OOC THREAD

[Eclecticon]

Dougs on vacation and I'm making the world save for democracy. I'll have something up today

And far be it from me to interrupt either of those things!  I was mainly making an observation about myself - my rate of checking the board gradually increased over the week despite the consistent lack of any pay-off.

Doug, I'm glad you're holiday went well.  What kind of things did you guys get up to?

[Telcontar]

Ok so I Douged. It will have to be tomorrow since laptop is at the house and ipad was left on my desk.

[tomcat]

You "Douged"!

I am a verb now! 

Paul - it was a blast! Save for the 11+ hours down and back, it was a non-stop weekend of friends and fun. Friday we arrived and I hung out with my buddy, the groom, while my wife went out with all of her hometown friends. Saturday we head up to the Jupiter Beach Resort for the wedding rehearsal and dinner. Once done, we spent the rest of the night on the beach with five guitars and a cajon - we are all musicians, so it was like seven players and singers all jamming. Sunday was the wedding - very nice time! Monday we started the trek back north, doing it in three days instead of two.

All in all, a crazy, fun, fast, but LONG trip.

Now to go and post in our game.

[tomcat]

Oh... and can I get a definition of Douging something, please?   

[Eclecticon]

So, apropos of nothing, I was wondering how much back-end collaboration there is between Doug and Tom.  Do you guys plan out a whole adventuring phase worth of stuff ahead of time, divvying up responsibility for particular scenes and/or GMCs, or is it more riffing as you go? 

[tomcat]

So, apropos of nothing, I was wondering how much back-end collaboration there is between Doug and Tom.  Do you guys plan out a whole adventuring phase worth of stuff ahead of time, divvying up responsibility for particular scenes and/or GMCs, or is it more riffing as you go?

No...nothing like that, really.

Right now, what I do is read the next Adventuring Phase and take from it what I like and want to use and make sure the rest doesn't have a future part in the story. After that, I see where the PC's are and listen to what you guys want to do, or achieve, and work that into the Adventure Phase information from the Darkening of Mirkwood, adding in anything that might be cool from The Heart of the Wild.

After that process, I kind of let the story flow day-by-day and introduce the pre-created challenges in the campaign, or gen stuff that I think needs to be there. The attack on the Black Tarn that you are involved with right now has nothing to do with any part of our current phase, other than it was written in prior Fellowship Phases that the Tarn suffers raids. I figured it was time you experienced one, so you can influence the situation and have fun.

As for Tom and his part - we do communicate, and he even wrote down a formula for each AP to FP, but we kind of wing that, too.

I like pre-written campaigns for idea resource and a overall story outline, but for the most part I GM my games so that they seem to follow a natural day-to-day order of things... if that makes sense.

[Eclecticon]

Cool.  I've been running games for decades, but I've never seen a pair of GMs working together before.  I'm guessing it's a little easier in a PbP game, but I'll admit that I have no real basis for this. 

... I am going to make Arbogast take on six enemies - two maximum each round until they are all dead.

Again, this is for narrative purposes - and bragging rights for Arbogast. Might earn a couple good scars.    So we'll make our attacks in this thread and I will track the hit points until someone falls.

Anyway, I will have to think about a re-tool of the MASS COMBAT CHART.

Right now, I'm just focused on getting through alive, never mind bragging rights.  All it takes is a single  and I'm done for - the lack of armour means I'm really working without a net. 

As regards mass combat rules, you could do worse than the attached.  The skirmish rules from Pendragon would work as well, if you have access to those. 

[tomcat]

Hey Paul,

Yea - these are great downloads and I will keep them for future games. I wanted to do something easy and abstract, and so I used the Mass Combat optional rule that was given in the Tales of Wilderland (with a few tweaks for our game) - unfortunately, I did it on the fly and didn't test my tweaks. Thus it is all F'ed up and was not fun to play through.

Anyway, I am changing it once more and I am going to say that the foes either won, or were driven off by whichever showed first - the or . In this case, it was the and so, Arbogast would only fight about 6 rounds of combat and I am going to limit his engagements to three adversaries.

Let us hope the die fall in his direction with what is left.

Sorry for the botch!

[Telcontar]

I agree with Doug, we kind of let the story tell itself and collaborate on where we think things should go or what kind of ramifications certain actions will have.

I think if I generalized, Doug is managing the game, and I am adding the happy little trees and detail stuff.

[tomcat]

Cool.  I've been running games for decades, but I've never seen a pair of GMs working together before.  I'm guessing it's a little easier in a PbP game, but I'll admit that I have no real basis for this.

Same here, Paul - I have been at the helm of one RPGor another since the early 80's.

I think EVERYTHING is easier in PbP because of the non-rushed format. Iactually like storytelling in PbP better than I do when playing around a table, but I miss getting around a table with people.

You can get so much more descriptive in this format, give inner thoughts, allow for cut-scenes. I don't have to have everything ready for a scene, or encounter, immediately.

PbP definitely has its perks...you just have to be willing to be patient to work with other players. That is what I think kills most PbP games - someone gets bored, or time doesn't cater to posting (although I think this is a lame excuse because there is always time to get on a PC). Things then cascade and the game falls apart.

I have shelved games due to this, but I, too, am to blame at times. Sometimes my mind starts creating in different genres and I lose interest in my current story. I put them on hiatus and start something new. It doesn't help that I keep buying new game systems! (i.e. TOR, FFG Star Wars, etc.)

[Eclecticon]

I know how it is.  I'm notorious in my tabletop group for falling in love with a new game halfway through the one I'm running.  In fact, we've not long started The Great Pendragon Campaign, but I've just bought the Dracula Dossier (for Night's Black Agents) and it looks so good... 

I'm just lucky I don't let this sort of behaviour slip into other areas of my life, or my marriage would be significantly less enjoyable. 

[Eclecticon]

Have a good weekend, everyone!  We're finally coming to the end of the spring cold and flu season, so I'm off to spend a weekend doing things other than dealing with the hacking crud. 

[GandalfOfBorg]

And we will soon be starting the winter cold and flu season.

[Eclecticon]

Doug, you're back!  I was wondering if I needed to pile some dice on my laptop, light some candles and pray for forgiveness. 

[tomcat]

LOL! 

Actually I was giving everyone some time that they needed to take care of busy weeks at home and work. But we only allow 1 week here and then it is back to work on our story. 

I was hoping Poster boy or Bandy would be able to post some character dialogue, but they must be slammed so I went ahead and did it for them.