Might and magic, Lords of the Contested Lands

Game Master Chyrone

Now if only that dragon was as easy to kill at level 1, like it were in its source material. :)

Does that grant some kind of special reward in the game? I love those kinds of rewards for beating seemingly impossible odds.

In the source material? Good loot and money.

In here? Just go back one day and see.

Yeah, in the game. I, ah, Wouldn't try here :)

So, very close quarters here with not much room to move around or enter. How should we fight this? Stand here? Fall back slightly and try to draw them out? Something else?

Apologies for the very poor grammar on the last post, probably a result of posting and editing the text while tired.

@Chyro Since the initiative is in two blocks of two, i gather we can't delay or post our actions in any order? Or can we? There currently don't seem to be enemies in between.

You can delay, yes.

I had only split the four between faster and slower than 10.

With delaying, and those plans set connected to Daniel's turn, you could end up on Estelle, Daniel, Brunhild, Astella.

Unrelated, question for Brunhild.
Will you be called upon for a certain amount of time, like back at the Serenity Hollow game?

Oh. I must have understood the post above the last incorrectly then. If we can't order our actions in a way of your choosing by assuming delays, then please disregard my last post. I'll think of something else when Daniel posts. Might go for an attack if he were to attack and shift back again or such.

See my edited post above. :)

“ Unrelated, question for Brunhild.
Will you be called upon for a certain amount of time, like back at the Serenity Hollow game?”
Called upon? I’m sorry, I’m having a negative int score moment here

Sorry,

Call of Service, training camp.

With delaying, and those plans set connected to Daniel's turn, you could end up on Estelle, Daniel, Brunhild, Astella.

Unrelated, question for Brunhild.
Will you be called upon for a certain amount of time, like back at the Serenity Hollow game?

Ah, okay. In that case I seem to have understood correctly the first time and I'll stick to my post and plan of blessing Daniel and moving away :)

Oh! Of course. I got out of service, thank god. Will need ankle surgery in the near future, due to said service, but that shouldn’t interfere with posting.

Given that an 18 misses I’m thinking of falling back and guarding the hallway. Does this sound reasonable?

Personally I'd try shooting. There are no other targets atm, you attack twice, Astella is singing for a slightly added bonus and you tend to have good luck.

There was cover penalty before, and the guy was on a total defense.

18 is normally a hit.

I think backing off is fine. I agree that if you roll an 18 for a 22 total and can't hit, especially with Daniel stepping back for you, there isn't much use in continuing.

It's an impossible situation with that psycho doorway/hallway situation. Unless you are directly in front of it (which you are not on the map right now) it looks like your shot is going to be blocked or something? Not sure, but agree that it seems impossible.

Since we already lost the race to warn the rest of the place (which I think was impossible from the beginning considering the setup), I say let Daniel stand in the doorway and me shoot because I have the special no-soft-cover thing so Daniel standing in front of me doesn't matter (only for 5 more rounds though), and you get into a better position so that when reinforcements do arrive, you have a clear shot. I mean, the horn actually helps us in a way so that we don't have to try acrobatics to get into a position where we can actually fight.

Right now, only two people can effectively fight (and it was one before I started singing). That's true for them as well though... only one person in that room can effectively fight back. Hopefully when the reinforcements arrive we can chew them up because we'll be able to choose a better position.

I don't think it's quite that bad. You can have everyone able to attack it normally every round if we position and delay ourselves correctly.

The party order from front to back has to be Daniel > Estelle > Brunhild > Astella in a straight line to start. After attacking, Daniel and Estelle sidestep to the side. Then Brunhild (and Astella) can fire without penalty.

The next turn, Brunhild shoots first, then Estelle sidesteps west and attacks, then Daniel. Astella can fire whenever because of her class feature.

You can repeat this until reinforcements show up and hopefully that takes down at least a few more of them. Yes, this would allow the front goblin to move in to attack Estelle or brunhild half the time if he wished but that means he'd drop total defense and the chokepoint.

If we really withdraw from here, these goblins will come after us and with bigger numbers. I'm not sure where we'd go to offset that.

"which I think was impossible from the beginning considering the setup"

Not impossible. Only one goblin managed to hear the horn. It could have gone the other way and none would have properly noticed.

I have never played any Might and Magic games, so I was searching through Amazon this morning, but I can't find anything that any of my systems will play... unless I dig out my old PS2. I can find things for Windows Vista, XP, and 8, but nothing more recent, and for console, it looks like PS2 is the most recent. Is there anything that I am missing?

I can play it on my windows 10. :)

But it worked best on 98/XP.
I started playing 6 and onwards. Might & magic 6 through 8 were all on the world of Enroth. I have still a physical copy of a 3 in one, and a physical map of Antagarich. When games still came on CD-Rom.... O_o

Good Old Games has Might & Magic 7, and it is adapted to work with the more recent windows. Don't expect super graphics, since the game dates back to 1999.

Link, for just a few bucks.

Wiki has spoilers on the game, so if you want to avoid it, jut sit back.

Oh, good call. I didn't think about GOG/Steam, but looking just now I did find several on Steam. The Steam console is delayed, but this might be the perfect thing to start when it finally comes out. :)

And yeah, no worries about graphics. I'm more of a story girl myself. :)

I'm more of a story girl myself

*high five, story value* ^^

I take it you've got your share of RPG titles, then?

Steam also has Heros of Might&magic in its store. at least VI&VII

Different universe.

New World Computing had the original Ancients Universe. After bankruptcy, Ubisoft eventually took it up, in their own 'Ashan' universe.
Any 'Heroes of..' 5 and onwards, Ubisoft series.

Oh, weird. I didn't know they were different universes. I need to do more research.

And yeah, I have lots of RPG titles, but I prefer ones where you get to make choices, so I skip some of the jrpg titles that seem just like animated storybooks... they tell a story, but you don't really get to participate other than pressing a button. :)

A new Baldur's Gate is supposed to be out soon, so I just recently went back and played through that series. Those are old games, but they have remastered versions that you can play on modern kit, and good story.

I recently played through Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous games. They're very good when it comes to player choices in the course of telling a story.

They are both on sale now on steam. I highly recommend them.

Yeah, the older Baldur's gate games are still amazing, especially when you use the better mods that were made by the community throughout the years. There's tons of great content, like adding banther, NPC interactions to BG1, restored previously removed content, new classes, lots of ease of use tweaks and even a complete rebalancing of all the spells that makes the otherwise never used ones worth using.

Supposedly, the oncoming Baldur's Gate 3 game has one returning companion from the older games, and in a recent adventure path, there was mention of a Minsc statue in the city of Baldur's gate that seemingly started moving and walked away. I wonder if that's confirmation we'll get him? Him and Boo were young me's favorite party members. But then again, pretty much all BG2 characters were great, along with the overall story. That's what made it memorable, not the graphics.

My RPGs -must- have choices matter options. :)

Bethesda, Obsidian and Bioware do these things decently.
If isometric is your thing, have a look at Pillars of Eternity, and ts sequel, Deadfire.

Lots of choices, romance your companion of choice (a +, nowadays), and very Baldur's Gate like.

WotR is still 42.50, and that's the base. Maybe wait for the highest version to be on sale.

Yeah, I'll add a plus for the Pillars of Eternity games too. I loved their battle systems (especially 2 was great) and part one had some great Baldur's Gate nostalgia value. Unfortunately, it felt like they dropped the narritive ball on Pillars 2, with the main quest feeling incredibly short and rushed. The world was still great, and if you looked around there were lots of nice sidequests hidden across the map. But it didn't feel like there was much player agency. Most of the npc's were met once, and the choice for handling them usually came down to killing them, sneaking past or trying a skill check to get past some other way.

Agree on those companies.

I was part of the Kickstarter for Pillars of Eternity, so been there, have the T-Shirt. :)

Played it as soon as it was out, and it was decent, although I didn't like the really foul language and the anti-religion theme, but that's personal preference and doesn't have to do with the overall gameplay. Haven't played any additional add-ons or the sequel.

Want to note, both pathfinder games from Owlcat were great, worth every cent. Even if I was a beta tester on release with both haha.

Wanted to ask this here @Astella, I was caught a but off-guard by the vehemency of Astella's last post at Estelle. Her reply was just written and was of similar tone since I believe that's how she would respond if spoken to in such a way on these topics. I see now that that post was deleted. I can remove my return post, but I'd also like to ask if there is some ooc underlying issue that could be talked out here?

If there is, i hope so.

Since the time limited for removing the post was almost there, I removed my response to the deleted post.

I'm not sure what triggered such a response, and would still like to know as I like this campaign and characters and don't want it sullied by some kind of possible grudge. All I can guess at this point is that issues were taken at not inspecting the mentioned locked door in the basement right away (which was supported by Daniel - not just me) and/or mentioning reasons for not hiring the goblins we're currently fighting for control of the castle - and whom the major Domo of the city directly asked us to drive out.

If this is the case, I suggest we backtrack to the basement and go look. And if the rest of the party is set on hiring these goblins then I'll roll with it. I just don't think it's realistic to not at least offer potential reasons for not doing so.

Daniel is hesitant to offer them a "job" as well. Though, letting them leave in peace is certainly an option he would be behind. Unless it can be proven that they are the ones behind the raids, and likely deaths, of the townsfolk. In which case...

Ugh. That post was only up for like 5 minutes. I was hoping to just retract it... but okay, if we have to talk about it, I don't actually care about the basement room, which I am sure we will get to from the other side at some point. What I hate overall is that we have to stop and argue about every single thing this whole game, with a lot of those things seeming trivial to me, although I am sure they don't seem that way to you.

So I was trying to just go with it and follow you, but then we have to stop in the hall and argue again, and you won't just let my character out of it, so I let myself get frustrated, which I shouldn't have, and I apologize for writing that post.

I honestly don't understand though what exactly you are trying to accomplish with this goblin employment thing. Why does it even matter? It's just a nice thing, and I brought it up initially because the goblins got off on a language tangent and my character started to see them differently.

We already know that the goblins were here to loot and go, most of them seem not to like it here... so the majority of them are unlikely to even want employment, but if some of them do want jobs, is that horrible? Are you committed to goblin genocide, are you worried about ruining the storyline in some way, or are you just worried about your share of the loot being spent in some way that you don't approve of? I don't get it. How can we rule out possibilities ahead of time when we haven't even met the leader yet, and we have no idea whether we can kill everyone or not... we should have some negotiation strategy in our pocket at least, shouldn't we?

All right. Thanks for explaining.

If you feel Estelle argues too much, I'll try to tone that down. It's a bit hard to explain resoning behind specific reactions on a general statement without naming specific examples, though. To name two, If how to approach the castle was one of them, I wanted to try and involve our guards in some way so we could start building a bond with them. It also felt a bit foolhardy to do a direct assault with the four of us with no other plan or preparation (also, lazy in a way?). I don't feel as if that is unreasonable to express when we have some resources to use, and if we find something that could help us in a fight to claim the castle when we're getting low on resources (the potions), it feels odd and somewhat reckless to me to completely ignore them for the sake of moving onto the next room quicker.

I try to intentionally write her with trust issues due to her background, though if you feel that is too much I'll try to reign that in more as well. In this specific case, we're doing a direct assault on the castle with the intent of driving them out, as we were asked by the town's steward. While it's a fun idea to hire them mid-assault, do you feel it's unjustified to have someone point out why that might be a bad idea? We know nothing of them and would entrust our safety and that of the town to them after already killing like four of them?

According to the player's guide in this campaign, goblins are associated with Krewlod, which is a chaotic barbarian nation made of raiders. They have an extensive history of raiding other lands. I think someone grounded in that world would point this out and suggest hiring them might not be best for the feeling of safety and stability for the town. Not to argue for the sake of arguing, but for the sake of realism.

Some slight meta knowledge added here perhaps is that in the games, if you station troops in a town that doesn't match their homelands', morale drops. That might OOC play a role in me being hesitant about this other than knowing nothing of this band.

I'm not committed to genocide at all. I only want them to leave our lands and leave us what they stole from it. That, to me, is what I think we set out to do when we decided we would kick them out ourselves. Though if some of them want employment, instead of the entire warband which would immediately outnumber our guards 3 to 1, that might be a different matter. And if some deal can be struck that accomplishes something among those lines, I'm not inherently against it.

While we of course *could* argue each individual circumstance, that seems on my side like it would make my post unnecessarily antagonistic, bringing up every thing that bothers me in the whole game and throwing it back at you... as well as that whole idea being exactly what I would prefer to avoid in the first place... actually having to defend trivial decisions and argue it all out.

If you are truly going for realism, and it matters that much to you... my character is happy to follow your lead. Just lead us where you think the story is "supposed" to go, and she'll follow. If you force her to lead, then please expect that we're going to do something you don't like, as has happened many times in the past.

If you'd prefer in exploring, we can just as easily counter clockwise/counter clockwise go by all rooms/passage ways. It would assume a group approach for thorough exploration.

Stairs, southeast, east, northwest hallway, in this case.

Sounds good to me.

I'm fine with that unless stated otherwise.

I'm fine with automated directions too.

@Astella I don't really feel comfortable with making all the decisions for both of us, if that is what you mean. I'd like you to have a say in things too. But if what the two of us would do apparently differs drastically thusfar and it is bothering you, we could adopt some sort of model where one person is 'the ruler' of the land with the other being advisors on their portfolio's, and he/she has the final say. We could each say what we'd think is best and Daniel for instance could decide, if he was open to that. He has the highest charisma and seems liked by everyone.

“ If you are truly going for realism, and it matters that much to you... my character is happy to follow your lead. Just lead us where you think the story is "supposed" to go, and she'll follow. If you force her to lead, then please expect that we're going to do something you don't like, as has happened many times in the past.”

Honestly? That comes across passive aggressive. Nobody is in charge. Nobody has to follow each other. Unhappily following someone else doesn’t sound fun

"I will begrudgingly accept this... weighty task. I vow to do my best, to see our party, and our little town prosper."

*slow evil laughing echos in the distance within his mind*

on a more serious note-

As brunhild said, but I foresee a lot of debating between characters, and even OOC in the future as we get more into rebuilding the town. Setting up something to help conclude those debates may be a good idea. Such as setting up a "ruler", IDC who it is, but they would have the final say, with the party having veto rights if they are against that action. Since majority would have to be 3 out 4 anyway at the moment.

This would function as-

the leader would be like "we are gonna go about X thing this way"

example- "we are going to fight the goblins, once they are all dealt with, we will deal with any survivors then"

This way the issue doesn't resurface too much. However, if the other 3 players wanted to go diplomatic, they would voice this and that would be the decided course of action.

Example of it IC- Astella, the ruler, says we should use diplomacy with the goblins. Daniel, Brunhild, and Estelle voice their opinions once. Astella decides to either keep her decision or change it. Unless all three members of the party were against diplomacy, that would be the course of action we take without Astella needing to explain/defend her decision IC.

Its not how I play IRL, but PbP has its shortcomings, and having constant arguments/debates are one of those that can really slow things down. It could also lead to some really fun RP when consequences for the decisions come about.

We could even take "turns" as the leader/ruler.

"I will begrudgingly accept this... weighty task. I vow to do my best, to see our party, and our little town prosper."

*slow evil laughing echos in the distance within his mind*

This kind?

Fwiw, i get the impression part of the debate could be easier if the rulers would have sources of information, to better base their decisions on.

Example: A goblin at face value is, to one NPC, 'a savage race' they have bad memories of, such as a survivor from the Krewlod incursions, not worth the effort of talking to.
While another might know more, through say, merchant dealings, or adventuring, to be true. Hence one would learn not all goblins are mindless marauders, but that there are also civilized ones.

(*Zoltan sneezes*)

Hitting up the tavern/locals for info is another. Not all settlements know specific things, but for example a settlement of hunters might point you the best route through the local area.

Has a particular merchant have a history of overpricing?
If known, you're better informed it's better to buy those goods elsewhere, or to do some really good haggling.

"I will begrudgingly accept this... weighty task. I vow to do my best, to see our party, and our little town prosper."

*slow evil laughing echos in the distance within his mind*

on a more serious note-

As brunhild said, but I foresee a lot of debating between characters, and even OOC in the future as we get more into rebuilding the town. Setting up something to help conclude those debates may be a good idea. Such as setting up a "ruler", IDC who it is, but they would have the final say, with the party having veto rights if they are against that action. Since majority would have to be 3 out 4 anyway at the moment.

This would function as-

the leader would be like "we are gonna go about X thing this way"

example- "we are going to fight the goblins, once they are all dealt with, we will deal with any survivors then"

This way the issue doesn't resurface too much. However, if the other 3 players wanted to go diplomatic, they would voice this and that would be the decided course of action.

Example of it IC- Astella, the ruler, says we should use diplomacy with the goblins. Daniel, Brunhild, and Estelle voice their opinions once. Astella decides to either keep her decision or change it. Unless all three members of the party were against diplomacy, that would be the course of action we take without Astella needing to explain/defend her decision IC.

Its not how I play IRL, but PbP has its shortcomings, and having constant arguments/debates are one of those that can really slow things down. It could also lead to some really fun RP when consequences for the decisions come about.

We could even take "turns" as the leader/ruler.

Isn't it easier to say that current ruler would have one extra vote? The only way their word wouldn't be carried out is if all other three members are against it. In other words, they only need one advisor to agree for a majority.

Honestly? That comes across passive aggressive. Nobody is in charge. Nobody has to follow each other. Unhappily following someone else doesn’t sound fun

That's a fair criticism. I'm sure that a large part of the problem is my own pride/ego getting in the way, which is slightly hilarious to me because my day job is being a community manager, and trying to juggle egos and herd cats constantly is my trade. I'm normally at least fairly good at it. For now though, I find myself working really hard not to be a jerk, and so I need to take a back seat until I can get my equilibrium back on this particular game. No one else's fault. Just me trying to get over myself.