I just read through your “Return to Terror” thread with my morning coffee. I had to drink it really slowly to have enough time to read everything. I look forward to the next installment! Thanks for sharing.
Selena appears to be ill. She threw up after we dropped her at the babysitter’s and is running a fever. I have every hope that it is something minor and she will soon be feeling better but I doubt I will have much time tonight to post. If she is not feeling better I will be staying home with her to-morrow and maybe if she has a nap I’ll have a few moments. I will update you all as soon as I can. I won’t insult you all by apologizing or something like that I know you all understand and send your well-wishes and concern.
Evening folks. Sorry for not being on today but the reason is quite sound. Today I was given one week’s notice at work. Basically there are too many teachers and not enough students, so computer teachers go first. It was completely unexpected, when I went to work this morning I thought I would be there for another couple of years. While I am upset Katie and I are choosing to look at this as an opportunity. Now that I don’t have that job she can widen her job search and I am free to find something better. I spent the entire day looking at job postings and even found a few that would be an improvement, so there’s no reason to think good won’t come of this. Unfortunately I don’t quite feel up to the task of GMing tonight, so to-morrow we’ll continue with things on here. I want to reassure everyone that Katie, Selena and myself are fine and will only be doing better as a result of these developments.
Just a reminder. I think who plays this knows, Katie and I, and Mike and Adam, are going to Origins next week. That means that from Tuesday evening the 23rd to Monday 29th there will be no posting from me. Feel free to chat in character or OOC during that time but I and the above persons will be unavailable, internet access can be hard to come by down there.
Okay folks, things got heated last night. I want to thank everyone for bringing a good story to my game and want you to know I immensely enjoyed it, especially since everyone is still friends. I want you to know that I handed out a couple hundred experience to everyone who got their 2 cents in to encourage that kind of heavy interaction in the future. We should probably take a break from the in-party attempted murders for a while though. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to follow up your awesome efforts last night with something today but work interfered so I know everyone will understand. The next place you guys visit should certainly raise some eyebrows.
I realise that I haven’t actually had anything substantial happen yesterday or today. That’s because I’m getting some stuff ready. If you want to talk amongst yourselves in the meantime I’ll be paying attention and answering questions as needed and keeping track of roleplaying xp. You’ll be seeing something sizable soon.
I am having an awesome time. I only wish I had more kung-fu in the graphic design areas so I could make the maps and such I imagine, c’est-la-vie. Thus far I’ve done pretty well scaving maps here and there but the next big battle is going to be a draw and scan because what I want is so specific.
The story of Mike and Derek is that they are having some connectivity issues. Derek is just now moving so he’s in between here and there. And Mike only has dial up at home and he is on the move so much these days he actually has more time to post while he’s at my place than anytime else.
so, my new hours, effective immediately are tuesday-friday 11:30am-9:00pm and saturdays 6-10pm. so those are going to be my peak hours online here, for anyone who wants a little more Stenrick in their gaming diet. p.s. i love you all.
The thing about the dex mod to damage is that i just borrowed the rule from 4e. My opinion is that ‘heavy’ thrown weapons would still and only benefit from the str mod, since they are too heavy to be thrown with incredible accuracy. Light ranged weapons would get the dex mod because you are very accurate. a mighty bow would probably get both under these circumstance, because the yare designed to have great strength but that doesn’t stop you from being accurate, it has the potential for abuse but mighty bows are pretty expensive in low/mod treasure game.
so marc! i just read the one house rule posted so far and i have a question. if i have a mighty composite (+3 str) bow, do i add my str AND my dex to damage in that case? also, traditionally when throwing and weapon such as a dagger or a javelin, you do add you str to damage. would i add my str for the force of the throw, and my dex for the accuracy of the hit in that case as well?
and btw, i like that house rule very much, and will from here on out be adding that to my list of house rules. you rock.
Good morning my sunshines. how is everyone today? oh, to be abusing the unapproved websites at work, which are now technically all websites. I’m going to be on all day, at least until 430 ish. in the pm. booyah!
Sorry gang! I’m going to be out all day and then spending time with Jessi after work. I entrust Roland to both Marc and Katie in the mean time. I want to be a part of the encounter, but I neither want 1) people to wait on for my turn, or 2) make any combat decisions before I see what Veit and Tobias do.
Marc, Katie, If you have to take control of Roland, feel free to log in as me. Thank you!
Ok everyone I want you to thank Akira for sponsoring our game and making us an Ascendant game. For now that means that we will getting access to forums and more maps. I’ll be setting those up in the morning.
You know what the crazy thing is, I don’t even know what I’m going to do when it’s my turn. We can’t go into this without a plan can we? We’re a team right? What are some ideas you guys have?
Someone asked about others ways you might have freed the ship. As always I leave room for you to impress so if anyone had proposed a sensible enough solution i would have accepted it but the other way I was thinking was you could have rigged up some ropes, maybe use the force of dropping the anchor, set up a few block and tackles, that sort of thing.
The combat yesterday was something of an experiment, it happened quickly and ended quickly so that I could draw some conclusions from it. The people involved made it happen really quickly because of the speed of their responses. In the future it is possible that a single combat might last several days, especially once things die down and people start only coming on once a day. That being said combat can happen at any time. I can’t pause things and make everyone wait for a certain time of the day to get the ball rolling especially if some people are online and actively advancing the combat. I have no problem with people telling me what their character might do in a given situation and I can act on their behalf if they don’t come on that day. This is something we are trying out, so we are going to have to keep trying it until we get it right.
akira, you mostly have it right about the 8am part. it also has to do with when i started playing halo at the lair in the mornings when i got there early. as for combats, yes ones run like that i may miss as well. it’d be nice if it was to be assumed i would be with my other dwarven shields, during combats, you know?
Yeah, it looks like it will work…unfortunately if combats are going to be run like that, I am likely to miss most of them. Is it possible to just assume that I am protecting Hilde when I am in class? I don’t know what you are comfortable with as the GM
We had our first combat and it went well. I just wanted to test the waters with a small fight to see how things would work. It was a swarm which in retrospect wasn’t the best idea, since they are immune to weapon damage. The players retreated and then formulated a foolproof plan so I called it in their favour.
Hopefully the next time will be more indicative of a regular combat.
marc! as far as rolling goes, YES i want you to take care of mine, and as far as i’m concerned i don’t need to know the results (as in the 5+mod stuff) just feel free to describe what happens in what ever detail you want. i don’t care about seeing other ppl’s results, but honestly i’d rather not see my own lol, if that isn’t too much of a pain in the ass ?
I just found out why Obsidian is not exactly a pro piece of software. Apparently it is designed and run by two guys who have done a great job of creating it but are still only two guys who only have 24 hours a day to run, maintain and upgrade this site. Apparently they also run another website that makes them more money (it’s a credit card processor, not any kind of game thing). Everything we see here is really just a hobby project that makes money on the side.
So being able to post in our character’s guise is probably somewhere on their agenda but it won’t be available until it’s available.
Something people may want to take a look at. some pointers for making combat speedier and easier. I’m thinking of how I can adapt most of this to our purposes.
I know that at this stage there is a lot of back and forth but once the characters get to know each other and there is some order, some purpose established, things will go much quicker. People who are able to be on more can do more talking and people who have less access can check to see what’s going on, tell me what they are doing and lay out some guidelines for what they will most likely do under certain circumstances. We’ll find a way to make it work.
Hi Laz, I don’t know how Marc was organizing the email game, but yeah I was granted xp for my actions. At least two other people were as well (from what I saw). I had assumed that everyone earned xp
I have no issues with it, but so far my one rolls have been a twenty and fifteen. :) If you are worried about people calling fouls if you roll a string of bad luck, what about just using a pregenerated roll chart? That way when you cross off a roll, you can also keep track of where that roll went to. Don’t know why that made sense to my tired brain, I just think it’s a funny brush off if you can tell so-and-so: “Sorry, mate. You could have had a twenty, but Alora used that last pregenerated roll as a constitution check against getting drunk on dwarven ale.”
Also, you have Carmindy! You can always use her.
And the tables are codes. When you go to make your character, they’ll appear on the right side of your screen and you just plug them in as appropriate. It involves a lot * and | and _.
Things have been going well all day. I’m pretty happy with it so far. I did have one question. How do people feel about me doing the rolls. I trust everyone here to do their own rolls and report them fairly but I want to avoid any resentment that might occur if someone has a streak of luck and other people start to wonder: “Hey that’s a lot of 17-20s that person is rolling.” How does everyone feel abotu it?
hrmm…I just had a chance to look at the map now, but I think it should work; even if combats are likely to be REALLY slow.
It is a double edged sword…the more actions you (as the DM) take control of the faster the game runs, but conversely the less involved the players are with the game. If the game is too slow people may lose interest, but if they don’t feel that they have control then they may lose interest…I am glad that you are offering alternatives.
Well I’m glad the dwarven invasion has you so giddy. I think the adventure logs will serve the purpose for now, if they don’t I’ll pass the hat and see what happens. For maps i think one at a time will do for now. If we need more than one at a time i will post them on my livejournal and people can download them from there. I had this crazy idea that I could draw out the combat maps and take digital pics of them and post them, there’s probably a better way to do it digital, instead of stop motion. we’ll see I’m certain we can, as a group come up with something.
so for an idea on how to get around the map issue, can you just take down the old maps and then put up new ones when necessary? and as for the forums… we might be able to make due with the comments/ adventure logs. whatever you think is best oh fearless leader.
Apparently only the gm needs a pay account to get those features but I’m experimenting to see if we can avoid that cost. I want everyone to look at the adventure log and the map I posted and tell me if they think that is workable.
That would be mighty appreciated but I want to make certain that everyone wont need memberships to comment in the forums or create posts of their own. If that is the case we’ll have to think of something else. I will look into it and see what’s what.
Thanks for reading :)
I just read through your “Return to Terror” thread with my morning coffee. I had to drink it really slowly to have enough time to read everything. I look forward to the next installment! Thanks for sharing.
Selena appears to be ill. She threw up after we dropped her at the babysitter’s and is running a fever. I have every hope that it is something minor and she will soon be feeling better but I doubt I will have much time tonight to post. If she is not feeling better I will be staying home with her to-morrow and maybe if she has a nap I’ll have a few moments. I will update you all as soon as I can. I won’t insult you all by apologizing or something like that I know you all understand and send your well-wishes and concern.
Evening folks. Sorry for not being on today but the reason is quite sound. Today I was given one week’s notice at work. Basically there are too many teachers and not enough students, so computer teachers go first. It was completely unexpected, when I went to work this morning I thought I would be there for another couple of years. While I am upset Katie and I are choosing to look at this as an opportunity. Now that I don’t have that job she can widen her job search and I am free to find something better. I spent the entire day looking at job postings and even found a few that would be an improvement, so there’s no reason to think good won’t come of this. Unfortunately I don’t quite feel up to the task of GMing tonight, so to-morrow we’ll continue with things on here. I want to reassure everyone that Katie, Selena and myself are fine and will only be doing better as a result of these developments.
Come one guys! let’s get in there and kick some ass. Breach the gate! Fortune favors the bold! Be bold!
that’s my attempt at cheering all you sons of guns on.
:D thank you! ...ummm… I mean… hey, look what i found just laying here unattended! mwahahaha
Whoops, this link fell out of my pocket, I have no idea where it came from. http://www.publicproxyservers.com/proxy/list1.html
lol, so… anyone know a good proxy server other than ninjacloak? and welcome aboard mike. also…your face. O_O
well, welcome mike. ninjacloak is down and i can’t get onto msn. :(
Good to have you with us Mike.
YAA with the use of firefox I LIVE!!!
Good to be back folks, another awesome Origins.
Just a reminder. I think who plays this knows, Katie and I, and Mike and Adam, are going to Origins next week. That means that from Tuesday evening the 23rd to Monday 29th there will be no posting from me. Feel free to chat in character or OOC during that time but I and the above persons will be unavailable, internet access can be hard to come by down there.
Have fun folks, I know I plan to.
Okay folks, things got heated last night. I want to thank everyone for bringing a good story to my game and want you to know I immensely enjoyed it, especially since everyone is still friends. I want you to know that I handed out a couple hundred experience to everyone who got their 2 cents in to encourage that kind of heavy interaction in the future. We should probably take a break from the in-party attempted murders for a while though. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to follow up your awesome efforts last night with something today but work interfered so I know everyone will understand. The next place you guys visit should certainly raise some eyebrows.
I realise that I haven’t actually had anything substantial happen yesterday or today. That’s because I’m getting some stuff ready. If you want to talk amongst yourselves in the meantime I’ll be paying attention and answering questions as needed and keeping track of roleplaying xp. You’ll be seeing something sizable soon.
I am having an awesome time. I only wish I had more kung-fu in the graphic design areas so I could make the maps and such I imagine, c’est-la-vie. Thus far I’ve done pretty well scaving maps here and there but the next big battle is going to be a draw and scan because what I want is so specific.
The story of Mike and Derek is that they are having some connectivity issues. Derek is just now moving so he’s in between here and there. And Mike only has dial up at home and he is on the move so much these days he actually has more time to post while he’s at my place than anytime else.
in the pants.
btw i haven’t seen mike or the jman in a few days and i misses them.
so, my new hours, effective immediately are tuesday-friday 11:30am-9:00pm and saturdays 6-10pm. so those are going to be my peak hours online here, for anyone who wants a little more Stenrick in their gaming diet. p.s. i love you all.
What ever happened to Mike Hrynyk? Unless I am missing something, he hasn’t really posted in a few days. Is he just busy at work?
Yep, good times. I just wish that we had started playing sooner. I almost went nuts here not being able to game at all.
trying to get a little bit of conversation going here lol. are YOU having fun Marc?
Glad you are having fun mate.
Egad!!!! Hi guys. how’s everyone enjoying the game so far? I’m having a blast, and it keeps me sane at work everyday. lol
I’m going to get mauled! AHHHHHH!!!!!! why!
>
woot!
Well it’s up now.
lol where’s my moday post! lol I’m at work and teh queue is slow today! bah!
Slow day today. That’s fine, once you decide where you are going there’s probably going to be some “down time” in game as you get where you are going.
that makes sense to me. thank you for clearing that up
The thing about the dex mod to damage is that i just borrowed the rule from 4e. My opinion is that ‘heavy’ thrown weapons would still and only benefit from the str mod, since they are too heavy to be thrown with incredible accuracy. Light ranged weapons would get the dex mod because you are very accurate. a mighty bow would probably get both under these circumstance, because the yare designed to have great strength but that doesn’t stop you from being accurate, it has the potential for abuse but mighty bows are pretty expensive in low/mod treasure game.
so marc! i just read the one house rule posted so far and i have a question. if i have a mighty composite (+3 str) bow, do i add my str AND my dex to damage in that case? also, traditionally when throwing and weapon such as a dagger or a javelin, you do add you str to damage. would i add my str for the force of the throw, and my dex for the accuracy of the hit in that case as well? and btw, i like that house rule very much, and will from here on out be adding that to my list of house rules. you rock.
Good morning my sunshines. how is everyone today? oh, to be abusing the unapproved websites at work, which are now technically all websites. I’m going to be on all day, at least until 430 ish. in the pm. booyah!
Sorry gang! I’m going to be out all day and then spending time with Jessi after work. I entrust Roland to both Marc and Katie in the mean time. I want to be a part of the encounter, but I neither want 1) people to wait on for my turn, or 2) make any combat decisions before I see what Veit and Tobias do.
Marc, Katie, If you have to take control of Roland, feel free to log in as me. Thank you!
Applause
You, are The Man. Thank you Akira. :)
Ok everyone I want you to thank Akira for sponsoring our game and making us an Ascendant game. For now that means that we will getting access to forums and more maps. I’ll be setting those up in the morning.
Give him a hand folks.
..........................................................................
You know what the crazy thing is, I don’t even know what I’m going to do when it’s my turn. We can’t go into this without a plan can we? We’re a team right? What are some ideas you guys have?
Tobias, if you shoot at Zombie 2 and I shoot at Zombie 2 on my turn as well, I’m SURE we’ll be able to kill it.
Most likely. :)
I WANT TO SHOOT SOMETHING!!!! lol
Someone asked about others ways you might have freed the ship. As always I leave room for you to impress so if anyone had proposed a sensible enough solution i would have accepted it but the other way I was thinking was you could have rigged up some ropes, maybe use the force of dropping the anchor, set up a few block and tackles, that sort of thing.
The combat yesterday was something of an experiment, it happened quickly and ended quickly so that I could draw some conclusions from it. The people involved made it happen really quickly because of the speed of their responses. In the future it is possible that a single combat might last several days, especially once things die down and people start only coming on once a day. That being said combat can happen at any time. I can’t pause things and make everyone wait for a certain time of the day to get the ball rolling especially if some people are online and actively advancing the combat. I have no problem with people telling me what their character might do in a given situation and I can act on their behalf if they don’t come on that day. This is something we are trying out, so we are going to have to keep trying it until we get it right.
akira, you mostly have it right about the 8am part. it also has to do with when i started playing halo at the lair in the mornings when i got there early. as for combats, yes ones run like that i may miss as well. it’d be nice if it was to be assumed i would be with my other dwarven shields, during combats, you know?
Yeah, it looks like it will work…unfortunately if combats are going to be run like that, I am likely to miss most of them. Is it possible to just assume that I am protecting Hilde when I am in class? I don’t know what you are comfortable with as the GM
We had our first combat and it went well. I just wanted to test the waters with a small fight to see how things would work. It was a swarm which in retrospect wasn’t the best idea, since they are immune to weapon damage. The players retreated and then formulated a foolproof plan so I called it in their favour.
Hopefully the next time will be more indicative of a regular combat.
no i mean theres the PI and the legion people. how do i be a part of a group?
Adam, just thinking about your name. I understand the ‘fatman’ part…why ‘8am’?
As I recall it, that used to be more or less when you would go to bed.
thank you marc for humoring me with the rolls thing. and larkinator, it’s adam, accept my friends request please? lol
You will joining up with them shortly scottie
every1 is a part of a group. can i join group 2?
Thanx Larkinator. I don’t think I will do the charts. To much work.
No problem mate, from now on your rolls will be secret.
marc! as far as rolling goes, YES i want you to take care of mine, and as far as i’m concerned i don’t need to know the results (as in the 5+mod stuff) just feel free to describe what happens in what ever detail you want. i don’t care about seeing other ppl’s results, but honestly i’d rather not see my own lol, if that isn’t too much of a pain in the ass ?
I just found out why Obsidian is not exactly a pro piece of software. Apparently it is designed and run by two guys who have done a great job of creating it but are still only two guys who only have 24 hours a day to run, maintain and upgrade this site. Apparently they also run another website that makes them more money (it’s a credit card processor, not any kind of game thing). Everything we see here is really just a hobby project that makes money on the side.
So being able to post in our character’s guise is probably somewhere on their agenda but it won’t be available until it’s available.
Sounds good Akira if she marches you off a cliff I’ll let you know.
I am sure that there is no doubt on your end, but I have fully authorized Amanda to make decisions for Erik in my absence. When in doubt, attack ;)
Something people may want to take a look at. some pointers for making combat speedier and easier. I’m thinking of how I can adapt most of this to our purposes.
http://www.d20source.com/2009/04/five-ways-to-speed-up-combat
I know that at this stage there is a lot of back and forth but once the characters get to know each other and there is some order, some purpose established, things will go much quicker. People who are able to be on more can do more talking and people who have less access can check to see what’s going on, tell me what they are doing and lay out some guidelines for what they will most likely do under certain circumstances. We’ll find a way to make it work.
And marc does use me, not my character, but me. You don’t want to know what for
Lazzzzzzzi, check your emails for the first part of the adventure, or email marc to get an update if you didn’t receive the email.
Once you finish the solo part, you’ll catch up to us on the portal.
Hi Laz, I don’t know how Marc was organizing the email game, but yeah I was granted xp for my actions. At least two other people were as well (from what I saw). I had assumed that everyone earned xp
Oh lol also, I forgot what the range was on my pistol. What was it, 50 ft?
Akira, you already have exp? Yarg! I want to find this encounter lol Why do I have to be so clueless? :(
I trust you Marc! That, and I don’t have a 20 sided die. Or any die for that matter. :/
Where can I find the first encounter?
Hi Akira!
I am pretty sure that everyone trusts you here Marc. It IS your game after all. The DM can do no wrong :)
I have no issues with it, but so far my one rolls have been a twenty and fifteen. :) If you are worried about people calling fouls if you roll a string of bad luck, what about just using a pregenerated roll chart? That way when you cross off a roll, you can also keep track of where that roll went to. Don’t know why that made sense to my tired brain, I just think it’s a funny brush off if you can tell so-and-so: “Sorry, mate. You could have had a twenty, but Alora used that last pregenerated roll as a constitution check against getting drunk on dwarven ale.”
Also, you have Carmindy! You can always use her.
And the tables are codes. When you go to make your character, they’ll appear on the right side of your screen and you just plug them in as appropriate. It involves a lot * and | and _.
Hey, thanx for letting me join. How did you get charts for your character page?
Things have been going well all day. I’m pretty happy with it so far. I did have one question. How do people feel about me doing the rolls. I trust everyone here to do their own rolls and report them fairly but I want to avoid any resentment that might occur if someone has a streak of luck and other people start to wonder: “Hey that’s a lot of 17-20s that person is rolling.” How does everyone feel abotu it?
bwa ha ha…here I come world!
I’m glad to see everyone is enjoying themselves.
Also, you may all want to check your email.
Forgive me as I take a moment to revel in my terrible glee MUWAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
YOU ARE ALL MINE NOW. THE KINGDOM OF TERROR COMMENCES!
I just saw it, very nice. Looking forward to playing!
Nice update on the Legion page Akira, I put a little surprise on there for you.
hrmm…I just had a chance to look at the map now, but I think it should work; even if combats are likely to be REALLY slow.
It is a double edged sword…the more actions you (as the DM) take control of the faster the game runs, but conversely the less involved the players are with the game. If the game is too slow people may lose interest, but if they don’t feel that they have control then they may lose interest…I am glad that you are offering alternatives.
Well I’m glad the dwarven invasion has you so giddy. I think the adventure logs will serve the purpose for now, if they don’t I’ll pass the hat and see what happens. For maps i think one at a time will do for now. If we need more than one at a time i will post them on my livejournal and people can download them from there. I had this crazy idea that I could draw out the combat maps and take digital pics of them and post them, there’s probably a better way to do it digital, instead of stop motion. we’ll see I’m certain we can, as a group come up with something.
so for an idea on how to get around the map issue, can you just take down the old maps and then put up new ones when necessary? and as for the forums… we might be able to make due with the comments/ adventure logs. whatever you think is best oh fearless leader.
Mwahahaha! Red-haired dwarves for the win! i would chip in a few $ of my own if necessary. p.s. Who loves short shorts?! nanananananana
Did you know that wizards makes all of it’s printed art available in a gallery on it’s website? http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4arch/ag
we are being overrun by blue-eyed, red-haired dawrves. Where my Darkonese at?
Apparently only the gm needs a pay account to get those features but I’m experimenting to see if we can avoid that cost. I want everyone to look at the adventure log and the map I posted and tell me if they think that is workable.
That would be mighty appreciated but I want to make certain that everyone wont need memberships to comment in the forums or create posts of their own. If that is the case we’ll have to think of something else. I will look into it and see what’s what.
If you want to get the year-long, I don’t mind chipping in $20
They want $5 a month, or $25 for six months, or $40 for a year. Which is not too bad all thinga considered.
hmm…how much is it?
Apparently you have to pay if you want to use more than one map or use the forums. That’s inconvenient.