Hey folks, today I might not be able to post. The world has thrown me a curveball today and I doubt that I will be able to post. I should come back tomorrow with a regular posting.
Cool mate - hope its not horrible!
Now I am reading my message and I see how mysterious and potentially grim it could have been taken. No, it was nothing horrible, one of my dogs probably ate something bad and she needed to go outside during the night. My sleep was sliced into 1.5 h slots and morning got reserved to go to the Vet. And that day was already planned to be busy. So I decided to not post anything here, as I don't want to screw this up.
I am back to posting.
And one more thing, yesterday Szama responded saying that they struggle with some personal matters and can't continue in the game. So I will leave Szama where they are and let you go as 5. I know that this will make the fight harder for you, but we will see how it goes.
If things will not look too good, We can bring Szama into the fight
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Hope Szama is ok, there are a fair few people doing it tough at the moment and I would love things to turn around for them all.
Good news on the dog too, well good in that it wasn't worse and your canine buddy is on the mend.
Thanks for the kind words.
Btw. nice jokes chaps! I started with the jokes on the wall since Garcon called it Chem Lab and I know that one of the players is a Chemist. And now the said player went on a rampage and started to add eyes and bacon images to the presentation.
Meanwhile in the Koala-fighting-Bear situation...
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Rules question:
Grenade description say: Staggered for 1d4 rounds. Is the duration thrown once per grenade and applied to all that were hit? Or should I roll 1d4 rounds duration per each recipient of that gift that keeps on giving (or taking in this case)
For the grenades I usually just roll the effect and damage once and it applies to everyone equally (subject to saves) - sucks when it's a 1 for damage.
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I can undertand the eyes and bacon, this is the Bacon Code after all!
@Ayoka - in your round you can't see the bear, they run away to the other place. So you would have to move to cast magic missiles
I will give few hours for Joe to post, he has one action so there are not that many options. And Jim usually starts relatively early within the day
So, a question. Does anyone know if there are exact rules on critical hits when using grenades? I could not have find anything :(
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Grenades can crit, but only the closest person to where it landed.
Explosives have the explode special property, which lists the amount of damage the explosion deals, the damage type, special effects (with a duration, if necessary), and the radius of the explosion. When you attack with this type of weapon or ammunition, aim at a grid intersection. Each creature within the blast radius takes the listed damage but can attempt a Reflex saving throw for half damage. If the explode special property has any special effects other than damage, they are negated with a successful saving throw. If you score a critical hit, it applies only to the creature closest to the targeted intersection (you choose the creature if several are equally close). Some exploding weapons, such as smoke grenades, don’t deal damage, so they don’t include the damage and damage type entries.
Yep per above :)
LOL awaiting a further trap/ambush/hidden foe
I am glad that you have those expectations ;) That fight was exactly about that ;)
When people kept coming through doors and lobbing grenades it felt like a more dynamic encounter, I quite liked that one! Was expecting that the tiefling was leading me to more of the crew or something.
I am glad that you did!
Those three enemies were all CR3 and the plan of the fight was for the first enemy to catch you with a bomb/trap and then 1d2 rounds later another one would come, 1 round after the third enemy joins. Each one of them had a grenade or spell to damage multiple enemies.
Unfortunately, I rolled 2 on d2 ;) The plan for the bear was to set you up for a grenade (which he did) but he has fallen too soon. I made the 1d2 roll after I moved him to simulate a situation when the bear does not know when the reinforcement would come.
I also tried to keep enemies on the move to use some of the tight spots on the ship. The human had shot on the run, but he never ended up using it due to grappling skitters.
Then tiefling was leading you towards her trap 6d6 in 15 ft cone, but again a stabby skitter came in the way :| Damn those furballs!
Overall, good job guys.
We are heading towards the end, but I will let you explore the rest of the ship, as there is a fair amount of things to find and a story to discover.
We started around the 19th of July so we have a good paste already (mostly due to utilizing weekends) and we will end comfortably before gameday (most likely next week).
Ewwww nasty trap!
Hey folks, just a heads-up I know that some of you might participate in PaizoCon Europe (which happens this weekend) due to that I will not post during this weekend. We shall resume on Monday
Hey folks, we are approaching the end. Please take a look at the Chronicles and let me know if there are some errors there. I will report the game tomorrow.
I would enjoy it if anyone would be willing to write few sentences about me GM'ing this scenario: what you liked/did not like.
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Thanks mate, Chronicle looks good :)
For feedback I will follow the Rubric
-Preparation.
The game felt prepared, your slide decks were clear and easy to follow, and you had obviously organised the randomised elements ahead of time and knew what you were going to run.
-Rules.
I didn't see any incorrect rulings, and with the corner case of the grenade you sought information and acted in accordance with the rules clarification.
-Distinct and interesting.
I did feel you made the encounter on the ship feel very alive and dynamic, what we did (and the enemy did) felt alive and like a fast moving encounter. It didn't feel like 'fight a room, fight the next room'. Good work!
-Scenario as written.
I've just downloaded and had a look, you did stay true to the storyline while allowing for creative solutions and player interest (eg Blinky towing the candy string)
Well run, and most importantly THANK YOU for being a GM!
With that, the game is concluded. I reported the game. From the organizational matters:
@Shifty - you wrote that Blinky's number is 725 but it is in fact 705. I reported it correctly but the chronicle has the wrong number. If you like I can change it.
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Thank you for your nice words. The most important for me is that you liked the game. On top of that, I enjoyed GM'ing it, so I actually had a great time posting and thinking about how to present some facts.
I made some mistakes when running this scenario: like drift, creatures should have used reach when attacking you. Making it a bit harder to attack back. Till last moment I was not sure what to do with the crew's bodies? The scenario does not cover it for 2 of the 4 outcomes. I was considering if they should be on the main deck where they made their stand or stuffed somewhere. In the end, I decide that not presenting the bodies allows for some open, naive interpretations that maybe they survived but were captured by pirates... Skitters are known to be a bit naive, so I wanted to leave that option possible. And make the whole outcome unsaid.
Now few words to you:
- I love when the team actually plays as a team, interacts with the scenario on more levels than simple: do the check, win the fight and go home. You did that, you had conversations with Royo and you made the receiving of the book more entertaining than just: let me give you that roll and keep going.
- You posted frequently, which means a lot to me. I like when games move forwards as I hate dragging the team and botting half of them due to unavailabilities.
I put some reference/easter eggs into the scenario
- One of the codes were from It crowd episode, which I know DebugAMP watched, and he recognized it :D
- Vision with White rats attacking starfinders was my reference to Datch. It is funny that when running old scenarios you can bring odd prophecies, dreams, and all that about future events
Anywho, thank you all for playing. It was a pleasure to run a game for you. See you around at other tables.
705 is correct - thanks for noting that :) I can pen amend the paper.
I think we had a pretty good team dynamic - and there was certainly plenty of chat and banter.
Yeah I was surprised to see that you have 25 Starfinder PC's but man, your player number is 826! You probably know Zo! from when he was living human and experienced the gap (but you don't remember that)
Haha!
I used to be 41662, but then I was awarded Campaign Service Award (Coin 826) for my contributions to Pathfinder/Starfinder Organised Play and my Organised Play number was changed to that.
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Chronicle looks great.
On your running.
All in all great. Yeah, I noticed the lack of reach in the space cuttle fish....but I sometimes do that purposely so that ranged characters can't get away with a guarded step...so figured you might have done similar.
On the things like the trap, and the interesting placement and actions of the opposing groups...hey....at this time if you haven't played Bacon Code yet...you are a rare bird. The idea for repeatables are to make them able to be replayed, and hopefully enjoyed. The Bacon Code is one that is not the easiest to do that...so making creative uses of the elements and moving them works. As long as the spirit of the game is not changed...or the stat blocks truly modified. I usually say work with what they give you. Seen a GM move the web grenade off the bear onto the captain, and give the bear one of the captains frag grenades....that really isn't a modification...and it honestly did little except mire a couple of players for a round, so I didn't call the GM on it until after the game.
So where encounters happens, and how each one chains off another is fine. Adding new equipment (or powers, or spells) is frowned on and shouldn't be done....moving equipment around is kinda a grey zone. Since the GM swapped 1 grenade with each baddy I was fine with it. I saw it like PC's swapping guns during a game.
Doing the 'fog of war' the way you did works well for PBP....and is useful even if everybody knows what the room looks like.
All in all a good game, with good players. And yeah, sometimes it is hard for all of us to keep focused on the PBP with all the craziness in the world...but we did well.
Hope to see you all on the virtual table sometime again soon.
Strangely enough I am one of the few people who hadn't played/read bacon code prior to this.
I normally give the replayables a miss due to bad experiences with them in PF1
On this table we had 3 people (4 including myself) who never played it ;) I joined SFS games when the 2nd season was beginning and it took me 12 months to get first PC at lvl 3 (which is a norm for only PBP players).
Just adding some clarification
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Hmm....makes me wonder what repeatable you had bad experience with....
To be fair....most of the repeatables in SFS are decent...though most of the variance in the scenario is 'here is 6 maps/things...pick 4'. And maybe some variance in the item/person you deal with.
My favorite is Ashes of Discovery. Season 1...it is a good scenario, though if ran 100% by the rules, is a cake walk for anybody who is not level 1...and even level 1's should do decent. But it is early season 1. So we all were still trying to figure out the rules, to understand how to build the encounters and all...
My least favorite (one I would have be be begged almost to play...or run..again) is 3-10 Live Adventure Extreme....it is just 4 combats...with maybe different people you fight...but just a slugfest.
All in all, Farol, you did an amazing job...especially getting so many people who haven't played it and were shy on repeatables liking it.
Cheers all....
I had bad experiences with a few of them but the standout was the confirmation. I rocked up at a table to play it (first time run through) and it was like playing a CRPG where the players just hit the spacebar to skip the dialogue and everyone at the table had played through so many times they all knew the scenario verbatim - people joking about speedrunning it to get xp and gold (turning it into a 45 minute scenario).
I found them worth playing once at best, but just avoided them in the main as I find they are either gap fillers for cons, or deliberately planned XP runs.
In saying that I played Rats Repentance the other night and it was fine too, but I was at a table with people who are relatively new to Starfinder.
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Okay.....having people 'speed run' a repeatable just for XP and gold....that is wrong, especially with new players/new to the scenario. I always attempt to have fun in the repeatables...sometimes making side poking fun at something. But if I know new players (or players who never played that scenario before)....I treat it like any other scenario and try to let the group have fun...though I usually do that anyway (when they are brand new...if I have ran them, or played them before)....goal is to have fun for all....
Which is why this group--and the full skitter force--is always fun. We all try to have fun.
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I agree, I hate when I play with folks that are only there for chronicle and don't RP. I think a lot of people do not understand that a game is a joint venture, GM paints the scene but what you do in it is on you. I usually don't play many times the same repeatable unless there are other factors: like other players/GM with whom I want to play that.
Either way, when I scanned through this repeatable I really liked that story, fights, skill checks. I don't think I would be able to modify it much in between the runs, but it is definitely worth playing once. I like also like the dreamer as a 'NPC' as it allows to interact with an alien being that is significantly different than others.
Anyways, my very limited experience in GM'ing PBP told me that getting a good team at your table can make it an amazing experience.
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Weirdly, if I get a player that is just there for a chronicle...and is being disruptive, or pushing players to just hurry up...if it gets bad enough, I am fine to give that player a chronicle right there. And then tell them to get off my table. Only did that twice...both to the same player. First time...he had 3 players almost in tears as he ran the table...almost literally. I called a 10 minute break, filled out the chronicle and gave it to the player telling him his attitude was ruining the game, and to go home and think on what he did wrong. I then told the VC (I was a VL at the time), and I know the VC contacted him and told him exactly what was wrong and what he had to fix it. He normally never came to my games after that.
The second time....he came to a con and had already pissed off players (I heard what he did...again...about the same). He came to my table for the next slot. I had the chronicle filled out and told him he won the scenario all by himself, so get. I was no longer a VL (stepped down because of RL for a while).
Both times....was supported by the VC.
Needless to say, this player never made the transition to SFS or PF2...as he couldn't make one man unstoppable machines like he could with all the myriad rules (and vagueness) of PF1.