| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
And oh did I tell you one of my players said this,
"I think you can see where I'm going with that. I hold no grudge against you, but I definitely am not playing with someone who feels comfortable talking about me (and others) that way when my back is effectively turned. Consider it a learning experience, or whatever. Ciao."
He was referring to FAWTL.
Hell, we even had a mod pop into the thread after we vacated it ^^
I guess that's a score for really having the world's biggest squabble.
*cynical laugh*
Welp. I guess it'd be a bigger issue if you hadn't already decided to swear off PbP?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Just had hot pot and I'm sweating so I took off all my clothes =D
So yeah gran, talk about big quarrels...
But again mine's all online, so if I want to avoid said people, I can. Not so simple in RL.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah I suppose it would. I mean the knowledge and everything is still there, I can give people advice on how to build cheese their characters, give GMing advice, comment about stuff I've done in the past. I just have no desire to use it for myself.
Of course, should I ever return to the PBP scene, people will probably track my posting history and think badly of me for it, because it's human nature to see the bad and not the good.
Freehold, that's a bald faced ploy on getting me naked!
*bats Freehold with a paw*
*but eats everything anyway. But does not take off clothes this time* =)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah I suppose it would. I mean the knowledge and everything is still there, I can give people advice on how to
buildcheese their characters, give GMing advice, comment about stuff I've done in the past. I just have no desire to use it for myself.Of course, should I ever return to the PBP scene, people will probably track my posting history and think badly of me for it, because it's human nature to see the bad and not the good.
Freehold, that's a bald faced ploy on getting me naked!
*bats Freehold with a paw*
*but eats everything anyway. But does not take off clothes this time* =)
HA! I knew you were going to do that, so I spent time with cats yesterday to enure myself to cat smacks!
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
First sign of spring!!
The Marco Polo birds are singing!!!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Second sign of spring!
All the ice rinks and lagoons closed for the season yesterday!!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Considering all the bike trails, milkmaids, and craft breweries we have, I think he'll survive...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
*decides to take off her coat the meantime*
*tries the big pitiful looking eyes trick on Freehold*
being naked counteracts the big sad eyes effect! Its like hearthstone that way! At least I think.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
First sign of spring!!
The Marco Polo birds are singing!!!
NOOOOOOOOO! GO AWAY BIRDS! NOT SPRINGTIME YET!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Second sign of spring!
All the ice rinks and lagoons closed for the season yesterday!!
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Another freaking snow day. We are never going to get this project finished.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Another freaking snow day. We are never going to get this project finished.
NO FAIR
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Man, I’d love to play a game in my own setting. Sigh.
I’d also be into a 3.5 Psionics game complete with the “style” they always sold for such (hinting at a kind of post-apocalyptic world wit lots of ruins and monsters everywhere).
Oh well.
Considering whether or not to run a “micro adventure” with my live PnP players before our “real” game next month in order to calibrate ability expectations (basically having them run 4 NPCs in a minor, but difficult quest, hopefully showing the need for real heroes and powerful people), but I’m not sure... sigh.
EDIT: what I’m suggesting is basically a prequel to “our” game where these hapless commoners are forced into a deadly situation, the end of which is reported to the empress... should any survive! This, in turn, leads to the four PCs later being recruited for handling the dangerous situation.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Hmmmm... hey, A Dark and Stormy Knight might be a perfect adventure to adapt for that...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As a random aside, it’s always frustrated me that no one writes Psionic adventures. Yes, of course, I could write my own, but I like prepublished modules for a reason and I endnote to be quite busy as a stay-at-home, so... dang it.
Who are your Pnp players anyway? I think I would rather do a 1-shot with their characters? Master of fallen Fortress is fun?
My wife and three of her coworkers - all pretty awesome people.
I don’t want to do a one-shot with their characters, because that game would be a one- or two-shot anyway. The reason I’m looking for a very short micro adventure as a prequel is to do two things:
... calibrate their expectations about what commoners (not the class) can do and aren’t generally capable of (and give them a sense of “scale” - by comparing their abilities and numbers to more common peoples’ abilities and numbers, and how the world wusses itself out);
... and give the players a sense of why the PCs might be called to an area or idea - basically permitting metamaging later, as a method of imitating their higher ability scores and intellects and knowledge. I’m planning on running it in an area the characters wouldn’t necessarily be familiar with, but would be briefed on, and hope that dawning sense of familiarity later down the line helps with the sense of setting immersion and persistence. It would also tie neatly into at least two other characters’ back stories.
It should segue together relatively well.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Strange Aeons has lots of occult stuff.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Tonight's game was rough, for a couple of reasons. The party is 5th level, and there were 5 of them tonight. They were facing a CR 7 creature, so it should have been a tough fight. But GOOD GOD WERE MY DICE ON FIRE!!! I only scored one crit, but probably hit about 75% of the time. And their rolls were terrible. The Paladin could hit the BBEG on a roll of 8+, and rolled 4 3s and 3 6s. So, I wound up killing the Paladin. And the Wizard (who was a replacement for the Alchemist I killed two weeks ago). And the melee Fighter. Which left the Oracle and the (blinded) ranged Fighter to run away. So it's never fun when you're getting the s*#@ kicked out of you as a group. And two of the players were very distracted. They're usually distracted, they have a 6-month-old so it's understandable-but tonight was really bad. The one was out of the room for probably 1/3 of the night, the other almost as often, and at one point they were both gone for 4 rounds straight. And even when they are at the table, she plays with her phone when it isn't her turn and he just kind of zones out. So they aren't paying attention to anyone else's actions, meaning they don't get involved in any tactics or know when to try and help each other out. So two of the other players are thinking of either dropping out or dropping the two distracted players. So none of us know what's going to happen now.
Yeah, one of the issues I always see snowballing is large groups and our infinitely-distractable culture. Once you get more than 4 players, then people have to wait a bit for their turn. They get bored, take out their devices, stop paying attention, and suddenly their turns take 2-3 times as long because once their turn comes up they ask for a recap of what everyone else did, ask everyone what they think they should do, go over their spell list to figure out what to do, etc. So if a round in a 4-player game takes 2 minutes, a round in a 6-player game takes 12. It's kind of astonishing and depressing how massively it snowballs.
Yet another reason any games I GM in the future will have at most 4 players. I'm just tired of spending entire sessions on single combats because each round is taking 20-30 minutes.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Interesting perspective NH. I know some people look at me funny when I recruit only 4 for PBP. But I know that if one person delays, everything is held up(like 4 days for a single combat round) and if the game is to be moving at any kind of pace, waiting for 6 people would be too long.
I'm glad in a way to find someone sharing my perspective.
Instead of people thinking I should give more people a chance to play.
But honesty on my part means I have to admit I am very sensitive to every nuance, so adding more players or too many NPCs at once just overloads my senses and I can't function.
That's why my first foray into a PBP was for a single gestalt character only.
I had to attune my senses slowly, before I could take the load of more players.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Occult Adventures has Psychics.
And it's also Paizo's best hardcover yet.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't own OA and I do not think I will ever buy it. I don't see the need for occult stuff and arcane and divine spells are enough to satisfy me. Besides I have also left PFS so I won't be rolling any characters pretty much.
I played a psychic bbeg and found the spell selection >.<
If it were up to me, colour spray would be on the spellls known, instead of some lame @ss other stuff like sleep. Sure 4 adventurers will allow you to take a full round action without interrupting that...
Psychics lack the AE CC of wizards like glitterdust, burst of radiance, black tentacles, fear etc. Though black tentacles is a sometimes thing.
Personally I'd find playing as commoners very restrictive. If I had any money it'd go to buying a trained riding dog and having ranks in handle animal. Otherwise I have no idea how to do anything productive with a commoner.
That is, in fact, the point. As noted, it’s not the class, but it’s the idea: maybe an adept, and aristocrat, an expert, and a warrior. That’s why it’s so short! The point isn’t, “these are totally your characters.“ But rather, to show them what most people in the rest of the world are like. I am interested in running a full campaign, or even a major adventure, for a bunch of commerce. However, it could be really nifty to see how a bunch of non-hero people actually handle a very bad situation. Also, it would let me get some Amount of practice in showing off my own world, and familiarize them (and me) with said world, before ex sept in them too deeply embrace the setting.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It is always amazing to me to see the differences in the way the mind works between a "perpetually late" person and a "perpetually early" person.
This is not a(n intentional) knock on NobodysWife, but the bus comes somewhere between 8:05 am and 8:07 am every single morning. And roughly 3 days out of 5, she's stressing out and complaining that she's late late late and she's going to miss the bus. And if the bus arrives early (as it did this morning), she misses it and needs me to drive her to the next stop so she can catch it. This happens maybe once a month. This morning is was so early (over 2 minutes) that we weren't sure we were going to get ahead of it. But instead of getting out her phone and checking the real-time app to see exactly where the bus was, she spent the time in the car complaining about the bus being early so when I dropped her off we had no idea at all as to whether or not she'd made it.
So, I understand not wanting to stand at the freezing bus stop for an excessive period of time. But I don't understand always running 5 minutes late and then stressing about it. Either you're Captain Yesterday, and it's, "Late again? Meh. Whatever." or you're NobodysHome and it's, "Oh, I'm 10 minutes early? No biggie. I can get in some Sudoku!"
But I know sooooo many people who always run a few minutes late, and stress about it. And I just think, "If it stresses you to be late, just move all your activities 5 minutes earlier," and somehow that just doesn't work. We tried it with Impus Minor, moving his wake-up time earlier and earlier, and he still managed to fill every single minute of his morning with stuff so he was STILL exactly as late every time, no matter when we tried to get him prepped.
It's just one of those weird phenomenae I don't think I'll ever understand.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
If they don't mind it rough, more power to them. I will just say no thank you if I need to play a commoner. Actually 3 warriors and 1 adept can function like an adventuring party.
I think you missed the point of what I was saying, but it could be a problem with my language choice (basically, "it's my fault").
1) this wouldn't be the thing that they're going to be playing "for real" - the point is to show them that their actual characters are, in fact, awesome.
2) Short game, short use of characters that are, in fact, only there to set up their real characters. It should be a 1-Hour game at most.
3) "Commoners" doesn't mean "commoner" (the class). It means "commoners" that are the "common" people. NPC-classed characters make ~95% of the populace. The class actually only makes up roughly 5/12 of the NPC-class populace (4/12 are experts due to high education; 2/12 are warriors; 1/12 are evenly split between adepts of various kinds [half normal, half psionic] and aristocrats).
That said, I'm not entirely sold on doing this. I'm mostly thinking it out, and wanting to make sure that my players understand their own role in the world.
EDIT: Also, for clarity, they're not supposed to be a "functioning" adventuring party. It's a single adventure. That they may not win. Which is fine.
(And will take a heeeeeeeeck'va lot less time than in PbP. XD)
Occult Adventures has Psychics.
And it's also Paizo's best hardcover yet.
So, full disclosure, most everything in that book is pretty great for a lot of different reasons, and props for making what may be my favorite Paizo class (the mesmerist) not some auto-baddy.
... but I'm never going to be able to convince a bunch of Eastern Seaboard Christians (or Catholics, for that matter) to play something calling itself "occult" - regardless of the reason (much like I'm not going to be able to sway them to do the whole "witch" class thing, despite me loving it so very much).
We're still settling out from the whole "D&D is of the devil, and filled with occult witchcraft" thing - and even those that never really believed that part about the game will have a hard time talking to anyone about a game that literally (because it's in the title) has "occult" and "witch"(craft) things in the game.
Conservative moral panic is one thing, but it's quite another when you actively acquire labels that have strongly negative connotations in actual religious ideology.
I don't own OA and I do not think I will ever buy it. I don't see the need for occult stuff and arcane and divine spells are enough to satisfy me. Besides I have also left PFS so I won't be rolling any characters pretty much.
I played a psychic bbeg and found the spell selection >.<
If it were up to me, colour spray would be on the spellls known, instead of some lame @ss other stuff like sleep. Sure 4 adventurers will allow you to take a full round action without interrupting that...
Psychics lack the AE CC of wizards like glitterdust, burst of radiance, black tentacles, fear etc. Though black tentacles is a sometimes thing.
The spell list is actually just fine. Whatever it's lacking isn't really a bad thing - many of the abilities wizards "rely" on aren't strictly necessary, and are even kind of OP from many games' perspectives (though I don't typically mind them).
That said, there are some things missing from the various lists that are just... baffling.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It is always amazing to me to see the differences in the way the mind works between a "perpetually late" person and a "perpetually early" person.
This is not a(n intentional) knock on NobodysWife, but the bus comes somewhere between 8:05 am and 8:07 am every single morning. And roughly 3 days out of 5, she's stressing out and complaining that she's late late late and she's going to miss the bus. And if the bus arrives early (as it did this morning), she misses it and needs me to drive her to the next stop so she can catch it. This happens maybe once a month. This morning is was so early (over 2 minutes) that we weren't sure we were going to get ahead of it. But instead of getting out her phone and checking the real-time app to see exactly where the bus was, she spent the time in the car complaining about the bus being early so when I dropped her off we had no idea at all as to whether or not she'd made it.
So, I understand not wanting to stand at the freezing bus stop for an excessive period of time. But I don't understand always running 5 minutes late and then stressing about it. Either you're Captain Yesterday, and it's, "Late again? Meh. Whatever." or you're NobodysHome and it's, "Oh, I'm 10 minutes early? No biggie. I can get in some Sudoku!"
But I know sooooo many people who always run a few minutes late, and stress about it. And I just think, "If it stresses you to be late, just move all your activities 5 minutes earlier," and somehow that just doesn't work. We tried it with Impus Minor, moving his wake-up time earlier and earlier, and he still managed to fill every single minute of his morning with stuff so he was STILL exactly as late every time, no matter when we tried to get him prepped.
It's just one of those weird phenomenae I don't think I'll ever understand.
I'm right there with your wife, my dude. Every time.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Tac - I like the idea. If it makes sense for you/your world, here's my take on it, use at will or not at all.
The module as a Rite of Passage. They're all late teen's/early 20's with NPC classes. When they complete the initial module before going into the AP, the Council Elders or whatever have them Drink from the McGuffin of Adulthood (which can later be stolen as a side-quest to tie them back to their origins), which transforms their NPC level(s) into the appropriate PC classes and raises their stats to what they determined by whatever method you use. They are now Protectors of their village (or whatever) and are sworn to protect and root out threats to the town...which will include threats to the wider region...hence the AP.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It's just one of those weird phenomenae I don't think I'll ever understand.
I see this too. I stress about being late to the point that I'm frequently 15-30 minutes early. I have an aunt and an uncle that are perpetually late. We used to tell them to be at Grandma's by 4pm just so that they would make it by 5 or 5:30 so we could eat the holiday dinner at a reasonable time.
Tac - I like the idea. If it makes sense for you/your world, here's my take on it, use at will or not at all.
The module as a Rite of Passage. They're all late teen's/early 20's with NPC classes. When they complete the initial module before going into the AP, the Council Elders or whatever have them Drink from the McGuffin of Adulthood (which can later be stolen as a side-quest to tie them back to their origins), which transforms their NPC level(s) into the appropriate PC classes and raises their stats to what they determined by whatever method you use. They are now Protectors of their village (or whatever) and are sworn to protect and root out threats to the town...which will include threats to the wider region...hence the AP.
Man, I love this idea.
... unfortunately, they've all already made basic characters that come from four different portions of the world, have backstories tied to their classes, and a "first adventure" where they meet already partially-executed.
... though I'm totally stealing this for a later game, if you don't mind. XD
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I see this too. I stress about being late to the point that I'm frequently 15-30 minutes early. I have an aunt and an uncle that are perpetually late. We used to tell them to be at Grandma's by 4pm just so that they would make it by 5 or 5:30 so we could eat the holiday dinner at a reasonable time.It's just one of those weird phenomenae I don't think I'll ever understand.
Oh, my brother's ex-girlfriend would routinely run 3-4 hours late, to the point that we all just took to leaving without her. And she got offended by this. But at least she didn't stress, which I can comprehend.
The area of my confusion is the people who stress about being late, but who are perpetually late anyway...
NPC-classed characters make ~95% of the populace.
For the record, the reason it's ~95% rather than, say, ~99%, is due to the relative danger of the world. While this is medieval era (or, rather, that vague time somewhere between the end of the medieval and beginning of the renaissance in the late 1500s); in any event it's dangerous time with the call for many dangerous people.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Oh, LM, I need to get some ideas from you.
It looks like Saturday is going to be the kind of session you hate: Gral, Tirra, Arkwhal, Kevril, and Iuliana still haven't done their level-ups. As far as I can tell, no one other than you has gone over the loot list, either. You're also in Absalom, with a, "The sky's the limit" purchase limit so people are going to want to go through the books and look for neat stuff to buy.
While Arkwhal and Kevril are easy (the Impii are nice, straight-to-the-point, "If it doesn't improve me in combat I don't need it" players), I see Tirra and Gral taking 1-2 hours each for their shopping, and unless Whingey's done some preliminary work, he could easily take 2-3 hours (or more, since he can buy spells there).
In short, after 3 weeks, to the best of my knowledge you are the *only* player to have taken any actions to let us actually further the plot, so Saturday's likely to be one big shopping/level-upping/giving each other advice session. Which you despise.
Is there any way I can make Saturday less painful for you?
EDIT: OK, Tirra's done her level-up and gone over the loot list, but hasn't shopped.
I see this too. I stress about being late to the point that I'm frequently 15-30 minutes early. I have an aunt and an uncle that are perpetually late. We used to tell them to be at Grandma's by 4pm just so that they would make it by 5 or 5:30 so we could eat the holiday dinner at a reasonable time.It's just one of those weird phenomenae I don't think I'll ever understand.
Oh, my brother's ex-girlfriend would routinely run 3-4 hours late, to the point that we all just took to leaving without her. And she got offended by this. But at least she didn't stress, which I can comprehend.
The area of my confusion is the people who stress about being late, but who are perpetually late anyway...
When we have big family get-togethers, it's usually at least 1.5-3 hours away. We sometimes (though highly inconsistently) run ~1-2 hours late to those (). To many other things, we run ~5-10 minutes late.
I've found a number of contributing factors.
- 1) Poor planning on my part; it's something I try to work on, but... it's not a skill that I've been successfully developing, even though my wife is really good at that sort of thing, in general
- 2) "Last minute emergencies" - these seem to harangue us constantly, and it doesn't matter when or how, they always take juuuuuuuuust a bit longer than would be ideal; often times, this is even in the car on the way to places via our kids (either a huge diaper, or immediate and insistent need to pee somewhere other than within the car, we hope), or someone spills something large requiring clean-up, or some other similar thing.
- 3) Traffic. Like, seriously, it's freakish. I actively try to plan around this, but something I don't expect always comes up. So, for example: I know several places where traffic gets bad, but often that's not where we go - we try to find the "clean" or "smooth" places which won't take so long. Or, if we go the "main" ways, we make sure it's not the high traffic times. Doesn't matter. Sudden accident. Unexpected slow-down for reasons unknown.
- 4) Sleep. I like driving safely, and long, boring car trips when my family falls asleep isn't really a good time to be sleepy, and, when I'm alone and it's dark I'm not interested in sleeping. During the week, it's often hard to get enough sleep (this is true for both my wife and myself). Hence, we sleep. This does not leave us much time.
But I readily admit it's my fault. While I'm not proud of it, it's something that's a battle to make happen. I dunno - it's consistent, chronic, and when I "fight" it in any "successful" manner, I usually end up so early that I've left even more chores than usual undone, and we have to entertain a six- and a three-year old for half an hour or (usually much) more while we wait on others (which inevitably ends poorly when one or both of them gets super-exhausted).
For clarity's sake, this happens, and it happens frequently enough that I recognize the patterns. Still haven't come up with an optimal solution. "Be earlier!" seems the obvious solution, but having exhausted, grumpy kids is not fun for anyone, and if we have to handle that, we're just those exhausted grumpy parents of the family that huddle in our own little world constantly disciplining children. If we don't do that, we have two little angels that are simply the best. These comments come from the same people. I don't know which is better to deal with.
It doesn't matter so much when we go to the parents' house, but going out anywhere? Not a fun thing.
Oh, LM, I need to get some ideas from you.
It looks like Saturday is going to be the kind of session you hate: Gral, Tirra, Arkwhal, Kevril, and Iuliana still haven't done their level-ups. As far as I can tell, no one other than you has gone over the loot list, either. You're also in Absalom, with a, "The sky's the limit" purchase limit so people are going to want to go through the books and look for neat stuff to buy.
While Arkwhal and Kevril are easy (the Impii are nice, straight-to-the-point, "If it doesn't improve me in combat I don't need it" players), I see Tirra and Gral taking 1-2 hours each for their shopping, and unless Whingey's done some preliminary work, he could easily take 2-3 hours (or more, since he can buy spells there).
In short, after 3 weeks, to the best of my knowledge you are the *only* player to have taken any actions to let us actually further the plot, so Saturday's likely to be one big shopping/level-upping/giving each other advice session. Which you despise.
Is there any way I can make Saturday less painful for you?
EDIT: OK, Tirra's done her level-up and gone over the loot list, but hasn't shopped.
Okay. I'll either be on time, or suck the "I'm not leveled, yet" penalty for the week. XD
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Tac - I like the idea. If it makes sense for you/your world, here's my take on it, use at will or not at all.
The module as a Rite of Passage. They're all late teen's/early 20's with NPC classes. When they complete the initial module before going into the AP, the Council Elders or whatever have them Drink from the McGuffin of Adulthood (which can later be stolen as a side-quest to tie them back to their origins), which transforms their NPC level(s) into the appropriate PC classes and raises their stats to what they determined by whatever method you use. They are now Protectors of their village (or whatever) and are sworn to protect and root out threats to the town...which will include threats to the wider region...hence the AP.
Man, I love this idea.
... unfortunately, they've all already made basic characters that come from four different portions of the world, have backstories tied to their classes, and a "first adventure" where they meet already partially-executed.
... though I'm totally stealing this for a later game, if you don't mind. XD
Sounds a lot like the whotsit you have to do in Dungeon Crawl Classics, where each player has a bunch of 0-level dungspreaders/bakers/serfs and whathaveyou, you send them all into a deadly labyrinth, most of them die, and whatever you have left becomes your character.
In other news, when you start singing New Kids On The Block songs to yourself, you know it's time to go home.
Hah!