Hey all- so sorry for falling silent! I’ve been sick all week and haven’t been able to think very clearly. Hopefully I’ll be caught up on my games by tonight. And hopefully the site will be working better by then...
No worries. Just get better, y'hear? :)
Hello.
So, in order to kick this back into gear, I'm thinking about just handwaving the fight and moving on. I'd like to finish up the first book soon and move on to the next one. That one also has a dungeon crawl, but I'm thinking about replacing it with something less prone to bogging down.
We can, of course, assume Randal acted with great honor and bravery.....
Fine with me. One less cut-and-paste from my log of week old posts...
Checking in - hand wave sounds a plan.
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Okay, I'll try to get a post up tomorrow then. Got a wedding to go to today and I'm trying not to get so distracted I forget to get ready for it.
Sounds good to me as well.
Okay, so given the recent instability of the site, I've been thinking about moving the game over to Mythweavers at the beginning of the next book. I would like to know what y'all think on the matter.
I'm open to the notion - am mulling the same thing for my Starfinder game.
Last few weeks (last 30 days truth be told the site's been creaking) has left me feeling less than impressed.
I'll move if that's what most people want. I'm ambivalent about it personally. The boards here can be a pain in the butt sometimes, but all my games are in one place. Moving to another site means having to check another location to see what's up.
It's not a great imposition, but makes it seem like about an even trade to me.
Seems like we want to stay. Anyone heard from Emi's player?
I'd prefer to stay. All my games are here. If the group moved I'll try to as well.
Okay, I'm not going to move the game and just deal with the outages. Hopefully we've seen the last of them for a while.
I'll PM them to see if the game's updating for them later. It's a holiday and with the recent site issues they may still be catching up.
In other news, I have a blog! It's mostly GURPS stuff, but I may add some Pathfinder stuff at some point. I've recently been working on some sci-fi stuff, so check it out if you're interested.
Well, I'll shoot them some PMs tonight then. I've got to get ready for lunch at my nana's and it'll be awhile before I can post again.
I'm here - seems the game wasn't updating for me... but now is. Apologies on the delay.
Cheers
BD
I'm around too. Just waiting for Vigny's initiative to come up before posting.
Hey- sorry for the delay!
The longer the boards were down the less I was checking them. Now that they seem to be stable I should be back to regular posting (and I'm hoping to catch up on all my games today).
No sweat, still getting back in the groove myself.
I've been contemplating a couple of things and I want to run them by you. For the next book, I was thinking about how to handle the more dungeon crawly parts and I think I'm just going to narrate to the parts where things happen. This takes some player agency away, but I think it will massively speed up things, especially if we establish how you are handling things before hand.
The second thing is implementing something from GURPS called the Mook Rule. Basically, if you deal damage, they go down. It'll help with the fodder and I can throw more at you without feeling too guilty because you can just mow them down. It also makes for less bookkeeping on my part because mooks are either up or down.
So, thoughts?
All that sounds fine, I'm totally unfamiliar with the ap, so if you think it's too crawly, I yield to your opinion.
Parts of it are very crawly and we've spent almost a year just trying to clear the dang castle. Compressing the crawls will help move things faster, I hope.
that said, I think I'm going to go ahead and start with the rest of the castle. Hopefully I can wrap this up before christmas.
I'm okay with writing the narration if you guys are okay with it. I can roll through areas without much in them, but I'm not sure how I can make it much faster than what we've been doing.
Both sound good to me Salsa - make sense in keeping encounters ticking over and allowing us all to make headway.
At Soli touched on, think the strength of this group is the role-play, so would be good to still indulge that during the crawls, but allow your suggested "cut-scenes" (so to speak) to move our collective saga on :)
I’m not crazy about the mook rule... I feel like it might make all those encounters blur together into a bland, completely forgettable slog.
As for expediting dungeon crawls- I’m not sure exactly where the ideal balance point is between keeping things moving and allowing for player agency and RP opportunities, but I think you pretty much have to do some expediting in PbP. In the game I’m running, I try to drop completely meaningless rooms, and when the players choose a direction I usually move them through as many rooms as it takes before they hit one that requires action or decision. I also try to automatically reveal anything that one of the PCs would know/notice by taking 10 on the appropriate skill check, and I’ve started trying to include higher DC info in spoilers. I’m certainly not saying that system is perfect but I do think it’s sped things up without feeling too railroady... I hope?
I wouldn't be throwing just mooks at you. You'd still have to fight significant enemies as normal. It's just a way to handle the fodder so that having to deal with them doesn't take so long.
I'll definitely consider what you said Nate. I think I'm also going to strip out the encounters that just have a couple of grunts and combine them with other encounters. Thankfully, after we're done here, we don't have to worry about another crawl for a while.
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I'm fine with the changes you've suggested Salsa. I do agree with Jerukh that we are a more RP oriented group compared to dungeon grinding so opportunities of that type are going to be more precious than every little combat in every single room.
I'm not personally very concerned with maximal player agency. I tend to think the use of adventure paths is much more akin to an a la carte menu than an open kitchen where you make your own meals. Really the key is preserving the illusion of player agency, because we are after all heading inexorably to book 2, etc.
I also think in situations like Brinewall, which (seems?) like an huge "dungeon" creates certain tensions between completeness and story. One day at Brinewall took roughly a year of real time. It gets hard at a certain point to maintain character story with that kind of telescoping. For example, in the game Reiko disappeared yesterday. But really, who of us really remember Reiko very well at this point? A lot of the smaller details that make the story richer and more nuanced fall away as real time passes unless there are ways to keep the story moving as real time passes.
So, I'm not too picky about the particulars of how you do it, but I think a certain amount of encounter and exploration aggregation is a good thing. After all, if something isn't working we can always change it again.
It's true....I can't seem to remember Reiko at all...….
heh heh
You know Jerukh, I think you should still have all your bombs. Since the overnight reset we've only had the 2 ambushes and the current fight. I went back and looked and you used the club in the first ambush, the second was glossed over, and you haven't used any in the current.
You probably just forgot to adjust all your daily expendables lists.
Salsa - you fine with me having all my bombs back?
Yup. I was wondering when you could have used them up, but I wasn't going to argue if you had a record.
Poor book-keeping made worse by the reliability fog of the boards o'er the last month :S
Alchemy duly restocked and used with aplomb :)
I'll be out of town from 10-25 to 10-30. I'll not be posting at that time. Bot me as needed.
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I deserve that for not double checking it before I hit post. :P
No, you may not bot the GM, but since it's my birthday, I give you this one time boon.
The Warlock's Gift
In honor of the GM's 29th birthday, you may choose to treat the result of one die roll as if it rolled a 29. This boon may only be used once.
Early. I was four days shy of being a Halloween baby.
I deserve that for not double checking it before I hit post. :P
No, you may not bot the GM, but since it's my birthday, I give you this one time boon.
The Warlock's Gift
In honor of the GM's 29th birthday, you may choose to treat the result of one die roll as if it rolled a 29. This boon may only be used once.
Uhh... a 29?!? is that a typo?
Nope. :)