Nice posts everyone, happy first combat.
By the way, I'm not currently planning to give a chance of damage with natural 1s for attack rolls (this would only be reflected in the description). Is that in line with your expectations/preferences?
Also, can everyone see the revisions history for the combat maps? That makes it a lot easier to tell where PCs were in prior rounds, if that's of interest. (I've been referencing it myself.)
Tomorrow will be another late post day, although I might get some time in the morning before we head back to the airport.
:: Plays Final Fantasty Victory Theme! ::
Huzzah!
One thing I thought of: say we are facing several enemies, and on the players turn we all gang up on one like we did here. Say enemy drops after player 2, but players 3-5 post there attacks before Mikkel has a chance to post. I would vote that we just retcon their actions and let them post again. If the player doesn't post again by midnight, the GM gives them some appropriate action?
I say the GM botting much faster than usual part because I can totally see myself being very busy, posting my combat action, and not being able to check in until many hours later. I wouldn't want to hold up the game :P.
Thanks for bringing this up Dulae. I am very happy to check the forums often on combat days, but come August it's pretty much guaranteed we'll have more days like today when I can't. It would be good to sort out how to handle any necessary attack redirects before it's relevant.
I'll have a think on it, and I'm keen to hear what others think.
Sorry, I got this game confused with another I applied to at the same time wherein the Critical Hit and Critical Fumble decks were going to be utilized. And per RAW, there is no consequence of a Nat 1 other than looking like an idiot missing.
I like Dulae's idea on the retcon in terms of something dying. Also, I understand the combination of words in reference to revision history on the map, but I either can't see what you're talking about or don't know what icon to click to show it.
@Alaina - no worries, glad we're on the same page.
@Cel - just to the right of 'Help' there is text saying something like 'Last modified by...' or 'All changes saved in Drive'. If you click on that it should take you to a play-by-play of changes (I think snapshots are taken maybe every hour or so if something has changed).
Yep, RAW a natural 1 is an auto-miss, and a natural 20 is an auto-hit (even if you don't crit), so as long as the latter is still in play, I'm good! And I agree with Dulae about retcons, the "surround and explode" method of combat is an old one, but when there's multiple enemies in play it'll be nice to be able to go attack something else, rather than just keep cutting up the same dead guy.
I think I now have 10% more gray hair, but we all made it back to LA. Not everybody is totally cheerful, but no deaths, injuries, or other major trauma so I'm going to call it a win. (Dear future Mikkel: don't agree to plan big group travel. That is a terrible decision.)
I'm pretty fried so I'm going to keep thinking on post-enemy-death combat retcon and other comments.
Haha, being in charge of a group of like, 5 people and their scheduling is too stressful for me, I don't envy you.
@Henri, I've just discovered an outdoor movie series in a big cemetery in Hollywood that sometimes screens horror movies. What are some good ones to see with a rowdy crowd in a creepy setting? (I think Poltergeist is up in August.)
@All - regarding combat retcon for defeated enemies, I think a slight variation on the rules proposed by Dulae would suit us well. I suggest:
- The GM will ideally field PC attacks ASAP
- In cases where a PC attacks a target that is already dead, the GM will report this (ASAP) and the PC will have until the end of the 24 hour PC combat round to retcon and redirect their attack from their original position however they see fit
- If there is no retcon posted by the PC before the enemy round time (which will always be the case when the GM can't post that day, which may happen) the GM will auto-bot the PC retcon before the enemy round
Thoughts on this? It may be a bit unsatisfying on days when I can't be very responsive, but waiting another day for a subset of PCs to report would leave the rest hanging.
(I think Poltergeist is up in August.)
Original or remake?
In regards to the combat retcon, I think that seems fair.
I think the combat sounds pretty good, it'll give us a chance to move how we want to, while still enforcing rules that keep the game moving at a decent clip.
AS FOR MOVIES, I'd say it depends on what they're showing. To be fair, the last horror movie I saw with a rowdy crowd was "They Live" at a drive-in, though that's arguable to even being a horror movie.
Poltergeist is probably a good one, and if we're making choices, I'd probably say ones with bigger set-pieces and crazier monsters would be ideal. Yes to Jaws, no to Halloween (Halloween kinda has Seinfeld is not funny syndrome anyway, cause it was ruined by every slasher that came out after it)
Yep, I'm on board with that proposition
The 1982 version. I suppose that makes it the original? I didn't even know there was a remake, although I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
Yeah, fairly recently. It was actually pretty good. Really creepy.
I do appreciate a good creepy movie, I'll have to check that out.
Thanks Henri, Jaws and its like would be a blast with a crowd (I get the impression more than a thousand people show up to the Hollywood cemetery shows, and they bring booze). And yeah, huh, you're right about Seinfeld isn't funny and Halloween (the tv tropes page for that is great).
By the way has anyone seen the weeping angels episode of Doctor Who? (I think it's called Blink.)
I'm down with the proposal.
Out of curiosity, anyone else started seeing the weirdness Pokemon Go is making?
Do you mean weirdness in that Americans are willingly exercising?
Or the LA-style weirdness?
Or the wait, are you sure I'm an adult weirdness?
Or perhaps that my facebook feed has more mentions of pokemon than Nice or Baton Rouge?
All of the above, and the weird social friendliness that it's creating. I have never seen so many people out roaming the streets at night, nor have I seen them get along so well.
Man, even pokemon go can't get me out of my house. I just got burnt out on it before I could get a foothold because it just kept crashing and being freaking annoying.
Yep, Blink is a treasure from that show, though I stopped watching after like, the 6th season because even though Moffat did great shows(he's the one who made the Blink episode), he's just insufferable as the show runner. I can't wait for him to leave.
Blink was the first episode of Doctor Who I saw. It could be that it draws really well from quantum mechanics or that I watched it really late at night, but it got under my skin a bit.
It took me at least a couple watches to realize they shot it so that the audience is also a valid observer. Still admire that.
I never made it through the series either. The needless doctor-companion romantic drama seemed to take away from the fun scifi adventure.
Unrelated and potentially of interest: the new Ghostbusters remake is great. I went because hey, take my money and ffs please make more movies with women heroes. My expectations from seeing the trailer were low, but it was actually delightful.
@Xizoh, I can't distinguish between pokemon friendliness west coast friendliness yet. (Everybody has a phone in their hand all the time anyway.) Every time someone makes eye contact and says hello here I can't help but think something like you're supposed to look away and walk past in silence. We're going off-script, everyone panic.
But, more friendliness in the world seems like a very good thing.
I'd have to disagree with you on the Doctor Who bit. My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed it until Netflix removed it. :(
On the New Ghostbusters, you say it's worth seeing? I wasn't sure about seeing it because I wasn't sure if it was a reboot or a continuation. Could you clarify that for me? Was it an actual reboot?
Fair enough, I got stuck on the 11th doctor being a bit dickish to his companion but I heard that gets better shortly after I left off. I also really wanted to see Peter Capaldi as the doctor, he's excellent in The Thick of It. But it's no longer on Netflix? Damn.
100% reboot. There are some nods to the original but plot-wise it's like it never happened. As with almost any movie there are a few dud moments, but all in all it's very funny, sometimes creepy, often silly, and quite entertaining. Kate McKinnon is great, and somewhat to my surprise, so is Chris Hemsworth.
A note on maps: I made the map numbers hot pink to make them easier to see. Map numbers are listed on the maps themselves in the order of their appearance and will not change until the end of the campaign. Google slide numbers on the other hand will change every time a map is added and are inverted in terms of map order, so let's ignore those.
Cel, thanks for moving your marker. Generally we'll want to use the marker type that takes up most of the five foot square so I switched that out. Xizoh and Anathema (and whoever else) are free to move through your marker to get to whatever desired order you'd all like.
Question for the party: my current read is that you left the body back near the log, but there was some talk of taking it with you. Did you take it or leave it, and if you took it who is carrying it?
I'm going to make the jump that the answer to the last question is 'left it'. Noted.
New query for the party: I notice PCs don't seem to be getting in the habit of moving markers as they post.
If it's because these maps are awkward/finicky/difficult to use, I can probably fix that, including trying a new/different map utility, but I'd need to know what the trouble is (thanks for the feedback, Cel).
If it's because you're not actually moving (i.e. you intend to maintain your current position outside of the cave), that's fair enough. It would be very helpful to me in turning my 'do I need to intervene' dial down a couple notches if PCs could note where they intend to move in addition to moving their marker when it affects party order or map exploration. (i.e. 'a few steps into the cave/room/chamber' or 'past Cel, behind Dulae'. RP or ooc is fine.) Is that a reasonable/realistic ask?
If it's some other reason (unclear what exactly the expectations are, or waiting for others to move markers first, or, other reasons?) then I might be able to help, and I'd like to, if I can.
In today's episode of Mikkel talks to himself on the internet: another query for the party.
Our average post rate has been steadily declining over the last month, even after travel. Two weeks ago we averaged 7.3 posts per PC, which is a little more than once a day (including one day with 14 posts during combat).
Over the last week we averaged 6 posts per PC; fewer than one a day, and it feels like it. That plus the lack of response in the discussion is wearing me down.
Is this ship sinking, and if so, how do we save it?
(Oddly enough, if I had to pick which question I'd most like you to answer, it'd probably be the question about markers. I can currently only tell where a third of you are standing, and I bet if I am confused, others are probably also confused. (That and I find it inordinately frustrating.))
For my part, posting has been difficult due to work burnout. I've been working 10 hour days for the past few weeks, and the call volume has been insane. I barely have enough time to read things, let alone post. Then when I get home, I'm just so burnt that I can't even really focus Alaina's psyche. Does that make sense?
Mostly what Alaina said. Got promoted at work, and I can't exactly figure out why. Our clinic stats are poor, so bumping me up even more didn't make a lot of sense. I'm basically scrambling harder to figure out how to build the clinic even more than I was (which may have been the point of the promotion). At any rate, while I have time to post it is harder to focus on at the moment. I don't see this as a dying game in my eyes. Just one of those life things that may slow it down. I can't speak for anyone else, but even with lulls I have no intention of disappearing or dropping out until we reach a conclusion of sorts.
Yep, I think everyone's work life is just converging into a perfect storm of being more busy, because I just got a job and am working at reformatting my schedule so that I can roleplay in different times than I used to. It's less than 40 hours a week, I just used to be in the writing headspace more often throughout the day + I had time to post more options. No worries, I'm here till the bitter end, it's just had a little stumble. I'll go and post something right now :3
As for the markers, I just haven't moved, I was just peering inside the cave for the most part, I try to be pretty clear about when I'm moving inside the RP text.
I'm finding Marcus and giving him a piece of my mind.
To answer the previous question: I don't have the body. Does anyone else?
Congrats on the promotions/new jobs! (And for Alaina, sorry for burnout). I have been traveling some, but I have less of an excuse than everyone else as work has been mostly the same.
I think one thing that may help the game move along is if we tried to combine more action with our posts and give Mikkel something to do. For example, (and not meaning to single out, this is just most recent) Xizoh asked to go in the lead for exploring the cave and gave us his changing form to react to. We've had some good responses to it, but we haven't actually moved along in a few days. I think that whichever character is driving the action (so me a few posts back in going up to the cave, and now Xizoh) should make a big effort to combine dialog with progress - we can walk and talk :P.
Just a coincidence people are busier at the same time then. I am relieved!
I'm much more invested in this party than in getting 10 posts a week, so I will put my patience pants on (and you'll have to do the same for me when I'm traveling.)
Alaina, that definitely makes sense. You'd mentioned you're in new market for a new job. How's that search working out for you? (And indeed, Marcus is out there somewhere.)
Cel, congratulations on the promotion! I hope that comes with commensurate pay for the stress. (Also, I don't know how young your patients are, but I've been seeing some articles on using pokemon go for physical therapy and I thought of you.)
Henri, congratulations on the job! What kind of work are you in for? (Also, thanks very much for your marker/position management, I appreciate it.)
Dulae, you're right that as much as I'm enjoying the RP I'm also eager to share the things you'll see and interact with. (Overeager? Probably.) I would be really happy to see comments/suggestions about movement and taking the lead in the discussion (or wherever) more often.
-
As for markers, I hereby threaten to keep posting Batman memes until all PC positions are accounted for. (This can be accomplished by either moving your marker, or posting something like 'my marker is still in the same place on map 6' ooc or in the discussion.)
Alaina, Xizoh, Anathema: this one's for you.
"Never start with the head. The victim gets all fuzzy that they can't feel the...(BAM!) See?"
Are you sure you want to start using batman memes? Cause I can do this all day.
Oh yeah, I didn't bring the dead body with us, its probably too heavy and once it was in the cave it'd start stinking up the place and then whatever monster that's in there would wake up and come out for us, it'd just be a bad time. I'll take what's left of it when the crows get done back with us though.
I agree with having sort of a follow the leader thing, where the person who wants to take the lead can, OR one of our many strong personalities can just shove past them if they're taking too long.
also thanks guys :D It's an odd-job sort of job with an organization that helps people with developmental disorders. I'll be doing a lot of things, but amoung them I'm gonna be doing some minor accounting stuff, maybe work on their website/logo, and my primary duty is to be "director of IT" which is much more impressive than it sounds, I've mostly used ninite to install firefox and chrome so far. Also one of their clients didn't want to use the internet without a firewall so i had to show him that the windows one was enabled. And do a soft reset on a phone.
[Alaina used 'bait the GM'. It was surprisingly effective.]
I don't think I like my chances in a quote-off with you, Alaina, but it still sounds like fun. I raise you this offer: you guess where the following quote is from. You get it wrong, you have to tell me where Alaina is standing. You get it right, you have my admiration and I get to know where Alaina is standing.
"Well, isn't that... special."
(CR: very challenging. Not a lot to go on and tricky to google because there's overlap with similar quotes. (It's not from SNL, and I'm reasonably sure you would've seen it.))
Henri, I give you credit for working with Windows! If you ever want to scare the sh!t out of a programmer, tell them you installed Windows on their computer (that might actually elicit a scream of panic from me, or at least a squeak.)
Man, everyone I know who insists on using f&&~ing ubuntu can go soak their heads, I hate them and EVERYTHING THEY STAND FOR
also wow are you kidding that's a totally easy quote and if Alaina doesn't get it then I'll lose all respect for her.
I used Ubuntu until about 2013, when everything stopped working. (Lucid Lynx, or something like that.) We use Debian or SL7 on the lab computers, which is much more stable (somewhat less usable, but we just need terminals and browsers really). I converted to a mac in 2014 and haven't looked back since.
And I figure it could be tricky. It's one of those where if you have it in mind it's quite easy but if it's been awhile there's a lot out there that might fit.
Here's one for you Henri (and google knows all in this case, so no cheating):
"Great! Where are we going?"
Son, I watch the extended lord of the rings trilogy at least once a year, over one 12-hour day. If you think that I don't know that that's from fellowship, you have underestimated me, sir! To be fair I don't actually remember whether it was merry or pippin so I guess only partial credit for me.
xD I mean they're pretty good for people who don't speak entirely in pop culture references, like myself.
Thanks for the congrats! Seeing as Seattle is more or less a gentrified city of techies, my patients are all between 20 and 50, healthy, active, and well educated. It certainly makes my job much easier! But, yes, Pokemon Go has definitely been something I'm super on board with. Amazing the health results that come from it.
I love Dulae's idea of when someone speaks up about moving along to just force the point and start moving. I think that keeps us from stalling simply because no one knows who is going to do what. If someone takes off walking the group better follow, because you know...don't split the party!
EDIT: It was Pippin! I watch it yearly too, on Christmas...and now that Hobbit trilogy entered into the mix. I can't do it all 6 in a day, though :(
I was an Ubuntu user while I needed to program in low level languages (C++, Fortran) and didn't have the money to spring for a mac. Windows has some pricey IDE's that can program in them, but is really just subpar. BUT that may be changing - they will soon have a fully integrated Bash terminal, with all the goodies!
Touche, m'lady. Here's a harder one:
"Where? When?"
LOTR marathon on Christmas is an awesome tradition, Cel. I might have to adopt that. I've done New Years before, but as you say, it takes a lot longer now. (I also am a fan of Dulae's suggestion, for the record.)
Windows+Bash... that'll be a game changer. Hard to imagine silicon valley without a sea of macs, but that'd make it much more likely.
Macs are great. I've had the same tower for 6+ years now, and I've just been occasionally replacing and updating stuff. It has some problems running games on things that are higher than low settings, it still works fantastically (plus I made a partition to run windows so its the best of both worlds).
I can't say I know where that quote is from, I suppose I have to turn over my nerd card. Buuuut using psychology I will say that it is from Lord of the Rings as well because you'd EXPECT me to choose a different movie if I was guessing!
Yep, I did new years a couple of times, but as of now I just sort of do it whenever. I have a hard time getting through the hobbit, I like it a lot, but it is a bit of a slog for me compared to LOTR which flows so great (mostly because it has more people to switch to to keep up the pace). Have you guys ever heard of DM of the Rings? It's a fantastic comic that I also tend to read every year because I reference it ALLL the time. It's 10 years old now which is crazy.
I read DM of the Rings many years ago, but then it fell off my radar. I'll have to read it again. :)
Yeah, my family's on a trip at the moment, and apparently phones are not very fond of your markers GM, if I may humbly ask you to move me about 6 squares ahead of Dulae that might solve some issues (super sorry about that, really). Also, l am the computer equivalent of a dog sitting on a remote. Things keep happening and I sit there with a blank expression.
Hah, you can safely keep your card Henri. It is indeed from LOTR, but more to make it barely on the doable side of completely impossible to guess rather than to trick you. (It's two of the most common English words strung together somewhere in 12 hours of content. I would be extremely impressed if you guess it.)
Where has this comic been all my life? I am not going to get any coding done tonight, am I. The spouse would probably dig this too, thanks for sharing Henri.
Hooray, thanks Xizoh! True story: today is my birthday IRL (29 times around the sun) and what I wanted most by the end of the day today was some marker movement. (Maybe just behind world peace. Close second.) Also, I really enjoy that analogy.
I'm very willing to keep moving your marker as you direct me for the duration of your trip, and I'd be happy to help troubleshoot any issues once you get back.
Now let's see if we can work on Alaina. (And potentially also Anathema.)
Happy birthday!! I hope you get to spend it exactly how you want to spend it!
Thanks Cel!
I now know where 2/3 of you are and have some idea about the rest, so we're doing at least twice as well as we were yesterday. Go team.
I'm about 70% sure Alaina is just trolling me now... (it is working)