Wondering where he got off to. Thanks for the heads up. :)
I appreciate the information!
I'm back! Sorry about that little delay. Let's get things rolling again.
As an aside, guys, let me know if the fight starts to drag. It is an option to resolve a fight in the direction it seems to be going if things go on too long. I think things at present are fairly neck-and-neck, but if you guys are getting bored, we should progress things onward. Not every conflict needs to be played all the way through.
Will do! I'm definitely having fun with it, though I'm worried that we're gonna succumb to the sunk-cost fallacy and throw everything we've got at this very secondary objective. Or that I'm going to, anyway. ;-)
It is probably the main conflict of the GM's Turn (the Player's Turn might have more to do, admittedly). Now seems a good time to explain how you get these resources back.
Traits are refreshed every session. That is to say, using a trait to help yourself can be done once per session per trait, unless you have a trait higher than Level 1 (which I don't think anyone does). Using a trait to hinder yourself has no such limitation.
Fate Points aren't recovered automatically. Instead, you earn Fate Points by acting strongly in accordance with your character's Belief, working towards your personal Goal (but not accomplishing it), and playing your Instinct when it applies. At the end of the session, we go over the Goal, Instinct and Belief to check these for everyone.
Persona Points can be recovered by accomplishing your Goal or playing against your Belief in a "cool and dramatic fashion". The latter can be tricky to quantify, but it's essentially about breaking a Belief for a compelling in-character reason. You can also gain Persona Points by being the best "embodiment" of your conditions and traits, both positively and negatively, and by being judged to have made the greatest contribution towards the completion of the mission.
Nature can on occasion be taxed, though nobody's been eager to try using it yet. Nature is restored during the Winter session, or by providing the "prologue" (recap) at the start of new sessions, or by missing a session.
Effectively, once one of these resources is used, it's gone for the rest of the session. I have really enjoyed running for this group, and I certainly wouldn't mind coming back to the patrol at some point, so it would come up if we ever did that.
Alright, guys. Difficult schedules, a difficult set of encounters, and a newly non-portable laptop have really hampered my posting rate over this term, but the good news is there's a light at the end of the tunnel—I have three final projects left (two art projects and a screenplay) and then I'm free once again! Of course, exactly what will be happening after this mission is hard to say, so that may have no bearing on any of you regardless.
Anyways, I'm going to be gone for Paizocon from the 26th to the 30th. I may be able to post somewhat irregularly during the con, but no promises!
Alright, so I'm not going to be able to post much at all for the next few days. I need to get lots of last-minute con game work done for Paizocon. Grimm is a nice simple system, but the story preparation is actually really tricky!
Way jelly. Have fun at Paizocon! We'll see ya when you get back. :-)
You succeeded, Thom, but I'm going to hold off til tomorrow to post the message, since it will also represent the effective end of the Player's Turn and I want to do it justice.
So here's what we're going to do. For now, the story of Thom, George and Vivian will enter its intermission. I'll cycle the game down to the next group of players shortly, and I'll run through a session with them. I'm starting to get the sense that the "tradeoff" aspect of this PbP isn't really viable, though. It's a tough system to learn. It's not that fun when, just when players are understanding the system, they have to step back and let another group of new players struggle with it.
I'm going to give it one more session. If I still don't think it's working, though, I think I'd like to come back to this patrol. If you three are available, that is. I think this is a good group, and the mice work well off each other.
I'd like to for sure, and this game isn't TOO time/rule intensive to play, but I did sign on originally because I knew it'd be a short term thing. Doesn't mean I'm not interested, so yeah - PM when the time comes, and we'll see where I'm at. :-D