DeadUematsu, what did you use to make your character?

Engine, what do you mean?

Werekoala, will we already know each other, or will we meet within the game? Should our characters be "adventurers," or just people who live in the surrounding area?

Assume knowing each other already, how well I leave up to you. I'm assuming a wandering group of adventurers (brand-new, just out of the package, obviously).

Quote from: DeadUematsu;230301Engine, what do you mean?

I was wondering if you'd used a character generator: I liked the format of your output, and was hoping to replicate it.

Quote from: Engine;230497I was wondering if you'd used a character generator: I liked the format of your output, and was hoping to replicate it.

Nah. I didn't use any character generator.

I just used the following text sheet:

Here's a link to Caernhas' character sheet. I'm supposed to get two more languages, but it didn't make any sense for me to have more than one. I didn't understand the "6x6 matrix" method of ability score generation, so I just took the stats One Horse Town had rolled and used them.

Anyway, here's the character:

The short form
Caernhas is a young fighter with a strong sense of wanderlust and an ambient distaste for authority. He is physically capable, an archer of some skill, and is most at home in the field. He carries a longbow and longspear, wears simple linens and hide armor, and has a ladies' locket on a silver chain around his wrist.

The long form
The youngest of five children - three boys, two girls - Caernhas is largely a victim of his own selfishness, founded at the knee of an overgenerous mother and two doting older sisters. With plenty of available family labor when he was young, Caernhas missed out on many of the chores and hard work his older siblings had been forced to endure, caring for the various animals of the family farm, mending clothes, cooking meals. As such, little kept him grounded in the daily life of a future productive villager.

As he aged, increasing responsibility made him resentful; he would rather be running through the fields, or felling birds on the wing with his sling. The field grew increasingly to be where he felt most at home, free from all responsibility but the need to remain alive. He exchanged a variety of furs one winter to a passing trader in exchange for a longbow, and his course was set. He spent hours in meadows, picking a point on a distant tree and landing as many arrows as he could as closely to it as he might.

His expeditions grew ever-longer, until he was packing a woolen blanket, water, even a cookpot, and remaining out for days, to the dismay of his family. He encountered more and more dangers, learning not all to be feared was animal: orcs, bandits, outlaws. After being injured badly enough to lay him abed for nearly a month, he took a doe and convinced Eliot, once an armorer, to fit him for leather armor. He began carrying a spear, for the times when foes came too close to practically take them down with his bow. Three times he'd saved villages or travelers from harm, a feeling of power and accomplishment which spurred him to ever-greater boldness.

Self-absorbed to the point of being nearly unable to understand the motives of civilized intelligent beings, he now travels in a world of his own making, shrouded in ignorance of the human condition while walking in the human world. He has no goals beyond seeing the next horizon, no ambitions beyond helping those he might along the way.

And if you're such a bore you want to read what happend the day before he met the rest of the group...
The father found his son precisely where he expected to: arms crossed over the pasture fence, eyes toward the setting sun. The boy's pack rested at his feet, which his father had not anticipated, but was not surprised at, either; for the last several years, his youngest had taken to disappearing for days or weeks at a time, returning with unlikely stories and bizarre trophies. The father shook his head. "Caernhas," he called, and the boy acknowledged his name with a nod, but did not turn. Without further preface, he continued, in a tone more harsh than he'd intended, "This has got to stop. This will be your sixteenth season. By your age, all your brothers had a trade. They earned their keep until they started families of their own, which is more than I can say for you."

At that, Caernhas turned, his brow furrowed as if in confusion, his eyes meeting those of his father, wordlessly. His gaze shifted to the outsize longbow resting against the fence, back to his father, and back to the setting sun. He didn't say anything, but his meaning was clear: twice in previous seasons, the family had been spared only by Caernhas's singular skill with the bow.

His father relented. "It's not about...Caernhas, it isn't about the food. You're never here, you 'forget' chores given over to you years ago. You can barely get along with the other village boys. And..." he hesitated at breaking the informal truce they'd developed over the years against what Caernhas had once called, "the lowest of blows," but continued in a rush, "...and you break you mother's heart every time you go."

Caernhas's eyes flashed, but he steadfastly refused to speak. His mother was a kind soul, the gentlest of women, and Caernhas's only regret was the amount of hurt he had heaped on her over the years, simply by being who he was.

"It cannot go on, son. You need to make a choice."

A long silence stretched, as the last limb of the sun rounded below the horizon, and the calls of nightbirds began to ring through the village. Finally, Caernhas turned toward his father. "You're right, pa. Tell mother I love her." And he shouldered his pack and left home, for much longer than he had intended when he'd made up his bedroll earlier in the day.

He stopped only once in the village before he departed. Aelwyn sat on her family's porch, mending linens outside as she often did to escape the sound and fury of her younger siblings within. He tried to approach without notice, that he might watch her longer, but she sensed him somehow as she always did. He said nothing, only stood in the moons' shade of the great apple tree in front of her father's home. Her face turned wry at the sight of his pack - she, too, worried at his frequent departures to gods-know-where - an expression that turned quickly to fear, then anger, as she saw the set of his face. She had known since they were toddling children this day would come, and she had feared and hated it more than anything. Her fury and sadness combined to force hot, salty tears from her eyes, though she would not sob before him.

Caernhas stepped forward, then, his heart torn between the selfish love of the trail and the small portion of him that cared for others deeply. He stood awkwardly before her, uncertain if she would rebuff any attempt at support, wanting her pain to end, but unable to understand her well enough to aid her.

"I'll miss you," he lied.

"I won't miss you," she lied.

He turned to leave, then on an impulse, with his lightning movements, he reached out and snatched the locket from her neck, breaking the thin strand of silver which held it in place. She cried out - the locket was an heirloom, and its removal thus was doubly painful - but as he retreated into the night, something in her warmed, that a piece of her would go with him. Then she remembered how like a fool he had played her, to leave her alone after all these years, and she wept bitterly into her linens, quiet as to remain alone with her sorrow.

Haven't abandoned ya ust been busier than expected the last couple of days. We'll see about getting started tomorrow. Any questions about anything before we get the ball rolling?

Will this be play by post, if it is not, please let me know what other formats you will be using and time frames.  I would love to join.  Let me find my 3.0 book and I will conjure up a character within a day or two.  I see there is an enchanter, monk and fighter.  Is there a certain character you would like me to pursue for party balance?

This will be PbP, yes, and we'd love to have you. As to "party balance" just play whatever you like to play - at first level (to start) it won't make a huge difference, and if I can't think on my feet with a couple of actions a week, I need to hang up my spurs.

OK...wait...you guys got a game going? Too late to join? What  was the decision?

Ah shit...I shouldn't...I'll be on vacation in a bit...

Last call for players - if you want to join, you have 24 hours.

If any CURRENT players have questions, now is the time to ask them.

In 24 hours, the approach to the Lair begins!

Here's my character: