Hope things are OK, Davor.
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Does someone mind posting a pic of the map for me on this GoogleDocs site so I can see everything? I think this is a complicated battle, and unfortunately it looks like Roll20's just never going to work on my home computer.
Posted what you can see.
Thanks.
I'm heading out to visit my parents Wednesday through Saturday. Not sure what my posting opportunities will be there. Please bot me as needed.
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Just checking in for Dak. He's still working through some real life stuff and hopes to be back by tomorrow! He thanks you for your patience!
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Posting this to all my games, so apologies if you see it in multiple places :).
Sorry for the delay everyone, my wife was in a pretty serious car accident Tues. She is luckily ok, but have been dealing with the aftermath of that the last couple days and have just been a bit mentally exhausted. Things are mostly cleared up now and I should be good to get back into things again.
Yeah, even without injuries, the mental stress can take can't a toll. Glad you're both fine, but don't push yourself.
Glad she's OK. Always very scary.
I'll likely be without internet access until Tuesday afternoon. Please bot my PC if necessary to keep things moving.
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I almost forgot... you all can level up to level 3 now and since you rested you will have access to any new spells or the like.
Gurk Rogue 3
hp +8
bab +1, will +1, fort +1
Danger Sense +1, Sneak Attack 2d6
Finesse Training: Dogslicer
12 Skill Points:
Acrobatics 1
Appraise 2
Bluff 1
Disable Device 1
Escape Artist 1
Know Local 1
Perception 1
Sense Motive 1
Sleight of Hand 1
Stealth 1
Use Magic Device 1
Feat: Weapon Focus: Dogslicer
AMELEXIS DUSK Level 3 Update
Bard (archivist) 3
hp: +6 (+ 5 roll, + 1 FC)
Init: +7 (+ 3 Dex, + 4 feat)
Saves: +1 Fort
BAB +1
Bardic Performance +2 rounds (total 11/day)
Feat: Improved Initiative
Bardic Performance: Inspire competence +2
Spell Slots: 6/4
New Spells Known: 0--resistance; 1st—comprehend languages
Skill Ranks: (6 + 3 Int + 2 Background)
+1 Diplomacy
+1 Knowledge (arcana)
+1 Knowledge (dungeoneering)
+1 Knowledge (history) *BG
+1 Knowledge (local)
+1 Knowledge (nature)
+1 Knowledge (planes)
+1 Knowledge (religion)
+1 Perception
+1 Perform (oratory) *BG
+1 Spellcraft
+1 level of slayer (FCB: +1/6 slayer talent)
+8 hp (half level +1 = 6, +2 Con)
+1 BAB, +1 Will save
+1d6 sneak attack
+1 feat: Extra Slayer Talent: Ranger Combat Style: Two-Weapon Combat to get Two-Weapon Fighting
Skill ranks: 7 (6 class +1 human) +2 background
+1 Acrobatics, Climb, Know (local), Perception, Stealth, Swim
and +1 Know (geography), Profession (sailor)
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Also, this will change my combat strategy a bit. I'm going to try to take advantage of sneak attack, obviously, so getting into flanking (obviously it'll make sense to try to do that with Gurk). When I'm in that situation, I'll use it as a double weapon to get a couple more attacks. When I'm not in a flank, I'll use it two-handed to get a bit more power.
Tossing out a note to all my games. I will be off to Disney World next week with my family and the extended family starting Saturday morning through the following Saturday night. As such my posting will be limited to non-existent. I will try and check in if I can in the morning or at night but not sure how that will go. So just be prepared for a bit of a slow-down over the next week.
Verris level 3 summary:
+1 BAB, +1 Ref Save, +7HP
Class Abilities: +1 Mercy, Aura of Courage (+4 to saves against fear effects in 10ft for allies), Divine Health (Immune to disease)
Feat: Precise Shot (No more melee penalties when firing into combat!)
Skills - 3 (2 + 1Favoured Class): +1 to Diplo, Heal and Perc.
BG Skills - 2: +1 to Craft (Bows) and Know(Nobility)
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Dropping a note in all my games, I am back from my week long vacation. Hope everyone who celebrated had a good Thanksgiving. Going to be working on catching up on things but I got sick over the weekend so moving a bit slower than normal. In any case, I will get caught up ASAP.
In the Gameplay Thread, Bixby said: "If there is a body of water, there are likely multiple organisms concealed therein."
I am officially hereby convinced that you can find ANY reference, no matter how obscure, on YouTube. :)
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@GM Dak: we're getting close to the 10-month mark for this first book of Shattered Star... (and I'm not sure how close we are to finish)
At this rate the whole AP may take up to 6 years. Is this a speed we're all comfortable with or should we pick up the pace to make the whole thing more on the lines of 3 years total?
So... the last few weeks have been a bit slower for me with the holidays and probably won't get a lot better until the new year, but I am definitely up for a faster pace. The other SS game that started at the same time is definitely way ahead of you all and I expect they will finish before the one year mark.
You guys are over halfway through the book, but there are (off the top of my head) like 3 more levels of this dungeon before you get close to retrieving the shard. I'm ok with whatever pace you all want to set but yes, should definitely set expectations.
They just post at a quicker pace. They are also really active on Discord so they can ask quick questions and such rather than having to wait on posts. I'm pretty sure the next game I start as a GM will be purely PbP on Discord as I think it really helps to speed things up.
Anyway, my slowness aside for the last few weeks, generally it takes a couple days to get a post from everyone. It's been that way from the start so I just figured that was kind of the pace everyone wanted. The other group they get in multiple posts a day and it usually never goes more than 12 hours or so before I get at least one post from everyone.
Either way, getting a pace that is faster than 6 years for an entire AP is going to be rough. Finishing a book in a years time, from my experience, is a pretty solid pace. It can be done quicker, but usually entails glossing over stuff.
Definitely open to suggestions and thoughts from others though. I mean I could skip through a lot of the more trivial fights if you all wanted and just pause at important moments to speed things up, but not sure if that is something everyone would want.
As an example in a KM game I am player in the GM has a good way to speed through more trivial things. It's been working out pretty well for us so I could do something similar. Feel free to take a look at it here
One thing that might help if Roll20 is an issue for some people, ping me on Discord and I can take a quick screen cap and post it there for quick reference. It's more time consuming to keep up a double copy in google slides and I really prefer to use Roll20 for the lighting and LoS functionality, but it is pretty quick for me to just post an image in Discord.
Wow. Hadn't realized just how long our game has been running. Nor how far we were from the end of the first book. Other than the recent lag, we seemed to be posting regularly, just with a bit more rp, which I like. I'd be good with either our regular pace or a little sped up after the holidays. The GM's speed rules do sound a bit interesting, at least for the first few books to allow a bit faster flow.
For whatever reason, my home computer just stopped allowing Roll20 to work, so that's definitely an impediment for me. Honestly, I prefer not having lighting/LOS functionality since it makes it harder for me to keep track of where we've been/where we can go when it might be days or even weeks of real time between those decisions. I feel like my character would know those details even if I've lost track, especially when this is I believe a pretty dungeon-heavy AP. Not sure what you mean about needing to do a double copy.
I'll be switching to a night schedule in a week, which should give me more time to post during most days, so I can up my speed a bit. That said, I think a year per AP generally has been the speed I expect.
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Not sure I like the idea of having a 1 in 6 chance of losing a limb. That seems a bit extreme. I struggle in PBP with deciding how important some of the minor fights are. I like getting to use my characters' abilities, and as a GM, I think it's important that some resources are used up. As a GM, I skip some fights that just feel like a waste of time, and often will cut them a round or two short when it's clear the PCs have things well in hand.
I'm more inclined to do a "used resources" type of roll based on that speed thing. Off the top of my head, maybe it takes X resources to get through an encounter, where X is equal to the number of enemies times their CR. For each level spell PCs expend or each attack the PCs take, that X can be reduced by 1. So if we face 4 CR 1 Tower Girls, we'd have to expend some combination of 4 levels of spells or successful attacks to defeat them... Not sure how much that would speed things up...
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I'm for whatever will make this quicker. Personally I'm not really fond of large dungeons like this: if we're ok with a 'use resources' scheme to blow through some minions in order to focus more on the named NPC / boss fights, that would be great, and would go a great way into focusing our posting/RP power upon the actual villains (i.e. there's no use RP'ing for minor minions and traps).
Memorable rants between the PCs and villains is where it's at. Three, four, five levels of garbage before you get to action is just an exercise in futility. I get how a group would like to play through big dungeons in real life, especially if they're roll-players, but in PbP, and with such a cast of GREAT RP'ers, let's skip the mediocrity and go straight to the EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL bastards / named villains please! :)
PS: @GM DAK --> in your WftC campaign, I loved how you skipped the final dungeon and brought us all straight to the boss because we charmed a minion to set an audience/meeting with the boss! more stuff like this please! :) :) :)
I can try to pick up the pace a bit, but since I don't have home internet*, I only have one posting window a day.
My library has hotspots for loan, and when I have one (for a 3-week period) I can post multiple times. Had to return the hotspot Monday, so I'm probably without one for another 2-3 weeks or so.
Like Adistan, I'm not a fan of the lighting/LoS features of Roll20. Google Slides is fine with me.
Uncertain about shortcuts at this point....
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That said, I have a personal matter tomorrow and won't be posting, but I should be able to sneak something in Sunday.
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Well, I think there are some differences in speed, as you mentioned between a more sandboxy game like Hell's Rebels, or War for the Crown, as opposed to this which is LOTS of dungeon crawling. It seems like the general consensus is that people would prefer using another medium for maps and don't particularly care for the lighting/LoS so after the new year I can see about making the switch. One of the benefits of Roll20 on my side since I am running two copies of this game, I only set it up once and then copy over that work to this game when you get to the appropriate area, but I would imagine there would be less 'setup' with using slides. I can try it out and see how it goes.
As for expediting things I will see what I can come up with and maybe we can find a happy medium. To note, even though the other group is further along, I was already considering something similar for them just to move us even quicker so I will see about working on a solution for that.
Sorry guys, this weekend has been crazy for me and I didn't get a chance to post until now.
I'm okay with a pickup in speed, I can usually post at least once per day, usually more unless something unexpected comes up like this weekend... but that doesn't happen that often.
Just as a note, sometimes I'm available to post but either a) don't want to take over the game by posting too much or b) the things Verris would do can change based on how other people's actions are used. Not sure if this applies to other people as well but, particularly b), this might be why things slow down a bit at times? It might be a good idea to reduce the length of time before botting to reduce these delays... that might pick up the speed a bit.
I don't mind whether we use roll20 or google slides. I can do whatever people prefer.
I use Google Drawings, which probably isn't much different from Slides. I have a combat map (that I "zoom in on" via Photoshop, though you could probably use the actual zoom function) and then an overall map. I just add some black boxes to cover unexplored areas in the latter.
Works very quickly and easily for me.
Just wanted to note that I've just changed back to a second shift at my job; if anything, I think it means I'll likely be a little bit more consistent in posting, though my time of posts will probably switch to most often in the late mornings/early afternoons. I'm not sure how often yet I'll be able to post in the evenings with the new job.
Happy holidays everyone!
Merry Christmas, everyone! May all your food be better than goblin gunk and rat free!
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Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and general goodwill to all!
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Hope everyone is enjoying the holidays. I'm moving slower than usual with all the family time and festivities myself as you have likely noticed, but I will start getting back to normal on the 2nd. Will check in as I can but otherwise everyone have a safe and enjoyable New Years!
Sounds good; same to you and everyone else. :)
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2020 is upon us! Time for Gurk to start the celebratory fires amidst the city!