DreamLyrics™ Play-by-Post Forums Fantasy SKT: The Storm King's Thunder OOC thread

As Aquadyne will attest to (and all of you too), the story does not take a back seat in this game. Similarly, neither do the combat strategy or tactics. That's because no two players are exactly the same. They have different interests and style preferences. I try to satisfy the tactical players as well as those who want to dive into the plot.

And you have been doing a great job of that Nep ... otherwise I would not still be here <wink>

No complaints from me!

Absolutely Enjoying it!

For what it's worth, getting involved in this has reawakened my desire to play more of these things as a player, possibly at a local tabletop gaming place.

It's been far too long!

As I've mentioned to Nep, I started out with the dice system games but moved more toward "story-based" free-form games... but there's a tendency to get too involved in story/choices and ignore randomness. All in all I think it's good to have both perspectives. I still think I do better as a behind-the-scenes facilitator but I think I'd also enjoy playing a bit too, now that I've realized what I have been missing

Go for it Aqua! FTF is so much more fulfilling and exciting, as long as you keep COVID in mind. DL is wonderful, don't misunderstand my point, especially as I have no FTF options, but the comradery and excitement of physically rolling dice across the table can't be beat.

Zeim,
I think our Roll20 games have kept our FTF games going. No, it's not the same as sitting at the table together, but it does a fair job none-the-less. In the Roll20 game I'm running for my sons and their friends we are moving tokens on Roll20 but rolling dice on the table.

Hopefully COVID will be an afterthought in a year and FTF can be an option again.

I think DL also contributed to our FTF game surviving. Being able to continue to play RPGs, even in a messaging system, gave us incentive to figure out how we could adapt our FTF game. It would have been very easy to just give up when the technology was crude, but DL kept us trying to figure it out.

Yep. I'm sure it did too.

A quick heads-up for everyone. Today and tomorrow I'm packing up my car and then I'm driving to Florida over 3 days starting on Thursday. Once I set out I don't expect to post until I get there and unload my SUV.

Glad to hear it guys! And I too have a preference for sitting round a table with folks to play

Both have their 'strengths'. Here I can take some time to think about what I had just read ... and what my character should do. But it is a lot of fun to sit around a table with friends and things can move much faster <g>

I love every aspect of gaming, from playing at a table to using more immediate electronic means such as a Google Doc (where a few of us all type at once, and chat over voice), Roll20, and of course our beloved DL.

I find that playing here actually is both simultaneously easier and harder as I want to write a more crafted story, yet find myself with limited time trying to squeeze in posts here or there.

The one advantage of gaming at a table is all of us are dedicated to that moment in time. Though it has been a very long time since I have had a regular group to share it with.

So as Nep mentioned in the game thread, in relation to breaking thru doors and windows, D&D has a system where those types of items have an AC and HPs and to break thru them you attack them and do enough physical damage to break them.

We were playing in a D&D Tournament several years ago at Gencon. A tournament has numerous DMs who run the same game for numerous parties of players. Everything you do is assigned points and whoever gains the most points wins.

We started the game inside an inn and the inn became under assault. Our mission (as I recall) was to save as many of the townspeople who were in the inn as possible. The assault was coming thru the front door and the only other exit was a window toward the rear. That window was barred.

My pc was a Wizard (this was D&D 4.0 btw). One of his spells fired a spray of Acid. I told the DM I was going to fire the Acid Spray at the metal bars in the window to weaken them so the fighters could break thru them more easily.

The DM paused. Looked at his notes. Paused again, then left the table to go talk to the supervisor. Eventually he came back and said I couldn't do it. He had no way to determine what a spray of Acid would do as far as weakening the bars to make them easier to break thru and no one else had ever tried to do that so they had no precedence.

Naturally my group protested as it seemed like there should be some sort of effect, but we got nowhere.

Nep - please add in anything I have forgotten.

<heh heh heh> I ran tables for =years= at GenCon when it was in Indiana. As I remember it (but I should point out I am getting old and my brain could be failing me) that while the players could come up with some =interesting= ideas, the GM did have =some= 'latitude' resolving that sort of thing.

Having said all that ... I can understand how a GM =might= decide that 'a bit of acid' would not have any 'useful' effect (in game terms) ... since it would take hours ... if not days ... for acid to 'dissolve' metal bars <shrug> Depending on circumstances ... I =might= have let something like that work ... but no guarantees <wink>

The only thing I'll add is that I kept thinking, "at least I wasn't the DM"

This seems like exactly the kind of thing for which the words 'circumstance bonus' were written.

The way I would have handled it is to give the bars hit points and AC. Metal, being vulnerable to acid, would take double damage. However, if the bars had an AC equal to plate armor and had 200 hit points, then Zeim would have likely said, "OK, not worth the effort" based upon those attributes.

Note those of you who remember 1st edition will recall that a strength attribute was a bend bars/lift gates percent. So the idea that it's doable came from Gary Gygax himself.

Oh, and that entire "championship" was a disaster. The objective was a timed effort to save as many people as possible from streams of flowing lava. Out "people" were magnets and we lost lots of time trying to herd magnets that wouldn't behave right. None of the other DMs there had magnetic people. It was a joke.

You're saying the people had magnetic personalities?

I find myself drawn to ... ummmm ... 'people' ... all the time. I have to resist the pull lest my wife kick my ass ... or worse <weg>

Something like that

Nep - Is now a good time to tell the Lingo story from Gencon?

Of course it is!! This =is= a place for story telling, after all <weg>

yep

So we're playing in a game at Gencon. Not a tournament this time I believe. Neptune was playing Lingo, a Halfling Rogue, and I was playing a Tiefling Warlock. In any case after working our way thru the session we finally run into the big bad dude, a Demon/Devil type. One of the first things he does is Dominate Lingo and take control of him. On my pcs turn I cast Banishment and he fails his save and is banished back to the Hells.

However the DM ruled that his control of Lingo extended across planes. The rest of the story is about how rules lawyers can make the game fun too.

So the rules stated that Lingo was controlled until he succeeded at a Saving Throw. He'd already failed his chance and the only way for him to make additional Saves was that each time he took damage he could make another Save attempt.

So, the Cleric cast Hold Person on him so he couldn't harm us as the Devil was remotely trying to make him do. We then tied him up and the party lined up and took turns punching him in the face. Each time he was punched he took a minimal amount of damage, but he got to make a save. It actually went on for quite some time before he broke free. Neptune was not rolling well that day!

<heh heh heh> Great story!!! Thanks for the share <g>