You guys have fun. I'll be watching
Signed Inferiority complex as the only guy not invited in ;-(.
So let's talk roles
With all these people there's probably a greater chance of multiple characters wanting the same role, it might be a good idea to get a good idea of what everyone is gunning for so that we don't step on one another's toes too much.
I'm looking for Ruler for Matius
How about everyone else?
Either spymaster or assassin more spy than assassin
"Looks like I'll be the Assassin then..."
[cheese]
"Good to know that when I am king, I'll have such beautiful women filling these roles."
[/cheese]
Haha, everyone else?
Either high priest or magister seems most appropriate for me, but I'm flexible.
How would you feel about having a high priest devoted to a dead god?
If it is Ardon,he is totally dead. For myself Karth will have little but comtempt and pitty for diluted followers of a dead god.
As for role counciler at lest but aiming at general myself.
Orin is considering the Marshal or Warden role
Warden most likely...maybe General.
Ok here is my completely finished sheet. I may buy some more gear as I have gold left but will most likely wait till we get into the game.
That leaves the Human Druid "Den Sarment" as played by French Wolf and Heaven's Agent's as-of-yet nameless Gnome Barbarian.
I'm Not gonna lie, the anticipation is killing me here.
=P
I'm looking at general as my character's most likely choice at the moment, but depending on how he advances through the game I could see him as high priest or treasurer as well; depending on the course of events I could easily see taking some levels in cleric of Gorum, druid, ranger, rogue, or oracle.
Warden or marshal are also possible roles, though they might best be filled by a character with a non-chaotic alignment.
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Profile Completed.
I certainly don't want to be rude Uriel, and of course you can do this anyway you'd like-It being your game and all I'm just happy to participate.
That being said, I think you might be over-thinking some things.
For one, is all this e-mail run around really necessary?
I mean, the characters are complete(or getting there) under their respective aliases and simply looking at them here in their preferred format is probably easier than E-mailing back and forth. And i think any discussions about changes can be handled a lot easier here, amongst the rest of the party- Such is the purpose of the discussion thread no?
Again, not trying to hate on your method or discourage you in any way, Just offering my opinion on the matter, since you're new to the realms of play by posts.
You're right, actually. My original idea was to have completed character sheets for everyone, but if you've got it in your profiles, that works even better.
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So the posts maybe filled along the lines of;
Ruler - Matius Drake
Councillor - Karth Tallstag2
General - Karth Tallstag1 or Heaven's Agent1 or Thumparr Ironfist2
Grand Diplomat -
High Priest - Fenna Thistlewade1 or Heaven's Agent2
Magister - Fenna Thistlewade2
Marshall - Orin Ro1
Royal Assassin - Syndessa Shadestalker1
Spymistress - Sasha Greymantle1
Treasurer - Heaven's Agent3
Warden - Thumparr Ironfist1 or Orin Ro2
It strikes me that our DM has plans for the group which will play a bearing on what we are all aiming for. So much like Heaven's Agent I haven't as yet picked out a role for Den. After all, I doubt we will be making decisions for a year or more the way APs run, and by then things will probably have fitted together nicely for our party.
Maybe there is the opportunity to double up on some of these roles?
Of course part of the fun will be trying to see how good a ruler-in-training or high priest-in-training or whatever some of these PCs do when there are dice involved.
Cheers
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So the posts maybe filled along the lines of;
Ruler - Matius Drake
Councillor - Karth Tallstag2
General - Karth Tallstag1 or Heaven's Agent1 or Thumparr Ironfist2
Grand Diplomat -
High Priest - Fenna Thistlewade1 or Heaven's Agent2
Magister - Fenna Thistlewade2
Marshall - Orin Ro1
Royal Assassin - Syndessa Shadestalker1
Spymistress - Sasha Greymantle1
Treasurer - Heaven's Agent3
Warden - Thumparr Ironfist1 or Orin Ro2It strikes me that our DM has plans for the group which will play a bearing on what we are all aiming for. So much like Heaven's Agent I haven't as yet picked out a role for Den. After all, I doubt we will be making decisions for a year or more the way APs run, and by then things will probably have fitted together nicely for our party.
Maybe there is the opportunity to double up on some of these roles?
Of course part of the fun will be trying to see how good a ruler-in-training or high priest-in-training or whatever some of these PCs do when there are dice involved.
Cheers
The way I see it, all this represents some "blue sky" dreaming while your group is on the way down to the Stolen Lands. We'll wait to let all this get settled until AFTER you've managed to get a kingdom to run. Right now, I'm trying to make sure your group as the right mix of skill-sets to succeed at the mission. Divvying up the spoils comes later.
"I have switched my AL to LN. As it better reflects how I plan to play karth"
Sasha
Ya put em in spoilers like so.
Sasha
Spoiler:Ya put em in spoilers like so.
That way folks can see it's an ooc comment or question
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Spoilers and out of character and bold comments make use of BBCodes. Some are listed at the bottom of the page when you write a new post. You just copy and paste and then change the comment to whatever you want to say, soon you'll be typing [ooc]..... or [spoiler].... just like the rest of us.
If you press reply to one to a spoilered or out of character comments above then you will get another way of seeing how it works.
Hope that helps.
Cheers
Quick survey:
how many people wold be interested in moving the game to Google Wave?
I've got a some invites (if you don't have it already). Google Wave not only works as a forum, but also allows features like a dice roller, editable maps and counters, and a more robust messaging system. It's a little tricky to get into at first, but there's some great tutorials, and it's pretty straight forward.
I like it, but if anyone doesn't want to use it, I am more than happy staying where we are.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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Quick survey:
how many people wold be interested in moving the game to Google Wave?
I like it, but if anyone doesn't want to use it, I am more than happy staying where we are.
I've never used it and would probably prefer to keep it here at Paizo, but that being said if everyone else wants to use it then I'm not against it.
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Would it be possible to get some idea of how you intend to deal with nine of us?
Pbps are slow and I am a little concerned that a combat with nine PCs plus bad guys will spell serious issues for the longevity of the campaign. The party size may drop as a result of these problems but I doubt it will happen before then. You have alot of very trustworthy gamers here, people who are unlikely to just stop.
I am currently running eight PCs in Frostbite so I know how time-consuming this will be, even though they were cherry picked as daily posters.
You mentioned having a cunning plan, perhaps you could let us know that?
Cheers
I would rather stay on the boards. Also 9 is doable, just recall we are APL 2 not 1 for starters, some encounters will have to have things added. Two of my games have 6 players, one also having two pets, 8 or 9 is very doable.
A good combat map helps smooth out combat as well, as does group Init and not waiting on folks to post in order of combat put have everyone post actions then arrange them as needed. Anyhow those are some things I have found speed up combat.
heh, yeah bit fights can be something else, when more so when your party is stretchered across about 10 timezones :)
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I agree, Seeker, and hope that when all eight get cracking that the fights come be resolved fairly quickly. My very first campaign died because of one such sprawling fight, the DM's energy levels eventually slipped away.
The ideas of battlemaps and group initiatives do help and I hope we retain them here. How is Pat's Expedition game going, Seeker? I don't follow many pbps I don't play in anymore. It's all about the time.
Cheers
it's ok but slow for one of pats games, and the party is a bit split right now and to be honest I am not totally sure whats going on with everyone lol, but as always should be interesting. Kinda funny I am yet again playing a bard
Something ya could do for large battles is basically give folks 1 day to post or ya NPC the action if ya need. I try not to let games go more then 2 days tops if I can help it. I dislike NPCing someones action but it does beat allowing a game to stale and die because one guys just didnt post for a week.
Wave will be a good tool when finalized, and I can see moving most PbPs there as a good idea when that happens; it just seems ideal for the task. But right now, the interface is still fairly buggy and slow.
I'm playing in one game over there currently. We've been going for a little over a week now and we've already had issues with the site stalling and applications, such as the dice roller, failing due to lack of network resources. For now, the Paizo boards does seem like the best option.
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Would it be possible to get some idea of how you intend to deal with nine of us?
Pbps are slow and I am a little concerned that a combat with nine PCs plus bad guys will spell serious issues for the longevity of the campaign. The party size may drop as a result of these problems but I doubt it will happen before then. You have alot of very trustworthy gamers here, people who are unlikely to just stop.
I am currently running eight PCs in Frostbite so I know how time-consuming this will be, even though they were cherry picked as daily posters.
You mentioned having a cunning plan, perhaps you could let us know that?
Cheers
Okay. First, let me say it's kind of humbling to be running a PbP for so many experienced players (and GMs). While I have been running games for years, I've never done a PbP before, so if you see me going down a a blind-alley, let me know.
My plan is to run the game as a combination of present-, future- and past-tense. In other words, I will describe a scene (as Kingmaker DM) in the present tense (e.g. "You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.") and then ask you what you're characters are doing. I then give you some time to respond, both with actions and, if appropriate, dialog. This will be in the third-person, future-tense (e.g. "Thog walks up and examines the house" or "Gregor will say 'That house is giving me a strange sense of deja vu'"). I will step in to provide new information, responses to your actions and so on as necessary. This, I believe, is pretty standard for PbP. I would like to use email as well, for "back channel" communications (i.e. stuff directly between a given player and the GM), in order to keep the main channel clean.
For combat, or any action-heavy scene, I want to do things a little differently. It starts the same way (I describe the scene, you provide intentions), but then I will post in the past-tense as Kingmaker Narrator, as if describing an action scene in a book ("Thog ducked behind a nearby rock, and began picking off targets with his giant crossbow. Gregor, meanwhile, let loose a ferocious battle-cry and plunged directly into the fray"). I don't want to run the combat round-by-round. Rather, after giving the players a chance to describe how they intend to tackle the fight, I will resolve the entire battle, and then narrate it.
Now, there is one more step. Nothing is worse than a GM who runs your character for you, especially if they run him "wrong." So, first, as we play give me some tactical contingencies (if you've played Dragon Age you know what a I mean: basically, "I will heal any PC at half-hp or less" or "I will drop a fireball any time I can hit a group of five or more"). Also, once you here the battle narration, if there's anything you would have done differently, feel free to correct the narrator ("No, that wasn't right. Gregor went after the skeletons first, then went after the nagas, remember?"). Once everyone is happy with the narration, we'll move on.
My intent is to have the action scenes not take much longer than a day or two at most to resolve, in the form of an interactive "cut-scene", and take more real-world time for the more character and role-playing elements, like dialog, planning, exploration and discovery.
But if all this seems completely out-to-lunch, let me know. I just don't feel an action scene that takes two-weeks to resolve is still an action scene, but I'm more than open to any comments, criticisms or advice.
I would hesitate to narrate the combat, even based on tactical contingencies and input from us after you've created the initial scene. We as players can only be so involved in such a situation, and it really becomes nothing more than us crafting the characters, and you as the gm writing the story without us.
Play by post games are slow. It's simply the nature of the concept. While there are methods to speed things along, and given it is imperative to keep the game moving at a reasonable pace, you're simply not going to be able to change that fact. Especially in combat situations.
We need to be given the opportunity to come up with tactics and actions that would have been impossible to imagine at character creation or the start of a given combat. In addition, everyone needs to be given the opportunity to respond to such actions in turn. There's not really any way to facilitate this without using the traditional initiative combat sequence.
This means combat in particular will be slow, and sometimes a single fight can take weeks to conclude. Especially given a larger group of players, such as ours. That's just the way play by post games are, I'm afraid.
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I'll applaud you for originality, but i can't say i love or even like the idea of tactical contingencies. I certainly love role playing and one of the reasons I've taken a shine to pbp games is the rich storytelling and character development. That being said-I still very much enjoy the roll-playing in the game, even if combat might take a while, I'd still rather action take a while and be portrayed in a way so that we can react as characters. The problem with providing contingencies and doing it as you've suggested is it takes alot away from the actual playing of the game I think, and there's no way to provide every possible contingency that a player might take. I love unique actions in combat and thinking strategically and if all of that is removed in favor of quick, however generic actions I certainly wouldn't be too keen on it.
Anyway, just my opinion
-MM
EDIT:Agree with Heaven's Agent there as well.
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Largely, the reason I want to narrate the combat is to move the emphasis more towards the storytelling and character development (aspects PbP does well), and away from the action scenes, which in PbP take up a disproportionate amount of time, and which no one seems to really enjoy.
I wanted to make one thing clear, however. With the narrative element I'm not talking about DM fiat. I really, really hate DM fiat. I would still roll out the combat, myself, and I'd like to get as much input from the characters as possible, both before and after the fact, changing the narrative to suit.
What I want to avoid is waiting days or more for "I hit the kobold with my sword, again." Most fights are pretty straight forward, especially at the lower levels. I also want to avoid unnecessary purple prose, such as: "Gregor leaps from the shadow, his bare blade glinting in the moonlight. A soft whistling as his sword arcs toward the kobold, followed by a desperate shriek, rapidly cut off, as his prey tumbles to ground. [I rolled a 16 to hit, and a 4 to damage]."
Don't get me wrong, this kind of thing is great, in context, but writing it for every combat round?
Still, as far as I'm concerned, you guys are the boss. If you don't want to do it my way, no problem. I just thought I'd rather go faster through the action scenes, and take more time on the more cerebral elements, and this seemed like a good way to do it.
I have to agree with the others, pbp are slow that is the nature of the beast. I am not to keen on someone else narrating the whole of the battle really. Combat is a large part of the system and once ya gut that your left with half your sheet being less then useless really.
There is tricks ya can use , like after the round is over recapping everyones actions and narrating the last round..keeps it a bit exciting as that way everyone does what they wish but you get to tell the scene and explain things in as much exciting detail as you like while keeping the players very relevant in every action they take.
Combats will be slow, what you can do is a few steps like after you post the round give everyone 24 hours to post up, if they have not ya NPC their actions for the round and move on, stalling does kill most pbp games
Like others have said fights with a group this big can last two weeks, but ya can keep the players interested and the fight exciting by being descriptive in the round recap
anyhow just thoughts
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Personally, I wouldn't dismiss your idea without seeing it in action, but if we're agreeing against it, then Kingmaker (maybe not the first adventure though?) seems like you could split the action into two threads—one concerned with the storytelling around running the kingdom, and the other dealing with the more combat oriented exploration/war waging.
Like most have said, pbp's are slow...but they don't have to crawl to a stop during combat. I've played online (via email and pbp) since '98 and combat can move swiftly or like molasses. First a word about the two games I'm currently playing in: in one game, the DM calls for combat rolls prior to a melee encounter. Players use an online dice roller (like Invisible Castle) and submit their rolls - we send in six to hit rolls with damage rolls at a time. We also post contingency actions with our rolls - this makes for a fast-paced combat. In the second game, the DM asks for our actions every round and for us to supply rolls either on the "honor" system or via an online dice roller. Makes for slower combat but still works well. Something to note about both of these games is that the characters are either 1st or 2nd level and there are eight players in one game and seven in the other.
In the games I run, I do group posts for combat...and often for roleplaying too. I prefer players to send in a series of rolls (on their honor) for attack, damage, saves, and initiatives. I keep all of the rolls in a stat block for each player in the group post. The players post their actions (with contingencies - it's very easy to do and IMO does not detract from the spontaneity at all) and then I compile their actions using their rolls into a group combat post. I've done this for nearly 12 years and it is very successful. But the key to the success is a detailed group post AND a combat map. A map is probably more crucial than the detailed group post, which serves to give atmosphere to the game.
Uriel, you do whatever works best for you. Since this is your first pbp game you could try a couple of different things and see which one you like best. Heck, you could try one...right now! Give us a simple combat scenario and see how we do. That would help you prep for when the real game starts. :)
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Uriel, you do whatever works best for you. Since this is your first pbp game you could try a couple of different things and see which one you like best. Heck, you could try one...right now! Give us a simple combat scenario and see how we do. That would help you prep for when the real game starts. :)
Now that... that is a good idea. I'm going to throw something together, and I'll have it up for tomorrow afternoon. Woohoo!