The Oracle of Life

About the GM:

 

My story-driven campaign will feature your characters as the protagonists in a campaign designed to bring you a sense of involvement in the mechanations of Golarion's recent past.  I want you to be able to pursue a character path of your own general design, with me adapting it to the setting, circumstances, and events of the story I am telling in the campaign.  For this to happen, I need you to come to the game with a character path to pursue.  For this reason, I have the somewhat steep admission requirement of basically a short story about your character’s background (more on that here).

 

Much of this campaign will take place outdoors; prepare feats and skills accordingly.  I am fond of outnumbering my party with lower-CR creatures, who are organized (emphasis added) and sometimes led by a ‘boss’.  Most of my monsters will have NPC classes, and a few enemies will morph into ‘villains’ who will antagonize you for many levels to come.

 

I will build challenging tactical combats, and aim for dice-light, and hopefully roleplaying-heavy NPC interactions.  I desire players who want to roleplay in character most of the game.  I enjoy tactical combat, and will have terrain pieces and building kits to achieve this.

 

I am not fond of traps, as a GM (but if someone wants to play a Rogue, I will make exceptions).  They’ve always felt like random ‘damage from god’ and serve more to expose GM sadism than anything else.  Certainly things will be locked.  You may find yourself having missed a secret door and walking into a pit-trap designed to kill the unwary dungeon intruder.  But perception, disable device, and a good lock pick ability (or strong hammer swing, when necessary) will most often be sufficient.  Do be careful with the notion of breaking small lockboxes with force, though.  Delicate things may be inside.  When all else fails wait for a means to unlock things to present themselves. 

 

Speaking of which, you as the players will not know the story for a while.   Please understand and respect my need to conceal information from the players.  For example, at low level you will make contact with enemies not in the beastiary.  I will present to you information about them as you encounter them, and usually after encounters you will learn more.  We are not in opposition to one another, but part of story telling is witholding information and creating mystery.