Sw is the direction the bandits came from, so we explore that first?
More to the point, Happs said he and his group came from the southwest. We don't know if he was telling the truth, we don't know if they left anybody behind, and we don't know (and he probably doesn't know) if his was the only group in the area. Given this, and given the need to stay close to Oleg's, I think it's a better idea to clear the hexes in the immediate vicinity than to go haring off to the southwest.
I said to explore starting with the SW the hexes around Olegs. We came from the north, so it is reasonable to assume the bandits came from the south. We can clear the two hexes below Oleg's first and map them.
We should be able to map a plains hex in a day.
We should be able to map a plains hex in a day.
Not according to Richard's armor we can't.
Sorry, that was why I went for horses. Oh well.
Where is Richard? He seems to be absent lately
I'll try to get him to post.
Sorry for being completely dead, I don't look at Paizo as often as I should, and I just don't really feel the same enthusiasm about PBP's as Udo does :P
It's not that I've lost interest...It's that I'm lazy and I don't really feel super-encouraged to post unless I'm directly needed. I'm not a very good player, sorry.
I've most certainly read everything that's happened, I just don't really have an appropriate response or anything to say in all honesty.
When you need him, Dick will be there. But until then, I'm more of the silent watcher type.
I can change my posting habits if you'd care for me to, I don't want to make you hate me :P
@DM_Kudos - Tomorrow (Tuesday 5/22) I'll be attending a state department of education meeting so I'll probably be out of touch all-day. Feel free to be creative with the following if you're so inclined.
Knowledge (Local)>
Or if necessary ... Initiative
That 200 XP is for the party, not for each individual character, correct? If so, that translates to 35 XP per character.
That number, along with most numbers I'll post, is per character.
I hope this isn't too much since we are only level 1. Later on, I might get more "stingy."
That number, along with most numbers I'll post, is per character.
I hope this isn't too much since we are only level 1. Later on, I might get more "stingy."
To be blunt, it's incredibly much. We're meant to get 25 XP per character per hex explored (that is, 100 XP per party per hex explored for a party of four or five), and you're giving us two orders of magnitude more than that.
You'll get no complaints from me! Haha.
To be blunt, it's incredibly much. We're meant to get 25 XP per character per hex explored (that is, 100 XP per party per hex explored for a party of four or five), and you're giving us two orders of magnitude more than that.
If this is going to ruin your fun, then by all means, please reduce the amount to 25XP. I didn't intend to make this into something but if this will offset something, we will change it.
Often times I find that the amount of XP given out is never enough and people come up short at the end. I was going to use this as a way to move things along.
To be blunt, it's incredibly much. We're meant to get 25 XP per character per hex explored (that is, 100 XP per party per hex explored for a party of four or five), and you're giving us two orders of magnitude more than that.If this is going to ruin your fun, then by all means, please reduce the amount to 25XP. I didn't intend to make this into something but if this will offset something, we will change it.
Often times I find that the amount of XP given out is never enough and people come up short at the end. I was going to use this as a way to move things along.
Well, I certainly can't complain about the fun I'm having now, but I'm thinking of the fun down the road. IIRC, there is just over 9,175 XP/PC to be had in Stolen Land as written, 1075 XP from exploration, 600 XP from quests, and 7500 XP from statted encounters (as opposed to random encounters, which this count doesn't take into account). 9,175 XP would put a PC at just over level 4. With the way you're rewarding exploration, we get 8600 XP from it, which, again excluding random encounters and assuming the statted encounters will give us the same amount of XP/PC because you're changing and augmenting them for our larger group, leaves us with 16,700 XP/PC. That puts us well into fifth level by the time we start Rivers Run Red, assuming we do our jobs and don't ignore or fail at accomplishing things. Among other things, this gives us access to third-level wizard spells when we're meant to be working with second-level spells, which is a major power-up all things considered.
And the extra exploration XP adds up over time. There are 308 hexes in the Stolen Lands to explore. Exploring all of them would usually give us 7700 XP by the end of the adventure path. Exploring all of them under this system would give us 61600 XP by the end of the adventure path.
Basically, unless we deliberately avoid doing things or fail at them, this extra XP will give us several levels more than we're meant to have, and make things, especially towards the end of the AP when all this extra XP will have added up, too easy for an already very powerful party. Walking all over encounters meant to close out the story in an epic fashion is, I think, far from fun. If you want to compensate us for failing at something, it would be good to see if we actually fail at it first and then correcting for it, rather than assuming we will do so and building that assumption into the reward system. This can be accomplished by adding extra "random" encounters, augmenting encounters we're meant to have in the future, or adding in quests tied into our backstories which we as conscientious players really should follow. And on another level, maybe we shouldn't be compensated for failing at or ignoring something at all: our awfulness or negligence should come back to bite us at some point.
Personally, I trust that Kudos will be up to the task of keeping us at the level that we're supposed to be at without letting us steamroll encounters. It's still early in the campaign and not anything worth getting in a twist over.
Personally, I trust that Kudos will be up to the task of keeping us at the level that we're supposed to be at without letting us steamroll encounters. It's still early in the campaign and not anything worth getting in a twist over.
I'd be happy to trust him if he trusted us. Look at his stated reason for this monty haul. He believes, rightly or wrongly, either that the amount of XP our individual PCs are supposed to have at the end of the adventure is too low (as written, of course, the encounters will not give our group of seven PCs all the XP a group of four PCs is supposed to have by the end of the adventure, but, quite rightly, Kudos isn't running those encounters as written), or that we as players are going to either ignore or fail to collect some of the XP we're supposed to. This extra exploration XP is meant to be a patch for that. In other words, either we are meant to be more powerful over the course of the campaign than the adventures assume and thus intended to steamroll encounters, or we are meant to face encounters appropriately souped up for our souped-up PCs, in which case Kudos has given himself a lot more work for no reason, or we are assumed to fail at various points. None of these assumptions indicate trust in us as players. Therefore, I am reluctant to trust that Kudos has made the right call in this case, and will present my arguments to see if he has thought about the possible ramifications of his change. As for it being early in the campaign, that's why it's a good idea to have this discussion now, before the ramifications begin screwing things up and Kudos has to come up with patches to fix the problems caused by this solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
I also think it's ridiculous that we get tons of XP for walking around, but that's another argument entirely.
Before I go into a specific response on what has been said, let me set the stage here. Also I will say it many times after this but please understand that you will not hurt my feelings if you don't agree with my way of conducting this game. I threw my hat into the ring for DM'ing this adventure as a new challenge to my DM'ing experience and if it turns out that what I come up with is not what people like, then so be it. I will change or adapt, and if that is not successful, I will step down. We are here to have fun and not to get frustrated and I will have no part in the latter.
As we have discussed before in this post, I have traditionally never gone down the route of handing out specific experience when it comes to encounters. For no real reason, I just have played my games with a simple "You now advance to the next level" statement. I could very well see that this could be something negative about me as a DM because it is straying from the typical means to DM'ing.
Related to this, in the times that I have used exact XP values I also throw in my sort of twist on how it is played out. I am aware of the total amount of XP that should be gainged from exploring but to hand it out in a constant value everytime is something I don't agree with. Let's say (for the sake of keeping this short) I like to apply the rule of "diminishing returns." This being your first time exploring something, I say you, as a fictional person, gain a lot of knowledge doing something for the first time. If you continue to explore and push forward, you will repeat many of the same actions and not really learn anything new, hence a diminishing return in experience. I don't apply this to much else (I.E. combat), but since this is an auxiliary means of gaining XP, I didn't see much harm in using it here. To me, the point of this adventure is to seek out the adventures in the land and have fun doing so. What I don't see as the point, is to trudge around the land in the hopes of scraping together the XP that could be earned from it. Basically, I don't want you all to be forced to cover the whole map because of that notion you are missing some XP.
Again, I can completely understand some people not liking how I do this and I am always open to opposite opinions.
Lastly, as with any other pre-made material I have used, I will always look to change things. More specifically, I look to alter early level content mostly because I have felt that this point in the game we don't have as many "fun tools" to use as we would later in the game. Throwing a little extra XP to you in the beginning to push you up is not going to alter the outcome of the game if things get tailored back.
Now, specifically to what you are saying Anwel, I'd like to offer the following. If this does not suit you because of the way that you like to play, I will not argue.
I'd be happy to trust him if he trusted us.
Quite frankly, I have every bit of trust in you and I have no reason to not trust you. I fully believe that you can play your characters quite effectively and don't want this to be concieved as a doubt in your abilities to play the game. What I am trying to do is to push us past level 1 and quickly.
A little playing with the math of early levels and it should be easy to see that you can die very quickly. A good bow shot to someone with 6HP means you are dead and to me, that is not fun. A good bow shot to someone with 20HP is not going to be as debilitating. Therefore, I feel now is a good time to apply my rule of "diminishing returns." Get easy XP early to get you up to safe levels, then come back to more traditional means of playing the game.
To add to this further, I have seen everyone here make some FANTASTIC characters that, quite frankly, make me jealous. I would almost feel bad if someone died this early in the game.
In short, I agree with you. The whimsical decision to give the XP that I did might have seen ridiculous without a proper explanation. I would not be opposed to adjusting what has been handed out.
Thoughts?
And as I've said, if what I'm saying is too far out there, I would not be opposed to altering/adapting or in worse case, stepping down and letting a different person try their hand in running this.
I give my 100% confidence vote to DM Kudos. Being the DM is a tough task and his rationale is sound.
DM Kudos did not mention that APs have a huge attrition rate and move much slower than tabletop games. That alone is sound justification for moving things along faster as long as the characters don't breeze through their encounters.
Confidence in the GM DM. I'd be happy if we just leveled up automatically when the Adventure Path indicates the appropriate places. I could care less how much XP I really have.
Anwel ... Just how much of the Adventure Path have you read? Sounds like you know a ridiculously large amount of info for this as a player.
I'm fine with whatever the DM sees fit. I've often seen the first few levels fly by in PBPs, for exactly the reasons stated above. The first few levels, you can be taken out in one shot, fairly easily. i completely understand this rationale, and have the utmost confidence in him that he'll be able to handle this AP. If he wants to tweak XP, I won't have a problem with it as long as he doesn't make this whole thing too easy, and I don't think he will. It's not that I don't get what you're saying, Andwel, I do, it's just that the first few levels are really tough on PBPs, and this should help alleviate that, and help us get into a "safer" zone, where a lucky hit isn't as likely to straight-out kill.
I'm personally okay with however you want to run it, as I said before. I'm enjoying myself thus far, and you've done a good job. It's fun to see how much we've strayed from our original game already. :)
Before I go into a specific response on what has been said, let me set the stage here. Also I will say it many times after this but please understand that you will not hurt my feelings if you don't agree with my way of conducting this game. I threw my hat into the ring for DM'ing this adventure as a new challenge to my DM'ing experience and if it turns out that what I come up with is not what people like, then so be it. I will change or adapt, and if that is not successful, I will step down. We are here to have fun and not to get frustrated and I will have no part in the latter.
I'd like to think we can disagree on a matter or two, or many, and discuss these disagreements rationally, without getting bogged down in frustration. I apologize if my posts gave you the impression that I was frustrated, or trying to drag you down to that level, or trying to indict you in some way. That was not my intent. Sometimes I do come on more than a little strongly over the Internet. I am, for the most part an introvert who doesn't talk much and who prefers to speak carefully, but who feels much less inhibited when communicating with the written word.
As we have discussed before in this post, I have traditionally never gone down the route of handing out specific experience when it comes to encounters. For no real reason, I just have played my games with a simple "You now advance to the next level" statement. I could very well see that this could be something negative about me as a DM because it is straying from the typical means to DM'ing.
Again, no indictment is being made against you personally, or against the style of gaming to which you've grown accustomed over your career – which, by the way, I'm sure has been longer and more fruitful than mine. What this does mean, however, is something you've already acknowledged. You come to this style of character advancement without as much practice at it as some.
Related to this, in the times that I have used exact XP values I also throw in my sort of twist on how it is played out. I am aware of the total amount of XP that should be gained from exploring but to hand it out in a constant value every time is something I don't agree with. Let's say (for the sake of keeping this short) I like to apply the rule of "diminishing returns." This being your first time exploring something, I say you, as a fictional person, gain a lot of knowledge doing something for the first time. If you continue to explore and push forward, you will repeat many of the same actions and not really learn anything new, hence a diminishing return in experience. I don't apply this to much else (I.E. combat), but since this is an auxiliary means of gaining XP, I didn't see much harm in using it here. To me, the point of this adventure is to seek out the adventures in the land and have fun doing so. What I don't see as the point, is to trudge around the land in the hopes of scraping together the XP that could be earned from it. Basically, I don't want you all to be forced to cover the whole map because of that notion you are missing some XP.
Okay, I see where you're coming from. I do not agree with your rationale. I think it mixes up cause and effect. Normally, one learns new abilities and skills as a consequence of gaining experience (both literally and in the form of XP). Doing something for the first time is a new experience to be sure, but it is by no means necessarily a more fruitful one. Each time we explore a hex we experience something new: a new copse of trees atop a hill, a new landform, or a new view of the sunrise. The more fruitful experiences are those experiences marked by encounters, where an objective is gained, an obstacle is encountered in the path between us and our objective, or obstacle is overcome to achieve an objective in some measure.
When it comes to exploring the whole map, I think that is something we, as both players and characters, should be invested in. As players, of course, it is our bounden duty to come up with a reason for our characters to do so beyond "the multidimensional being controlling my every move wants me to become as powerful I can". What's more, we have, in this case, with these characters, accomplished just that. Just to pick a few examples, Anwel wants to range as widely as possible in order to meet as many potential allies against his dark masters as possible. Khargol wants to range as widely as possible in order to spread his message as widely as possible, and to influence the lives of as many people as possible for the better, as he sees it. Garth wants to range as widely as possible because any nook or cranny might contain the portal to the First World that he seeks. And of course, there's the little matter of the Swordlords having charged us with a task, and it being more than within their power to execute us if we disappoint them (perhaps through those Restovite guards due to show up at Oleg's any day now).
Again, I can completely understand some people not liking how I do this and I am always open to opposite opinions.
Lastly, as with any other pre-made material I have used, I will always look to change things. More specifically, I look to alter early level content mostly because I have felt that this point in the game we don't have as many "fun tools" to use as we would later in the game. Throwing a little extra XP to you in the beginning to push you up is not going to alter the outcome of the game if things get tailored back.
As I hinted earlier, I do not disagree with the idea, just the in-universe rationale and the execution. It seems clumsily done and not really justified in-universe. To take a break from the criticism to offer something constructive, the way I would handle things, if I had the same driving motivations as you (for the record, I don't consider the need so pressing due to our numbers and the extremely generous point buy, but I'm not the GM and it ain't my call), would be using the tools the adventure makes available to me. Namely, there's a table of random encounters included with the adventure. Now, you want this early advancement to be a speedy process, and combat can take a long time especially with so many people and especially in a PbP. So just pick one, either at random or influenced by whatever factors, and make a good story out of it. You could, for instance, weave a tale of how we defended our camp from marauding wolves, maybe subtract a few spells and other renewable (and soon-to-be-renewed, since we're camping) resources from our characters, and award the extra XP on that basis. There's no risk of us dying due to leveloneitis, and we get the rapid advancement that you, and apparently all the people who have addressed this issue who are not me, want. The only downside is that it demands you write a bit, and that we cede a little control over our characters (though again at no actual risk) to you for the first few levels. But at least it makes sense.
Anwel ... Just how much of the Adventure Path have you read? Sounds like you know a ridiculously large amount of info for this as a player.
I've read the first two adventures with some care and skimmed through the later ones. I purchased the AP some time ago in anticipation of running it, either as a PbP or FtF game, but got roped into GMing a CotCT PbP and couldn't find a reliable FtF group anyway. It's one of the reasons, besides balance, that I'm glad Kudos is not running the adventures precisely as written (the particular disagreeable change at issue notwithstanding).
Just dropping a quick note to say I'm out of town for this weekend. I fully plan on coming back on Tuesday morning. We can chit chat till then and go full bore Tuesday.
Much as I hate to say it everyone, real-life circumstances are conspiring to pull me away from my PbP games in a way that makes it necessary for me to trim the fat a bit, as it were.
Because this is the last PbP that I was accepted into and also the one with the largest group of players, I feel that, logically, this is the best one for me to drop out of. I'm sorry for having to leave everyone so early into the campaign. I'll write one more post to remove Khargol from the group. I hope that everyone has a really great time with the rest of the campaign and I'm sorry I won't be able to experience it with you. Good luck and thanks for letting me play with y'all!
Sorry to hear that, Khargol. It was a pleasure having you, and I'll miss my flanking buddy.
Farewell Khargol. May things in life go easy for you.
I'd like to think we can disagree on a matter or two, or many, and discuss these disagreements rationally, without getting bogged down in frustration.
I will agree to disagree. As long as I'm not going to ruin your fun (or anyone elses) I would like to proceed with your suggestions in mind. I will taper back the XP given on exploration and focus more on "specialized" encounters.
I will do my best to make sure that these encounters fit the story well enough but I would stress you don't look too much into them (unless I get a huge strike of creativity) until later when the creative juices get flowing.
I should have stated before that I don't want attrition to set in with this group just yet. I was pushing more for easy XP now to get everyone hooked and then later shift to more random encounters but your suggestion works well for me.
Sorry guys ... it was a hell of a week. I'll catch up today!
Really sorry that I'm doing this sort of suddenly, but I'm going to withdraw from this game. I'm feeling like my Pbp's are a chore, and I'm not really having fun with them anymore. You can take me out however you please. Once again, sorry about this, and best of luck to you.
I am still here, but it is good we started with such a big group. Unfortunately the momentum of PbP attrition is much against us.
I'm still here as well.
Can I count in anyone else? Once I have a total head count I will consider opening up recruitment.
So far we're down Khargol, Jeremiah, and probably Richard Hawke.
With Garth and Anwel we still sit at 4.
I've spoken to Dick Hawke, and it appears that he won't be returning.
This is to confirm a continued wish to participate.
Then it is settled. I will wait for Garth to respond to this although I would be surprised if he doesn't wish to continue.
In the meanwhile, feel free to continue with gameplay and we will carry forth.
Is the recruitment taking place? If so, where? I haven't seen posts in the recruitment thread.
+1
I thought we were going to continue on for the time being with the people we had.
I wanted to see if Garth was in or not.
If I still don't hear from him by the end of this week, I'll just boost the ranks.
Udoeak still with us as well?
I'm still here.
I think we'll count Garth out.
Since this is a game for you guys, how do you feel about selecting the recruits?
The only thing I would look for is someone who posts daily (weekends are an exception) and is a good team player.
That's pretty much all I'm looking for as well. That and another melee. Udo may be good as a temporary main frontliner, but he has little staying power throughout the day, with his limited buffs.
Note to self: prepare defensive buffs for Udo. That said, another meleer would be helpful, to say the least.
Got anyone interested, Kudos?
I can get my AC fairly high, it's the offensive ones I don't have many of. Enlarge person and mutagen, and it's infeasible to be making more than one Mutagen/day in most situations. I just need to be judicious in application, I usppose.
No one specifically in mind. I've poked a few friends, but many had the sort of "eh, I guess" response... so I probably won't take them up on it.
I'll post something in the recruitment section here and see who comes in. After a couple days, I'll let you guys decide who you want to join. I'll just say how many I'd like.
Seems like we have a few options. When would we like to close the recruitment?
I'm good to close up recruitment when ever you are. I was hoping to see more ranged/caster/skill applications, but that was, apparently, restricted to the original recruitment. This time, it's melee, melee, and more melee. I know I wanted some melee, but damn.
Be careful what you wish for :P
That said, I think we can hold out a little longer. I don't think we have enough applications of sufficient quality to replace all the players we've lost.