The Strangler of the Shadow Moor (Inactive)

Game Master Terquem

I have, but what I meant to say was that her spear doesn't have reach anyway. Both her spear and her dagger are melee only, and the enlarge extends her melee reach one square, no?

Oh I see, you mean damage, I was thinking reach, gotcha

I don’t want to lose anyone because the battle is dull and dragging on, so I was thinking of wrapping it up with a narrative post. It looks like we lost Felicia, and I haven’t seen Diarmal post in a few days.

Can I end the battle with a victory for the party and get the game moving into Role Playing again?

Alright with me.

If you think it necessary....

I am agreeable with this. The battle seems to be in our favour and is almost over, so that's fine. Hopefully they're still around though.

We can move along; if they show back up, they show back up.

For me, the surprises and gimmicks are all wore out, and the party should know the weaknesses of the remaining monsters, and given that I made them weird, but with low hit points, once you know how to take them down it should be easy, so a post tomorrow to slide us into the clean up. There is one piece of loot on the ground after the battle, does anyone remember what it was?

Axe of the dwarvish lords?

Didn't one of the zombies have a bow?

Ding! 50 bonus xp for Ribat

Sweet!

I'm still around, not disappearing yet!

Not going to lie, though - I totally lost track of who was where in the whatnow with the thingamajig. That was a huge fight.

I sent out a group of PM's with the following message

The battle has ended, I would like to thank each and everyone of you for hanging in there, I know it was tedious. Could you please tell me if you intend to stay with this game, or if you would like to drop out. Or, if life is ganging up on you and you need more time, just let me know and I will get you in the background for a while.

Thanks for your interest in the game and your patience

Still onboard! How much experience did we get for that battle?

I'll be calculating it today and should have it posted tonight

I crunched the numbers a couple of times and came up with a total of 3100 experience points for the monsters

Then I added a +30% modifier for the encounter

and came up with 4030 experience points to be divided between 10 characters

So each character gets 410 experience points (I rounded up to 410, from 403)

Still here!

So from the starting 100 XP, and the 225 from the first battle, and 410 from this one, I am now at 735 XP. Are we going at Slow/Medium/Fast character advancement?

I'm quite curious to see if Marvin's boomstick will work for anyone else. That is to say, if anyone else can actually fire it. But that's just me musing on the implications of whatever is going on in this world.

We are using the fast advancement track

I have not had a response from Rydwen, Meero, nor Felicia. We will proceed without them, for now.

Jazz has officially withdrawn from this adventure and will wander away in the night

As of now, there are no details in my campaign setting about the Elemental Plane of Shadow. If you concoct something interesting it may become part of this setting.

You made a good case for Moloween being the resident goddess of primordial darkness in general, didn't you?

The Plane of Shadow, as I understand it, can be thought of as not wholly (thought certainly somewhat) unlike Ginnungagap as situated in the Nordic cosmology according to Snorri Sturluson's Eddas, or The Twilight Zone: It is, according to some, the "quasienergetic plane" where the Positive Energy Plane meets the Negative Energy Plane - others say that the Plane of Shadow came first, and those two 'extreme' planes came from it in some great cosmogonic fission. Some place it in the category of "transitive plane," like the Astral and the Ethereal, save that where the Astral is the Plane Between Planes, and the Ethereal is a sort of "carpenter's walk" within planes, the Plane of Shadow is the plane by which a truly fearless, prepared, and lucky traveler may reach other cosmologies. It may well be both these things. Travelers to the Plane of Shadow from the Material are likely to find it is much like where they just were - but a twisted and eerie version, where all things are both muted and mutable. Shadows of what are, were, will be, and could be are layered like fine Damascus steel into every solid, liquid, gas, and plasma one finds here. Remember that (in)famous Garfield storyline that ran around Halloween of 1989? He might have somehow briefly shifted to the Plane of Shadow. Ebedneezer Scrooge's odyssey of judgement and redemption may have taken place (at least in part) in the Plane of Shadow. And, as mentioned, the realm Rod Serling showed us in The Twilight Zone may have been where the Plane of Shadow managed to connect with 20th-Century Earth.

No matter what, Shadow is, was, and always will be - even moreso, devotees of Shadow Magic claim, than Light and Darkness, or the "lower" elements. Shadowcasters revel in wielding a power that, though maddeningly difficult to learn to work with relative to most other forms of magic, makes no demands of its own and will never, ever go away - one might say that Shadow already is "away."

Without a stable internet connection at the moment so I can't reply in length. Pretend Marvin is processing everything. I think all the news about gunpowder supposed to not work would be news to Marvin too.

He's an old model anyway, he's bound for some problems getting caught up to speed with non-core functions.

I hope that some of the players at least try to talk to each other about what they plan to do next

I hope I didn't overwhelm anyone with that long post

and now

Happy Father's Day to all the Dads playing in these games!

For my Father's Day, I received the Campaign Cartographer 3 bundle pack (with City and Dungeon builder)

I'm a long time AutoCad user, so I hope the learning curve isn't steep

Soon, I hope, you will all see better maps

I hope all the player's willing to put up with me are having fun in these games.

I will try to update the game before Sunday, but if I do not get to it, I am sorry. On Sunday I am making a special trip to Las Vegas (not for fun, shesh) and will be back on Wednesday

Well, looks like we lost Diarmal now

so after all that nonsense, it looks like Ribat was the only recruited character to add to this game. ha

Not dead!

Work's been crazy this week, my apologies for being unable to get a post in. I'll have time this weekend to get something substantial up.

Shadows...sooo many shadows of What Were, What Are, What Might Have Been, and What Yet Could Be....

Just a thought, DM: You mentioned looking into making up the occasional Shadow Magic 'toy' to toss at me? Some kind of eerie picture album that contained the inexplicably-familiar images of a panicking Basconde Witch, a Scots-Elfish Ranger, and some kind of time-travelling fox-headed bow-twanging Suli Magus might eventually be in order....

I don't remember that, but right now I don't remember much. Very rough trip, but I am back (almost in one piece) and I will try to give you all a game that will be interesting. Please stand by, update in the works.

Thanks for being patient.

I'm good to go, but I've neither food nor a bedroll.

Need to purchase those.

Androids do require sleep, but can go without it. Think of it as 'recharging time' that's required for certain classes to regain spells. Luckily, Marvin doesn't need spells. Grit doesn't seem to require rest to regain, and neither do abilities. They just restore themselves at the start of the day, though it's subject to table variation, in which case Marvin just needs rest after any combat or strenuous activity.

The only other downside to not sleeping is fatigue and exhaustion. Androids are immune to fatigue and exhaustion.

Marvin... doesn't actually need to sleep. They'll continue to do so when it's safe since it improves functioning, and like last night heals non-lethal damage, but it isn't technically required.

Is this reasonable, GM?

Also, might I craft some ammunition? I can purchase the materials needed in town and can do the crafting on the road or while everyone else is sleeping.

I don't suppose we got any additional experience for all the recent shocking revelations? It would be handy to reach level 2 before hitting the trail.

Marvin can buy the things he needs to craft ammo, there is a chemist in this village.

Sorry, no experience points, at this time anyway.

There is a Holiday Weekend coming up for us here in the US of A, so posting toward the end of the week might be slow. I hope to get you moving out of the village (there might even be a Campaign Cartographer map built by the end of the week, my first so don't laugh!).

Oh My[/george takei]

I'll purchase a Gunsmith's Kit then, because I seem to have forgotten to buy one. Lets me craft as long as I have it. Crafted 2 black powder (dose), 2 alchemical cartridge (paper). Also buying 2 trail rations. Total cost is 30 gp.

Yay, map!

Are there any kind of miscellaneous adventuring supplies we might need for our journey? Extra ropes and pitons and lanterns and the like? Diarmal's got 20g he can chip into anything we might want for communal use.

I'm still waiting on Nigel to tell me what 5 silver can buy me.

There will be little activity from me over the Holiday Weekend, I hope to work on new maps. I hope everyone in the States enjoys the weekend as well as they can.

I'll make a post for Sasithorns question, and to hopefully get everyone moving to the Moors, but it will be slow until next week. Thanks for playing

Any other questions?

For 5 Silver Pieces, Nigel is giving you enough bread and cheese to feed you for at least three days, or you can share the food with your friends. The sack contains “rations” and I will call it 12 “rations” . If I tell the party that they need to mark of one ration, I will be talking about a single meals worth of food.

With regard to rations: Do you account for the disparity between the needs of Small and Medium entities? With at least two Small party members (to say nothing of the Tin Gunman), this could be worth taking into consideration.

Summer time can be a busy time for a lot of reasons. This weekend I am running to Salt Lake City to pick up my daughter who is returning from Nepal, so I'll be away for a couple of days. I'll try to post if anything important comes up like a question about the game or an important Character action

Sasithorn, you know it seems to me that you can always find the strangest questions to ask. The rules do not make a distinction between rations for a small character or rations for a Medium sized character, but in this case if I were going to make a rule, I'd say that what I told you applies to your character, and that each of your rations is equal to one half of a medium sized character's rations, or maybe just leave it the way it is, with everyone using up rations equally, which itself seems like a silly thing to talk about because it is difficult to keep a game interesting enough on these boards with me being a crappy DM and then asking players to track something like rations, yeah now that I think about it it was a bad idea to bring it up at all.

Bravo!!!!

Ribat and I are sneaking off to wherever, the others backing us up - I think we're all waiting on you to drop the next breadcrumb/shoe/bombshell, DM.

Yes, I'm trying to get a few minutes available to describe what you find, been very busy

The clues from the campsite, fish bones, a few blackened spots on the ground indicating small cooking fires, indicate the Bullywugs moved on earlier this day. Perhaps there is a trail outside of the ruins that can be followed. You do not hear any sounds. Would you like to make an Intuition Skill Check?

This is news; are we, in fact, using your Intuition/Perception house-rules? Last I was aware, we hadn't been (which was probably when this game was being treated as a little less formal). If so, my Perception bonus should be a great deal higher, if nothing else (and would mean my Perception check just now should in fact have been a 23).

Thank you for pointing that out, and the answer is no we are not using that House Rule (I need to pay closer attention to my games and keep track of what games are using what rules).

That was a mistake on my part.

I will be doing the family theme park thing this weekend, so my posting will be sporadic. Expect things to get moving again on Monday

That's cool man, I will be in San Diego from friday afternoon til monday for my nieces daughters 1st b-day.

would they miss you if you accidentally ended up at the comicon instead?

If you do make it there, check out Hannah Lynn Disney's booth her art is something

Funny you ask that...I was going to sneak away and check it out, but I spoke to a friend of mine and he said "You will wait in line for hours with thousands of people and not get in". Although I heard they will have some events related to ComicCon down in the gaslamp district.

I'll be calculating it today and should have it posted tonight

I crunched the numbers a couple of times and came up with a total of 3100 experience points for the monsters

Then I added a +30% modifier for the encounter

and came up with 4030 experience points to be divided between 10 characters

So each character gets 410 experience points (I rounded up to 410, from 403)

A modest proposal, DM: Since several of the players involved in this battle faded into the shadows themselves immediately afterwards, do you think it kosher to recalculate the experience shares based on who's here now (including our new member, the details of whose journey here the rest of us can only speculate on)? That would increase our experience gain from 410 to 450 (447.7 rounded up) if you're including the DMPCs in the equation, or 675 (671.6 rounded up to 5) for the 6 of us otherwise.

Nope, we will let that stand.

I'm back (and getting too old to do those kinds of weekend jaunts to zoos and amuzement parks, malls, ugh I'm exhausted)I'll be working on a brief update today to get us moving again.

I've been busy with a minor local convention (and a brief power outage), for the past few days, I'm a tad surprised to see things still as they were - is everything as it should be, like a bustling metropolis's twisted, mocking, Pompeii-like reflection on the Plane of Shadow?

Something lke that, I've done the one thing a pbp DM should never do

I've given the group options