Alright, I am recovered from my wedding and ready to go, sorry for the delay on my part. I live in Bismarck North Dakota, GMT -5 according to the online sites I checked, which doesn't sound right to me if Florida is GMT -5.
I have cut/Pasted all the campaign info given so far into a Word document, but have you considered just putting it all under campaign information. Perhaps, spoilered to reduce page browsing...I'm on the road frequently, and having all the info readily available would be great.
Place Name
Relevant info.
@ Balodek - I hope your wedding went great! As for your timezone, I think north dakota is in central time, so GMT -6.
@ scranford - good idea, I shall do so soon.
Okay, we're just waiting for Matthew Winn (who got married yesterday, congrats!) to check in, then I think I'll move things along - it doesn't appear like there's going to be much said around the campfire, this night!
Sorry I'm late. Biggest pre-November Nor'Easter since the Civil War just whacked my area. 90% of the state is still without power. We may still be without for most of another week. I'll be sporadic at best. Really sorry about this guys. I will post when I can.
@ Matthew Winn - I'm sorry to hear that, I hope you and yours are safe! Hopefully the campfire talk will continue for a bit, before we dive into our first encounter.
Buona fortuna (good luck)
Who could blame you for a bit of escapism? When the real world is so crappy, you've got to have an outlet. I hope power gets back on for everyone sooner, rather than later, and that things can calm down a bit. I remember, back in 2003, that our power went out for a full day; I can only imagine what a week of that would be like.
Did you manage to get the wedding ceremony done?
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We did, though it's a good thing we decided to have four witnesses. Two of them were stuck in a two hour line for gas and missed it.
It was pretty cool though. I in my Red Star Trek Bathrobe, her in her Blue original series Nurse shirtskirt. Our two god-children dressed as Paleontologists throwing snowballs during the ceremony at their Cat mother and Cowboy father. My best man came over thinking he was just going to use a shower for the first time in three days and had no idea we were even getting married. He looked like a malnourished deer with bed head when we told him to clean up for the wedding.
When the family across the street looked out the window and saw what was going on, they ran outside to applaud, their ten year old son started playing "here comes the bride" on his trumpet.
To it happen like this, on the day after such a tragic storm, was epic. I could not have asked for a more memorable day.
So... if I post a lot... it's because I'm excited, bored, jubilent, and very much in need of escapist activities. ALL AT THE SAME TIME.
Though I think now that "private time with prison girl" is over (presumably) I'll slow down and let everyone else participate instead of just watch "The Kathai Show"
That does sound epic! Congratulations again, I'll say a toast in your honour (and Balodeks as well, also recently married) tonight over a bottle of the finest spumante bambino (which my wife affectionately calls, "the diet pepsi of sparkling white wines")
This week i have a different workshift and won't be able to post until midnight (my time) or the early morning.For the rest of this fight Alendrethala will first use her school power (force missiles 7/day) as long as she has distance. In case someone approaches too much she will skip to mage armor and drawing her sword (assuming Inwe can buy her a round to cast while the enemy closes in)
DM Locke, how attached are you to having each enemy have their own initiative? I'm loving the game and I think the in character interactions have been wonderful, but the fights seem to be fairly chaotic. There are a couple of other methods in use but I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, just sounding you out for how you feel the flow of battle and posts in combat is going?
I actually thought the first combat went really well, especially considering the number of combatants involved. I don't really see the chaos you speak of, save for when a screw up occurs (for example, my using the wrong action for Kathai and forgetting to update the map). The initiative order is posted so I think everyone has a fair idea of when they should be taking their turn.
Having said that, I'm open to suggestions on how to improve things, keeping in mind that this is a play by post and that absolute fidelity to how I run things IRL may not work as well here. If you have an alternate system or systems in mind, by all means, I'd love to hear about them and see about implementing them.
I think they've gone well, and looking back you're staying on top of the action so things are happening as they should, so I don't want to rock the boat. From my perspective it's a little chaotic with 2 or 3 posts for each character to get their action resolved. I think what is going on is I'm used to PbP combat and this is playing out more like a tabletop combat, which I don't think is a bad thing at all.
Again this isn't a criticism so much as a check to see how you think it's going. The other methods I've seen for PbP are:
1. All monsters of a certain type get their own initiative (Skeletons go as one, flaming skeletons go as one, evil cleric chick goes as one) and then the players each have their own individual
2. Average all players initiatives, average all monster initiatives, whichever group wins goes first and then alternate
Of the two I like method 1, but again if the current method of everything has it's own initiative works for everybody I don't want to try and force a change, and I'm having a great time with the game.
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I think one of the benefits to having the baddies use the same initiative would be to condense the number of posts. I find it easier to follow that way, and since with a PBP people will often be posting their actions out of sequence, it might give the player a better idea of his options..
What I sometimes do IRL is a combination of the way we've been doing it and Balodek's suggestion. Creatures of the same type (or same init bonus) share Initiative at my table. This way, the battle isn't skewed by an NPC with a +uber initiative bonus and twenty minions with a -suck initiative bonus, but also creates less to keep track of. To make it more fair (so that one bad/good roll doesn't skew all the npcs), minions (not BBEG's) simply use a passive initiative of 10+bonus.
EDIT: Ninja'd
Okay, those are great points. What I'll try and do is this - after this combat, I'll run with Balodek's suggestion of having creatures of the same type sharing initiative from the get go, and of course, individual rolls for each of the players. I can see a lot of benefit to that system over what I'm doing now (I am a PbP noob, fyi)
I'll move to that system for round two of this combat as well, I think. So next round, it will be:
Kathai
Inwe
Skeletons A-F
Flaming Skeletons A-B
Evenor
Evil cleric
Ruhk
Vestilet
Alendrethala
Lockjaw
This round, of course, we're still locked into the old system.
Thanks for the advice, guys!
Maybe i'm becoming old, but last time i remember when you buy a Comp videogame you get a DVD with the game data on it.
This wasn't the case for Skyrim this morning :( i only bought the activation code of Steam from which DLing the game after mandatory creation of a Steam account.
I know i shouldn't be mad, but it sucks, i buy the original DVD, i don't hack the game or illegally DL it.
Now have to wait for the (long) DL
This is why I got my Skyrim for 360. Though I do not understand why they would force you to make a steam account.
Really bad DRM by the sounds of it.
I lined up at midnight last night to get my copy :-| I really dont mind steam that much; if I lose the disk, I can always download the files from their server, and it's usually pretty quick.
Awesome game, btw!
If you're looking for crappy DRM, try EA's origin - the only reason I'll let it on my PC is for Mass Effect 3.
Steam is the best thing for PC gaming in some time, I've purchased more random games I would never have tried otherwise. Just a bad DRM model to give you the disc without letting you know you needed Steam.
To tell the truth, on the back side of the box there is the warning, i simply only watched at the pictures, but not real problem.
I just played through the tutorial, and it is great so far.
Agh, anybody see where Ruhk's liver went?
So yeah, Skyrim? PRETTY GOOD.
I'll try and do a better job posting, but this game, it has me in it's clutches :-(
So yeah, Skyrim? PRETTY GOOD.
I'll try and do a better job posting, but this game, it has me in it's clutches :-(
I completly agree :)
Screw expansions Skyrim! Anyway Locke and Gandal you guys find any shouts? I only found two and one I cannot use because I cannot find the dragon that lets me use it.
Yes, I've got frost breath, unrelenting force, and the whirlwind speed ones. Following the main quest line will give you at least a couple of those.
I have just begun, am level 2 still :(
Starting from now i have an entire week at home, want to see how many hours/day i can spend on the game :)
Was thinking, wouldn't it be good to have some way to check the general health of really hard bosses, like this evil cleric ?
You know, like in Baldur's Gate cursor saying "Barely hurt" "Seriously wounded" "Near death"
Those are good news :) I really like Evenor and this will certainly give me a chance to justify his learning curve *wink* Oh and he would be most sad if his failure cost Kathai's life, he's growing really fond of his Little Shadow.
I'm really enjoying this game and the players, but need to get this off my chest. I'm aware your new at this PbP thing, and certainly don't want to leave this game...but my major Pet Peeve in gaming is having NPC's be the star and swooping in to save the PC's. I'd almost rather have a TPK...
OK I got it off my chest. Not being critical, or telling you how to run your game, but thought I'd better put it out there, as I've had some GM's particularly in Real life that made this a common occurrence. I'm sure in this case it was just a one time thing...but just to let you know.
@ scranford - fair enough.
@ everyone - how do you feel about what went down? Should I have tried to extracate you in another way? Should I have let the TPK take place? Should I consider myself "on notice" with the rest of you with regards to future missteps?
@ scranford - fair enough.
@ everyone - how do you feel about what went down? Should I have tried to extracate you in another way? Should I have let the TPK take place? Should I consider myself "on notice" with the rest of you with regards to future missteps?
I hope you didn't take my last post wrong. I think you're doing a great job with the game, and I'm enjoying myself, but I'm not good at letting things fester...so please don't take this as "notice". I don't plan on going anywhere...just giving my imput on what makes the game enjoyable. Love the story, and can't wait to get clued in on the mystery... :-).
I would rather not have a TKP after one fight so NPC save was okay with me. I spent awhile wanting to make a paladin of Helm. As for the the fight yeah I thought from the get go there was to many enemies. You fixed it though so it is okay with me. The major problem was we are all level 1 so some of our healing is not up to par yet and have not gotten it.
I think you did fine. I think an earlier intervention by a few caravan guards or maybe the town cleric to get us stable and give us that extra round of fight may have gone a little smoother. Right now it feels out of character for Natasha to have saved us like that, but then I don't know all of what's going on either. I've killed parties by accident when I misjudged the opponent many times and handled it less gracefully, so I'm fine with how it's going.
I usually don't like TPK, but we charged head low. Of course at level 1 you don't expect a cr 7 fight, so we both made a mistake.
The NPC intervention was logical this time, as they were there anyway, but again i'm against using deus ex machina solutions.
When GMing, i try to give players some advices if they are going against too hard CRs, but if they ignore those....well their own funeral :)
I'm cool with it. If nothing else, Kathai learned a valuable lesson.
Good points all! As an aside, someone may want to have a chat with Natasha about why she did what she did. She definitely doesn't seem like a nice person to me, what with her mistreatment of the prisoner and all. Using her tips my hand a little as to her motivations; but I didn't really have any other NPC's that were available, and I didn't really want to have some errant knight wander past, or whatever.
For what it's worth, I don't usually like bailing a party of out a situation; I did so this time because I was responsible for putting you in a bad situation.
@ Vestilet - your character hasn't said anything about it, but you might want to re-read the post which described the end of the battle; it might have special significance to a follower of Helm.
Who it belonged to, no-one knew. But the gauntlet stood, palm out, fingers upright and directed to the heavens, in a warding gesture that looked very much like it was indicating "STOP".
Yeah I saw this but I did not know if it was Helm's sign or Torm. I also thought Vestilet was knocked out at the time so did not see the gauntlet if it did than he would of said something.
Well, it's all up to experience, besides, we are JUNIOR adventurers, and we are supposed to make mistakes.
Sometimes the more experienced people just have to step in and fix it, Ruhk certainly didn't mind.
Besides, it gave both him and me food for thought, next time, make sure to balance between offensive and defensive spells.
A shield spell could have saved Ruhk a lot of hurt.
A quick stop to say Skyrim is awesome, especially when you slay the third dragon :)
Am 16 and 9/10 now, but still have done almost no steps in the main quest.
Got the shock wave and the fire breath shouts (only know the italian names. I translated them literally, not sure what the original names are)
edit: to compare our games, i'm playing a female bosmer rogue/assassin specialized in bows.
A quick stop to say Skyrim is awesome, especially when you slay the third dragon :)
Am 16 and 9/10 now, but still have done almost no steps in the main quest.
Got the shock wave and the fire breath shouts (only know the italian names. I translated them literally, not sure what the original names are)edit: to compare our games, i'm playing a female bosmer rogue/assassin specialized in bows.
Just started playing it (Level 4). I love the game (Have only gotten myself stuck once so far...don't jump in places you can't jump out of :-))
but I hate picking locks. Seems tedious and such a waste of time. If anyone comes up with a code to open locks let me know. If not I might just avoid them.
A quick stop to say Skyrim is awesome, especially when you slay the third dragon :)
Am 16 and 9/10 now, but still have done almost no steps in the main quest.
Got the shock wave and the fire breath shouts (only know the italian names. I translated them literally, not sure what the original names are)edit: to compare our games, i'm playing a female bosmer rogue/assassin specialized in bows.
Just started playing it (Level 4). I love the game (Have only gotten myself stuck once so far...don't jump in places you can't jump out of :-))
but I hate picking locks. Seems tedious and such a waste of time. If anyone comes up with a code to open locks let me know. If not I might just avoid them.
Open the console (with the tilde key ~) click on the lock you want open and then type "unlock" (without the quotes) and hit enter. Warning: may effect your ability to unlock steam achievements with that character.
I've got an Imperial, level 19, mainly focused in destruction magic and one handed swords, and he's rockin'! As for shouts:
(+1 dagger "Snakehand" 2302gp 1lb) I estimated the cost based on the magical item creation table. I added the item to Alendrethala inventory to keep track of it, she doesn't mean to claim its property, if any of you thinks it should go to someone else.
"You don't know the first thing about me, dwarf."
"Aye, that's what I'm saying."
Is that what I'm saying? Yup.
*snarf*
I am around. I never do much for Thanksgiving.