If you guys want to attack, I'll give you a surprise round as you get the drop on the grindylow ghouls. I'll roll Init thereafter and do subsequent rounds normally.
Quick Note: I may not be online tomorrow. If I am, it'll be later in the day. I may also take another Saturday off to keep catching up on home jobs, but I'm hopeful that by next Monday I'll be able to put the foot back on the gas for this game.
sorry for the inactivity everyone and not really posting why. It's been hard to keep with a pbp game, I have no actual excuses for as to why I stopped posting the only thing I can say is that things just sort of move slowly so I end up not posting because I don't feel like it'll really hurt since half the time I come back on there's only 14-15 new posts each couple of weeks.
However after thinking about it I realized that this line of thinking is unfair to the rest of you. I'll try to pay more attention to the thread moving forward and give more of a heads up as to when I lull.
my sincerest apologies to the DM for being a bad player, I'll try to make it up to you
Looking forward to seeing more of you Vincent!
My semester ends soon, but I have a big paper I won't be submitting until after Christmas... I'll keep trying to keep up but my posting won't really pick up until the new year probably.
Thanks for weighing in, Vincent & Culder. In these games, success seems dependent upon both the GM and the players maintaining some semblance of a consistent posting rate. If the GM slows down, so will the players. If the players slow down, the GM will follow suit. It's the nature of the beast and can become a vicious circle if it goes on for too long.
For a while I was trying to post every single day in the hopes that you players would follow suit, but then Culder reminded me that when I started this game I advertised it as a 'leisurely' game so I scaled things back some. Lately, though, I've become too leisurely. Part of it is from being a 1st-time PbP GM; I'd read that things tend to bog down in PbP games during dungeon crawls. I've learned since that while that's true, things get MUCH slower when your dungeon has 5-foot-wide tunnels where any battle's likely to become one PC vs. the monsters, one-at-a-time. I'll try to avoid this mistake in the future.
I considered posting something along the lines of "I'll rededicate myself to this game after the holidays" but realized that my GMing performance has been slipping for months already and the game might not survive letting things slide for another month. So I'm going to try to at least nudge the pace up a notch over the next month; then, once the holidays and their distractions have passed, maybe kicking things up another gear. While I admit I've lost a bit of my initial enthusiasm and passion for this game, I AM still very much interested in running it and am NOT suffering from GM burnout. I'm looking forward to the reckoning you guys are destined to have with Master Scourge and, beyond that, to the kinda horrific (from a GM's standpoint) freedom you guys will have to go anywhere and do anything once you've got a ship of your own.
@Vincent: There's a spoiler under my handsome mug in this post. The bad news is I rolled really low on your Knowledge (arcana) check; the good news is I goofed on the DC and gave out more info than the roll deserved!
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Man am I glad I didn't spam my channels on those damn undead grindylows!!!! I might have to use my spontaneous casting ability to use one of my spell slots for a cure spell as well.
Yeah, the whole time you guys were trying to decide what to do about those creeps, the old song "Just Walk On By" was playing in my head. :)
I've got a midday doctor's appointment tomorrow, so if I post it'll be late in the afternoon; Wednesday looks iffy as well.
Next week, I'll be iffy on Wed. 12/13 and will almost certainly be unable to post on Friday 12/15.
Oh yeah--we've got that minor Christmas holiday coming up soon as well. Let me know what you guys want to do in regards to that; I believe last year we took a mini-hiatus between Christmas and New Year's Day.
I think a mini hiatus between Christmas Ann's New years is appropriate
I think a mini hiatus between Christmas Ann's New years is appropriate
I would certainly not be opposed to taking a break over this busy time of year. Not that this particular campaign is very labor intensive, but if it is easier for everyone to take that break and come back renewed and refreshed in the new year, I absolutely support it. :)
Hiatus works for me. I got an extension on one of my courses, so this semester that won't stop kicking my ass now lasts until the first week of January.
OK, looks like we'll take a break from 12/24 through 1/2/2018.
Good luck with the classes, Culder.
Sorry for the mostly-unscheduled lull. I should be back to daily posting for the next week before our holiday break.
So, have we decided if we're going to continue into the cave, or do we want to try and get out? I'd like to try and find Kroop and Sandara (or what's left of them) if we can, but it'll likely be a bit of an uphill battle.
Sorry for my lull too- end of the semester plus busy time of year at work. I’m all for pushing on.
Happy Holidays, folks! And Happy New Year!
See you all in 2018.
Yes, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all!
Jeez, 2018's not starting out well for me....
Back spasms sidelined me yesterday.
Today my library evacuated me almost immediately due to a suspected gas leak; I hopped a bus to another nearby branch, but I don't have an outlet to plug in my laptop, so it'll be a short day.
Tomorrow I've got a major snowstorm due (apx. a foot of snow), plus I'm expecting the delivery of a new laptop (my current one has started shutting itself down for no reason, so I'm being proactive before it shuts down for good).
I'm hoping to be back on Friday (Saturday at the latest); hopefully by then I'll be set up on my new laptop and we'll have heard from Jarvis (who seems to have gone missing).
So the Holiday Hiatus will be a few days longer than previously announced. In the meantime, stay warm and plan your next move in the sea caves.
OK, got a new laptop that doesn't shut itself down when it feels like it, and I believe I have all the apps and files on it to resume this PbP game. Jarvis seems to have gone missing, so I'll run his PC in NPC mode for the time being.
A quick Situation Summary: The devilfish did some major damage (as yet mostly unhealed) to Culder before swimming off up the NW tunnel (its token is still half-visible on the Roll20 map). You guys found one half of what's likely a pair of magical bracers (useless by itself). There was also talk of retreat, though such a course of action will likely bring Mr. Plugg's time limit for island foraging into play.
So...what's the next move for our pirate heroes?
Library's closed both Sunday & Monday (MLK Day), so I won't be online those days.
Also, I have a biggish rainstorm coming through on Friday with residual freezing rain on Saturday. Right now I'm leaning toward staying home on Friday but hitting the library on Saturday...but the forecasts are still iffy on exact timing/amounts.
Anyhow, I aim to (again) try to get this ball rolling on next Tuesday, meaning I'll try to post every day (except Sundays) and will give players a couple of days to reply before I bot them.
It appears the game has stalled, and we may have lost both Jarvis and Vincent. Should I try to recruit some new players? Everyone else interested in continuing?
Sorry for my long quiet- I have a month long 'intensive' course that I'm doing right now in addition to my normal grad school schedule, so I've been pretty busy. I shouldn't even be on right now but I wanted to give a heads up. I'm going to really try to post something tomorrow.
Sorry for my long quiet- I have a month long 'intensive' course that I'm doing right now in addition to my normal grad school schedule, so I've been pretty busy. I shouldn't even be on right now but I wanted to give a heads up. I'm going to really try to post something tomorrow.
OK; I'll wait for your post before doing any botting. School work comes first.
So, is Jarvis the only one we're missing right now?
I enjoy this game and would like to keep playing- in the interest of full disclosure though, my posting is most likely going to be spotty until the middle of February.
If everyone else feels like we've lost too much momentum to really get the game moving again, then I understand and we can let it go (and I'll apologize for my part in slowing it down). If everyone else wants to keep going then feel free to bot me as necessary as we limp through the rest of the cave and then we can talk about whether we want to try to recruit a new player to replace Jarvis when we hit a port.
Jordan's gone quiet, but that seems to be short-term--just over the last week. Maybe he got sick, is busy with school work, or got sick and is therefore catching up on school work. Vincent popped in with a post but hasn't yet followed up.
We've definitely lost momentum. Slogging through the sea caves has slowed it even worse. And having a foe cast entangle on top of it...WTF was I thinking??!! Maybe the lost momentum is terminal at this point.
IF we get beyond the grindylow cave, things should pick up: we're near the end (Finally!) of The Wormwood Mutiny, meaning the showdown with Plugg, Scourge, and their minions is just around the corner. Are we going to get there, though?
I'm still interested in GMing this game if the players are still interested in playing.
I'll give Jordan another day to post before trying to push things forward tomorrow.
Due to a pending medical procedure, I'll likely be offline Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm hoping to be back by Thursday afternoon.
Hope it goes/went well!
Thanks. Waiting on the results of some lab work.
With Presidents' Day this week, I'll be offline both Sunday and Monday; I should be back online Tuesday.
Also, I sent each player a PM to see who's still interested in making this game work.
LAST GASP? A Campaign Reboot?
Well, it appears not much has changed. The party's still stuck in the sea tunnels, unable or unwilling to decide what to do or where to go next. Here's my latest/last idea to salvage this game:
I'm in a Skull & Shackles game where the GM posted on a very slow basis (every couple of weeks turned into once a month, and now he's been AWOL since 1/2/18. In spite of this, three players are still checking in, and recently one asked if someone else wanted to take over GMing the game. My idea is simple: Mash those three players together with the three remaining players here and sort of try to start fresh.
To do that, I'd need to do some hand-waving and some prep work. Here's my plan: We'd jump forward a bit in time. You guys would be off Bonewrack Isle, back on the Man's Promise, and (shortly thereafter) in pursuit of another ship to plunder. Long story short, your ship would catch and grapple the other ship during a storm, a big wave would hit and knock your characters overboard, you'd swim to the shore of a nearby island with three survivors from the other bat (the new PCs), and (before you can attack one another) I'll throw another threat at the combined party. It'll soon become clear you're all shipwrecked and will need to join forces to survive.
At that point I'll run a modified version of Souls for Smugglers' Shiv (Book 1 of the Serpent's Skull AP), a bit of survival horror as you try to find a way off the island. After that, it'd be back to piratey goodness.
Any interest? Cuz I think at this point Plan B is to fold up our tents and end this game.
GM Piratey Steve... I appreciate all you've done for us in this game, and your willingness to take things and move them forward, but I am going to be selfish and bow out of this campaign. It has been a great deal of fun for the most part, and you have proven yourself to be a very fair and fun-inducing GM, but I am going to look to other diversions. To you and my fellow players I'd like to leave by saying: thank you for everything, take care, and good gaming!
Aghon
Good luck in your future endeavors, Aghon. It was fun while it lasted.
well this kinda stinks. GM its your call at this point really, I've had fun with the game (else i wouldn't make a post about not being able to climb for a hour of in game time), but its your game. I'll at least go along with whatever you decide.
*Peeks in*
(>_>)
*Waves*
(^_^)
The writing's on the wall. I'm going to end this campaign here and mark it inactive.
Thanks to all the players. It was fun while it lasted and has taught me what to do (and more importantly--NOT DO) in a play-by-post game. Wishing you all good gaming in the future.
Garn! Ol' Piratey Steve needs to roll up a goblin tribe an' ain't got no other dice roller to fall back on.
So....
49 goblin warriors
49 goblin noncombatants
3 3rd-level sergeants
1 5th-level lieutenant
1 6th-level goblin leader
not worrying 'bout canine allies/mounts right now....