Not sure, I didn't get a good look at the thing. First it was a vague blob moving on the light carpet in the dark, and after I switched on the light it scuttled under the corner of my mattress, which I could only tell because it was moving. I couldn't see much else even though I was looking right at it (which tells me probably light deserty color and high legs-to-body ratio).
Probably not a cockroach, but could've been an earwig if it really jammed itself in there. (Which is heartening. At the prospect of house centipede snuggles I may have been awake with the lights on until the sun rose like O_O)
Here's something else I've been wondering. There's a bird (I think? Probably a bird.) that calls in the morning and evening that's like nothing else I've ever heard. Its call is loud, pretty long (maybe half a second), relatively low-pitched, with a warble in it that almost sounds like a frog's ribbit. (I'd say it sounds to me like an evil buzzard cackling its dying breath, but that's probably not helpful to you.) Sound familiar?
No idea what the bird is. Might be an L.A. thing. As for the bug, doesn't sound like an earwig, but it doesn't sound like a centipede either. So.....no clue there either.
Mysterious mysteries. I still have a couple years here to figure out what the bird is. And definitely not a regular centipede, agreed. Those are pretty slow with not a lot of legginess (and largely okay by me. House centipedes, however, are speedy f*ckers.)
Honestly, I'm pretty sure my cat kills all of the bugs that come into my apartment because I haven't seen so much as a spider leg indoors for the past year and a half since he moved in.
Of course, we can also see what happens when a great indie idea gets forced the opposite direction through the grinder - we get a movie like Lights Out, a movie which I can't fully critique on myself, but the 2-minute short was great. But from the trailer and the imdb plot synopsis, they just tried to turn the (honestly pretty great) idea and of a monster like that into a generic sort of movie like the conjuring. (Note; IMDB seems to like this movie, but they also gave Attack the Block a 6/10 so I don't trust them AT ALL, its probably just because the film has a dec. original idea, but the trailer betrays any real faithfulness to the short, which, from a filmmaking perspective, relies on a type of jump scare that feels well-crafted and earned, as opposed to something like a Cat Scare, which is CHEAP DRIVEL.)
Oh man, I would absolutely love to have a cat or two (not only for extermination purposes) but I travel too much for that to work.
@All: Speaking of travel, next week I'll be escorting a few dozen future physicists of the world to a lab in Louisiana. There's a good chance I'll only be able to post very late on Monday (July 11), and posts from me may be limited to 1-2x a day through Wednesday July 13.
The rest of July is clear for me, but then comes travel season. During August and September I expect to hit Eastern Washington (I will wave to you when I'm in Seattle, Cel), Spain (maybe), Massachusetts (Hey Dulae), the UK, New York, Florida, and Arizona (might be October). I'll let you know the prospective post schedule as these trips get closer. At the moment I don't think I'll miss more than a day at a time. (Hopefully those trans-Atlantic flights have free wifi).
I don't really trust IMDB either (I get the impression there's some kind of pay-to-promote ratings shenanigans). What do you think about the Rotten Tomatoes ratings?
By the way, Cabin in the Woods was such a great life choice. (The 'harbinger on line 2' line f*cking kills me. Everything about that movie is near perfection.)
Have you seen Hail Caesar? A have a few college friends in film in LA and they say it's startlingly accurate (in an endearingly silly way) in terms of the nonsense producers have to deal with.
Open question for the party on combat:
My current plan (still not concrete) is to post initiative rolls, have players post actions whenever they can, and resolve them in initiative order.
That should probably work pretty well in most cases, but I can think of examples where it wouldn't.
For instance: I am last in initiative, I post I intend to take a full-round action to attack, but by the time it gets around to my turn the target has moved behind a rock and/or an ally has jumped in front of me. I'm thinking the best way to handle that would be for the GM to modify it so it achieves as close to the desired goal as possible (i.e. to a move and standard attack). How do you all feel about that, and can you think of a better way?
Something else I didn't quite think through is having PCs move their own marker on the map. I can think of cases when moving to another square may not work out like PCs think it will, and by the time I see it to field it another PC may already have reacted to it. I suppose it'd be pretty easy to set up a scheme where the tiles are labeled and players could state where they intend to move and the GM would move them depending on the outcome, but then the map would get out of sync with the posts while I'm not checking the forums. Do you all have a preference between these? I'd also be very interested to hear alternate solutions.
Also of interest: how would you all prefer to handle cases when a PC wishes to initiate combat? I'm thinking it makes sense to go ahead and RP a surprise round action (if appropriate) and it makes little difference whether the initiating PC(s) roll initiative or the GM rolls them all at once (as would happen for enemy-initiated combat). If you have a preference, I'm happy to go with whatever it is.
(When this is settled, I should really start compiling these rules along with the map rules somewhere.)
I suppose it's not a complete answer to your question, but I am currently in a game that uses an initiative system I think works pretty well. Effectively, it's a enemy initiative and a party initiative. So, if the party wins out, they all get their turn regardless of order followed by the enemies. I'm relatively certain he averages the initiative rolls so it's one number versus another. It does work pretty conveniently, though. It's first come first serve on the group's actions during their turn, and if you log on and see something developing that you want to build on, you just wait until everyone else has posted before you make your action. That way it's harder for plans to get ruined by someone else's action, you simply post in order of occurrence. This guy also uses the stipulation of one round of combat per day. If at the end of the day at a specified time you haven't posted, your action gets GM botted, then the enemy goes. If the enemy won initiative, then they go first on day one AND again at the end of the day after everyone else has posted, then they always go at the end of the day from then on. The system moves pretty smoothly!
I'm not going to say this is how we should do it, just something I've seen work pretty well if everyone is on board.
In terms of movement, I feel like just doing some retcon stuff would be the best option. Sure sometimes things go awry, but half of this kind of game is the improv in the moment, right? We can always hold a discussion if something really gets messed up.
In terms of surprise rounds, I agree that the roll doesn't matter so much at that point. It's a guaranteed "go first" moment, then just follow it up with standard initiative roll rules as you decide.
I think that sounds all right (in my limited experience with pbp business), it might be a little extra effort for you, compared to "we all just post when our turn is", but I think it will probably move faster so it might be worth it overall. The only other (short-term) pbp I did used roll20, and we basically did the same thing with moving our icons, except we moved in order of initiative, and I think they showed the hp and/or the AC of monsters, so that we could be more autonomous in our replies (which takes away from the mystery a bit, but I don't think anyone here would be too meta about it). I think that helped sofar as keeping combat moving quickly, but it does have its drawbacks.
EDIT: Cel ninja'd me, but yeah that sounds like a really good system! I think I've heard of it before and it sounds like a great format for the situation.
As someone who has done both standard initiative and the one Cel suggested, I think that this group would probably work well with the latter.
For surprise rounds, I think what you've suggested will work just fine.
Thanks a lot for the suggestion, Cel. I think PC and enemy rounds would suit us very well and I would not have thought of it myself.
I'm still interested to hear what Xizoh and Dulae think.
I've never done the group inititive, but I can see where it would excel. I've got no issues with anything, and think the retcon idea is probably the better idea for PC action.
Thanks Xizoh, I quite agree.
Given that it's Tuesday, I'm guessing poor Dulae is passed out by now. (Hang in there Dulae.) I'll wait until tomorrow to see if we have a consensus or other suggestions.
I think the enemy/party initiative that Cel proposed sounds good.
And in case anyone was wondering, I have group meetings on tuesdays that, combined with work, tend to stop me from getting home until 9 or later. Apologies for late posts!
A consensus is reached! Happy day.
Thanks Dulae, I should know better than to ask important questions on a Tuesday.
@All: I compiled the rules for maps and combat that we've agreed on in the last couple slides of the campaign map. (Mostly for my benefit - I have a mind like a sieve.) They'll live there for reference unless we can think of a better place to put them.
Comments and suggestions are still welcome. Thanks for the input everyone.
Another question for the party: I notice we had an average of a bit over 8 posts per PC over the last week and the discussion has dried up. We had a lull over the holiday, which is expected I think, but we don’t seem to be recovering. (A little less than one post per PC per day, on average.) What’s up with that?
I’m wondering if it’s a cyclic thing where people notice the post rate is down, so they post less often, and so on. Whatever the reason, if there’s anything I can do to help make the game more engaging, suggestions are welcome.
From my view, I can keep up with you all pretty easily now, but that won’t always be true in August and September. I’m pretty eager to get through as much as we can in the next few weeks before I'm forced to drop off the grid every so often as I rack up a load of frequent flier miles.
If there’s anything schedule-wise we might do to help move things along, I’d be into that. (For example: Dulae, we may want to consider doing a standing auto-bot on your 12-14 hour long workday Tuesdays.)
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I have the site up pretty much all day every day, it's just a matter of lack of things to say. There's also always the effect where I think everyone is waiting for a "leader" to say we're done here when it comes to make a decision. I've noticed that this seems to happen a lot in PbP games just during the traveling bits. Posts pick up when there's combat and when there's down time at an inn/military post/etc. Traveling is always rough..."Hey there's a thing!" everyone looks at the thing. Then we all stand around looking at each other until someone finally says, "Okay, let's go!"
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This pretty much.
As the obvious outlier from these bunch of jackals, I suppose I can bear the burden of the mantle of leader ;P I mean I did initiate that fast travel.
But yeah, in person it's easy to call a quick vote, but in game it is a bit more difficult to hear from everyone.
Fair enough, I am glad I asked.
Now that I think on it, it could read like a dickish dismissal to disagree in character with a PC who wants to stick around and then immediately comment 'ready to fast travel' ooc, even if that is the case. (I'll note that people have largely avoided doing this.)
Inverting the logic (from requiring five 'aye's to requiring zero 'nay's) probably wouldn't help there, and it'd put a subtle pressure on the party to move on (which I don't want).
Maybe we could try using the discussion for conditional 'ready to move on' statements/thoughts? Otherwise, travel is hard in PbP, roger that.
Eventually you guys will reach somewhere that you'll spend more than a few posts on, but when depends on what y'all do =D
I'd be interested to hear further thoughts, particularly from Dulae and Xizoh, if you care to share.
Its a little bit of not having much to say, but also just being busy - often times at work I'm not using a computer so don't have a chance to pop on and post. I'll try to be better!
I wouldn't mind moving the 'ready to go' to the discussion - I feel its a little more natural in the gameplay area as then there is no confusion as to 'when' the ready was posted in game time. However, I understand people might feel pressured to move on.
I think we can all agree at this point that none of us are rude OOC (in character can be fun :P) on purpose. Which is really nice and I appreciate it, so thanks everyone!
Hah, yes, I definitely didn't mean to imply anybody's been rude ooc. You've all been quite lovely in my view. (And if at any point that's not your experience, let me know and I'll try to resolve it. Myself included.)
That comment was more my oblivious scientist realization narrative. (I'd started at 'I think that post means they're ready... why wouldn't they give a go-ahead' and eventually got to 'Oh right, social skills'.)
Yes, let's stick to the current scheme for now (requiring five explicit 'aye's in the gameplay thread). If people think it's useful to post 'I'm ready if <condition>' comments in the discussion, that's great, and if not, we'll keep on keepin' on.
Also, my read of the posts thus far is that you never really stopped hiking, so I'm preparing to fast travel you again once Alaina, Xizoh, and Anathema have had the chance to react (including stopping, if they wish).
Also, you may find this amusing: I was considering our character at level 3 in this world, and my estimation is running much less towards 'badasses' as it is towards 'meat popsicles'...
Here's hoping that insight develops into a healthy sense of self-preservation.
It shouldn't stop you from trying to be badass! Fake it till you make it, baby.
Also, Cel, thanks for negating my natural 1, getting fatigued in this situation would be awful.
In all honesty, it's kind of a luck deal where I intervened in the way I did! In another PbP campaign I'm playing a Luckbringer who is delightfully off his rocker. These two facts (class and personality) force me to think in very specific ways. First, as a Luckbringer I am basically making the lives of the group much better and making the lives of the enemies much worse. Probably has become my absolute favorite class to play even if it is a 3pp class. The later bit about him being absolutely mad means that I have to find ways to communicate intention, confirmation, and all the other elements that come with interacting with a group in bizarre ways (i.e. song, dance, cryptic statements that aren't so cryptic they can't be figured out but also not obvious, etc.). Inevitably, I'm so overwhelmingly primed to be constantly keeping myself on high mental alert plus seeing a nat 1 basically turns into, "Oh shit, a nat 1! I can fix that!" So, even though I'm not on that character I went into that mindset, and it is the only reason I looked at my character sheet again which reminded me I had the wand in the first place. The poking in the face was probably more just me finding the visual imagery funny.
End overly long, needless wall of text!
You're welcome :)
Yeah... I would have had fun with those fortitude rolls =D
Anyone happen to read xkcd? There was a particularly amusing one yesterday: http://xkcd.com/1704//
Hah! That's pretty great. I don't read it religiously but every time its referenced on reddit I go and read all of the new updates since I last saw it. Usually every few weeks lol.
Personally, I always feel like I hold the game up. I notice a lot of the posts occur between 7 and 11 am while I'm working. So I don't like to hold up anything because I figure most of it will happen while I'm away. That, and I'm a night person.
@Henri - I hope you also read the scrollover text. Sometimes that's the best part.
@Xizoh - being a night person brings up a good point. Currently the combat rules say that the PCs will post during the day and the enemies at night. If we were to shoot for a particular time window for the enemies to take their turn (where PCs would post any other time), would ~11pm pacific work well? Or would it work better to shoot for something else (like midday or afternoon)?
Also, I think we're all taking turns adding some lag time to the game. (My turn will be this coming Monday.) 10 posts a week is an ambitious schedule, so if we don't meet it every week that's okay. (I would very much like to meet it most weeks though.)
That being said, I'm considering moving up the "GM will autobot if 48 hours without a post" rule to 36 or even 24 hours, perhaps just until August. How would you guys feel about that?
I should note that an obvious con to this proposal is that it's likely I will sometimes do an unsatisfying job RPing somebody else's PC (except perhaps in straightforward scenarios like combat, where the rule is already 24 hours).
I don't mind the 24 hour thing except maybe weekends. I know many people may have troubles posting on a weekend. Regardless of what the vote says, I'll just say you can put me down as auto-bot if it's 24 hours since my last post as a blanket statement.
That is true, fair enough.
I feel like sometimes I through OOC thoughts about the game into the actual gameplay forum but now i feel awk about it.
I did promise "some horror" eventually. Might be now, might be later. Who knows? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I do appreciate the party's efforts to not metagame. Go team.
* plays Skyrim dragon fight music *
See, I love zombies and I love Resident Evil, so I've got some of that good castle zombie music playing in my head for this.
@Dulae, you're going to go straight to the dragon theme for this guy?
@Henri, I will comment later on this choice.
@Xizoh, small favor - it would be very convenient for me if you could add Anathema's perception to his stats spoiler when you next get the chance.
Well, ya know, Fight!
Also dragons are far less dangerous than say... a bear. When you first encounter them at least. This guy can probs take a dragon. [Edit] A low player lever skyrim dragon, that is.
:: Grumbles about leveled enemies ruining immersion ::
=== Administrative-y stuff =====
Map stuff
Now that we've had a bit of a chance to see them in action, everybody please have another look at the map and combat rules to see what you think. (They are listed in the campaign map.)
Currently, anyone who attempts a ranged attack should be drawing a line from their marker to the target marker.
@Cel - I attempted to do this for you and found that the target had full cover from where you are standing.
I'm going to retcon that for whatever reason those smaller trees had their snow knocked off and were thin enough just where you needed in order to get line of sight, but the target is going to get a big AC bonus (+4).
For the future, if we still like this rule, assume anything drawn on the map has the area shown from 0-8 feet above the ground and is too dense to see or shoot through, unless otherwise stated.
Description stuff
It would be nice for posterity if PCs could describe where they move in addition to showing it on the map. Maps will change, and if we ever go back to reference this it'd be nice to have it in a more permanent form. ('...moves to <Name>'s right', or 'stands next to <Name>' is fine.)
Ah ha, but this is where I bring in the contingency that I did say somewhere with line of sight! In all honesty, I'm not being nitpicky, just snarky. I'm totally okay with the attack not going through, but I do appreciate your willingness to just put it at a +4 AC. I will pay more attention to that part in the future :). If you could queue when we're up for first round actions. I'll be moving to clear any issues!
That you did, part of the reason I retconned that to be true. (I would say I will check in the future, but I'm probably too lazy and I'll very likely rely on PCs to do it.)
I will do that. Depending on how Xizoh and Anathema interpret what they observed before Cel's blast, we could have up to two turns left in the surprise round.
===== GM travel advisory =====
I'm headed to Louisiana tomorrow morning and this time I'm responsible for the well-being of 30 students. I don't expect to be able to do my usual airport things, like check the forums.
The students get a few free hours in New Orleans in the early evening - I might be able to check in on my phone then. Otherwise it's a drive north to where we're going and it'll probably be close to midnight central by the time I'll have a free moment. (Unless they discover Bourbon Street... in which case it could be later.)
Tuesday we're at the lab and Wednesday we start at the lab before traveling back to LA, so I should be able to post at least a couple times those days but it'll be more sparse than today.
tl;dr: I'll post when I can.
Awkward timing story-wise, sorry all.
No worries, life happens. Have fun with them!
A couple minor miracles later, we managed to get everybody here in one piece. (Also, New Orleans is still wonderfully jazzy and beignets are still delicious.)
Sorry Xizoh if it wasn't clear we were in combat rounds. Surprise! For when I need to bot a PC again, feedback on those autobot choices is welcome.
EDIT: Xizoh, if you want to change where Anathema moved to in the last action, that's okay by me.
<brain shutdown>
It's fine. So just I'm straightened out, the party as group can go during combat, or is it in order of initiative?
The party as a group won initiative, so PCs get to act now in order of post. First to post, first to act, and so on.
In this round style, PCs get 24 hours to act (normally), then enemies will have a round, then back to PCs.
I tried to summarize this in the combat rules posted at the end of the map. If that's confusing or hard to parse as written I'm happy to take another crack at it until it's clear.
@Henri: No, you cannot stand under the tree.
For the future, if we still like this rule, assume anything drawn on the map has the area shown from 0-8 feet above the ground and is too dense to see or shoot through, unless otherwise stated.
(Now also added to the handy map rules reference at the end of the combat maps.)
I moved your marker to your alternative location. You will get the opposite corner flank from Dulae in the future, from where she stands now. (Yes, you can move through the square just below Anathema, I reckon you could fit 50% of your marker there.)
Oh right, my bad! Sorry I messed that up, I'll be better about that in the future >_>
No worries, you're doing great. We'll get used to the rules, and modify them as needed/desired.
Oh also, @all: I'm a bit busier here than I'd figured and my wireless is shoddy at the hotel, so tonight's update may be brusque (i.e. from my phone).