A couple of notes.
First, after over two years, I've finally registered an
official account over at Invisible Castle. Some of you are already registered there, and you can use the campaign name "Lost Souls Octhania" for your rolls. (Registration isn't mandatory for this game, though; you can continue using the site as a guest if you want.) This just makes it easier to find rolls, and creates more transparency on my end, so you guys can see exactly what I'm rolling for.
Also, if you check out the bottom of the
Character Stats thread, you'll find some new stuff.
First, there's a 'bath counter.' This shows how many days it has been since your character's last bath. Since you all bathed this morning (in-game time), it currently reads 0. This will be a handy way to keep track of such things, as previously the party had gone almost two weeks without a bath. It's not really important, just a flavor thing to help with verisimilitude.
There's also an area labeled 'Conditions.' These are temporary status effects to help me keep track of the current condition of your character. These can include buffs and debuffs, both magical and mundane. It got to be a pain to constantly modify the stat blocks for such things; now they'll just be added here for reference.
For instance, if Jocelyn would cast Bless on the party, they would get the 'blessed' condition, and it would indicate that everyone has a +1 to hit and morale.
Right now you can see, everyone but Val has the 'clean' condition, because they recently bathed. Val has the 'salty' condition because she recently went swimming in the sea (so she smells like the sea). She's also tipsy, and you can see where I've marked she now suffers a -1 to INT and WIS.
All of this is for verisimilitude, as well. I check the conditions before every post, and they help remind me of what the party looks, smells and sounds like at the moment, as well as how they are feeling. This helps remind me to have NPCs and such react to their conditions. For instance, if the party treads through a sewer, then I'd write 'stinky' under conditions, and this will remind me to have NPCs react to the bad smell. If someone eats a strange mushroom she finds, I might write 'nauseous' and this will remind me to occasionally mention in my post that the character's stomach is gurgling or in pain.
There's a lot of stuff that happens to PCs we just sort of forget about over time. Like maybe your clothes were shredded in the last fight or you were splattered in blood (either yours or the enemy's). Maybe you're covered in bandages, haven't slept in two days, drank putrid water, slept in your armor, etc., etc. Some of these things have mechanical consequences, some are just for flavor. There are good conditions, too, though, like if you just bathed (clean), are wearing perfume (perfumed), are all dolled up (glamorous), that likewise could have mechanical or just flavor effects. It would depend on the situation. (For instance, wearing perfume at a gala or ball might help your reaction with the aristocrats; on the other hand, wearing it in the jungle will probably just increase encounter rates as any nearby predators will be able to sniff you out easier).
My hope is that this will help keep me reminded of the various conditions of the party. If they walk into a town all bandaged up, splattered in blood and haven't bathed in a week, NPCs should be like, "Oh, crap! What happened to you?!" instead of just acting like that's perfectly normal, you know?
What do you all think?
