller hit die and are not as hardy as the melee fighters. So our fighter will gain somewhere between 1 and 10 hitpoints every time he levels up (not counting things like having a high constitution or taking feats like Toughness that can add even more hit points). 2. +1 Base Attack Bonus. Base attack bonus is what you add to your rolls (as well as bonuses from attributes or other abilities) when you make a melee or ranged attack. Some characters, like fighters, get improvements to this every level because they are designed to make a lot of attacks, where some characters, like wizards, don't improve this very often because they tend to cast spells or do other things besides basic melee and ranged attacks. 3. +2 Fortitude, +0 Reflex, +0 Will. These are bonuses to your saves. Saves are used when you need to resist the effect of something adversely affecting your body (Fortitude), requiring you to avoid it through quick reactions (Reflex), or adversely affecting your mind (Will). Anything that doesn't roll to hit your armor will likely attack one of these defenses. These are often attacked by spells, traps, diseases, and environmental effects. 4. Bonus Feat. Fighters are very good at specializing in some form of combat or being able to learn a lot of new abilities. A bonus combat feat lets you pick up a bonus to attack with your preferred weapon, the ability to do some crazy battle maneuver, and acquire many other interesting talents. Feats are one of the primary ways of making a character be more than it's class (job) and behave in a more unique manner. 5. Proficiencies: Simple (decent) Weapons, Martial (Good) Weapons, All Armor (Light, Medium, and Heavy), and Shields. This means that you have a lot of options for how to equip your fighter with arms and armor, and you don't have to worry about being limited to simple weapons such as daggers and clubs with no armor like those poor wizards. Alright, we're almost ready to put this character together, but we still need something very important, attributes. Your attributes determine how strong, agile, tough, smart, aware, and persuasive you are. The standard way to do this is by rolling 4 six-sided dice (aka 4d6), ignoring the lowest value, and writing down the sum of the top 3 dice. We do this once for each of our six attributes so that we have as many numbers as we have attributes. I'll show you how I roll this fighter's attributes: I use this roller when I'm not in a roll20 board, or when I leave my dice in the car and it's raining *looks longingly out the window*. <a href="http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dice/dice.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dice/dice.htm</a> For my first roll I use 4 six-sided dice and get 2, 3, 4, 1. I ignore the 1 and add the rest to get a total of 9. My 2nd roll is 3, 3, 6, 6 for a total of 15. My 3rd roll is 5, 3, 2, 1 for a total of 10. My 4th roll is 1, 4, 4, 2 for a total of 10. My 5th roll is a 5, 4, 1, 1 for a total of 10. My final roll is 4, 1, 6, 6 for a total of 16. So now I have 6 numbers (16, 15, 10, 10, 10, 9) that I can assign to the attributes I want. For attributes, a 10 is considered average. The most average guy in the world has a 10 in every attribute, and can get by okay without too much trouble. A number below 10 indicates that your character is less than average in some aspect of their abilities (they might be a little weaker, more prone to injury, have a harder time learning new things, etc.). An attribute of 18 is the highest that can possibly be rolled and is the peak of natural aptitude, although rolling the three sixes out of four dice is fairly rare. I have to think about how I want to play my Human Fighter. I feel like playing a big strong guy who can swing a big strong sword. So Strength should be my most important stat. I also want my fighter to be tough so Constitution should be my next important stat. Fighters are all about being physical so if I have another high number I should round it out with some Dexterity. Seeing as how I didn't roll a lot of numbers above average, my attributes look like this. Str 16 (if a fighter isn't hitting something then he'd better have a good reason for it) Dex 10 (being agile in combat is nice, but if you have heavy armor slow's not so bad) Con 15 (gotta be tough. grrr) Int 10 (i'll learn about things tomorrow, I'm having too much fun swinging this sword) Wis 10 (did something move over there. I'm not sure) Cha 9 (so princess, are you going to *buuuurp*... invite me to the royal party?)

I'm looking to start playing D&D and have little experience but I'm from Europe, so I'll have to see whether I'll be available on a Saturday 12AM-3AM. I'll try to make it but I can't promise, as that's the weekend term ends, but I really want to try to make it.

If you can make it then that's great, but if you're finishing up a school term then you should probably prioritize that. ;)

Bookmarked and I will definitely be here on the dot, I have always had a curiosity with D&D but everyone I know thinks its something only "neckbeards" do unfortunately.

Definitely going to join in. The timing works out perfect for me, since it'll be a Sunday morning, 8am here. Wow, you've really posted up a lot of information, Umutuku! It's really great for a total newbie like me. Really excited!

This is JUST what I need! I am keen to learn about DnD and Roll20 and while I have read up a bit on both I am struggling with setting myself up with a character sheet and rulebooks etc. What is the best way to keep in touch as I create a character and so forth so I am ready for the invite?

I would absolutely love to join in as I am completely new and wanting to get my feet wet.

Diego, that is an awesome comment about neckbeards, they aren't the only people who do, there are just a lot of them, but they like to stay in their groups, away from others.

I'm happy to see a lot of interest. I'll try and get a bit more of the guide section chipped away tomorrow. If you have questions then feel free to ask, everything doesn't necessarily need to wait until a few hours on saturday. With all the interest, here's how participation will work. I'm going to post the link to the game on time (assuming my brain doesn't roll a 1), and the first 4 people to enter the lobby and type "Player" in chat will be the ones actually playing (It's not uncommon for groups to have 5 or more, but I'm going to keep things simple for my first attempt at doing this in a standardized manner). If someone keeps dropping their connection, or is unable to use the Tokbox voice chat (unless you've discussed a valid reason to not use voice beforehand with me) then I'll have to bump them for the 5th person who typed "Player", and so on. Please try and familiarize yourself with the roll20 game interface ahead of time. If there are any disagreements then I'll roll for it (as is our way haha). Anyone who is interested in simply observing the game to see what they can pick up should type in "Spectator" and participate passively to keep the channels clear for the players (I'd like to make the experience as "normal" as possible and reduce distractions for those playing the game). Anyone who is willing to help out new players should type "Mentor", and ideally be willing to use the whisper chat to help answer questions from the players if I'm having trouble keeping up with them, and maybe explain things to the spectators if they whisper you with questions. I think that would be a good way to get everyone working together, but if you have any better ideas then please let me know. :) As far as the neckbeard jokes go, sure I DM for some people who are "neckbeards" in my in-person games. I also DM for a variety of students and local residents, and even have some members of the Marching 110 in my crew here. Roleplaying games are a medium for imagination and self-expression, not a secret basement-dwelling society. There are plenty of "regular folks" who play and enjoy it. :)

Count me in, will try my best to be on time and be one of the 'lucky' players. Don't really have a lot of experience with DnD, haven't really played for like 6+ years (and probably no more than 5 afternoons after school). I am really keen to give it another try. Creating a character now and promise no rerolls for stats :). So excite!!!!

Dropped you a PM Umutuku

Aww, no base class? Is multiclass allowed? I want to try multiclass, so you can tell me what I am doing wrong. If I get in the game and multiclass is acceptable, can I just take one level of oracle and the rest of class will be sorcerer. If not, then single class is fine Actually, I am very reluctant to join game because many games prefer voice chat as a method to communicate with other people. That is the very reason why I am afraid to try out because it would ruins game for others. And then I saw your post, it gives me a hope to try out this game. Don't worry if you think I might get ignore. It would be nice to type short sentences what they are talking about. So, I can use pfsrd to find reference relate to that topic what they are talking about. And I have absolutely zero experience with D&D and roll20. Recently, I discover D&D 4e, then 3.5 and finally Pathfinder aka 3.75. I would love to try D&D game. I research on various D&D editions and I think Pathfinder is more fit for my character. I am not exactly confidence to play D&D due to the combination of lack of D&D experiences and voice chat. If the game is full, I will join the game as a spectator only if someone is willing to volunteer (perhaps mentor?) and tell me what is going on by via whisper. I would appreciate that. Thanks!

Multiclass isn't possible at first level, but it isn't too complicated, pathfinder made it easier than in 3.5, and I'm available pretty much 24/7 to do stuff to help people out and what have you.

@Jahanzeb H. : I'm posting this here as well in case anyone else had questions about this. I'm happy to answer PM's, but I'd like people to be able to read other questions so it might save them asking. Your caster level is equal to the number of levels you have in a class that casts spells. If you stick with one class then your caster level is always equal to your character level because you increase your caster level every time you level up with that class. Druids and Clerics don't have to learn their main spells like other casters do. If it's a druid spell then a druid knows it (assuming they are high enough level to cast it), and the same goes for clerics. For divine casters, it's usually not so much about knowing a spell, it's about asking a higher power for certain "blessings" in return for their faith and devotion. So a Cleric would have to pray for a bit and be all "so, I really made sure that everyone knew how awesome you were today. If you grant me the ability to heal a couple wounds, cure a disease, create some water out of thin air, and maybe call down a thunderstorm tomorrow then that would be great". So you would basically have x amount of level 0 spell slots, and y amount of level 1 spell slots (I'll sort that out in a bit). You have to decide ahead of time which spells to put in which slot (you can put a single spell in more than one slot if you think you want to use it more), and then you spend that slot for the day. It's easy to think about it like using cards. You have some amount of level 0 cards, and some amount of level 1 cards. You can write any 0 level spell you have access to on any of the level 0 cards, and any level 1 spell you have access to on any of the level 1 cards. Then when you spend that card to cast a spell you can't use that card until you rest and pray/meditate again (if you're a wizard then it works the same way as clerics and druids, but you memorize your spells from a list that you have learned instead of just asking for any of them). When you rest all of those cards go blank and you can write on them again. Druids can make a choice between having an animal companion or taking a cleric domain and having more spells. If you take a domain then you get exactly what it says. You also get an extra spell slot for every spell level (just like we talked about with the cards), but you can only put a spell from the short list in your domain in that slot. You can only cast a spell of a level that the table for your class says you can in Spells Per Day (if there's a dash instead of a number then you can't cast that level of spell at your character level. I know it's confusing that player level does not always equal spell level.). You can also only cast a spell of your spellcasting attribute (Wisdom for druids) is high enough to cast the spell. Either one of those can prevent you from using a spell. Also, it's not a problem because we're only playing level 1 characters for a tutorial session, but if you want to play a spell caster in a longer game then you should definitely make sure that your spellcasting attribute is one of your best stats (usually the best if you can get it). If you read the Spells section of the druid page, you will see that druids use Wisdom to determine the level of spells that they can cast (a wisdom score of 10+ the level of the spell they are trying to cast), so if your druid only has 12 Wisdom then he only has 2 more than 10 wisdom and can only cast up to level 2 spells even if he levels up enough that his class enables him to cast them. Although, you have a score of 12 and a modifier of +3 for Wisdom. Is it possible that you made a typo and actually have a Wisdom of 16 or 17? If so then that's a perfectly okay score to start out with.

Thanks. PMed with further questions as well

Umutuku, if you need any additional experienced GM/Player help let me know. I will be available saturday. - Gauss

Thank you Gauss. I'm not sure how many people are going to show up and I would appreciate anyone who can pull people aside and answer questions if everyone starts asking at once. I'm a little bit behind on helping people who have posted/PM'd because of work this week so every little bit helps. :) This doesn't exactly cover combining all your stats onto the character sheet, but it may help a bit with some questions that you guys have. <a href="http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/gettingStarted.html" rel="nofollow">http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/gettingStarted.html</a> For actual play, here are some links that may be nice to keep handy. <a href="http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/usingSkills.html" rel="nofollow">http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/usingSkills.html</a> <a href="http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/additionalRules.html" rel="nofollow">http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/additionalRules.html</a> <a href="http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/combat.html" rel="nofollow">http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/combat.html</a> Magic users will want to use this page as well. <a href="http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/magic.html" rel="nofollow">http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/magic.html</a>

@Frostaqua, Do you have speakers or headphones? Anyone in the game will be able to hear what anyone else is saying even if they don't have a microphone of their own. Roll20's game board has a system that pics up audio and or video from participant's computers and lets everyone hear it (you can turn off what you broadcast however) so if you can hear everyone then you can just type responses or what your character says. As for transcribing everything that happens, I don't think I will be able to keep up with that while managing the game, but if you can convince the other players to type out there actions/conversation for you or find a spectator who can transcribe things quickly enough then you are welcome to do so. If you're just concerned about people not understanding an accent or something then I'm sure it will be fine.

A question. Is a cross-wildblooded sorcerer allowed? I think it is legal because it doesn't cause conflict within class. Obviously, you can't select both bloodlines come from the same source. For example, you can't pick Arcane and Sage as a cross-wildblooded sorcerer because both comes from the same source. So, can you pick Arcane-Empyreal? Sage-Primal? To Umutuk. Well, I don't use headphones because I am Deaf. But I don't want to interrupt game flow. However, it would be nice if a mentor could type to me in just one or two sentences on about what the topic they are talking about via whisper. It would help me a lot because if they are talking about specific topic, then I can check that topic on d20pfsrd, so don't worry if I get ignore or doing nothing. Plus, 2 sentences is better than nothing. I read fairly lot but not all on rules on d20pfsrd. If I could participate this session, I can get some insight what is to expect in general, combat, adventure, characters, etc. Thank you for your concern.

I'll look into the sorcerer bloodline (I don't mess with those much personally). Also, would someone mind listening in and transcribing the important spoken bits in a whisper chat for Frostaqua? I'd like to make this a good experience for all involved. :)

I don't mind, I can do good summaries, I work for a tech support company.

As for the sorcerer bloodlines, I believe you are correct. Aside from not being able to take a bloodline with a bloodline that replaces it, you may also be in a situation where the primary effects of the alternate bloodlines both change your casting attribute to a different one. You couldn't make your sorcerer use both Wisdom and Intelligence in place of just Charisma. You would have to choose one or the other as the new attribute, thereby nullifying the primary effect of the other bloodline. I don't know if you noticed, but using crossblood reduces your spells known by 1 at every level (including cantrips), and spells known is already something that limits the versatility of sorcerers. Just something to be aware of. :)

FYI everyone, I'll be editing the link into the beginning of the title post when the game is ready to go at 7.

Not the actual game, but anyone needing more help with characters can meet here until about 5-5:30. <a href="https://app.roll20.net/join/58521/LjpW-A" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/join/58521/LjpW-A</a>

The game is going to be starting in just a few minutes if anyone is still wanting to play.

Link added <a href="https://app.roll20.net/join/58494/ekdRvw" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/join/58494/ekdRvw</a>

I am going to be doing a bit of a followup for last night's players who can make it (and possibly a couple more if some of them don't show up) at 3-6pm EST (about an hour from this post). We didn't make it as far or try out as many things as I had hoped because some technical issues delayed my game prep for a couple hours. So I'm continuing the module we were running for anyone who wants to continue and try out more things. As always, spectators are welcome to watch/listen in and pick up on some of the gameplay and discussions about game rules. It's basically going to be picking up where we left off last night with as many of the players who can show up as possible participating. If we can't get a full party then I would be happy to let someone else in if they are okay with quickly making a character while I recap the events and get the wheels turning (although I can help as much as needed).

Also, I have to give a shoutout to Frostaqua. The first roll he made in the game was a natural 20 critical. "Born under a good omen" indeed. :)

The same link is still open, but here it is again. <a href="https://app.roll20.net/join/58494/ekdRvw" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/join/58494/ekdRvw</a>