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Please, don’t take the comments that harshly Rob.
As a player I like being able to move my figure. It doesn’t matter if it is VTT, PbP, Pb Discord (where I had a GM doing exactly what you are) or face to face. I get a feeling of disconnection when I can’t move my own figure.
That said, playing live I will sometimes ask someone else to move my figure when I just can’t reach it conveniently.
Sorry, guys, life is just life.
Years ago, I used to really enjoy GMing PbP games. I'm learning that now it's more of "one more thing I'm supposed to be keeping up with" than it is fun. I will finish this game, but after that, I don't think I should GM any more of these. I'm way too damn slow, *and* I'm just not enjoying it.
I would like to GM some of our games in VTT, if we manage to have some of those in the gaps between PbP games. I still do GM that way regularly, seem to be at least vaguely competent at it, and enjoy it.
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Tastes change over time and there's nothing wrong with that. There are things that I used to enjoy from my PbP games when I was first starting out that don't appeal quite as much now and there are other things I've grown to appreciate more. What's most important is that you do what you enjoy - gaming is supposed to be fun, not feel like a chore or obligation.
I agree with Lady Ladile (aka Shieara), if you aren’t having fun then don’t do it.
I look forward to you guiding us through a VTT session sometime. I am fine if you don’t GM PbP again. This is supposed to be fun!
Rob, you're an excellent GM -- but if you have burned out on PBP, we could probably get another GM to take us through the last encounter of this adventure -- maybe with you as a player? Do you want us to get another GM to finish us out? What do you want to do?
I had to step down from my halflight kobolds game because I was overwhelmed with real life even though I was fairly close to the end. They finished four days later with another GM. It was the right choice for me at the time.
Do what is right for you.
Hmm
I have run this one multiple times and can take over. It will probably be less disruptive at this point to lose Iovo than Kleines.
I will need a little bit of time to review where we are in terms of success conditions and such, but there isn’t much of the adventure left.
Looks like I will have to leave in the middle of the combat. For some reason, I had thought we were done with that combat.
Please do not attempt to sunder the handwavium armor when Iovo suddenly runs off in the middle of combat. If there is a better way than having Iovo just leave in the middle of the combat, I would like suggestions!
Other than the character not being the type to run off in the middle of combat, I don't see that this will be a big complication. On the other hand, if we don't want to do that then Hilary would need to check for an outside GM to take over. The whole group was in the combat, so switching to any of us causes the same problems.
I've just spent over an hour looking around.
This scenario doesn't appear to have a four player adjustment. At this point, I would recommend we go low tier.
If I'm wrong, please give me a keyword to search and a pg. number with an adjustment.
Thanks!
I hope you have a fun and safe trip!
I’m going to wait until people have a chance to catch up before proceeding.
You may want to review from the start of the adventure just to refresh your memories of what has happened. I’ve also got the rumors document linked in my header. If someone wants to make their own notes in it, that would be great.
I was going to give an adventure summary, but then realized there wasn’t a good way for me to do that given the setup of the adventure. It is supposed to be an investigation and part of that is you as a group deciding what is important.
Hey guys -- I'm really sorry about having flaked out and disappeared. There are reasons and extenuating circumstances, but you're probably not interested. In any event, Bret, thank you for jumping in after I flaked out.
I don't think I should continue either playing or GMing in this game sequence. I'm sad to let it go, but I think I need to. I'm not convinced that I'm able to keep up with PbP in any form any more; and, life stands the chance to get even more complicated in the near future.
I am sorry your life is so complicated. Regardless of anything else, I do hope that gets better for you.
Would you mind if we transferred the campaign to one of us? That would allow us to mark people no longer active or NPC. We could also update campaign to link to the starting box text for each scenario.
Take care and let us know when your life is calmer again, Rob.
Best wishes!
We are close enough to the end where people can roll day jobs!
Honestly, I'm not sure when I'll get to a convention in the near future. A couple of years ago, I figured out we hadn't really adapted to the pay cuts I took moving back in 2014. I went to both Paizo- and Gencon that year, but took the PFS offer of a free room for Tier 1 GMing. I'm too old and too much of an introvert to be able to cope with that. If I'm going to one of these on-all-day cons, I need my own escape space. (And there ARE some antisocial you-don't-want-to-hang-with them stereotypical yukky gamers in our community.) But, there's no way I could come close to affording that nowadays. (It used to cost probably $1k to go to PaizoCon each year.) (Even taking the PFS room offer, I'm probably outside my budget going to those.) So... I don't anticipate being able to do it any time soon.
One of the things in life making it hard for me to concentrate is much angst and uncertainty concerning the college where I'm on the faculty.
One possible side effect of this is that I might end up in a substantially higher-paying job (although it would mean leaving what I think of as my calling). If that were to happen, then perhaps I could consider going to one of the cons again.
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I hope that things work out for you, Rob! I would be happy to play with you again in the future.
Sorry, I was at Mom’s most of today. I didn’t have a chance to respond until now.
Let’s bring the discussion of invisibility here instead of in the Gameplay thread.
At the point that Tovril spoke, yes you could locate his square during the time they were speaking. After that, they still have full concealment allowing them to use Stealth and move up to less than a full move. They have to restrict themselves to half move or have a special ability like the rogue’s Fast Stealth if they don’t want a penalty.
Each time they talk, cast a spell, or drop a dagger (as examples) you know where they are at that moment. Readied actions are your friend here.
A creature with Scent will know when they are within 5’ of an invisible creature and know which square the invisible creature occupies. The seek trick is great for getting an animal companion to find a lone invisible creature.
If Garif wants to change Nico’s command to Seek, I will allow it.
Finding an invisible creature via sight is tricky, and the rules as I understand them are not totally consistent. Pinpointing their square is extremely difficult.
To go any further with it I need to go back through the books.
Thing is, inspire courage is a verbal activity. So the entire time he was inspiring courage, we should've known exactly where he was.
Very true.
Had it been the Bardic Inspire Courage, you could have done exactly what you describe.
My description was a Single Word that inspired Dalton. I am sorry that my notes on effects or description caused confusion.
I need to look at the post again, but could use some feedback on how to avoid any confusion without revealing game mechanics until appropriate.
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Yeah, I would have used the Seek trick if Nico had it. I had him move up in the hopes that he'd scent the enemy within 5' and get an attack, so I won't change Nico's action. Next round he can try to sniff out the target as a move action, to carry out the attack command, unless you feel like the Seek command is specifically needed for that, which would be reasonable.
On the invisibility point, I don't think you need to worry too much about whether your description revealed a game mechanic. You're very forthright about what's going on and possible rules issues, and I think both you and Rees were right, it just happened that what Rees (and I, and probably the rest of us) thought was happening, that bardic Inspire Courage was being used, was not in fact what was happening. I think you played it fairly and correctly, and had we been at a table, Rees would have made the point about being observed, you would have quickly said "You can no longer hear anyone speaking where the voice came from" or something to that effect and we would have moved on.
Looking at it, I did say inspired by the words. I should have made it much more clear that they had stopped speaking. Even with that, the ability could still easily be confused with the Bardic Inspire Courage.
Garif: Sorry, I didn’t check which tricks Nico had. Seek would be the obvious answer for best way in this case which is why I mentioned it. Even without the trick, you can push to try and get the cat to do it.
I need to look at the Attack command and figure out what should happen. I just thought it would be best to resolve the Invisibilty / stealth issue before too much else had happened.
Was the real problem a miscommunication on the Inspiring Word? I hadn’t realized that people thought that Tovril was still speaking while sneaking.
On the way back from fetching a pizza, I figured out a better way I could have phrased it with the Inspiring Word. Something like ‘with those few words, Dalton feels inspired.’ I’m not certain that would be clear enough, but at least it would have been better.
On the Attack trick, if you don’t point it would go after enemies it is aware of. Nico did Sense the invisible creature at one point, but really had nothing to do. Thinking it over, I could have had it head butt Garif at that point. Without Speak with Animals I don’t know what Garif could have done. I need to think on that point some more.
I think that with Attack and pointing the animal should attack where you point. Attack without indicating an enemy probably works in this case. Seek would still be different in that it would go looking for something. Readied action and Attack with pointing would also work.
I would like feedback on ways to do this better.
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Sometimes if I have an NPC or bad guy do something that might seem a little odd or potentially out-of-bounds as dictated by their tactics/abilities I'll just put on my GM hat and say something like:
AKA: This is how the scenario dictates it rather than me not knowing or understanding the rules so don't come for me, okay?
In this particular case if I were anticipating people to be confused by the Inspiring Word I might say something like:
Or something to that effect, maybe with a little more brevity than my brain can muster right now. I'm all for trying to communicate mechanics in an in-game, RP-style manner but sometimes it's just easier for GM and players alike to break out the OOC text and be a little more direct about what's going on or how something is supposed to work.
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I agree with Shieara, that's an excellent way to handle this sort of thing. That said, this was a minor misunderstanding that was made slightly more complicated by it being in PbP rather than at a table, and I don't think there's any cause for extensive soul-searching or great effort in the future to prevent any possibility of misunderstanding, because we'll never get all the way there.
On the question of Nico and Seek/Attack - I think you've summed it up well. A really strict interpretation might say you'd have to Seek first - you've ended up in a reasonably flexible middle ground, which I find is generally the sweet spot in rules interpretations.
I have a face to face game, so update may not happen until tomorrow.
Combat is over, your team is no longer suspected of wrong doing, and the other team will also be released soon.
There is a tiny bit of cleanup to be done and then I will get chronicles out. With RetroCon just stating up I may take a little extra time as I am GMing two tables and playing at three.
Do we want to take a brief hiatus for at least the start of RetroCon?
Sounds like we have a general consensus for a five week hiatus. That would have us resuming sometime around April 15th.
If someone wants to run VTT, the next session is probably an excellent time to schedule it since we have a relatively open window.