OOC thread!

[raixel]

Ok, thats a concept I really like, using the poison like that.

[beowuuf]

Back! Kept up with Ameena on my phone, need to read the other thread. Let me know how to drop back in.


And the grapple rules - easy in concept, yet they always seem to get complicated to explain

[beowuuf]

Oh, and congrats on the 1000th post Raixel! Feel free to ask for a GMing related rank - didn't I go with Dungeon Mastiff?

[Ameena]

Wb Wuffy .

[raixel]

Hey, didnt see you were back. I'll post an update tomorrow for you so I can get everyone back at the same time. Hope you had fun!

Yeah. I was thinking my art name is Masta Cylinda. Also, my avatar is (sort of) Master Cylinder from Felix the cat, a logo I use often. So if I could have "The Dungeon Master Cylinder", that would be so cool.

[beowuuf]

The rank is set up. Did you want to see Archmaster under your name, or are you happy to sneak the title early? After all, you are a GM and would get a special rank anyway I reckon


And yes. tjhe copncert was fun. Prodigy, Metallica and Black Sabbath headlined, and were awesom (Metallica and Black Sabbath especially so), plus a cool set of other bands like Tenacious D, Machine Head, etc. Generally a good time, with some mud at the start that luckily went away by the end!

[beowuuf]

Lol, caught up with the other thread. Excitingly gruesome and interesting mechanism of chaos, and the incidental chaos of an excited pig and yelling people makes for a really fun scene! Also weird for OPB to be the strong one and Ian being the religeous one!

[raixel]

Sweet, you saw Black Sabbath! That is *so* cool. Glad you had fun! I havent been to a decent music festival for about 10 years. I"m jealous! And yeah, I'll happily take my new title!

[ian_scho]

I *completely* forgot to say that I'm in France from tomorrow until Sunday morning. Cheers!

[beowuuf]

Lol, one of the benefits of being in europe is you don't have an ocean to cross to do that! Have fun


Eit: Seems weird I've been back from the concert for over a week now!

[ian_scho]

Yep, only a 5 hours drive... 4 If you're Scottish with a litre of Iron Bru inside him.

[raixel]

Oh waah, you guys in the UK have to cross a channel! *I* have to cross a continent *and* an ocean to go to France. It would be so neat to be like "Oh, I'm gonna go to France for the weekend..." Normally here people save up for a year so they can go for a couple weeks!

[beowuuf]

Hey, I'll have you know I'd have to walk aaaaaaaall the way across the road to where the train station is, travel by train for 45 minutes, and then walk aaaaaaaall the way downstairs to get to the eurostar. That's like.... effort....

Actually, I htink they moved the eurostar from below Waterloo to somewhere closer to one of the motorway junctions, the buggers.


Wow, why have I never gone to France before if it's that easy?

[Ameena]

Yeah, Eurostar hasn't been at Waterloo for a few years now - access is at St. Pancras (not St. Pancreas as many people seem to call it ), Stratford, and Ebbsfleet. The High Speed train goes through my station (Chatham) so I hear the call-out of the station list quite frequently .

[beowuuf]

Yeah, I had my chance for five years and I blew it

That fact stratford is one underground hop on the jubilee line away is BESIDES THE POINT!

[raixel]

You Europeans and your amazingly efficent high speed trains and transit! Mass transit is socialist pandering! Ill have you know I am a red blooded American and drive my red blooded American car that takes red blooded oil that red blooded Americans shed their red blood to wrest from them Ee-rak-keys(actually my car is tiny for an American car and gets like 32MPG, which is amzingly high for cars here)!

God mass transit here SUCKS. Some cities have decent versions, but not ones that go anywhere but in city. Seattle's blows ASS. They are just *now* putting in Light RAil. And it sucks because the city has this mindset of *we're gonna force people to use it" by destroying main arterials to put it in (they turned a major 4 lane road into 2 lanes and a bike/ped path!), but not making it more efficent or cheaper than driving. So trips that used to take 30 mins now take an hour. And the bus/LR isnt faster cuz its going along the same roads!

It would be so cool if we had decent mass transit here. Id love to ride the train across the country. Well, I took the Amtrak once, but you do that for the experience, cuz its just a normal train, and cargo trains have priority, so you end up going slower than a car a lot if you factor in all the stopping and going slow. And it isnt like theres stops all over, only in major cities, and only one.

[Ameena]

Would it seem weird to you if you were to come over here and travel within the country and find that everywhere is, at most, maybe ten hours' drive away from anywhere else? I'm not sure how long the longest trip would take (Land's End to John O' Groats, I suppose, those famously being the two furthest-apart points - southwestern tip of England to the northernmost point of Scotland), but compared to the huge epic distances between big cities and stuff in the USA I suppose it must seem quite tiny?

[raixel]

Yes. Very. Just for comparison:

I have driven across the USA in my lil pickup truck quite a few times(that got totalled by a drunk driver 2 years ago, RIP blue S10 that rocked). A straight shot, only stopping for 6 hours a night to sleep is bare MINIMUM 59 hours. I had a friend that once did it in a little over 48, but he didnt stop. Literally. He just ate trucker speed the entire way and then crashed when he got here for a day straight. Thats not recommended. He was loopy as hell when he got here. And this wasn't even to the actual coast, but about 600 miles inland from the east coast to visit a friend in Pennsylvania, the same friend that made it here in like 53hr.

If you want a leisurely trip to where I was going in Pennsylvania driving for 12 hours and relaxing for 12 hours, or going from the absolute far corner (like where I live) to the other absolute far corner, (like the extreme southeast or Northeast) in a speed-run is like 4-6 days. Of course the states over there are tiny (like the size of a European small country) compared to the states out here, so it seems to go by faster. But I think the US is like 3800 miles from end to end, longer if you measured from the absolute southern tip of Florida to the absolute Northwestern tip of Washington. Just my state *alone* is like 8-10 hours if you were out on the peninsula and drove to the other end, a straight shot not counting ferry times to go across the Sound.

Thats why when you guys say "youre 3000 miles away" I always go no, like 7000. Cuz its 3000 miles across the Atlantic, ya still gotta get all the way out here first. But like I said before, the wast coast is the only place worth living in the US. Its really culturally different enough that if it was Europe, itd be a different country entirely.

[raixel]

Alright, so now that everyones in game, and this is my first attempt at PbP I wanted to ask (I know Ive asked Beo a few times, but not everyone):

How am I doing as a DM? Hows the story, pacing, description, dialogue vs combat ect? Sould things move faster/slower, less description/more, less talking more combat, or anything? Do you feel like the story fits DM? (My goal was to kinda flesh out the actual world, but as there is very little canon to go off of, Im just trying to add what I can while staying true to the basic feel of the game).

My goal is to keep everyone enjoying themselves and keep things from bogging down or being predicable. HOwever, this is my first real attempt at running PbP, so I just want to make sure everyones happy.

[Ameena]

Well, I'm having fun so far, though of course I suppose the game proper hasn't technically started yet, seeing how half the PCs haven't yet encountered the other half . It'll be interesting to see how it goes from there. But yeah, it's good so far - some interesting problems to work through, even if my character doesn't ever think of trying to do anything except the most obvious/practical thing to solve said problems because...well, that's how her mind works .

[beowuuf]

Yeah, the pace has been good, story's cool, etc. It will be interesting to see how the world expands, but the lizar swamps and Makan have been interesting already.


How are you finding DMing a PbP nopw you've got more people to juggle?

[oh_brother]

Yeah I am really enjoying it. I love the level of detail and sense of immersion that comes from the description and cool, fleshed-out characters. It does have a DM feel (or perhaps more of a CSB feel). I am enjoying Ian's character too, and looking forward to meeting Beo and Ameena's.

Pacing is something I don't notice unless it is really off, so the fact that I haven't noticed it is a good sign.

I think the balance of combat is fine at the moment. It needs a mix, just like in a good crpg: too much combat gets tedious, too little makes the lulls and downtimes less satisfying.

Regarding your post in the IC thread: I will not be around much (at all?) over the weekend, so happy to wait for Ian. On that note over the next two weeks I am travelling a lot (for work, not for pleasure ). So at the very least for Thursday and Friday of next week and the week after I will be AWOL (weekends also). The rest of the time will still be hectic, but hopefully I will get to post. But feel free to move the story forward. Artaxes can just sit back and frown at everybody while I am gone.

[raixel]

Yeah, its CSB based For those who may not know, it takes place right around the same time as the start of CSB, to show what happened on the surface. I havent set an actual time like "it was 3 years after DM" cuz I'm not exactly sure how far apart they are, or even if there is any canon that states it. (I have only read the CSB intro story once, and it was a few years ago. I do remember it being nowhere near as cool as the DM intro story) But Westian's running around with Growlgra, on their way to meet other Resistance members in the forest.

The lack of canon is both hindering and helpful. Hindering cuz its a very delicate balance double checking facts and all to make sure I don't over-ride what little canon there, and the fact that I have to tread a delicate line to keep it feeling DM based. And helpful because I can pretty much do what want otherwise.

So like so far, in the DM intro story it mentions the "upper planes". So conversly there most likely would be a "lower planes". And CSB has a prison, so take that and what do you get. If you don't want to know, dont read ahead, but I can almost 100% assure you that this info will not impact player knowledge vs character knowledge. Its just an excuse to explain the cosmology as it stands in the game but so I can have the bad/good guys and the grey lord influencing stuff at the same time and it works in a D&D sense with planes and gods and stuff.

Spoiler

Ok, the upper planes are where the good-neutral High Lords live once they were unfrozen and built the world, they left. In the interest of Balance, the good Lords all agreed to sign a treaty saying taht they would not directly manifest and interfere with the Plane of Harmony. Mortals have to come to them of their own free will. The neutral Lords are only concerned with the Balance, so wont interfere directly as to interfere would disrupt the Balance.

The two lower planes are law/chaos evil planes. They are the prisons of the essences of two evil High Lords, as they could not be destroyed in the interests of Balance, but nether did they *have* the interests of Balance at heart. The Grey Lord (who may have been called somehing else once), agreed to(or was created by the other lords, mortal history is unclear on this) be a kind of metaphysical "lock" on the two evil beings keeping them within their prison, as he allowed himself to absorb their physical forms(or was made out of them). He must reside on the Mortal Plane, otherwise the lock fails. This "lock" keeps the evil Lords from running around and wreaking havok on everything. But they, like the others, are constantly using worshippers to increase their power. And like in the Forgotten Realms, the more worshippers a High Lord has, the more power they get. And the stronger they are, the more the Plane of Harmony slides towards being under their control. So, as you can imagine, the two are constantly trying to find a way out of their prisons or getting their followers to convert others so that the Plane of Harmony will slide toward the lower Planes. If they worked together it would be easy, but due to their nature they cant even consider it. However, if one breaks the lock and manifests on the Material Plane, the other is freed too and the Grey Lord splits.

This the Grey Lord never even told Theron.

If you have any ideas or questions let me know. I'm always up to make it better!

And yes. Two threads is hard. I spend at least 2 hours a day on this. Every day. And thats just the actual posting(I rewrite stuff a few times until its clear enough), not counting everything else. Not that I mind, its great! But with that and the time dfference, thats probably why it seems like you guys post and go to sleep, and theres a new post up when you wake up (I hope at least, I normall post around 8 pm). But over all I love PbP. I find it in some ways better than tabletop due to the amount of decription and depth you cna put into everything because you *can* rewrite it.
Today, I'll post later, Ive got a thing Ive got to attend and I just realized I spent way too much time typing out the cosmology thing!

But other than that, glad everyones enjoying it!

[raixel]

On a side note, if I manage to pull of a post tomorrow for Ameena/Beo, its gonna be this late again, cuz I'm gonna be at a function from 9 in the morning to prob 10 at night. Just so you guys know.

[beowuuf]

CSB is set 13 months after DM if I recall correctly (I think the Grey Lord states it in the CSB manual story).


Edit: Double post! No problems about the update. I think Ameena said she was away this weekend anyway elsewhere.

[Ameena]

Yeah, that was over on RPOL - I was gonna mention it here but I forgot. Anyway, I'm only going to Ja'Ph's house - we had discussed maybe going actually away somewhere for the weekend but decided to scrap that for this week and wait till we've actually planned something properly. So I should have Internet access because I can plonk myself at Ja'Ph's computer .

[raixel]

On a side note, Nightwish is the best band ever to write D&D to. I mean, its opera! And metal! and they sing about Dragonlance! It makes me want to go get a sword and kill orcs. Seriously.

[beowuuf]

Lol, so noted

[raixel]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R82paQbF0Yo

No kidding. The first time I heard this song i flipped. Its about Raistlin Majere. Which is kinda cheesy, but also just so fucking rocking.

[ian_scho]

The group is also the most successful Finnish band abroad with more than 8 million records sold worldwide, and having collected over 60 gold and platinum awards.

Never heard of them
Must investigate!