OOC thread!

[Lord_BoNes]

So 4-24 bonus sneak attack damage... WOOT! That's pretty damn well off. And I can definately see why you don't want the new character being "unable" to use it.

[Ameena]

You're assuming I'm still rolling up a Rogue . It's only Rogues get Sneak Attack, as far as I know. That's not to say I'm not being a Rogue again, of course, but I can certainly still fit into that role pretty well, I reckon .

[Lord_BoNes]

We don't appear to have a rogue without you, so yes, I'd say that you'd definately fit in well.

[raixel]

Hey, I had a horrid day at work last night, and then right when I woke up my ex-roomate ran his car out of gas and it wouldnt start because he had less than 3 hash marks on his tank and parked it one one of those crazy hills we have here. Then frantic calling ensued with me driving all over hell's half acre to get him gas. So I've had a really really horrid day. Sorry for the lack of updates. Things should go back to normal tomorrow.

[Lord_BoNes]

Sounds like fun.... not. I hope your day improves.

[beowuuf]

Yeah, hope your day is going better today, and if not then ... umm ... not much we can do about it, except offer to ban Trantor or something

[raixel]

So, beo. Hows the pacing? Since this is the first PBP game Ive actually run, I'm having trouble with it. Its WAY different than tabletop. I feel like im either going on and on and making huge posts that leave you having to respond to like 50 things, or making short posts to avoid railroading you, but then a brief interaction takes 3 weeks real time. Any comments/hits/criticism/advice?

[ian_scho]

My observation about PBP is that it takes AGES so you need commitment from everyone. Also the 'lull' periods can last a couple of weeks!

[beowuuf]

Part of the 'me responding to 50 things' is me trying ot get a feel for the character, or else I would back off on the IC reactions to stuff and summarise them unless it was important. So that's maybe throwing off how my reactions feel to you. From my side, the pacing feels fine. Stay on this side of the way you are doing your posts! Certainly the updates you are doing are larger than I would expect, but the pacing and interactions have felt fine, bordering on perfect, including where the decision points are and what they are. I think fleshing out the world is adding to your story count right now. That's possibly something to keep in your back pocket so that when characters go shine a light on some area, they get this rewarding information back, rather than it be constantly coming. I'm enjoying it right now, and I can see it's letting you develop everything, so I have no problem with it. I'm just aware that with more characters you automatically have bigger posts anyway (oops, won't tell you what that typo just was) from resolving all the character concerns. Well, unless you get lazy like I sometimes do

So I think you'll find that with more characters, you need to 'pick your battles' as it were, and decide what is important to play and what is important to summarise. But you've instinctively got the pacing right, as you'd expect from all your GMing experience! PbP definitely feels like crafting a written story or TV show idea on the fly, far more than running a game. So you are always looking for the new little cliffhanger before the break. That's probably my biggest concern always. That's why it's usually so much better to have the characters walk and talk than talk, fro example - there's something advancing plot wise and you can interrupt as needed.. And that's why you tend to find I (naturally) default to having NPCs with their own (usually aggressive) through line if you interact with them. No point in having an NPC being passive, they need to have their own concerns that actively cross with the players. So you don't have an intereaction that stops while they ask for a name, then as for an occupation. Hopefully they are asking for a name with also a clear indication that something is going to be happening if that name doens't also come with a purpose. Etc.

So yeah, you will find a good interaction takes a week. Don't forget combat, that will actually be the major headache, it will take a day per round, as long as people giving you OOC options so you can adjust on the fly to the outcomes of that round. So a battle can take a busy week, a major one two or three (the Soorec fight in his room was a 20 round fight, the Golem Hall I believe was a 15 round fight).


I mean in reverse, even if you can't pin point why, how do you find my game? Where does it feel like it grinds to a halt, where does it feel too fast, what do you see feels off from a normal game, and so by default what must be going right as you never notice it affectign the game?

[raixel]

Hm. I'll take your words to heart. Itdoes feel more like writing a script. Ive written fantasy fiction for years, and I find myself falling into that pattern. I have to remind myself constantly not to railroad, as I'm not the one writing the story here. The biggest issue I think I have with my own game is im used to players being able to respond wherever. Last post, for instnace, there was more I wanted to write, but I stopped because I figured the cleric giving you the item was a signifiant enough break. I'm trying to look at it like 'ok, if this was a normal gaming session, where would the players all start jumping in with commentary or actions?'. It also feels weird due to the time lag to me. Especially since I work such a weird shift, I'm at work in the middle of the night. Then I come home and post and sleep (or sleep and post), Honestly, which one would be easier for you, as I believe the majority of you guys are in the UK and it's no biggie for me to do either if it would make the time delay easier? (Of course sometimes IM gonna be to tired after work and HAVE to post when I wake, or be running late and not able to post before I leave)

Well, obviously, your game is off from a normal game due to the fact I'm running on a 10 hour time difference than most of the players(see above).. So when I post, its most likely 3am over there unless I'm not working graveyard(or use my laptop at work on break), in which case its 3 am here. So sometimes I feel like I'm delaying the updates. But thats not really a problem with your DMing style, its the fact that the ball we all live on is big . Other than that, not much. Ive done PbP playing before. HEy, its better than PB(e)M back in the day. That took for *farking* e.v.e.r. Your DMing style works, and is one of the better PbPs ive ever seen. I think if it didnt, the game wouldnt have gone on this long. I would say 'more detail, but as i think thats already been discussed in your post, its a necissary sacrifice to avoid 1500 word posts.

[beowuuf]

The idea of a cliffhanger probably should be thought 1. You stopped with the cleric offerign the item. Was that an important beat for me to weigh in on? Will the cleric walk off offended if there is this issue of distrust? Is the item trapped? If there's no reason to pause, then mention the item is offered and move on. Then in the OOC section mention that the decision needs to be made whether to take the item or not, and that any questions regarding it and checks on it can be retconned in.

Obviously, sometimes a post goes on long enough it's nice to just find a natural break, and sometimes I'm just crap, but I think that leading 'cliffhanger/look things will steamroll onwards badly if you don't way in' is the way to decide how to break up the posts, and even how to tweak to keep the pace.

And yes, sometimes details can kill, if I think the post is getting long anyway. Plus I can write tons and still not highlight what's interesting to you guys. History, composition of an area, etc tend to be by feel of what you guys think is important. Plus I must admit by default I'm bad for following the story and words over exactly how someone looks or what a place looks like. And I love to throw in history stuff, but those details feel like reading a novel if put in unasked. To me, anyway, Obviously, that's probably something I need to work on in terms of balance (I need to pick my battles, but certainly need to pick times when I make somewhere interesting. I only really try if it's an important area, missing smaller chances I probably should take) . Plus sometimes I need just need to post to be able to go to sleep or relax, and so it might be bare bones

Yeah, never done e-mail gaming, don't really wanna Can see a scene during a week between gaming could be fun to run, but still like PbP it's as fast as the slowest person, and it's much easier to accidentally run multiple version of the same e-mail I would guess!


At least as DM, you are autmatically on the final post anyway, so no biggie when you post to the players :p

[Ameena]

Yeah, I think it's harder to play/run games over a forum 'cause of the way everyone can only post when they get time or whatever, so you have to wait for everyone to have been online and made a post before you can reply/update. At least in tabletop/online chat it's more "real time" and people can jump in with random comments and stuff as they think of them, etc. I don't think I'd want to try running a PbP game, and I'm not sure I'd be much good at tabletop if I had more than a couple of people playing (though it'd probably depend who the players were). I'm having much fun with the chat-based version, though. The group might have spent about three (RL) weeks in the same village but we're both still having fun (as far as I'm aware) so it's fine .

[beowuuf]

So how was the birthday?

[raixel]

Well, my actual party is today cuz I had to work yesterday. So I'll try and post in the two main threads, but other than that I probably wont be around much.

[beowuuf]

Then I hope you had a great combined birthday/easter!

[raixel]

Just to let you all know my really cool logitech g-series keyboard that Ive had for less than a year appears to have a short in the USB cable. I will have to dig up my shitty stock keyboard (if I still have it) if this thing goes out completely. If I dont have it, I might be incommunicado for like a day or so.

[beowuuf]

Played Portal 2 over the weekend, and so my first instinct for today's update was 'can't I nip in behind them and pull them across

[raixel]

*snicker* I'm D/ling it as I type this off of Steam. 3 hrs to go!

Portal blew my mind when I playd it on my 360 years ago. I find some people love it and can wrap their heads around the puzzles easily (like me) and some people can't (like my ex-roomie, who loved to watch me play, but kept going 'how are you getting that?!"). Wonder if it has to do with the way different people's brains process spatial awareness?

[raixel]

5 mins into Portal2 and my minds been blown. I just wish the stupid controller my best friend found for me to play it hadn't been for mac. Ahh, the joy of playing a first person game with a keyboard, mouse, and partially paralyzed left hand. Mental note- go buy USB controller tomorrow.

[Lord_BoNes]

"Partially paralysed left hand"?
If it's anything like mine... then stop leaning on the edge of tables, desks, etc. Spending too much time infront of my PC led to me loosing a great amount of sensation to BOTH hands, not just my left. I can sympathise with you.

[raixel]

I think its a little different. The entire left side of my body is partially paralyzed from the neck down. I was born this way, I'll die this way, and nothing I do will make it any better. I have next to no fine motor control, very little sensation ect. I can walk and shit, but I got a little limp. Although people have said it looks kinda like an intentional swagger so its not all bad, I guess. I do dig how shitty having no sensation is. I dont miss it tho cuz I never knew any other way, and after 30 years you can damn well bet Ive adapted. (i can type faster with 6 fingers than most people do two handed, although I notice my typing looks like beo's )


On that cheery note, I'm gonna PM you soon about the lycanthrope template. Its gonna be a little altered from the one in Races of Faerun, otherwise you are gonna get a crazy LA (Weretigers get a +12 STR in animal/hybrid on top of their original STR!!), but I'm cooking somethin uo for you right now.

[beowuuf]

With portal, I found my spacial awareness is terrible too. The puzzles are nicely simple that I can usually figure them out eventually, and playing with physics is fun until then

See, it's odd, my friend swears he never played the keyboard set up I play, yet it was him I got it from. He's said 'nope, always WASD, weirdo' whereas I always play with the four cursor keys for movement, the control and shoft on the right side for crouch and jup, and the large 0 on the numeric keypad for use. And if it's half life, then delete pgdn, 1, etc are furhther functions.

Like I said, I got comments over it,but I like it. I don't know if that set up my suit you betetr too, since it means all the keyboard controls are in a much wider space and in slightly better positions. You can still roll quickly to all the controls. Unless you are left handed for using mouse, in which case never mind!

And sadly yes, I have no excuse for my typing other than laziness/mental fatigue and wanting to go back and check stuff sometimes. Well, doens't help if I have a browser filled with tabs I'm trying ot get through typing


And yeah, I see the weretiger gets like a +6LA if I was reading the rules right.


But back to portal. I like the way they've done the game. I think the fact the narrative is as strong as it is to link together what is essentially a puzzler game, that I actualyl started getting annoyed and forgot the purpose of the game. Sorted my head out, and it's very enjoyable. You go from nostalgia to new stuff to really new stufff + surroundings (And laughing at cave johnston and follwing along with some history lessons) and then of course you have more new stuff when the story wraps up for the last part.

Also, while the end boss fight is as fun as the previous one, then very very very end way you win is one of those laugh out loud with the sheer madness and coolness of it moments.

[raixel]

[giant off topic rant that has nothing to do with DnD]

Hm. The way I run (-If I HAVE to play a first person game on the PC- I usually use one of my consoles) is with a 4 button mouse, plus wheel and wheelclick. I map EVERYTHING super important to the mouse(jump, fire, zoom, cycle weapons ect), and then just run around holding W and using the mouse to steer. This works for some games, Bethseda's oblivion engine comes to mind. Not so well for others(Just Cause 2). If I need to fine tune, I use my right hand on the wasd keys and hope to god I'm not being attacked. I have absolutely no use for multiplayer FPS type games due to this, and I think its why I naturally gravitate towards rpg's or single player rpgs with some action. Also what screws me up is games that dont have a toggle sneak or crouch, as I can only hit one button at a time with my left index finger, and cant switch buttons quickly (the other fingers minus thumb are basically one unit to my brain, I can close/open them all at once, but thats about it). I downloaded Just Cause 2 from Steam, but got 2 mins into it before I realized there are way way too many important buttons, and theres no way I can play w/o a controller.

The keypad style setup works great too. I use a form of it on my laptop as I can play one handed and use my thumb on the mouse. Seriously gamers look at my keymaps and go WTF. But its all about adaption

Hey Beo, wanna co-op on Portal2 sometime(If its possible, but it should be)? I havent started the co-op yet cuz I was reading on Steam's forum that the co-op is kinda screwy and if you havent started and then play with someone who's farther than you, you lose all the story and hub reveals up to the point the farther person is, and theres no way to get it back. People are screaming for a reset option on there. But so far, I like it, although it doesnt quite have the same magic as the first one its still great. I prefer sociopathic-but-friendly-glaDOS to psychotic-you-killed-me-and-I-hate-you-glaDOS.

Oh yeah, and the massive texture corruption I had, that sent pink and black checkers and giant blue ERROR messages all over the screen where the missing textures were. It was kinda cool, it took me a few mins to realize they werent supposed to be there. I thought at first they were due to the 'brain damage' Wheatley mentioned. In the first room after the intro, seeing two giant blue ERRORS coming together in the place of the broken door, and pink and black checkers falling from the sky in place of the smoke when you stand on the button WAS kinda cool. Wish I screenshotted. The extra hour it took to redownload the corrupted files from steam-not so cool. But yeah, good game.

I just d/led a game off Steam called Drakensang: the river of time. Its 20US$, and I would recommend it for ANY die hard RPG fan. Its AMAZING. Unfortunately the company that produced it (German) went tits-up, due to shitty marketing and the fact that they loaclaized it in like english, spanish, polish, and a bunch of other languages with full voice acting(expensive!) and the aforementioned shitty marketing internationally. But it is a die hard true RPG lovers wet dream. Ive been waiting for YEARS for a game like this to come out(ever since RPGs became action games with stats. This runs like Baldurs gate crossed with um. Eschalon or something). Millions of customizable stuff, lots of stats, you can harvest stuff for alchemy, bowmaking, blacksmithing, ect. OMG FUN FUN

[/giant off topic rant that has nothing to do with DnD]

Yeah weird thing is in my races of Faerun it says adding infected lycanthropy template is a +1 LA, and natural is a +2. But it doesnt list an ECL, and then says the weretiger has a+6LA (mostly due to HD). I HATE how they always add the HD levels into a monster for the ECL. WHY WHY WHY do they do that? IMHO it is completely un-nessicary and juts makes it harder to make the monster a suitable PC. I mean, who in their right mind wants to play a lev 1 char when everyone else is like 8. Its stupid. If you remove the HD, it would make most monsters playable.

Anyone know the reasoning behind it?

And I will get that to you soon LB, I had a long work day and I dont think tomorrows gonna be much better. But soon, I promise

[beowuuf]

Odd, on the d20 site, it has +3LA on the weirdtiger, then also says for player characters you have +2 LA for natural, and +3 for afflicted. So that would also give you your +6LA too, but written differently! No idea baout the LA reasoning, never heard one. I guess the idea is that you aren't supposed to be playign a level 1 character, you are really being given an equivalent character and then slowly multiclassing on top to add flavour, but that just means you are never as cool as your party as they level up, and slowly but surely they outstrip you. RP wise I can see it working ok, but for large LA characters, then your class modifications will just not be cutting it as you go along, and no creature is ever as suitable to adventure as the equivalent PC with their full class intact.

Yeah, completed portal, was just thinking it's sad as I don't really know anyone to play the co-op with. If we can get shedules straight (and I might not be able to, my weekends right now are kinda D&D with Ameena right now) then would be cool to try and solve some of the co-op suff and see that content!


I assume how you are talking, you are in the rebuilt test runs now? Ah, just wait til you get to the gel sections. There are many reasons to go 'woah' at the gel sections. And then, the final anti-gravity beam/portal winding up to a close sectiosn are...hmm...dunno quite how to put it. Let you see for yourself then tell me how you react to them

That sucks about the corruption, though funny it seemed to fit! I know the graphics are supposed to not be as good as modern games (I don't play many, so they were cool to me) but I just thought the scale of the start and the first look at all the overgrown areas was brilliant.


Anyway, only got back an hour ago, need to look at updates and stuff

[raixel]

So, its been about a month since we statred. How am I doing? Any comments/questions/concerns?

[beowuuf]

From my side, none at all (well, no negative ones). Seems to be the right balance of stuff, the narratiove stuff has been fun and interesting. Obviously I'm bad for managing an update a day right now (it seems to be 11.30 at night when I get to the game tab here and go 'grr, need to update tomorrow') and I think you've been occasionally busy too. So it's probably about two-three weeks of game really. Which still seems lot. Weird, times flies!

How about you, how are you finding it?

[raixel]

Better than I did when I started. I think ive kinda got the rhythm down now. It still drives me nuts that I cant get input on little things, but I figured I'd err on the side of not railroading at the risk of moving slower than making Sssil be a character in a novel written by me and moving faster. I consider myself kinda a non conventional and free form DM, and this medium generally works well in that way. As long as youre happy, im happy.

Yeah, I havent been able to update and add as much as Id like either, as works gotten nuts the past few weeks(as you can probaly tell by my much reduced posting). I have no part in it at all and dont really know whats goin on except for the fact that it has to do with the IRS,(eep!) but I guess some heads are rollin so the the rest of us gotta pick up the slack(and enjoy audits out the wazoo ). Fun fun. I asked one of my bosses about it and he couldnt tell me what was going on except for 'the people involved have been taken care of, and it'll go away soon'. Yikes!

[Ameena]

Oo-er...well, hopefully it'll get sorted out so you get stuck with less work and can get on with more important things, like getting Wuffy's character killed in some kind of weird and interesting way, or whatever . So the mini-game's going alright then? Has Sssil been eaten by big scary monsters yet?

[beowuuf]

Hey! No killing me off. And wow, sounds weird with the work stuff, at least you aren't on the other side of it being laid off. Maybe someone needs to put a GPS trackers on the owners, just in case...

Glad that niggles aside it's going ok from youir side of the screen. I think the only other weirdness is always combat. Maybe running a combat with a couple more players?

How did you find the deer combat (it seems a static, easy one, though there were quite a few DM run participants)

[raixel]

Yeah, the only thing I can think of is since April is tax time, someone in charge of the companies tax prep made a boo-boo (whether intentional are not, the IRS doesnt care). And the IRS is SCARY when you fuck up your taxes as an individual, nevermind a buisiness. There was an article in the paper last year about a woman who the IRS claimed that she was evading taxes ad she owed like 40k and got her entire family audited. Their reasoning, nothing more than she was a single mom of two kids and she claimed like 25k on her tax return (she was a hairdrsser at one of those cheap chain haircut places). But the IRS said in order to live in seattle and have two kids, theres NO WAY you could make that little and survive (rents here are astronomical) and so they claimed she HAD TO be making at least 60k. Thing is she lived rent-free with her folks, so didnt need to pay rent and actually really did make only 25k. It ended up costing the family like 80k in lawyers ect, osothe paper picked the story up, and then the IRS backed off once they were seen to be like an ogre picking on a poor chick.

Screw monsters under the bed, the IRS is the real boogieman