Fall of Blackbottom - You start in a tavern, but it's on fire.
Experienced adventurers relax after their latest triumph. When your R&R is interrupted, can you survive the wrath of Ajax?
TYPE
SYSTEM
LEVELS
LANGUAGE
EXPERIENCE
AGE
$25.00
/ Session
Details
Weekly / Wednesday - 7:30 PM UTC
Session Duration / 3–3.5 hours
Campaign Length / 7–12 Sessions
2 / 5 Seats Filled
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Meet your party members
2/5
About the adventure
This adventure starts in a tavern--but by the end, the tavern isn't there anymore... The cornerstone of this game will be MCDM's Fall of Blackbottom (FoBB) adventure. There will be a small prelude of the adventure you went on before retiring for a rest in Blackbottom. FoBB itself will likely last around six sessions, with a short prelude of one or two sessions. If there is interest after finishing FoBB, I would like to continue on and run a few published scenarios. FoBB features a doomed city with our heroes caught in the midst of a massive political and military upheaval. The forces of Ajax the Invincible have descended upon the city to punish the mercenary group the Chain of Acheron for their attempted assassination of one of Ajax's most valued advisors. While the Chain is the target of Ajax's military, the fighters attack indiscriminately and many citizens are in danger. While the heroes don't have the ability to stop the ongoing violence and terror, they can save themselves and potentially those around them, guiding noncombatant NPCs through a dangerous city in the throes of collapse. We'll be playing on the alpha version of the Codex, which is the VTT being specifically developed for Draw Steel. It's already quite fully featured despite being in alpha and has been stable throughout. They're making it better and better every week!
Game style
Combat Heavy
Tactical / Crunchy
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
5.0
(29)
3 years on StartPlaying
523 games hosted
Highly rated for: Creativity, Sets the Mood, Teacher
About me
I'm Ryan and I love running Pathfinder 2e! I came on over from DnD 5th edition and have been running 1 to 4 games a week for about 4 years now. My style tends towards cinematic, fast-paced combat with a lot of humor. I love doing ridiculous voices for my NPCs and letting players get away "rule of cool" shenanigans. I've got an active Discord community posting about Pathfinder, video games and the like. Come on by and join a table! All tables are of course queer-friendly and we have a friendly Discord community for folks trying to wrap their heads around Pathfinder 2e.
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
Players will start at level 1! Complications are alright but I generally prefer the ones that are roleplay hooks/add and reduce power in an interesting way rather than just straight stat buffs or "gain weakness X and immunity X." Most of these are not yet implemented in Codex as well, so while we can make em work don't feel like you need to take one just to have one! While there are pregenerated characters for Fall of Blackbottom (with pretty rad art) you can feel free to take the art and change the character, use a pregen, or create a fully new character. There will be a few plot hooks that would be nice for backstory--at least one of the characters should have some sort of a tie to Ajax's encroaching forces; whether it's everyone or just a few is something to be worked out session 0. You can use https://andyaiken.github.io/forgesteel/#/hero to help with character creation, and of course Codex has a decent character wizard.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
We'll be using Codex VTT and Discord for voice chat, so you'll need a solid internet connection and accounts for each (it's free). The Codex is run through Steam so you'll need an account for that as well. Codex currently requires a key from MCDM's Patreon. Each Patron gets a set of keys. If anyone is willing to join the Patreon and share these keys I'll happily give you a free session (the Patreon's cost is $8 per month and you don't need to keep on after the end of the game). Otherwise I'll grab some keys with an additional Patreon account.
What Ryan brings to the table
Fellow Player-side excitement at all the cool nonsense you get to do, Codex maps with automated collision detection, elevation, lighting, and other fun tricks, friendly and active Discord Server, a learning mindset (we're all figuring out how this system works as it's quite new). I'm invested in the success of our player characters at the table both in terms of their personal arcs and ruling in favor of cool stuff whenever feasible.
Homebrew rules
I will likely be using a variant of Montages known as "Threats and Opportunites" which broadly breaks down the vague blob of a Montage test into some obstacles that have to be overcome lest you suffer a penalty (lose a recovery, out of position, etc) and some opportunities that can give you an advantage (get a consumable, surprise enemy forces, etc). I think making the little objectives a bit more discrete should be more fun and strategic.
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Platforms used
Safety
How Ryan creates a safe table
This will be very much pulpy high fantasy with limited dark themes beyond "ooh nasty baddies." Codex doesn't have a nice automated X-card but I do encourage players to message me for an anonymous (to the table) ask for a transition in scene. If you're comfortable with heroic action movies and that amount of violence, that's likely to be the most objectionable content at the table (though I can't help myself but to do a little body horror on the descriptions of my undead). I highly encourage you to write me if it goes over the line, but I think it's mostly lighthearted.
Content warnings
Safety tools used