Palace of the Vampire Queen (Inactive)

Game Master Terquem

I miscalculated the rounds with Windel.

Windel channeled for 8,5, and 13 HP.

Rownig was only hit once for 17 HP.

I have Hal down 6, so it looks like your second calculations are correct.

The current maps of the dungeon levels are still posted above, your party is at the crossroads of the 20 x 20 passageways near the first set of huge double doors that lead to the goblin temple. Do you know where you want to go from here, or should I just move you toward the second level...

...and see what happens then?

I would like to move the goblins into this level. I'm sure they'd like their temple back, and it will be easier for them to support us if they have the first level in their control.

Thoughts?

Well someone has to dismember those giants before the Vampire queens curse causes them to rise form the dead and try to kill us.
Though that will mean we likely need to clear this floor entirely for that to work.
I have plenty of combat spells left, so I can at least contribute

Also there is the chance that more Giants will arrive while we are clearing things out. We have no idea how many more are coming to this place.

That's a good point. We do not need zombie giants.

Minor set back, tried to sit up today for a while, had a little bleeding. Need another at or two I guess

Very sorry

Terquem how are you feeling?

I feel a little better, had to change medications at the first of the week and it knocked me down a bit. I hope to have messages out tomorrow

Thanks

I am feeling well enough to start getting back to updating games. It will be slow at first, maybe two or three games today, and then the rest will follow through the weekend.

I appreciate everyone’s patience.

I’ll start each game post with a review, to try and bring everyone back to where we were when we left off, and a prompt to getting us moving again.

I imagine it will take some time for everyone to realize the games are going to get moving again.

Again, thank you.

We will deal with the gruesome (and time consuming) task of dealing with the bodies, and Miagnik's trip to see the good king, as long as no one is bothered by his little side trip.

Sounds good Terquem.

Glad you're doing better. If you need to take some more time, don't worry too much about letting us know. We understand the situation.

I'll be busy until tomorrow.

For those who celebrate it

Have a happy holiday tomorrow

Things that have happened to me in the past two weeks

spent the night in the hospital
Yuk

found out I do not need further surgery
Yea

found out I am going to be a grandpa for the second time
Yikes

Yeah for gobble gobble day here no sparing the bird in my house.

Sorry to hear about your health but at least there's no further surgery.

Congrats on being a granddaddy.

Glad things are looking up for you Terq. Happy holidays.

What a wild holiday week. unexpected visitors, too much food, laundry drain back up, and internet outage, wow I had a
blast...

Sorry for the long delay, I know it is a drag, but starting tomorrow everything should be updating more regularly.

Thanks

Glad to hear that everything worked out, Terquem. Thanks for the update and can't wait to continue!

I was just reviewing this game this morning and I realized that I am doing a terrible job, really terrible. It was almost one year ago that the party rescued Dwarbon from the Palace, and here we are, one year of game play later and all we’ve manage to do is fight three Hill Giants.

I apologize for this.

I once believed that Play by Post gaming would turn out to be something like playing a table top game, but it is not. No one enjoys exploration, or making decisions about what to do or where to go, and conversations between player characters are brief. What players want is to move from one short description to action scenes as often as possible, and to wrap up combat quickly and in doing this I have failed.

I am going to try to do things a bit differently, but please keep in mind that battles of six fifth level characters with appropriate CR encounters are going to be tough.

I'm really busy at work this week so I'm going to be spotty.

Exploration is hard in PbP games. It's mostly a conversation between the scout and the GM. Lots of stealth and perception checks punctuated by occasional disable device checks. What that's a few minutes in tabletop can drag on for months in PbP if the scenarios are approached the same way.

I have found that the best way to run PbP games is to treat the decisions, the lead up to fights, and the important conversations as the "game." Everything else should be a sort of GM guided montage to get to the next bit of story. The fastest and most engaging PbP games are the ones where the GM handles all the stealth and perception checks for the party, and then just covers exploration in chunks, describing the scene right up until the next trap, fight or important discovery.

Because of the limitations of the format, dungeon crawls and mysteries are very difficult to do in PbP

I agree with your approach DH, and I hope to start running this game with that in mind. I am just always going to be a little worried about the decision making, but I think I can make that work so that the players do not feel like I am deliberately leading them into dangerous situations they are not prepared for.

That's the balancing act.

The rule I've developed is that "combat starts with the first successful perception check from either side." (Not with the first attack roll)

As long as the various penalties for perception checks are remembered, it works pretty well. Most of the time an adventuring party isn't going to walk into an ambush if they have a competent scout. Sometimes they will though, and that's fine.

See what a mess I make when I try to move things along

I assume everyone enters the first room be for the door is closed

Ah, fair point. Stephaine was waiting for Whiskey Barrel to get back from asking king Heelggod about the door.

I think for the sake of expedience I have another solution though. We could have Stephanie just react on seeing everyone else leaving and use her Wizard school ability to teleport through the rapidly shrinking entrance of the big steel door.

Might not be the smartest decision but I can't see the little gnome princess being alright with getting left behind.

I imagine almost everyone will be a little preoccupied over the next week or so.

For those who celebrate these things,

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

I’ll be posting, or at least trying to anyway, and trying out some new Google Picture map techniques.

I'll be around to post

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, to all the patient and understanding players in all my games. What a week.

My home computer unexpectedly crashed. I hope to replace it this weekend but it may be a few days before I can update games, sorry

We'll be here.

Sorry to hear that Terq! Hope the changeover is seamless...

Update on my return - I don't want to bore anyone with details, but here we go. I bought an HP Pavilion on Friday, returned that machine to Best Buy on Monday and picked up a Dell. I am almost done setting up the Dell, and lucky for me my portable Hard Drive has almost all of my old maps and tokens. I hope to post a brief game update to all my games today, and by this weekend I should be posting maps again.

Thanks for being patient with me.

Good luck.

I think what Stephanie is doing is a clever idea. I'd like to give everyone an opportunity to tell me, here in this thread, if they intend to try to interfere with her before I post an update

I was about to respond to Hallister and Rownig's examination of the chain when I had to start rebuilding the second computer I bought this week so i apologize for that

I really appreciate your patience, and as I know some of you are among the most active posters on these boards that is really saying something, that is, that you waited for me to get back to this.

No problem. This is the first game I ever joined and I think you were new online at that time too. You gave me a chance to join a game. It's been a steady game for nearly 4 years now, so that is saying something regarding everyone's commitment.

I'm always happy to wait in a great game with well-played characters. :)

As fopr acting before Stephanie does anything, Outside of simple combat, Mae isn't always sure what anyone is doing let alone why, so she's not really going to do anything.

Okay I am going to do a game post, I hope you all like it, but...

I am trying something new. Look at the map in the header "Dungeon Map."

It is a google picture I should be sharing with anyone who can access the link. You should be able to zoom in and out, and move your own token. When you close the picture it should save what you have done.

It took me a little while to resize the tokens, so if they appear off in size please let me know.

Also, I would appreciate it if everyone could try to remember to put an ooc comment in your posts (particularly in encounter situations) that is a map reference of where you are supposed to be at the end of your post, just in case you cannot access the map, maybe I or another helpful player will move your token for you.

Any questions?

I'll be sure to utilize the map.

Heh. figured it was too convenient.

Though I get the feeling our group is going to take that "Can't kill me, Can't kill you" thing as a challenge rather than a fact.
We did purchase weapons with the sole intention of fighting demons after all.

I'm going to try the diplomatic option, which I can only assume will be immediately veto'd by Hallister, Maignik and Windel. However presenting this as an option would be something Stephanie would do.

Stephaines mother being a rather potent witch I can't imagine she has a traditional outlook on demons.

Mae is also going for diplomaecy. ;)

(Nice work Stephanie...)

Mae is also going for diplomaecy. ;)

(Nice work Stephanie...)

Your comment regarding not being a demon had me belly rolling when I read it last night.

While I try to come up with a short post to tell Stephanie what she learns by studying the circle, do any of you want to talk to each other about what you want to do next?

I think Hal will just stand guard. He doesn't have a lot to say in front of a demon.

I bit under the weather, so DMPC if need be.

Whiskey barrel is very likely quite grumpy right now.
There is kind of a big stone door between us and him right now. I wonder what one fiendishly smart owl can do in that room while we are all over here.

I'm thinking we are going to need to progress to the next room and deal with the next demon. I'm really not excited to deal with that honestly, evil outsiders are nasty critters for their CR.

Were there some easy method for us to get back there I'd say we should grab some of the hacked up giants to use as tribute.
Its hard to advocate fighting demons in a place like this when there is so much more to still deal with.
Which is honestly kind of sad with the amount of work we did to make sure we all had weapons that could deal with a demon under the assumption we would be fighting them.

I don't know what sort of demon is over there though so I can't make any pitches for plans at this point.

Mae is all for offering anybody except herself up for tribute.

Following that, attack the demon. Either one - the one chain'd here, or "Pronggul".

I'm still fighting off a nasty cold. I'll get back to posting by Sunday.

I will be traveling to Redondo Beach, California for training from Sunday to Saturday next week. The company is sending a laptop computer with me, and as long as the hotel has WiFi I should be posting normally, but if there is a delay, please forgive me, as you know, ITS REDONDO BEACH in February, and I live in Idaho, hahahahahahahahahah

The wifi in this hotel is terrible, and the homework I have to do every day is in tense, so I'm sorry for being away. I will be back soon