GM thunderspirit's Online Gameday PbP: Burnt Offerings (Inactive)

Game Master thunderspirit

I'd interpret it as you using the performance to effect the same thing as the skill check, so it would get any bonus (i.e., half-org racial bonus) or penalty (i.e., size penalty) associated with it.

That's how I read/see it also. Thanks for the input! Sorry for disappearing over the weekend. Super busy weekend then I got hammered with some type of bug.

It's funny you brought up the storms, my power is currently out so my posting might be a little spotty until it comes back on. Until then I'll be posting on my phone so I won't be able to see the map. Feel free to bot Maddie as necessary.

Dink whips out his wand of Silent Image.

AUGGH!

Just for Dink! :-D

Something I would be remiss for not pointing out: the PbP Online Gameday officially ends Saturday, Jan. 4th, 2014. That means we have a little more than seven weeks to wrap up, which should be plenty of time...but please keep in mind, we do have Thanksgiving and Christmas/whatever your traditional winter solstice holiday is taking up part of that time, when some or all of us may be away from keyboard.

I also need to make it clear that I have thoroughly enjoyed the interplay with the party; you guys have been a fun table for me to run, and I hope y'all have been having a good time as well.

We are probably 40% done once you cross over to the island itself, and the effectiveness of the "organized" resistance from the goblins will be self-evident, LOL. We are not in bad shape; the beginning part of this scenario and the goblin hideaway at Thistletop are both decidedly sandbox-y and things get a little more linear after that.

But keeping to a time frame is one of my weaknesses as a GM (overheard at nearly every PFS table I've ever GMed: "what? We have how many minutes left? Okay, I'll try to speed things up..."), so rather than face down a time crunch with, say, two weeks left, and panicking to find a way to finish, I wanted to put this out there.

If someone has ideas about helping to keep things on pace, I am all ears.

I'm really enjoying this and I'm sad to hear they put a time limit on it. I guess we may need to rush some of the fluff, or at least make it linear, in order to ensure we finish. EF will likely have good ideas about how to time this.

I was just about to ask how we were doing.

It's a bit of an unfortunate side-effect of PbP but in order to keep things moving sometimes you have to just update/jump ahead without getting everyone's approval or at least just assume that moving forward when nothing is there will be fine with the party. It doesn't give everyone the chance to react the way they could in real life but rather than letting everyone react to an empty room for four days, just post the description with some spoilered checks and move on once everyone has seen it and taken their chance with the checks. Especially once the party has established a procedure, I sometimes just assume they will do the same for each location e.g. Quiven scouts ahead a few feet, everyone follows and makes Perception checks, then we move on.

Posting all the loot and relevant KN/Perc checks immediately after downing a monster or entering a room can also help. Then the players don't have to wait for the GM to respond with the answers to their rolls. I like to use spoilers for checks, as you have probably noticed in my games. Looks like lots o' goblins coming up but posting KN spoilers about monster abilities during initiative posting can also speed things up; once again the players don't have to wait for the GM to respond because the info's already there.

All in all I think you're doing a fine job and I'm having a good time. But if you think we need to speed up to finish in time those are my simple suggestions.

Completely happy here. Guess we have to get the show on the road!

Yeah, I'm fine with the way things are though. Just thought I'd throw a few ideas up there at Quiven's prompting. If you think we need to speed up, we can all work on it.

Let me be clear that I have no issues with taking longer than January 4 myself. I don't much care if I get a GM boon; I have plenty of them already that I'm not using. LOL

However, I'd feel really bad if you guys, my players, missed out on the boons and prizes our online VC has offered because I, your GM, didn't finish in time. That would epically suck, and I'd feel like I failed you guys due to that.

So while I've been reticent to roll inits and checks for people, I'm getting better about it; and if someone wants to take the lead on that I'm okay. (What I do NOT want is to play anyone's PC, or have anyone else play their PC, for them.)

We are not at condition critical. I want us to finish in time and then none of the above will be an issue. That's why I mentioned something and wanted to be sure everyone knows the time frame at which we're looking.

Re: Spoiler

We could always try to arrange a time(s) where we are all online and can post rapidly.

Re: Spoiler

We could always try to arrange a time(s) where we are all online and can post rapidly.

I'm game for that.

I dont mind going past the end date to keep playing and having fun. :)

I'm not too concerned about the GameDay prizes either but I know there are some here who haven't made it to a Con and likely don't have any boons, etc.

I'm enjoying the game and the group too. Unfortunately, I do have another scenario lined up for Maddie when this one ends, so if we could reach a conclusion at the appropriate time, that would be helpful. Also, I wouldn't mind still being eligible for a boon. :)

My apologies. My Internet has been out at my house. Getting in touch with AT&T they said it would be out till at least Saturday... PbP by phone sucks. With that said, feel free to drop Dink from the party. Not sure he adds much and I know I'm slowing things down. No worries from my end.

Otherwise, feel free to bot him till this weekend. His first move is
Always to taunt since Maddie has bless going on.

-Sean

I don't see any reason to drop Dink right now. We can make do for a bit, no worries.

And yeah, posting from your phone can suck. A lot.

A boon would be great but its not a dealbreaker if I miss out. No worries either way.

If Dink wanted to change up from the Taunt, it looks like the +1 competence bonus to attack rolls from Inspire Courage stacks with the +1 morale bonus to attack rolls from Bless. The only thing that wouldn't stack would be the +1 morale bonus to Fear Saves that both effects provide.

We NEED Dink!

DIIIIINNNNK!!!

Sadly, Dink has elected to drop from the game; in his mind, it was unavoidable.

I will remove our beloved insulting gnome from the board and we will continue, unless you all decide now is a fine time to run away.

Going out of town until Sunday night. Will most likely be radio silent until then.

You can bot me if you want :)

Don't mean to rain on Ander's parade, but:

To use this ability, the magus must have one hand free (even if the spell being cast does not have somatic components), while wielding a light or one-handed melee weapon in the other hand.

Maybe I misunderstood the issue or there's something somewhere else I didn't catch though.

Talking about spellstrike.

The question being whether it was ok to ungrip and regrip a weapon with one hand in order to cast a spell and use spellstrike, since gripping and ungripping are free actions.

Ahhhh, I see. In that case I think you're right:

At 2nd level, whenever a magus casts a spell with a range of “touch” from the magus spell list, he can deliver the spell through any weapon he is wielding as part of a melee attack.

So yeah, you'd just get the one "free" touch attack instead of a regular attack along with it, but it seems you can do that.

Yeah, that has been my workaround for using a 2-hander.

Cool. That works. I never would have thought of that.

I wish I hadn't made Beleg such a traditional "Intensified Shocking Grasp with Magical Lineage and lots o' Pearls of Power" magus. It's been overdone because it's the most powerful use of the magus (at least according to some). But I wish I had done something more unique. I could always pick up some better arcana later on, I suppose. . . .

Since it's getting late and I'm not sure how close we are to finishing, I just wanted to say that, despite my earlier comments, I'd rather
finish the scenario after the Game Day deadline than cut the scenario short in order to make the deadline.

I hope that means Maddie is enjoying Thistletop. :-)

There is one more level below this one; I'm sure we could blaze through but frankly then you'd miss awesomely-written rooms like this one (this one is, in fact, one of my favorites).

Though, we still could see if there's a convenient time to meet up online (Skype/MapTools? Skype/Roll20? something else?). Otherwise, I'm just fine with playing on!

For those who don't know: Ander and I are Venture-Officers in real life, and Carl is a retired VO, so I think I can speak for them when I say I have no worries about them getting boons for the "official" game day. (I know Beleg runs quite a bit as well IRL, so I think he's in the same boat.)

Since both Maddie and Quiven expressed some concern about missing out (not unreasonable, to be sure), I'm sure one of us has a spare player boon we can donate to the cause if we wind up out of the "official" running. :-)

I've never taken advantage of any boon before but I did complete two other PbP Online Game Day adventures already so I'm assuming I'll still get a boon. If true then I have absolutely no problem with playing this one out as it was written.

I do think it would be cool to play with you guys in real-time on Roll20/G+ Hangout or whatever but its certainly not necessary. I'm up for it though!

Yeah, I play/GM IRL quite a bit and have GM'd/played at several conventions so I have quite a few boons floating around. I'm also the organizer for an upcoming convention in January so I have access to those boons; I can give Maddie and Quiven the ones I would have gotten for myself. Phil (store owner) and myself are pretty much VLs in everything but name because he felt it was inappropriate for the store owner to be a VL and I didn't want to take on the title only to give it up a few months later when I leave Bloomington (also because of time constraints last semester).

I'm all for keeping going and I could do an online session for a few hours but scheduling something like that is always a bit tough. During the day I sometimes don't know what my schedule will be until the morning of-I might get the day off like today or I might be working outside in the cold all day. Hard to tell. At night I'm usually free.

I've never taken advantage of any boon before but I did complete two other PbP Online Game Day adventures already so I'm assuming I'll still get a boon. If true then I have absolutely no problem with playing this one out as it was written.

Ander/Tektite can probably correct me but I think that for every GameDay scenario you complete your number gets put in to a drawing for prizes after the official end day.

Meh, whatever. :)

I really don't need anything in return just to agree to go past the deadline, that's pretty much all I mean. I enjoy playing the games, plain and simple. No need to give up any of your boons.

However I would have thought running an entire chapter of an AP might get a little leeway as far as the deadline goes.

Beleg is correct about the drawing and thunderspirit is correct in that I do have a few boons floating around.

Let's take out time and enjoy it!

I did have a couple of boons that I got from something but I believe I forgot to turn them in or something. I had assumed I just had to hold on to it but I never assigned them to a character. Nothing special, I think one might have been from completing 3 scenarios in Season 4 and the other, umm, I have no idea... something generically qualified for.

Ah, I still have a copy of one : Year of the Risen Rune. I might have a few guys that earned 6PPs in the time period allowed. I have no idea how to actually apply it though or how to get another copy.

I appreciate the offer of boons, but it's not a huge deal if I miss out on them.* My biggest concern is that Maddie is scheduled with her regular to go through the next level of Thistletop after Gameday was over and I don't want to keep them waiting too long/miss out. On the other hand, I'd rather not miss out on anything in this scenario, so we'll see how it goes. I'm hoping we'll be able to finish this before February in any case.

*Although if someone has a Kitsune boon they're willing to part ways with, I'd love to have one. :)

I think I have a Kitsune boon. Let me check when I get home. That won't be until 1/5 though.

I have about 15 boons sitting in a drawer.

If you happen to have two, my stepdaughter would love one. But by all means, take care of Maddie first. :-)

Here's the official word from the online VOs.

I am perfectly content to continue running this for you all, but I wanted you all to be aware of how the situation plays out from their perspective.

If someone needs to pull their PC out for another game, no worries; I will happily give that person a chronicle good for what we've done so far, no questions asked, and no repercussions for such a decision as far as I'm concerned.

And if not, I believe we can wrap this in another couple of weeks with everyone's help. :-)

I'm set to keep going!

I'm good until Groundhog's Day!

Let's keep going. If anyone has any feedback I will actually see Jesse tomorrow as he will be at the store that I game locally at tomorrow (I live in Houston).

My only feedback would be that, at in-person conventions, two slots are usually scheduled for module-length stuff, so consideration like that would be welcome.

But it would also be difficult to do, so it may be best to leave things as is.
</rambling out-loud thoughts>

Yeah, I'm not sure how they would do it in the future but that's a lot to cram in in just a few months. Maybe give module and AP people an extra month or so? Or let them start early? I'm not sure.

Modules are one thing but I think APs, although they give the same XP as modules, actually have way more encounters in them. We're at least making a lot of progress. My Reign of Winter Gameday game is barely halfway finished, part of it due to slow posting by the GM. But even with a good group and GM like the group we have here it's a struggle to finish AP content in that amount of time.

That's a good point — APs are almost like pure dungeon crawls.

The sanctioned parts anyways, yeah. I haven't counted, I'm just estimating from my experience. In real life we can usually finish a module in two 4-hour settings, whereas it takes my Reign of Winter group more like 4-6 sessions to get through a book (granted, not all of the book is sanctioned and we do everything in the book, but usually the sanctioned parts are about 75% of the book).

Even with the way you have run Shattered Star it still takes a good bit of time but I've really enjoyed it. Plus, I like the dungeon crawl feel of it sometimes, at least I do in person, since it seems you always have a chance to do something.

I've also enjoyed this AP immensely. I don't care about the time it takes, I'd like to complete it properly. In fact, I wouldn't argue about continuing with the AP afterwards. Still I'll mention that idea about the "extra block" to Jesse if I can get the chance to talk to him for a bit.