GM ShadowLord's Rise of the Runelords Campaign (Inactive)

Game Master GM ShadowLord

Sunday is.

I suggest you Vivi retreat. You are faster than the bears, and your movement might attract them into a position the others can engage them. Only a miracle will save you if you stay there fighting this round.

I will be traveling to PAX Unplugged tomorrow and will be generally unavailable through Sunday. I hope to catch back up on the games by Monday at the latest.

Sorry about the delay... real life has been kicking me in the ass lately.

*sends hugs*

I should be somewhat good now. I had to replace my car after I got in a low speed car accident (I am fine, my old car was not) and I have been switching shifts a lot at work due to the holidays.

Thanks for your patience. Also, thanks for the trap, coming toward me (allowing me to use spring attack), and the healing. I would likely be rolling up a new character if not for that combo... note to self, don't stay in melee range.

Or "Leroy Jenkins" vs giants and their bears.

I also forgot to say the sleet lasts 1 round, so it should finish by Vivi's turn. The terrain remains difficult and slippery for 10 rounds.

We are waiting for Yav and Jess isn't it? I guess Daud and Vivi talk meant they are delaying.

Not so much delaying as probably moving further south. If Yav confirms that she can burn the bridge there too, might as well be preemptive.

Makes sense. It's a wand so I can do it multiple times.

I hope everyone is having a safe and happy holiday period, no matter which (or any) one you celebrate.

Assuming Yavenee agrees to hop onto his shoulders, Vivi's turn would be to move (or double move if possible) to the southern bridge with her hanging on like a child being given a piggy back ride.

This has been a busy but merry week definitely for me! Merry holidays everyone!

Remember we are all hasted and can run quite much.

Happy New Year's Eve, y'all. Please stay safe and have fun!

Happy New Year 2020! Let the year bring joy and many adventures to you all! :D

Happy New year!

Happy new year!

Happy New Year (and decade) to all of you. May they both be filled with enough joys to outweigh the sorrows.

My apologies.

This game keeps disappearing from my game list for some reason, this has now happened multiple times and I can't figure out why that is.

Happy belated holidays and new year to you all!

Happy New Years all.

Everyone is up people!

I'm already determined for the next two rounds still.

Yeah I think Sunday is going to the same place as Jessica.

Another problem, Sunday may have the bow but since I didn't figure he did he never got arrows so... I don't know.

‍♂️

Ah that sucks man! This encounter is really build against Daud capabilities :/ We really need to prepare better next time. Well I guess since we are at town it should be possible to find a shop and beg for arrows, or perhaps some city guard... the barracks are on fire, but there must be arrows there too.

It is terribly boring having to sit behind and just look when there are those encounters you can do absolutely nothing, so I feel bad for you there man.

Thanks.

I am perfectly fine saying that since you know the attack was coming you are stocked with arrows. You had time to prepare, so fire away!

Okay.

*checks map*

Well the dragon Isn’t in range/line of sight so nvm for right now I guess.

I share your trouble Daud. All Delendir can do right now is to keep running towards the dragon and crossing fingers the beast does not decide to flight again to the other side of the town to burn down a different neighborhood before the half-elf reaches a good shooting position.

I suppose Delendir could ready an action in case it flies over him, but alas, he would be barely able to move each turn then.

I wonder how Bard the bowman managed to kill Smaug. It is terrible this cannot be repeated nowadays!

Yavenne, where exactly is you are trying to teleport Vivi and yourself? If you have difficulties with the map I can try to move your tokens for you around, if you let me know approximate locations.

Pretty sure we were teleporting back to where you were by the northern gate (or whatever is left of it).

The giants and the dragon are both here at South, you would leave us alone!

Jessica in particular is in front of the piling number of giants in the bridge street.

True, but we don't know that. When we split up we had sent Sunday and Jess to meet you at the gate, we were going to follow once the bridge to the south was torched. We were not successful, but we have no way of knowing that you guys headed off from (or rather, never were at given you met them halfway) the rally point we picked.

The good news, as it were, is that Jessica can sense roughly where we are... so she might be able to get us a message somehow. I think. Maybe she can have you send Ghina or something.

(shrug) As a great general once said, no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.

Yeah pretty much the plan was to teleport back to you. We have no idea how things are going on that end

Think I moved us to roughly where we would have been coming in... Yavenee can correct me if I am off though.

We are probably overthinking it here people.

I feel unless we lower our sense of verisimilitude it is going to be very difficult to make this multi-combat setting flow.

For me at the least this is going towards a direction I am not liking/enjoying.

I honestly don't know what to do or what's really going on, other than we currently have a dragon attacking that only Krysta can really engage.

Similar, truthfully. At this point I am almost willing to just cede them the buildings while we get the townsfolk to safety. It just doesn't seem like we can meaningfully engage them (apart from Delendir and Krysta).

Yeah it's not overthinking when we need to deal with a nap, attacks at far flung different points, movement that takes up three or four rounds while attackers continue to wreck things and can hit from pretty much any distance. What's your suggestion?

Let's try to move more coordinately. We can use the message cantrip to talk from side to side of the town to ensure we stay focused and working together.

I would say the dragon is the highest menace right now. Anyone unable to support Krysta while she heroically fights the red one, can try to face the giants, or if outnumbered at least disrupt their advance with magic or throwing anything at hand at the streets to delay their advance until we have dealt with the dragon.

Any better idea?

We try to coordinate through here and that doesn’t really help much.

Message has a range of 100f+10ft/level. That's 200ft limit.

I think that should be enough to have some easy communication. The guards and other city NPCs that have not retreated shall be able to help gather ourselves too.

Anyway, I will help Krysta with the dragon. If you can try to do something about the giants, that will be just great, otherwise we will see how much we endure it, and if we have to leave the village to their destruction then let that be.

Delendir will fight until the end though. This is the only home that remains for him.

Anyway we are waiting since Tuesday, Jessica/Krysta and me we have already posted our actions.
If you do not know what to do, state you just move or wait, but try to post something, otherwise it is confusing for the GM to know how or when to move to the next round.

?

Another problem, Sunday may have the bow but since I didn't figure he did he never got arrows so... I don't know.

?

Were we moving somewhere?

Being honest this is not the most clear of the encounters we have played on this campaign, but taking into account how experienced roleplayer you are, and how active you Rysky are in these boards, I was expecting you could offer us more to help this encounter move and be fun.

Because otherwise we keep not knowing what is your intention for this game and we either remain here silent letting this die or we continue skipping rounds until Sandpoint is destroyed and we have to run away and concede the village to the giants.

I'm starting to think this is a fight that honestly works better face to face on a tabletop than on a PBP format.

I did offer to do it via narrative! :)

Part of our problem is the pacing we have In this game is making it harder to run an already challenging encounter.

I did offer to do it via narrative! :)

That you did, and we wanted to at least give it a try first (myself included in that we).

That being freely admitted to, along with the holiday slow down having probably not helped with the pacing... well...

At this time, I would like to revisit that option. After having tried this massive combat format for several rounds (some of them spent running, most of them spent trying not to get flattened by boulders) I can honestly say that I am not having fun with this segment. Even now that I have an adversary to engage with. I would rather we not lose the town, it has more than a fair bit of meaning to me, but I am honestly not sure that anything we are doing is significantly stopping that (beyond having saved most of the civilians).

Now if others are really enjoying this section I can shut up and bear it... but now that we have given it a try I think we should at least consider the option of just hand waving this segment in narrative, perhaps with inputs on how each of us would react to overarching events (like the dragon reveal, for example) and ultimately if we would withdraw or die fighting.

Thoughts?