Doug M's Way of the Wicked (Inactive)

Game Master Douglas Muir 406

Agreed. You give the player a reasonable chance, because real life happens; people move, change jobs, have relatives die unexpectedly, what have you. Maybe more chances, depending. But at some point you cut losses and move on.

Talk to him first though. As Doug said, it may be out side influences. Like since I started my new job I have been working 12 hour shifts, so game time is minimal. it could also be character problems that could be worked out with a little one on one. then again he could just not be putting in enough effort and needs to be made aware before he gits booted.

A player in my Serpents skull game just disappeared after about 1 year of playing. I am sure it is his personal life. I hated to see him go but I just filled his slot with another player after sending him a PM and posting in game to try and find out if he was okay.

Just move on after PM'ing him if he doesn't respond in 3-4 days.

"E-mails, like house guests and fish, stink after three days."

On one hand, a PBP game should come far down your list of commitments in life, well after job, family, friends, what have you. On the other hand, it /is/ a commitment. And it's no great effort to do a one-line post saying "I'll be unavailable for the next couple of weeks -- please bot my character -- if I can't come back by then, go ahead and find a replacement."

I agree, it takes 20 seconds to tell the rest of the people in a campaign that you will be away for a few days. Failure to do this is something that I consider very rude.

If someone tells me that they will be gone for a while, then the campaign can work around this, either by DMPCing the character or having another player run the character for a while - or even having the character take some time off to visit relatives until the real player returns. Just disappearing without any explanation is something that I cannot condone.

In the case of my campaign we have a problem with one person not posting right now - of course it is the DM and that is me, so I really need to get my act together to get the campaign going again now that the holidays are almost over.

I am afraid judge that I must agree :)

:(

Thanks for the advice! I shot him an e-mail and we'll see if he responds in a few days.

I will be traveling tomorrow light posting

What about the Rookery boys? Setting that aflame would also cause the commander to split up his forces.

Working (and partying) today, I'll check in at least one more time before all that!

Also a few hours early, but since we are all spread out HAPPY NEW YEAR! (U2 remix a little bit of everything version)

Yes happy new year, may it bring the downfall of the kingdom of light!

Light posting for the next couple of days -- New Years stuff here. Happy Eve and Day to all!

By this time next year I hope we're all level 9, half of us surviving with the same characters even!

Haha! That's adorable.

Just finished setting off a lot of fireworks with the kids and the neighbor's kids. (Germany allows fireworks one night per year, so everyone goes crazy.) Slightly tipsy now from standing around an outdoor fire drinking sekt and champagne! Happy New Year, all!

I Googled Sket by mistake.

HAPPY NEW YEAR DM!

Sekt = cheap german not-quite-champagne -- aka bubbly cheap wine.

At least that is pretty much how I recall the germans describing it to me when I lived there.

assuming grumbles doesn't pick me up, I assume I will be charging in the with the bugbears, good thinkg I bougt that hat so I can look like them.

Yes. On New Year's, you drink champagne to celebrate, and then sekt to get drunk.

Patron and Belvedere over here, although my tolerance must be up because I put a few away and I way too sober.

I got my CR in $ though!

We have potions of Jump and Spider Climb and would have distributed them during flight if any of you need them.

I need help with a some what high level build I have to create, DM do you mind if I post it here?

lol, drop one over the edge to Xen

I was reading up on Paladins, as I have never played one, the commander will probably get two attacks per round, at 15 damage per hit plus bonuses (yaay math), he will drop any of us in one round, more than likely hitting each time he attacks, unless we can recast Darkness, how do we deal with that?

He will only have 1-2 smites. This is one reason why the prophecy said that our champion (Edmin) must strike first. Also, Morsum can trip which helps and will draw AoO and limit the commander to a single attack per round.

The best way is to just not fight him. Yeh, DMDM might hate this, but we are not ordered to kill the commander, just to get the bugbears through the wall. To do this we need to open the drawbridge, portcullis and main gate. I am hoping that we will find something to burn the gate, otherwise we will just have to hope that fireballs will do it.

If the commander dies the fort's morale will crumble or even better we can assume his character with Disguise, either way his death is our key to victory, I am also worried about the Rookery because they can use that to send word to the rest of the kingdom, taking those two out should still remain clear goals.

Also Judge when I was doing math I did not even add Smite damage for the commander (that's why I said plus bonuses), that's just bonded weapon, power attack and Strength (he probably has a Belt +2 at least).

No we kill him chop off his head and toss that over te edge I to the good soldiers midst

That's covered under the fort's morale will crumble part, but after seeing what Barhold could do, I was like, yikes.

How was your New Year's Bref?

I'm with the Judge. We did damage to the keep. The mission was simply to weaken the keep and let the bugbears in. We don't HAVE to fight/kill the commander. Nor do we have to do it before we let the bugbears in.

Also, the raven tower is pointless at the moment. Its been 30+ rounds already, I'm sure they've sent warning that the tower is under attack from within.

Light posting today and tomorrow -- on the road.

Not sure I agree, we have damaged them quite a bit but only in the last couple of minutes have we become a real threat to the entire keep by taking over the gate.
I would say that now is a time that someone might release a raven saying that someone is trying to take over the keep. A fireball might not be a bad thing to make sure the ravens are all dead...we would be down one charge but secure an advantage for the army that takes the town...assuming we don't get killed before the bugbears arrive.

Expect the Monk and the Commander to try and take the gate back...they will know we will have them by the balls if we do and will have to try and take it back before any other forces arrive. We can hold off the regular men-at-arms with the wand but they will be a different matter. Expect that we will have to defeat them near the end in order to keep the gate. Its a bit of meta-gaming but also the most obvious course of action over the next few minutes.

Cy needs to be in a position to weaken those forces as they try to assault the gate with the fireballs.

the raven tower is pointless at the moment. Its been 30+ rounds already, I'm sure they've sent warning that the tower is under attack from within.

That's not necessarily true. Please bare with me and this line of logic.

That's only three minutes at most, not counting the time you take out when the officers are determining what the threat really is. The screaming guards and the pain in the Monk were the first to report that something was amiss.

Say they have a Druid or a Ranger up there in the Rookery, Mad Martin, he would probably still need an actual hand written and commander sealed writ/letter to be delivered, with what message they needed to be delivered I don't think they have had time to do any of that yet.

The fort is on alert yes, but this is not the modern age, three minutes is still three minutes.

I have a question to the group.

Xen elbows past Jax and fiddles with the chest for a moment. "There's probably runes inscribed in the metal, and if we can... yes, here."

OOOO EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE OOOO EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE OOOO EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeee ooo... The sound gradually fades to silence.

What did you guys find? I can't seem to find it on the posts.

I vote fireball them birds.

I also think that we are committed at this point. The gates must be dealt with now. I wished we could have killed the commander first, but things happen. Gates now and if we have time we go for the commander.

We lock and bar the door from the catwalk, where Morsum entered from. If we want to drop some caltrops and/or oil on this walkway, all the better.

One of the stories we heard was about some ogres being allowed across the drawbridge and then dropping the portcullis and firing arrows from both sides. To me, this means that there are arrow slits in the gatehouse which face toward the fort. We should be able to watch the main gate and the catwalk from there. Unless they also use flight to get here, and we eliminated the mage, then the commander and troops will have to come across the catwalk.

Remember also the spider climb potion, they might try to climb back in, we will have to keep someone on the roof watching for the monk and anyone else trying to climb up.

This is why I wanted to cast an extended Fly coupled with Invisibility and Shield (which now has run out) while the whole group was Flying, using some History channel terms, it would give Cуровую 'areal superiority and our group overall combat dominance over the battle field'.

I was pressing that we do this.

If Fireballs were going off at the Rookery and the stables while we were in flight, then the response to coming to the gate house would be very much decreased in speed and strength.

Likewise we would have bird's eye view of what was happening in the fort.

But that idea was shot down several times :(

You should be able to see over the fort wall and hit the stables. The Fort walls are actually lower than the gatehouse from the map. The Gatehouse has one level higher than the fort. Although from the appearance, unless there is a window, you would be shooting at the back of the building.

As I have said, Morsum can take the alchemist fire flasks and just fly in and toss them around in the stables.

So far, they have seen explosions on the top of the keep, and on top of the gatehouse. A few more explosions on the top of the rookery tower and then in the stable should really demoralize the soldiers, and also confuse them as to where exactly we are attacking from.

That's exactly what I wanted to do earlier and it maybe a little late now, I am all for that if the group can hold out for say six rounds here?

I must be misunderstanding the walls as well, how far do they go up?

we never went into the chest zimu the alarm went off and all we did was turn off the noise

we never went into the chest zimu the alarm went off and all we did was turn off the noise

Correct. The contents of the chest are still resources for Team Good.

Ok.

I must have spent 30 minutes looking at the posts to see what was found before I asked.

Umm. Why did we leave the contents of the chest?

Because you never got the chest unlocked. You triggered the alarm, then you turned it off. And you had a big fight with the Commander's pet angel, so half the party was standing around stunned for a while.

And you had just met your monk BFF so we had to take care of that. guess we got side tracked over the course of about a billion messages that covered 3 minutes of game play.

judge also got mad that we were looting and yelled at us lol

Oh yeah.

As noted, light posting for me this weekend -- flying back to Kosovo.

DM I was re reading posts, can we say we hit Grumblejack with two CLW while in flight? Completely forgot he was injured.

Although they've lost several of their big guns, the defenders of Balentyne do still have resources. And you'd expect those resources -- spells, items, skill rank investments, what have you -- to be optimized for military purposes. And "being able to see the opponent so you can hit her" is pretty basic.

An aasimar druid is certainly one possibility! There are others.

I don't doubt that, when it was revealed that the fort had access to Commune and a few other surprises, if the commander came charging at us with on winged horse or the pain in the Monk came out on a Flying carpet we should just say 'of course' and take it in stride.

A swarm of ravens? Of course there are a swarm of Ravens under command of a Mad Druid, check.

Judge, elementals would have worked but Morsum coming to the Rookery would not have done us any good, so there's that.

The nice thing with swarms is that they usually move of their own volition. If you fly right through it, it may well turn around and attack whoever is in the tower.

Also, you could have the swarm chase you toward the guards on the walls with their crossbows.