DMDM's Strange Aeons

Game Master Douglas Muir 406

I doubt it, but did Kyleen's 19 on the knowledge get anything?

Or Yordan's 22 ;)

At this point, no. Closer examination or interacting with it might perhaps...

I have the feeling you guys are thinking "can't attack it, too obvious" (mmmaybe) and are going into "what to do, we need more information" paralysis.

Well: this is a horror themed adventure full of awful consequences, so some caution is certainly reasonable. That said, sitting and waiting for things to explain to you how to by get past them is probably not a winning strategy.

Yordan is just waiting to see if anyone else has anything to say before he breaks out the alchemist's fire and tosses it at the thing. Plus he doesn't want to destroy what might be a useful door. But he's ready to attack.

He probably would attack instantly if Fritz shared the information from his detect evil but he doesn't want to act outside player knowledge...

So... further discussion, throw the fire, or something else?

Throw the fire.

Fire at will.

I got nothing, at this point, except either ignoring it or trying steel. But can we afford a riot among the inmates?

Anyone out there?

yes, still slinking around. At this point I say we move forward as we can. I would like to start to see if I can sneak into the area of the BBEG and gain any intel on him.
If that doesn't work we try to clear out every area besides this hallway and the BBEG's lair.
Maybe we will find something to help our quest to get the hell out of here in another area.

The only thing I can think of for the weird doorway creature is that maybe its regeneration would be stopped by holy weapons... does a paladin's smite count as that?

I am pretty clueless as to what to do next. I suppose we could just open the door and see what happens.

I believe we have to get through the creature to get through the door.

Yah. Maybe we just have to call it a day, and move on to discussion of decadent art with the soulsucking whatever-it-is. I got nuthin' here.

Phew: was starting to wonder if you guys had lost interest.

A thought: consider possible informational resources.

sorry all. I kept getting signed out of paizo and didn't see new posts

The last week of website chaos has not been helpful...

Yeah, same here -- lots of "nostore" screens and getting signed out.
What's up with that?

There's a thread or four in the website feedback forums, but basically a code upgrade caused unexpected problems and they have spent the past week frantically working on it.

Yeh, I discovered that the Pathfinder Society part of the site is listing scenario 9-03 as 9-09, and 9-05 as 9-11. I don't know if others were screwed up, but I am sure that there were other broken links like this.

My understanding is that they are working to get everything fixed. I have to say that having the site log me out so that I have to sign back on every time I check in is rather frustrating.

As far as informational resources go, we've asked Winter and Yorke what they know about the thing, we've apparently flubbed our Knowledge rolls, and -- hmmm, can we try detect magic on it? Fritz reports it's evil, but is anything else going on? Kyleen, Mrakala, any informational spells you two might have available?

Not sure if I have anything else useful. Kyleen will ask the doctor if he knows anything, but I am not sure what he might know.

That might work...

Barring that we should keep moving forward in some direction. You know my vote for our next move.

Hey all, I have to take a hiatus from the game. Due to health issues, I had to postpone my final exam to early Feb. Add in family issues, and things are pretty stressful right now -- I don't have the time to contribute. If you need to replace me, please feel free.

If you haven't replaced me, perhaps I'll join back in in the future, if you would accept it.

Hope all are doing well.

-M

argh

so frustrating.

Yes.

Okay, so we're losing our oracle. That still leaves us with a party of four -- paladin, ranger, wizard, and bard. A bit light on healing but definitely still playable.

Do we want to proceed?

I wish to proceed

I am enjoying this, but have been having trouble following things between my RL picking up speed and the intermittent speed of this game. If everyone else wants to keep going, I will stay in, but definitely am having trouble giving 100% like I have in the past (this applies to all my few remaining campaigns)

You also have a rogue...

Doug, I know this is more work for you but I think it would be helpful if you could summarize any useful information we have learned so far. PBP mysteries are tough to keep track of what we have learned in context to what is going on. Just a suggestion...I think we all want to continue but feel like we have hit a dead end. Thanks.

What Ghelik said. It might be time for a summary post... I can't really think of anything else to do here, but nobody has proceeded with my two suggestions (having Fritz smite it, and having Kyleen go ahead and ask her phantom about it)

Sorry. The stupid log in thing got me again.

But that seems to be fixed. I am here, slow hutnhere

Okay, guys... it isn't working.

I don't know why not. We've all played together before. We started off well. But somewhere along the line, we just lost momentum, and it's proving very hard to get it back.

Losing two players definitely hasn't helped, but in theory we could recruit two new people, either with these PCs or with new ones. But the last few months have been like wading through mud. I don't know why, but there it is. A while back, when I stopped the second Way of the Wicked game ("The Dark Tower") I later on felt bad about it. Heck, I still feel bad about it. But this one... just isn't clicking.

Leaving this open for a while for any wrapup comments. Not starting another PBP very soon -- I'd like to figure out in my own head what went wrong with this one first.

This one's on me, gang, and I'm sorry for letting you down.

Doug

Long time lurker(Hi Mini!) I think a big problem is that this thing on the door is rather vague on how to deal with it. perhaps allowing a skill roll to determine how to dispose of it?

hey!

I know for me, I was just super slammed, and the horror theme just didn't connect with me as much.

That and Bref, and then later on Ulp just really jived with me, and Xenfal to a lesser extent. Fritz was harder for me to wrap my head around.

But that is how these things go sometimes.

:)

I think that the horror genre may just not be for me. Also, as with MiniGM, I really had a tough time connecting with Kyleen. Not having any real background to build her personality off, made it difficult to connect.

Lastly, as with others, RL has taken over and not given me the time that I had before. I loved playing the Judge, and creating his uncaring personality was a lot of fun. In this one, it was just not the same for some reason.

I absolutely loved the first Way of the Wicked and still think that it was probably my favorite out of 30-40 campaigns that I played on Paizo.

DMDM - If you ever want to start a new campaign, keep me in mind. I do not know if I will have the time, but if I do and you are starting something, I would be interested in it.

For me, I think part of it was the general slowdown -- it fed on itself. When there are no new posts, and you are waiting a week for any response to what you said, it sort of kills the momentum all by itself. I realize that real life takes precedence, but inaction begets inaction. Once the cycle starts, it's hard to summon up the initiative to break it,and if only one person tries and there's no response, it just discourages them more... and apathy begets apathy. I tend to have more energy when responding to someone else.

Part of it, also, is that gaming is not just a DM interacting individually with the players/PCs; it's also the players interacting with each other. With nobody having much of a past to remember, it's a bit harder to have interactions with other. "You're an amnesiac? Well, so am I?" -- and there's not much more to say. The players have to be able to generate energy and reactions off each other, and it's a bit hard to do that here.

I don't think it was the horror genre per se. I think some of it is adventure design issues -- Paizo has some NPC groups that PCs are supposed to interact with but lots of parties find it difficult to care even if they are heroes who are supposed to care. Nobody's friendly in Ravengro, the elves in Second Darkness are actively off-putting (though hatred is a great motivator; my character in that path was determined, by the middle of the fourth book or so, to make sure that the asteroid did get dropped right on target in Kyonin!), and while Sandpoint and Korvosa are easier to be involved with, they also have public knowledge (the starting Guides, the AP player's guides, etc.) that give people some feel for the place and some way to build characters that work well with the initial setting. After that it's up to everybody to keep it going. The opening scene or three were great horror, but ... I'm not sure it went anywhere.

The initial mood was certainly well-done and well-sustained for a while, but I think it started falling apart somewhere after the PCs reached shelter, particularly when there didn't seem to be any clues or any sense of belonging. Sure, it's reasonable that they're all suspicious of a bunch of strangers in the madhouse, but it makes interaction a bit difficult. (The most memorable character was Gweiliam the Unknown, whose shtick was "looking silently down at you" -- nice brief piece, memorable, but not much to build on.) I never really got a feel for Winter or Yorke or any of the others.

Now, in my particular case it didn't help that Yordan is not the most outgoing of characters (low CHA and enough WIS to know that he's not a social type makes for a strong silent person-- someone more outgoing might have been a better choice to do things here.)

As a minor style point, it got a little frustrating when I would try to do something, and just get nowhere, or ask/do two things in a post and only get one of them answered while the other was apparently forgotten. But that was only a minor point next to the posting speed slowdown -- if everyone is posting frequently, it's more reasonable to bring stuff up again, ask for clarification, etc.

That said, I would certainly be very interested in any other game you ran, and would hope to be considered for it (though I think I'd try to make a somewhat more socially-adept character for it, since PBP does interaction/conversation better than all-combat or all-dungeon-crawl stuff.)