Shifty - your dice rings get to you yet? - Mine just landed in KL and they are pretty cool. Need to get them into a soap bath so I can get them swinging free - but I'm reasonably impressed.
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After ruminating on Chronicle of the Righteous for a few days now, I can't shake the image of a Wrath of the Righteous campaign where each of the party members is beholden to and a mortal exemplar of one of the Empyreal Lords.
A motley band of misfits... maybe even an all Aasimar party.
Must... resist... urge of temptation.... running enough campaigns I can't keep up with as it is...
If you dare to run such a thing in the future, I can get behind it so easily, lol. Going to look into that book today after such glowing reviews.
So, the Legacy of Fire game that Tom started has died. He's been absent for quite some time. I think that I can get at least three other players (and myself) to continue with it if someone else wanted to step in as DM?
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So that's at least twice that he has bailed on a game?
Yes. Probably more times. I won't play another of his campaigns, for sure.
I have had a DM that bailed on a campaign, then returned and said he was back for good, and then bailed again on a second campaign when life became difficult. From now on, if the person does not have a long track record, I would not even consider joining the campaign.
I don't have the best track record with that AP.
Two goes at it and never made book 2 :p
The only reason I agreed to play this one with him is because he PM'd me to see if I'd be interested. I figured I'd give him a second chance, since he chose me out of all the other excellent applicants to fill the spot in the Second Darkness campaign I made Bree for. It was my first paizo campaign, and still probably my favorite. Though, I'm fast becoming fond of Mark's Reign of Winter campaign.
Yeah the Second Darkness one is good in that it has a nice storyline, but you can tell it was one of the earlier AP's due to the pacing and mechanics. ROW is less chatty chat, more carnage, relfective of the more recent AP's and the focus on AP & PFS articulation.
I do enjoy the actual role play aspects, generally more than I do the combat aspects so it's good that it is still somewhat present ;)
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RoW does have some chatty chatty bits, but it tends to be:
Chat with someone
Wade through blood
Chat with someone else
Wade through more blood
Rinse, repeat
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See here's the struggle, I like both and think they shouldn't be mutually exclusive - witty rejoinders, pithy quips, all the camaraderie as they battle it out against all odds. Although if the combats are slow then you wait a while between posts, which ruins the momentum.
Mixed blessing.
Ninja'd by Mark, but yes the chatty whilst wading in blood only works if the turns resolve very quickly.
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As much as I would like to be charitable I ahve to get myself straightened out between my writing, family, competitive TF2 team, and my 3 (formerly 5 then 4) groups on here before I can help. :(
I love the idea, but my odds of ever getting to play it are about 0, so gonna have to pass.
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So that's at least twice that he has bailed on a game?
Sadly that's nowhere near the record I've seen. 13 or 14 previous abandonments - but somehow he still got players to put forward and true to form ran away after about 50 game thread posts.
I love that you brought it up with CH, he gave a bunch of assurances and STILL buggered off, that is classic!
I am almost tempted to run AP's, although my concern is that whilst I know I'd do the right thing, I can't really be sure the groups will, and getting half way through an AP and running outta peeps would suck.
PFS for me I think, the 4 week adventure cycle is what I think I'll stick to. I am not sure an AP chapter can be done in 12 weeks, which is the speed I'd expect to maintain. SS might be different.
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The main issue with AP slowdown is the sheer number of combat encounters. In RoW to go from Level 1 -> 2 as written it's 7-8 separate combats... which is why I've skipped a couple each side en-route to the lodge... still grinds out a lot of time though.
If you ever want to recruit from the faithful for an AP Shifty I'd be up for it ;)
I think that is smart, Shifty. I'm glad to see more people doing PFS scenarios. I think a one-shot module would be good as well. APs are all shiny, but a looooong haul. I wonder how many have actually been finished on PbP.
I've been playing in S&S for over a year and we're maybe 3/4 through the first book. JR is moving really quickly and we just started book 4 as we near the two year mark. We've had pretty dedicated players, but just lost one this week. I'm hoping that doesn't bode ill for finishing the sucker out.
I don't think I've ever seen a book 5 or 6 AP on Paizo yet - a few book 4s, but thats about it.
I've gone through book 1 on a few PbPs, but haven't made book 3 yet in any.
My track record as an AP player:
Discontinued.
Shattered Star - Folded during book 1
Legacy of Fire - One GM 'vanished' with no notice, second one I bowed out on good terms ('musical differences' :p)
On going.
Council of Thieves - End of Book 2
Reign of Winter - Book 1
Rise of the Runelords - Completing book 4.
Second Darkness - First GM pulled out sans notice, second GM now has us on Book 3.
Skull & Shackles - Gotta be near the end of Book 1 (surely!)
My belief is that if each book should be six months long as an estimate, past that and your likelihood of finishing the whole path is pretty unlikely. Are PbP'ers REALLY going to sustain play (and maintain interest) for SIX YEARS? Surely not. I'd take a stab that momentum is the big killer. In the same time you could do 60 PFS scenarios at a leisurely pace - enough to take two characters the whole way through their careers.
Shifty, I thought we were finishing Book 3 in the Runelords. I could be wrong though.
I am midway through Book 4 in Curse of the Crimson Throne. I do not think that any others are through Book 2.
If there is campaign that may make if through all 6 books first, this is probably it.
They are level 9 from the looks of things and have just passed the 1 year mark with over 18,000 posts, in addition to 6,000 OOC posts. I was asked to join, but was already in Tark's CoT with Shifty.
Aye - S&S is in the second to last battle before Book 1 is history. After the cave you've just got a couple of pesky pirates to deal with ;)
Ahh yeah could be book 3, I got ahead of myself.
I expect to be with those Pirates shortly in S&S - all alone, on an island, who could tell what might happen in such a dangerous place...
Now you sound like you are starting to channel Harry into Cedrick.
Cedrick is a nasty nasty horrible piece of work. Harry is a fluffy bunny in comparison. How many people has Cedrick already murdered for convenience? :p
Cedrick 3 in his first level - Harry 0.
If Harry starts channeling Cedrick, BAD THINGS happen.
On reflection, there are a few PFS 'arcs' that sort of cover a more extended play - Quest for Perfection is a 3 part series, as is First Steps (even though First steps will soon be no more!).
I could also quite easily see a module would work - for sure. Even a triple play like Crypt/Mask/City or the Kobold ones. Ive got two PFS groups on PbP now and both are going great, but I never floated the notion of a module with them, so not sure I'd put it out there.
Legacy of Fire - One GM 'vanished' with no notice, second one I bowed out on good terms ('musical differences' :p)
You're still sore. I can tell ; P
I should confess that the AP I'm running (very modified LoF) is past the 1.5 year point and we haven't really started book 2 yet. Admittedly, I tend to go very far afield from the AP as written. I'm having far too much fun with my alt universe Undrella at the moment.
Nah its only a pain because when an AP ditches (regardless of reason) it means either...
A) That's one less AP you can now play, or
B) You can replay it, but you are now up for spending another year (or more) moving through stuff you already know, waiting to get back to where you were. And even if you make it patiently through, longevity is not a given...
In both cases it almost always involves writing off the character too.
So, as much as I want to get into Jade Regent and Shattered Star, amongst others, I think trying to nail them at face to face games might be the only way.
Wow, 13 abandonments? You can tell how addicted people are that they still give him a chance^^
Actually I think the both, the number of reliable players and DMs is rather small -_-
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I guess quite a few players do PbP games as a fix when they have no active face-to-face group (or somehow they manage to have far to much spare time - due to loss of job/relationship) and leave them once their 'real life' keeps them busy again. Although dropping out without even so much of a note to the other players remains bad style.
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This is why we can't have nice things.
LOL That would be huge.
Any takers on it as a replacement DM?
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Yeah we did a few things that sillysauce back in the early 90's. Day after day of hectic grind with no stop. Those were great days, spent in a haze :P
Aye, that's about how my first year or so of rpg experience went and I thrived on it like mad. *Wistful Sigh*
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We did a three days minimal (abou 1/2 night) sleep session of Call of Cthulhu Orient Express during my time in High School. I vividly remember the way home - sleep deprived, sitting in a train for about two hours on a misty autumn evening - and I was the only friggin passenger...
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Never had those extended playing days. Although the first time DMHW and I played, we were probably 11 or 12. We played until 10 pm (we were kids and my parents had told us it was bedtime.) Then we got up at 4 am and kept playing.
We also lived about 9 miles apart. One day we biked from his home to mine, realized we had forgotten something, biked back to his home and then back to mine. The ride was about 4 miles of uphill and 4 miles of downhill with a few hundred feet of flat thrown in for good measure. Probably 750' or more vertical total. Those trips usually had a dozen AD&D books (PH, DMG, MM, MMII, Fiend Folio, modules, a ton of lead figures, and frequently my boom box) strapped to the back of our bikes. It was a blast.
Yeah I have fond memories of travelling to friends houses on my rickety 10-speed with pack full of Dnd book over my shoulder...very precarious :)
I had similar experiences although in NY it usually involved hiking through feet of snow laden with books and then spending 3-4 days snowed in gaming until our eyes hurt from the strain of reading in a dimly lit garage.
We almost never got snowed in in northern NH. I remember a few snow days in seven years, probably less than 1/year even though we would have a dozen storms with 6 inches or more snow every year. People up there just went along with their business, the roads were plowed, and life went on. Here in Chicago, if there is news reports that it might snow they close half the schools, bunch of wimps.
One classic was in the winter of '79 when we got about 3' of snow together with several hours of 60-100 mph winds. We had 5-6 foot drifts in front of our home and 10'+ on the roads. Unfortunately, I had not started gaming then, although at the age of 8 playing in snow over my head was a lot of fun.
I was not born yet, but here is my father's recount of the winter of '69 in Pinkham Notch where I spent my first year a short time later.
Well in fairness it was a self imposed snowed in by the whole group. In the three years I lived there I missed not one day of school and we typically got heaps of snow from October to May.
My summer class starts today, my postings my be off for a few weeks. If ever needed, someone please take over for Bree and/or Alana. Thanks!
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At least it wasn't one of these Fey... my thumb hurts just thinking about it.
Rest up though.