[GM School] PFS1 - Silverhex Chronicles - Quest: Webs (Inactive)

Game Master kaervek78

Welcome to the Discussion Thread for Webs.

Please fill out Slide 3 and put a token of your character in the marching order on Slide 2.

Not going to be posting much this weekend into early next week due to a family celebration. Please bot me if I'm holding things up. I expect to return to posting late Monday or early Tuesday US time.

This kind of creeping across a map, waiting for something to happen, can grind the game almost to a halt in play by post games. There are a few things the GM can do to try to keep things moving:

1. Consider the team to be moving as a 'block,' where the characters stay in the same places in response to each other. Then only that block has to be moved, not each character

2. Ask either the block as in number 1 above or each character to map out a much longer path they would take, rather than going turn by turn. In this case, that would mean drawing much longer arrows on the map. The GM then sees where each arrow would be when something happens.

Agree, I think we can put ourselves into a formation and move the group along a path across the map. Whatever our take 10 perception doesn't find shoud just surprise us.

The GM actually can't just say that players take 10. The GM can just roll perception for everyone, or have everyone roll perception themselves ahead of time.

But the player can declare that they move slowly and take 10 to watch out for danger, right?
GM rolling for everyone also works.

Thanks for the tips! I put all characters in a formation next to Thurgar.

Also, there are no additional Perception checks needed, one (the first) roll of each character was enough to determine what I needed.

The next week is going to be really hectic for me, so my posting is going to be sporadic. Feel free to bot me if needed.

Sorry for not posting in the last few days. Got a bit overwhelmed by real life, but now I am finally back to normal posting.

I will post an update tomorrow.

Is everything OK, GM?

OK, everyone; this game meets the official definition of an abandoned game, because it's a week past the time the GM said they would post.

I will send the GM a private message poke to see if we can get things moving again before we talk about what else we can do.

Again, I am really sorry, everyone. I thought I finally had everything under control and we could go forward with my part of GM school.
Well, it turned out that I didn't. :-(
And I have no excuse for not letting you know that there would be another delay. Sorry again.

Things are better now, I finally posted the update (=start of combat) and will continue to post in gameplay at least once every workday.

I can only hope that you give me one last chance to finish this part of the scenario.

Kaervek,

Please do continue. I appreciate what you said, both here and in your private message.

GM school is supposed to be a safe place to make mistakes, and the mistake you made is one that almost all of us make at some point. The only way most of us find our limits is to go past them and then have to struggle through the overload.

Thanks for giving me another chance. I really appreciate it!

I'm sorry about the delay, everyone. I homeschool my kids, and we started this week, and I always forget how exhausting the first week is.

GM Kaervek wrote:

@Crowe: The unconscious red spider is dangling 5 feet above the ground and the black spider is out of your reach, still 15 feet above the ground. As you can only move at half speed (entangled), you cannot both reach and attack the red spider. You can keep the attack and damage rolls for an actual attack later, if you want. What is Crowe doing instead?

Crowe will attack the tree instead with that attack roll and damage if possible trying to knock the web off the tree.

"GET DOWN YOU STUPID SPIDER"

Ok, now I'm stumped. How do I handle this situation, @Redelia?

Honestly I was thinking about how would a barbarian bloodrager, I know will choose to handle the situation.

Throwing slings at the spider is way too cowardly, and probably won't be very effective.

And common sense told me/Crowe that you if shake a tree hard enough, acorns/birdnest/apples/whatever that's on the tree will fall, eventually......

Sorry if it cause difficult situations.

That's fine, I see it as a learning opportunity. ;-)

If a player tries to do something there are no rules for, you as GM just try to come up with something balanced and fair, remembering that the point of the whole game is to have fun.

Some things you could try:
-see if there are any rules for really similar things
-see if there are rules that give you a partial answer (for instance, you could look at the hit points and hardness of wooden objects in this case)

A tree is probably very easy to hit, but hard to do a lot of damage to. It probably doesn't take much damage to make something fall, though. And then you can apply the falling rules to the spider to see if it takes any damage.

One last principle here: I tend to err on the side of making interesting things work. That just seems to contribute to player (and GM) fun.

This is your decision to make, and other than giving you my general thoughts, anything that you have a reasonable explanation for is fine.

Death by die roll.

Is that a nature or survival check, or something else?

As weird as it seems, there is no check to collect the adhesive from the egg sac written in this scenario.

Hm... I think I'll rule that I will just let you collect it without a check and move on with the scenario.

I will be traveling and so unlikely to post this weekend. GM Kaervek, please bot Sam if needed to keep things moving. If you get to the end of the quest before I return, I'll handle the wrap-up and the transition to the other parts when I get back.

I will be traveling over the weekend, so I will be unable to post. Feel free to bot Lara if needed.

Sorry, brought home a bug from my trip, so not feeling well. Please continue to bot.

@all: I appreciate the great RP, but I just want to make one thing clear: You do not have a contract with Johannes Vox (or any other merchant in Daggermark). You went and acquired the adhesive all on your own. The merchant doesn't know you (yet), he only knows Ulisha (and dealt with her in the past). You can certainly go and deal with Vox, but in no way you are obliged to do so.

I'm traveling today - will post tomorrow.

Nice job, GM Kaervek. The only place where I saw any problem was with moving across the map, which can be quite hard to manage to keep moving smoothly in PbP.

Other students, please provide your feedback. Ideally, you would comment on something that you think went well, and something that could be improved next time.

About the moving through potentially dangerous area, what I usually do is have my players put themselve in formation, then move them to where they could potentially see the hidden enemy, and have everyoen roll perception.

The battle went well (much better than most of my low level combat I've gotten better, no real TPKs). 3D combat is always difficult, but he utilized the verticality well. The merchant part got slow probably because the lack of information (of skill check not high enough), so it's hard for the character to make an informed decision. If it's possible, I would list out all the notable merchants as options then have player use Diplo or Kn(local) to know more about each of them.

I liked it. I agree with Colin, that the verticality in the area was well done. I didn't really find the merchant part very engaging. I think maybe if you described the merchants and their shops more, then we would have been more engaged. Thank you for running.

GM, please remember to mark this game inactive.

Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it! :-)