+++ 112.M42 +++
+ One year after the official end of the Indomitus Crusade +
+ Praise the Emperor for his divine protection.
+ Praise the Imperial Regent Roboute Guilliman for bringing hope to the forsaken.
+ Praise the Adeptus Astartes for their superhuman strength, endurance and their utter loyalty unto death.
+ Praise the Adeptus Mechanicus for their unstopping stream of supplies and their mighty Titan warmachines.
+ Praise the Imperial Navy for eradicating the skies above our worlds from foes and guarding the troops bringing salvation and hope to the planets of the God-Emperor.
+ Praise the noble soldiers of the Imperial Guard for fighting for mankind's survival on a thousand thousand worlds.
+ Praise them all, for without them, the alien will eat your brains and enslave your children, the heretic will bring ruin to the planet you treat on and sacrifice you to demons lurking in the beyond.
+++ +++ +++
this is the follow up post for my previous post for android.
In essence, I'd like to share my current PbP-post-composing setup, that greatly speeds up my pbp post time (and thus allows me to do more pbp gaming with less free time).
Opposed to the Android-Guide, this one will focus on the usage of snippet/macros even more, because they are the reason for the great speed up.
Just using an external editor (as opposed to typing your entire post in the browser window) is easy enough to do on PC - and I highly recommend doing so, as that will save you from any random paizo.com crashes that will omnomnom your 10000 character post and induce high level of RAGE in you :-)
So, without any more preamble, let me show you a magic trick.
1) Download and extract the portable version, including my pre-made Paizo snippets.
1b) What is a portable version? It's a program you can have anywhere on your pc (or even a usb-drive) which runs without a installation. Handy if your cooperation does allow you to install stuff or your often switching PCs. Just put the folder on a usb-drive and always have your program with you.
2) Run sublime_text.exe (it is inside the extracted folder).
3) Start typing your post and enjoy a couple of basic paizo-snippets* out of the box!
At this point, some of you may be like:
"Uh, I don't feel comfortable executing an *.exe from some stranger in the Internet."
Upon which I'd answer:
"Good job, you learned your lesson well, young padawan.
Now that you resisted the fast path that leads to the dark side, let me show you the true way."
The longer, more secure way:
1a) Download and Install from the original source Sublime Text (currently version 3).
1b) Download the snippets and settings from here.
1c) Extract the content to: c:\Users\YOUR_NAME\AppData\Roaming\Sublime Text 3\Packages\User\
1d) If the above folder is not visible for you, google "how to display hidden folder in windows" then try again. (AppData folder is hidden by default - which is retarded, but whatever)
2) Start Sublime Text (from start menu / desktop)
3) Start typing your post and enjoy a couple of basic paizo-snippets* out of the box!
How does snippets work:
(Let's use the basic 'say' snippet for an example)
- You can try it out! Just start typing say and you'll see a pop-up appearing.
- You can select the snippet you want to use with the up/down keys from the pop-up list
- Press the tab key to 'expand' the snippet. You will see the keyword disappearing and the familiar paizo-bracket-tags appearing.
- Most snippets also have 'fields'. That is, they have one or several input parameters where you can add additional stuff inside the snippet. In our example, you want to add whatever your character is actually saying within the "". Some of the more advanced snippets (like dice rolling) have several fields (e.g. one for the Name-tag of the dice expression and one for the d20 modifier). In those cases, you can jump between fields by pressing tab. If you don't want to use a field (e.g. because there are no modifiers to your roll), simply press delete once you jumped to the field.
- That's it!
*Basic Paizo-snippets / Keywords I prepared and shared:
say => "Talking"
think => Inner Monologue
shout => "Shouting"
ooc => Out of character talk
spoiler =>
Of course you do!
Now, those snippets above will speed you up quite a bit, as they will solve the issue of typing all those brackets and remember to close them at the end.
But, you still have to type out your attacks, saves and all that complex stuff that is always the same (bar after a level-up and a few short-term modifiers).
So, let me introduce you to character macros!
In my other post, I used my Zen Archer Amari for examples, so he will serve the same role again.
Let me tell you what macros I have for him.
amariSingleAttack => Single Arrow away!:1d20 + 10 ⇒ (14) + 10 = 24Arrow Damage:1d8 + 4 ⇒ (7) + 4 = 11
amariFlurry => Flurry Attack #1:1d20 + 10 ⇒ (8) + 10 = 18Damage #1:1d8 + 4 ⇒ (5) + 4 = 9Flurry Attack #2:1d20 + 10 ⇒ (9) + 10 = 19Damage #2:1d8 + 4 ⇒ (8) + 4 = 12
amariKiFlurry => Flurry Attack #1:1d20 + 10 ⇒ (16) + 10 = 26Damage #1:1d8 + 4 ⇒ (8) + 4 = 12Flurry Attack #2:1d20 + 10 ⇒ (13) + 10 = 23Damage #2:1d8 + 4 ⇒ (1) + 4 = 5Ki Extra Attack #2:1d20 + 10 ⇒ (1) + 10 = 11Damage #3:1d8 + 4 ⇒ (2) + 4 = 6
amariFort => Fortitide Save:1d20 + 7 ⇒ (19) + 7 = 26
amariRefl => Reflex Save:1d20 + 10 ⇒ (20) + 10 = 30
amariWill => Will Save:1d20 + 9 ⇒ (5) + 9 = 14
And each one of them has a field behind the constant modifier, to quickly add circumstantial modifiers on the fly.
***
Even more useful, you can have group snippets.
Being a nasty GM you just hit the entire party with a surprise illusion?
Just use a groupWillSave snippet and go on describing the horrors that suddenly appear all around them without having to double and triple check all those modifiers of all six characters!
***
Intrigued?
Have a look into the character_macros folder (came together with the download).
I added a couple of basic character macros in there.
Create a new folder for your character and copy the snippet you'd like to use over.
Open them (e.g. with sublime text) and enter your basic modifiers where asked for (usually: BaseModifier).
Replace the text inside the <tabTrigger>BlaBla</tabTrigger> block with some keyword you'd like to use for your character.
E.g. I use the name of the character as a prefix as you can see above, to make it easy to access all snippets of a character by just starting to type the name and see what the auto-completion pop-up window finds. E.g. if I start typing amari, it will show me a all my Amari snippets.
Want to get rid of Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V ?:
There is a browser extension called "Edit with Sublime Text" that lets you edit browser field with sublime text editor.
As soon as you save your sublime text, whatever you entered will be auto-magically transfered to the browser text window.
Install the Extension and follow the install instruction (downloading a zip and execturing a .bat file).
It may not work with portable edition, I did not try that out though.
Once installed, you can just right-click into the paizo post edit field and select "Edit with SublimeText" and it should open a new sublime text edit window.
Just start typing and save (Ctrl-S) whenever you feel like it (e.g. to preview a dice roll) and the text will be trsnfered to the paizo edit field.
Okay, I think that is it for now.
The explanation is as good as I can make it. But nothing tops hands-on experience.
Just give it a try and see whether or not it works for you.
Feel free to ask question of course.
You enter the shielded chamber deep inside your flagship (or command fortress) through quadruple-secured security doors. The room is utterly silent, causing every step and every breath to be clearly audible. There are several rows of high-quality hololithic projectors arranged along the ceiling and walls of the small, highly shielded room. They are inert - until all four security doors have locked and the internal scans are complete. Then they awake to a mechanical life, projecting the hololithic images of persons into the rooms. The image is of an unheard of quality. Not even a single flicker, no annoying delay between visual and auditorial transmission. Were it not for the faint smell of blessed machine oil and ionised air, you fall to the illusion that your conversation partners are at your side in person.
The technological wonder is all the greater for the latest status report of various ongoing campaigns arrived just prior to this regular meeting of the highest Commanders of the local Imperial forces. Status reports that traveled through several astropathic relay stations until they are reduced to night incomprehensible word-garbage. And it took them days if not weeks to arrive on your desks, rendering them even less useful.
Compared to this long range communication - which is the Imperial standard, rather than a simple case of bad luck - the communication method provided by the Archmagos feels near miraculous. Instantaneous communication with all connected parties heedless of the distance with full visual and auditory of all communication partners - truly a technological wonder blessed by the Emperor.
Ripping your gaze and thoughts away from the technological wonder, you focus on the present Commanders...
in one of my games I have a player who does not get 'new' post notification shown in his campaign tab.
Here are some more details:
- The player dropped out of the game at some point in the past and I marked his alias as 'inactive'
- Now, one year later, he was able to rejoin with the group. I reset his alias status as 'active'.
- This, sadly did not help to change the fact that he is not getting any updates for the game.
- I triple-checked it - yes, all his alias are marked 'active' and neither is 'NPC' in the campaign set-up page.
Do you have any idea what this is about and how I can solve it?
Thanks,
GoW
+++ 112.M42 +++
+ One year after the official end of the Indomitus Crusade +
+ Praise the Emperor for his divine protection.
+ Praise the Imperial Regent Roboute Guilliman for bringing hope to the forsaken.
+ Praise the Adeptus Astartes for their superhuman strength, endurance and their utter loyalty unto death.
+ Praise the Adeptus Mechanicus for their unstopping stream of supplies and their mighty Titan warmachines.
+ Praise the Imperial Navy for eradicating the skies above our worlds from foes and guarding the troops bringing salvation and hope to the planets of the God-Emperor.
+ Praise the noble soldiers of the Imperial Guard for fighting for mankind's survival on a thousand thousand worlds.
+ Praise them all, for without them, the alien will eat your brains and enslave your children, the heretic would bring ruin to the planet you treat on and sacrifice you to demons lurking in the beyond.
+++ +++ +++
The short:
+ Warhammer 40k, newest lore (8th edition, M42)
+ Round-based, large-scale 4X sandbox strategy game, pbp-style
+ Players are leaders of one of the powerful sub-factions of the Imperium of Man
This is the open recruitment thread for the game, after an initial, closed recruitment.
I have one major open slot available at this time but maybe I'll be willing to take in another minor faction (likely in the role of Ecclisiarchy) beside.
So what faction is still open?
- Lord Admiral, commanding the massive void ships of the Imperial Navy
--> Your task is threefold:
1) Keep important trade & supply lines free from pirates and enemy raiders
2) Defeat all enemy spacecraft that dare to sail in imperial space
3) Escort and transport ground-based forces to the many battlefields of the sector and provide air support during their deployment
Currently, the player line-up consist of:
- a Lord General in Command of the Imperial Guard
- an Archmagos, commanding a major detachment of the Adeptus Mechanicus
- two Chapter Masters of the Adeptus Astartes (Space Marines)
The original recruitment text:
What you will play:
+ Players take on roles of powerful leaders of different important branches of the Imperium
++ Chapter Master(s) [Space Marines]
++ Lord General(s) [Imperial Army]
++ Archmagos [Adeptus Mechanicus]
++ Lord Admiral [Imperial Navy]
++ Other potential candidates include: (only if all primary roles are already chosen)
++++ The Ecclisiarchy
++++ Rogue Traders (?)
++++ Inquisition (?)
Your task:
+ Explore the Grimdark Galaxy of M42, especially the Great Rift bisecting the Imperium and secure one of the two known passages through this newest and most volatile of warp storms - the only ways linking the Imperium Sanctus with the Imperium Nihilus
+ Expand your influence, earn battle honours, (re-)discover lost planets and archeotech
+ Exploit enemy weaknesses and other factions' (Imperial and Alien) agendas for your own gain
+ Exterminate all enemies of the Imperium, be they from beyond, within or without!
What I offer:
+ Sandbox for a Warhammer 40k, 4X-inspired game where players take command of one of the powerful sub-factions of the Imperium of man struggling for survival against attacks from all sides
+ Slow but steady progress of the campaign using a time-box once/week game progression
++ faster if all players have acted and I find the time to do so but I‘ll try my best to advance the game once/week
++ Missing player action within one ‚round‘ will be considered a stall, having his/her units continue their last orders
What I expect:
+ Enthusiasm for the game concept and a decent knowledge of the 40k lore (the latter is not a full KO criteria, but I think you will have to do a lot of wiki reading to catch up to fully engage in the game)
+ Sandbox game with exceptional player freedom means willingness to burden a lot of work by yourself!
++ The story will be player-driven. I will throw events at you. More than you can handle at times. Nothing at other times, leaving you to your own devices, allowing you to restock troops or allow for player initiatives like attacking known enemy strongholds or starting expeditions into the unknown
++ This will be a micromanagement heavy game, with lots of stuff to track from round-to-round. It will be your task to keep track of everything related to your own faction. This is a simple necessity of the game concept. If I would even attempt to do that, I would be grinned to a halt within a few rounds. We will work together to find a good end-of-turn summary format together.
++ You are master of your faction. So you are pretty much free to come up with any names, lore and appearance of your faction completely on your own as long as it fits the general theme
++++ E.g. you are free to name your faction leader (and pretty much any underling) as you see fit, as well as the banners and icons of your troops, the name of your flagship and so forth
+ Open-mindedness for a game without a real rulebook as I am unaware of any system intended for what I am intend to achieve with this game
++ I am for a game feel somewhere between the Total War, Civilization and Anno game series
++ Units* will not (unless for starters) have real stats, but rather a short list of attributes describing strengths and weaknesses in general terms, which are subject to change during gameplay (e.g. an Imperial Guard regiment fighting a jungle war for several rounds will eventually receive the jungle expert trait)
++ Unit type/size vary greatly between player factions, ranging from infantry regiments to Titans and capital ships
++ For resolving combat, I will consider the opposing forces, their attributes and the scenario, resolving it with what might be called 'educated guess' enriched by a simple opposed dice roll for the necessary element of fate
++++ If you know the total war game series: think of me as a (hopefully less crappy) version of their auto-resolve feature :-)
+ Readiness for some Cloak&Backdoor Diplomacy with fellow players
++ You are all on the same side … technically. Colliding agendas&motives are (very) likely and it will be your task to see them addressed
++ I expect that a major part of the game (beside managing your faction) will be the RP between the players (in the role of their respective faction leaders) trying to find ways to cooperate and achieve Imperial victory
++ I will be the final arbitrator of course and I am not a fan of outright unfair play or player grudges. If we find ourselves at the doorsteps of an IC-conflict, I will have everyone in the discussion section for an open talk about how everyone feels about it. Player-clashes will only happen if all affected parties are fine with it. If one (or more) parties are not comfortable with the conflict I will resolve the issue by some GM means as I see fit.
Howdy fellow Play-by-Post,
are you a 21st century gamer with an android mobile?
This guide is intended for everyone who finds themselves composing a lot of their posts from their phones and on-the-go.
I know 'we' are a decent proportion of all PbP gamers on this board, so I figured it would be time to create a thread to discuss solution to some of the challenges one faces when doing PbP from mobiles.
From my point of view there are two major challenges and one time consuming annoyance in mobile PbP:
1. Lost posts. This is the single most frustrating thing for mobile PbP by far. Whether it is because paizo.com decides to go full-Goblin (never go full goblin) and omnomnoms your 3000 character posts you just 'submitted' or you simply ran into one of those pesky black holes where there is no internet available without noticing and you just sent that post into the nothingness. With a lot of luck® your mobile browser may recover your post. But probably not. Everyone knows the pain, I am sure.
2. Post Formatting & Dice-Rolls. I am a software-dev, so I am no stranger to bbCodes and formatting. While on a device with a decent keyboard that is. But on a mobile ... it is just a pain in the behind (and fingers). Whether it is simply "Talking with your group" or Attacking a dragon:1d20 + 8 + 2d6 - 4 + 19 + 2d4 ⇒ (7) + 8 + (3, 6) - 4 + 19 + (2, 2) = 43, these expressions take ages to type on a mobile.
3. Copy-Pasting. As a result of 1) and 2), I have long since started typing up my posts in a note-taking app on the phone to prevent post losses and to store&use dice macros, e.g. for my attacks, the combat initiative order / round overview (when GMing). The trouble is ... copy&pasting on mobile is annoying. Especially if you have long posts and have to copy back and forth multiple times (because dice rolls have to be resolved in the browser).
After a lot of cursing I think I managed to establish a nice composition of two apps on my android mobile to overcome nearly all of those challenges.
Intrigued?
Good.
Then, if you don't mind, please follow me down the rabbit hole :-)
The first app is called Pure Writer:
There are many note-taking apps available. I am currently using an app called Pure Writer. It is a very nifty editor with several very useful options that are not hidden behind a paywall.
The one feature that made me use this app, is a two-tap Copy-All function.
You edit your post, open the editor menu with one tap and select "Copy the Content" with a second tap. Et voìla, all of your post is copied to the clipboard! Open your browser and paste it on paizo!
Done.
This app alone will prevent post losses (and even provides local recovery, useful if you use it for GMing and want to have a look what you posted three rounds before - offline) and will severely speed up copy-pasting your offline-composed posts to your browser.
The second app I am strongly recommending is Typing Hero:
With that one, we are going full-caster guys.
This app is pure awesome and will speed up mobile PnP A LOT and comes totally free as well!
What it does?
It allows you to create&store an unlimited amount of text macros which will be triggered by a keyword you can freely choose.
What the heck????:
Okay, let me explain with an example. One of the most commonly used bbCodes is the "Talking" combo of bold text and quotes. Let us create a macro for that!
1. Creating a new Typing Hero macro:
Open the app, press the neat blue plus (add) button.
2. Selecting a key:
In the upper text field, you can enter any text you want to use for the keyword associated with the macro. Whenever Typing hero detects you typing a keyword, it offers you to replace that keyword with the stored macro text (see next step). So you want to use a keyword you would not normally type and that you can easily remember.
For our PbP talking, lets go with the keyword .say
Notice the leading dot. This nifty prefix will prevent typing hero to pop up everytime you type 'say' but it makes remembering the keyword easy as cake. I start all my typing hero macros with a dot (see example section further down).
3. Entering the macro text:
Now that we have a keyword, we only need to add the actual macro text. This is the text that typing hero will insert instead of the keyword we set up before.
For our talking macro, we will enter the bbCode for "Talking"".
So basically {b}"Talking"{/b} but with these [] brackets instead the {} ones.
And we're done!
Now, whenever you type the keyword .say in a supported* app typing hero will* detect the keyword and replace it with your macro text!
* (see restrictions further down)
Awesome, isn't it?!
For increases usability, open typing hero options and enable the first option ('Fitting Macros highlight' or something like that). If enabled, a pop-up will appear if you type the beginning of a keyword, allowing you to have typing hero insert the macro immediately, without even having to finish typing your entire keyword!
Go forth and add all the macros you need and use them in conjunction with Pure Writer for maximum effect.
Macro examples:
(using my Zen Archer 'Amari' in the examples)
- Attack routines:
.amariAttack => Single Arrow!:1d20 + 10 ⇒ (12) + 10 = 22Arrow Damage:1d8 + 3 ⇒ (4) + 3 = 7
.amariFlurry => (2 attack Zen Flurry of Bows)
.amariKiFlurry => (2 attack Zen Flurry plus an extra attack from spending a Ki point)
.amariRiskyKiFlurry => (as the above but with risky strike for reduced atk and increased damage)
- Initiative rolls: for characters or the entire group (either to support the GM by speeding up your game or because you are the GM and roll ini for the group)
.amariInit => Roll Initiative!:1d20 + 5 ⇒ (12) + 5 = 17
.group2Init => (lots of init rolls)
- Saveing throws: (again, for characters or your entire group => very useful for gming!
.amariFort / .amariRefl / .amariWill => saving throws
.group2FortSaves => (all of the groups fort saves)
- Round Summary: my preferred way to organize battle for the groups I GM for
.group2RoundSummary => (round summary including round number, initiative order, status effects, resolved actions, ...)
Qestions/Answers:
- Hey, but why don't use typing hero directly in the browser?
Well, for one, you would still face big-pain problem 1). And for another ... Typing hero does sadly not work with all apps (as it depends on the standard android text input to work, so all apps which replace the default android input with a custom one will not work). This includes browsers and most 'big' notebook apps like (oneNote and evernote). But it DOES work with Pure Writer. Yes, it took me a lot of time to find a working combination, but here we are.
- Hey, awesome, but why does my Typing Hero only works some of the time?
Welcome the cool world of aggressive android power saving. You got two options, either to track down all the energy saving options in your android version and allow background activity of Typing Hero (varies wildly between OS version and manufacturer). Or, you simply start the typing her app before starting to compose your post in Pure Writer to ensure it is active while typing.
+++ 112.M42 +++
+ One year after the official end of the Indomitus Crusade +
+ Praise the Emperor for his divine protection.
+ Praise the Imperial Regent Roboute Guilliman for bringing hope to the forsaken.
+ Praise the Adeptus Astartes for their superhuman strength, endurance and their utter loyalty unto death.
+ Praise the Adeptus Mechanicus for their unstopping stream of supplies and their mighty Titan warmachines.
+ Praise the Imperial Navy for eradicating the skies above our worlds from foes and guarding the troops bringing salvation and hope to the planets of the God-Emperor.
+ Praise the noble soldiers of the Imperial Guard for fighting for mankind's survival on a thousand thousand worlds.
+ Praise them all, for without them, the alien will eat your brains and enslave your children, the heretic would bring ruin to the planet you treat on and sacrifice you to demons lurking in the beyond.
+++ +++ +++
(Initial post to create the thread, making it dot-able)
+++ 112.M42 +++
+ One year after the official end of the Indomitus Crusade +
+ Praise the Emperor for his divine protection.
+ Praise the Imperial Regent Roboute Guilliman for bringing hope to the forsaken.
+ Praise the Adeptus Astartes for their superhuman strength, endurance and their utter loyalty unto death.
+ Praise the Adeptus Mechanicus for their unstopping stream of supplies and their mighty Titan warmachines.
+ Praise the Imperial Navy for eradicating the skies above our worlds from foes and guarding the troops bringing salvation and hope to the planets of the God-Emperor.
+ Praise the noble soldiers of the Imperial Guard for fighting for mankind's survival on a thousand thousand worlds.
+ Praise them all, for without them, the alien will eat your brains and enslave your children, the heretic would bring ruin to the planet you treat on and sacrifice you to demons lurking in the beyond.
+++ +++ +++
What you will play:
+ Players take on roles of powerful leaders of different important branches of the Imperium
++ Chapter Master(s) [Space Marines]
++ Lord General(s) [Imperial Army]
++ Archmagos [Adeptus Mechanicus]
++ Lord Admiral [Imperial Navy]
++ Other potential candidates include: (only if all primary roles are already chosen)
++++ The Ecclisiarchy
++++ Rogue Traders (?)
++++ Inquisition (?)
Your task:
+ Explore the Grimdark Galaxy of M42, especially the Great Rift bisecting the Imperium and secure one of the two known passages through this newest and most volatile of warp storms - the only ways linking the Imperium Sanctus with the Imperium Nihilus
+ Expand your influence, earn battle honours, (re-)discover lost planets and archeotech
+ Exploit enemy weaknesses and other factions' (Imperial and Alien) agendas for your own gain
+ Exterminate all enemies of the Imperium, be they from beyond, within or without!
What I offer:
+ Sandbox for a Warhammer 40k, 4X-inspired game where players take command of one of the powerful sub-factions of the Imperium of man struggling for survival against attacks from all sides
+ Slow but steady progress of the campaign using a time-box of once/week progression
++ faster if all players have acted and I find the time to do so but I‘ll try my best to advance once/week
++ Missing player action within one ‚round‘ will be considered a stall, having his/her units continue their last orders
What I expect:
+ Enthusiasm for the game concept and a decent knowledge of the 40k lore (the latter is not a full KO criteria, but I think you will have to do a lot of wiki reading to catch up to fully engage in the game)
+ Sandbox game with exceptional player freedom means willingness to burden a lot of work by yourself!
++ The story will be player-driven. I will throw events at you. More than you can handle at times. Nothing at other times, leaving you to your own devices, allowing you to restock troops or allow for player initiatives like attacking known enemy strongholds or starting expeditions into the unknown
++ This will be a micromanagement heavy game, with lots of stuff to track from round-to-round. It will be your task to keep track of everything related to your own faction. This is a simple necessity of the game concept. If I would even attempt to do that, I would be grinned to a halt within a few rounds. We will work together to find a good end-of-turn summary format together.
++ You are master of your faction. So you are pretty much free to come up with any names, lore and appearance of your faction completely on your own as long as it fits the general theme
++++ E.g. you are free to name your faction leader (and pretty much any underling) as you see fit, as well as the banners and icons of your troops, the name of your flagship and so forth
+ Open-mindedness for a game without a real rulebook as I am unaware of any system intended for what I am intend to achieve with this game
++ Units* will not (unless for starters) have real stats, but rather a short list of attributes describing strengths and weaknesses in general terms, which are subject to change during gameplay (e.g. an Imperial Guard regiment fighting a jungle war for several rounds will eventually receive the jungle expert trait)
++ Unit type/size vary greatly between player factions, ranging from infantry regiments to Titans and capital ships
++ For resolving combat, I will consider the opposing forces, their attributes and the scenario, resolving it with what might be called 'educated guess' enriched by a simple opposed dice roll for the necessary element of fate
++++ If you know the total war game series: think of me as a (hopefully less crappy) version of their auto-resolve feature :-)
+ Readiness for some Cloak&Backdoor Diplomacy with fellow players
++ You are all on the same side … technically. Colliding agendas&motives are (very) likely and it will be your task to see them addressed
++ I expect that a major part of the game (beside managing your faction) will be the RP between the players (in the role of their respective faction leaders) trying to find ways to cooperate and achieve Imperial victory
++ I will be the final arbitrator of course and I am not a fan of outright unfair play or player grudges. If we find ourselves at the doorsteps of an IC-conflict, I will have everyone in the discussion section for an open talk about how everyone feels about it. Player-clashes will only happen if all affected parties are fine with it. If one (or more) parties are not comfortable with the conflict I will resolve the issue by some GM means as I see fit.
So, that was my initial write-up of the campaign idea.
There were already a lot of feedback and discussion going on in the original announcement and I will try to copy over and expand bit by bit.
Feel free to start that by yourselves, come up with further questions, ideas, etc
Gameplay post for everyone to dot in.
Feel free to do that in an IC manner, describing how you chars life in Aelyosos looks like or how you arrived in its port if you come from afar.
First things first:
- What is meant with Semi-Closed?
--> During this recruitment the idea was born to have a shared-GM game in case the recruitment would fail - Players would volunteer to take turns to GM the game in a 'Monster-of-the-Week' kind of short-adventures
--> This recruitment is intended for those Player-GMs interested in that kind of 'experiment'
--> For now, this is for Player-GMs only, to discuss the overall shape of things and how we want to organize, etc
--> Player-only Recruitment will happen later (if-at-all)
***
That being dealt with ... hello fellows from the recruitment (this is Quercus if you didn't guess).
After five days over the deadline without any word, I think it is about time to set things in motion.
Could anyone interested just pop in and say hello, so we can see how many of us there are and then proceed to discuss stuff, ideas, etc
First of all, a big thanks for the latest big chunk of work.
Going for a full HTTPS change is a big step - and an overdue one at that.
Thanks for that.
You may want to fiddle around with the defaults though, such that old bookmarks/open tabs are auto-redirected to the https one.
Plus, there is still the issue about mixed-site content (images, ...). Moderns browsers rightfully warn of such approaches, so you wanna keep that in your mental backlogs.
Then, another BIG one (at least for me as active PbP-GM):
THANK YOU for fixing the alias selection! That was a real pain the last weeks.
Finally a sad thing: Mobile view still does not work out-of-the-box.
It is still cut-off at the right side after opening any thread-page.
BUT, what looks like it works reliably as a temporary workaround is to quickly hit the review button ... the review-site is neatly aligned and perfectly usable in vertical mode (Android 8, Firefox).
You may want to look into the differences between default-view and preview-view to (finally) fix the default view.
It works, but is a bit annoying to first scroll down to the bottom, hit preview, then get back up top and start reading - not to mention the unnecessary traffic generated by loading every site twice...
Bottom Line: Thanks again for the hard work you invest for us all.
It is greatly appreciated.
wouldn't it be great if you could get push notifications on your phone if someone posted a new gameplay/discussion/recruitment post in one of your threads?
Well lucky you, there is a way to do this!
It requires a bit of work so I thought I would coble together a quick tutorial of how to get the various parts working.
1. Preparations/Requirements:
- A smartphone running Android/Applethingy that is compatible with the IFTTT App (search it in the respective play store and install)
- An IFTTT account (you can actually sign in with Google/facebook if you want to), just go to the IFTTT Homepage and sign up
2. Getting PbP-Rss-Feed link:
- Navigate to any page of the campaign you want to get notifications for
- In the upper right corner of the page, there should be 1-3 tiny orange icons with a wifi-like white symbol in it (the RSS icon)
- Each of those will bring you to a new page, one each for Discussion, Recruitment and Gameplay (if you hover over the symbol, it will tell you which one - or you could simply follow the links and figure it out there)
- Once you found the one you're interested in, copy its URL from the adress bar of your browser (it should look similar to this: paizo.com/community/forums/campaigns/general&xml=atom)
3. Set up Rss-Feed Notification Applet in IFTTT:
- Go to the IFTTT homepage and sign in (actually you can do this from the app as well)
- Create a new applet (e.g. by going to create page)
- As + this element select 'RSS Feed' (the list is long, but you can search for it) and as trigger use 'New Feed Item'
- On the next page, it asks for the Rss-Feed to monitor. Paste the URL from Step 2 here.
- IFTTT will check the URL (and warn you if you copied an invalid link) and then returns to the if-then screen
- As the + that element, search for 'Notification' and select it.
- It will ask you whether you want rich or small notifications. Choose whatever you like. I usually use small notifications, as I prefer to read the posts in my own browser.
- In the next screen you can adjust how the notification would look like. You can usually just skip this and use the defaults but if you want to, there is a lot of stuff you can change and add here.
- The final page will let you check your input and then you're done.
Once set up, you should receive Push-Notification on your phone within something like 10-30 minutes of a new post.
To add additional pages, simply repeat steps 2 and 3 for any thread you want to monitor and receive notifications for.
Disclaimer: I did this a while back, so the whole setup of IFTTT app and account is a bit lost in memory, so there may be one or two steps I missed there but I am sure it will be easy to figure out.
Let me know if it works for you and how you like it.
Enjoy and game on :-)
Hello Paizo-Tech-Team!
During trying out to make paizo feeds working on my new phone, I ended up running your feed-links through this official feed validator, since several apps refused to work with them.
And would you look at that, the validator errors on generated paizo feeds!
[code]This feed does not validate.
line 2, column 0: Missing feed element: id
[...]
In addition, interoperability with the widest range of feed readers could be improved by implementing the following recommendation.
line 2, column 0: Missing atom:link with rel="self"[/code]
From the report, I'd guess that some goblin crept into your generator and nomed away some xml elements.
Could you maybe hire a few Pathfinders to have a look at that and collect the head of that little bugger?
I love to get notifications on my phone instead of polling your page every 5 minutes with my special Flurry-of-F5 special ability.
I am currently GMing a Warhammer 40k campaign in this forum an up until now everything just worked like a charm!
Now my players and me experience a strange phenomenon:
Our campaign tab, does not show us any new posts for the campaign anymore!
For me it is not as bad, since all my computers use live-bookmarks to keep me up to date for may campaigns, but some of my players don't use them. And anyway it is strange enough to ask the community (you, yes you!) if anyone ever experienced that kind of situation.
So to clarify:
Let's say I post a new entry (whatever Gameplay or Discussion) in our game.
Typically any of my players would see that handy x new beside the respective tab (Gameplay/Discussion).
But this does not happen for us anymore.
It worked until a few days ago, and no one can see why this has stopped to work for us.
The only thing I did since then (although I am not sure if it matches the time frame when it stopped working for sure), was to mark one of our players as inactive (since he has stopped posting for about a month now).
This will (hopefully) the place of untold heroism, glibbering madness, painfull deaths and a s@*#-ton of black humor and sarkasm.
In short: This is the place where the adventures of the New All Guardsmen Party will take place!
Whether you are present at the central place, watching one of the public screen transmitters or simple receiving the vox transmission while working over thousands of kilometers away, on the other side if the planet, you all can see (or at least hear) a well-fed man in ubiquitous decorated uniform of some kind you do not recognize, step unto a podium - surrounded by black armored Arbites and priests - preparing a speech.
His voice is powerful, vibrating with power and authority. It sounds like a roaring fire, untouchable, dangerous, mighty, a force of nature.
"Inhabitants of Serenus Secundus. Loyal Servants of HIM on Terra.
I am General Inspector Helminga, Proclamator of the Departmentum Munitorum. The Imperium is glad to see that this loyal planet is flourishing as HE wills it and the agricultural output is within the norm.
But do you know the price of your peace?!
Only two light years from here, rages on one of the mightiest battlefields in existence!
Foul Xenos try to conquer the planet of Junathan III. Four times the populace of your own planet fight against the foul Xeno at this very moment already!
But that's not all!
The never satisfied Xeno hunger for destruction will swallow you all if they were allowed to defeat the armies of the Emperor! And not only you but the entire subsector if they are not stopped!
Thus, the Departmentum has decided that a new regiment will be recruited from this world!
The Serenus First Guard Regiment, Line Infantry of his Majesty the Emperor of mankind will be founded … TODAY!
10.000 men and women of this world will be mustered for active duty in the next month. They will receive basic training and their battle gear within another month. Then those lucky warriors of the Imperium will shipped to Junathan to defend all of you from the Xenos horror!
Some of the men and women will be recruited from the arbites and the PDF forces, but we will also need a few civilians to fill the regiment.
The war will certainly be over within a year, so you will be back here in not more than one and a half year, having been to another planet, defended your planet and have been paid more than four times the wage of an manufactorum worker!
So step on, brave ones! Answer the call of duty. Lay your hands on the tools of war so that your loved ones will remain save!
JOIN THE IMPERIAL GUARD, NOW! "
This is a Warhammer 40k - Only War game, that may eventually evolve into a Dark Heresy game.
It's a tribute game to the famous 'All Guardsmen Party' - if you know them - with the blessing of the creator using parts of that awesome-borderline-mad story.
No idea what I am talking about? Well that in fact doesn't matter at all, as you will play some guy from a backwater planet that gets recruited into the army of the mighty imperium (all you know about is that you are part of it, you have to pay them taxes and pray to some god-Emperor who is on top of the Imperium of men). It’s a militaristic game set in the far future, so space travel faster than light is there (although quite different than in most sci-fi settings), laser guns are there (although weaker than in most sci-fi settings) and lots of alien factions out there that want to eat your face plus the complete planet you are standing on, wage war for fun, spill your blood for the amusements of their dark gods and to spawn demons, kill you because you are alive rather than suffering from a close-in syndrome into a machine, or for other arbitrary reasons.
What do you play? What awaits you?:
As you read in the teaser: You will play a totally green regiment of freshly recruited guardsmen and like the original, the start of the campaign will be highly lethal.
If you tend to get really attached to your characters, unnerved by losing from time to time and are unwilling to quickly come up with a new character after your old died horribly, then this might not be a game for you.
You will be often play your own relief forces: So a new squad takes on the place of the previous one, while any survivors of the first squad are rotated back to rest & recover and to be played at a later time again. Or you may play the 'cavalry' that arrives just in time (or maybe not) to safe your old buddies from certain defeat.
It simply matches being a guardsman in 40k ... and war in general. Expect that nearly everything you will encounter have ether high quality troops, hideous tactics, warp powers, advanced technology or the advantage of number. Or all of it.
So you will have to be creative, be ready to sacrifice yourself for your brothers in arms and the Regiment as a whole.
The far future is a grim dark one! But it is also filled with dark humor, absurd and grotesque situations that will certainly be good for some laughter's and fun – at least that’s my aim!
And of course you will also win battles and those will be hard earned and thus even more satisfying if you know how hard you fought for it!
Character Progress:
XP will be given to the regiment as a whole, so any 'new' character will have the same amount of XP as your recently fallen one. This will give you the possibility to freely try out many different character concepts and squad compositions, without falling behind the older characters.
This represents the fact that the regiment as a whole becomes more experienced and slowly transforms from a green regiment to a battle hardened unit . The progress will be rather slow though, as I aim for a long term campaign and that transformation takes some time.
Character Creation & Alias':
Character creation in Only War is pretty simple and fast - especially after the first one. Most things are set by the regiment (thus you may make wishes/proposals for regiment creation, especially additional equipment, that may or may not make it into the final regiment).
Really all that is left to do for character creation is to roll characteristics, choose a specialty and spend a few hundred XP and you are good to go.
I will use the three rulebooks: Only War Core, Hammer of the Imperium, Shield of the Imperium, but you probably can do with only the core book. If you do not own the books but REALLY want to play with us, pm me and we'll so what we can do about it. The regiment you'll play does not have ratlings and or Ogryn but if you REALLY want to try one out, you can probably come up with an idea to explain that and I might get along.
For characteristics:
Roll for them in the recruitment thread and allocate the rolls to the characteristics as you see fit. You may reroll one stat, keeping the better result.
Alias:
I require you to create an alias, were all your stats, skills, characteristics, xp advancements and other stuff is kept and up-to-date so I can quickly check what you can or cannot do and bot you if required (see below). As you may play a lot of characters in this campaign, it is fine if you create a kind of meta-alias with a pseudonym and just swap out the information's stored in the alias when you play a new character rather than create a complete new alias for each new character.
I will probably put up most of the OW combat rules in the campaign info tab, so you must not recheck the rules in the books each round – possibly further increasing post frequency as you do not have to have your books with you to post. I tend to put them in my Alias' as reference, so I can easily put them in the campaign tab as well so you can check them as well.
Surviving characters that you currently do not play will be stored by me. If you want to play them later again, just ask me and I will send you the alias via pm.
Additional / Changed Rules:
I will use the following additional / modified rules. I put up the arguments why I added / modified them. Mostly for fluff / realism reasons. Note that those rules apply globally so as much for you as for your enemies and that these changes are also in effect in the original all guardsmen game.
Getting wounded:
Spoiler:
Each hit which inflicts at least one wound, impose a cumulative -2 per suffered wound for all actions in the round the damage is inflicted. In addition to this, see 'Getting hit but not wounded, as that effects apply as well!
Example: Getting shot for one wound (-2) and later again for four wound (-8) will result in a -10 for all actions that round. A successful willpower test at the start of your turn let you ignore the effects. If the target has a unnatural toughness score higher than the inflicted wounds, it can also ignore this effect. This rule does not apply to machines and mindless creatures - but it certainly counts for the crew of vehicles!
This represent the momentary pain of getting injured. With enough willpower or unnatural toughness one may ignore the pain but otherwise that new hole in your arm will certainly throw off your concentration a bit...
Getting hit but not wounded:
Spoiler:
Each hit that inflict damage for more than half the soak (armor + toughness) to the target, will reduce the movement cumulative by one. Negative movement that result by this rule results in the target is pushed back a few steps by the amount of hits it take. If the negatives are higher than his base movement range, tha target will start his round prone as he is thrown down. Heavy weapons reduce the movement on a hit by 2.
Example 1: An ork charges you (charge action: 15m) and you manage to get two Lasgun shots (one wounding, one above half of his soak) at him, will slow him down to a movement of 13m, your squad mate hits the ork two more times with a heavy stubber and slows it down to mere 9m. This rule does apply to everything - beside obvious exceptions like titans and super heavies. Note that the soak of vehicles/greater demons and the like will be much harder to slow with this rule due to their increased soak, but a rocket hit on a tank will certainly slow it down as much as a stubber round will slow down a man.
Example 2: You hit a unaware, standing heretic (movement 0, base movement 3) with a shotgun five times (thanks to scatter!). He will stumble back (in a straight line away from you) three meters (his base movement) and fall to the ground there. Despite the fact that he might be very dead that is ;-)
This as much a fluff as a realistic addition. It is often noted that even Space Marines getting bogged down by massed impacts of small arms fire even through it is in itself not able to pierce their armor. The pure kinetic force of a hit is likely to slow your movement or even throw you back - even if a bullet is stopped by an armor vest, it nevertheless feels like a punch with a hammer to the hit location ...
Suppressive Fire:
Spoiler:
It will reduce the base speed of everyone caught in it by half (rounded up). If the pinning test was successful, one can decide to ignore that penalty but the attacker will not suffer the usual -20BS to hit that certain enemy with the suppressive fire action.
This represent the fact that suppressive fire will 'suggest' you to keep a low profile and moving careful throw the firestorm. You certainly can ignore that and simple run through it ... but then I cannot see why you would be harder to hit than normal. Also this is how suppressive fire used to work in Dawn of War II, and I liked it that way.
'Brace':
Spoiler:
The Brace action is available with EVERY ranged weapon and will increase the BS by +5 - +15 depending on the kind of bracing used. Simply assuming a better better firing position (wide and still stand, crouching) will be at +5. Firing prone or bracing the weapon against an solid object (sandbags, trenches, usually ALWAYS if you have cover) at +10 and using a dedicated tool for bracing (weapon mounting, fire slits, three- or bipods). The restrictions for constraint firing area (see bracing) apply and may even be greater depending on the used method - usually the higher the bonus the smaller the possible fire arc. This boni does not apply to vehicle armament like turrets or side mounted weapons.
Every marksman can tell you that it is much easier to hit a target if you lay prone rather than standing or if you can rest your weapon onto something when firing, so this an obvious realism addition and improves the advantage of a readied position above mobile attackers.
Post times and PC-botting::
I aim for a rather fast-paced game. I will check and maybe post three times a workday in average, likely more often. I know that RL is shifty so I do not require a set post frequency, but once a workday should be an lower average. My weekends are often filled with lots of RL so I can certainly understand if weekend posting is more infrequent than workdays, that's fine.
If you know you are away for a day or two, just leave a note in the discussion, so I know about.
If a PC takes too long to act – as a guideline: not within 24h after the start of a combat turn - I will simply bot him/her for that round. That's not me being a dick, I just want to keep things rolling for all of us to keep the interest high and the story moving. Especially fights tends to get bogged down if some players post less frequent than others – and we will see lots of fighting.
I plan to get this moving well after Christmas, maybe next year, we'll see how fast we will get enough players: 4-6 and how fast my preparations go.
Whatever your own reasons are, you all have reached the elven town of Gondlin within a few days of today. As no one of your group has been here before, the great town has taken your breath as you first lay your eyes on it. The town is build right in the middle of the great forest and so its sight is even more shocking as it is only visible about ten minutes before you reach its iron gates.
The town is ringed with a great, thick wall built from white marble and a hundred or more high and sleek towers looming overhead. As you have closed on the iron gates, watchfull eyes from elven guards on top of the walls observe your every step but you are allowed to enter the town without any hindrance. The streets are made of a grey-white stone and in the middle of the bigger streets are little waterways, which have its source at the great fountain in the central place, right at the front of the kings palace. The streets are ever clean and about every ten steps is growing tree or a bed of roses laid into the streets. Wherever you go, there is music from harves, flutes and singing from a dozen places and a lot of trading is going on. Most people in town are elves, but you can also see a lot of rich-looking dwarves, some Seedlings and also a lot of Kitsune walking by. Every now and then you are passed by four-man patrols of guardsmen, equipped with silver-white armors of Mithril, long spears and iron shields in their hands and bows on their back.
There are at least seven different Inns where you could stay for night (and day) with very comfortable bed and good meal's for everyone's taste. But these excellence comes with a high price, so shortly you are compelled to search for some kind of income to support this kind of lifestyle.
Soon you all discover the two blackboards, right besides the two gates, where different job offers are pinned every day, ranging from simple manual tasks like (un-)loading of trade carts, calls for musicians to some performance events or calls for bodyguards for long trade-journeys through the great forest.
So, hier kommen alle Fragen, Diskussionen, Hinweise, Taktikplanungen usw. rein, also alles außer dem was eure Charaktere im Spiel sagen, denken oder machen.
Hier kommen ausschließlich posts rein, welche direkt im Spiel passieren, also Aktionen eurer Charaktere. Unabhängig es sich dabei um Gespräche, Aktionen im Kampf oder einfache Blödeleien zwischen den Charakteren handelt. Alles was ihr nebenher besprechen wollt bitte in den Diskussions-Thread rein, oder wenn es nur eine kleinigkeit ist in ein (ooc)...(/ooc) packen so wie ich das hier gemacht habe.
Hintergrund ist der: Wenn wir hier eine weile gespielt haben, und nur die In-game Sachen stehen, liest sich das ganze dann fast wie eine Geschichte, was ich persönlich sehr schön finde, und es auch Spaß macht nachzulesen was wir das letzte mal getrieben haben. Ich werde auch versuchen unsere direkten treffen hier kurz zusammenzufassen, damit wir auch da einen schönen Übergang haben.
