DreamLyrics™ Play-by-Post Forums Hall of Fame - Latest Top 10 completed games LMP: Lost Mines of Phandelver OOC thread

Yeah. Doing great. Done with my draft but there's fallout after system issues there. I should be done tonight and then a post!

I have some tactical observations. I'll go by turn order (Davroar, Kriv, Whisper, Jaliera, Luminmorn, Ryssa, Bern)

Chandan, who went, is "stuck". That means he cannot move without provoking an attack of opportunity. Only one ogre can attack him.

Davroar does have room to move and get into melee. Both spots labeled "A" are available to him and allies can move through each other's square as long as they don't stop there. He needs a double move because of the distance (more than 40 feet) to reach but he doesn't have to do a full move. He can stop earlier and do a move/attack next round.

Kriv is pinned completely, surrounded by ogres. He has nowhere to go but my gut feeling says that this is where he wants to be.

I thought that Whisper was going to move? I'll assume that she is where you want her to be. Jaliera doesn't need Whisper to bother the ogres if she targets one of the ones in hand-to-hand combat with Chandan, Lumi or Kriv. Jaliera does need to move to attack. I'll assume that she steps forward up to half her movement, take shots and then step back into darkenss. She can target all of the ogres from the "C" mark but not Ogre-2. She would need to step up 1 square further and the ogre would benefit from partial cover.

Lumi, like Chandan is "stuck" but he can be attacked by 3 ogres with attacks of opportunities.

Bern is free to move about as the ogres only have a reach of 5. It also means he's in a rather ideal archer spot. He can target all but cannot be target except for by missiles. That, of course, did not work out in the first round.

Ryssa also does not have direct line of sight to Ogre-2. And she would also need to get to move to one of those same spots as Jaliera to target him. Otherwise, she can sit back and cast her spells and cantrips.

Neptune, Davroar in his brown bear form has a move of 40 feet. By my square counting he reaches position B in 7 and should be able to attack Ogre 3 ?

The other half of the tactical picture: Ogre 2 (topmost, adjacent to Kriv) is one hit away from death. Ogre 3 (adjacent to Lumi and Kriv) is untouched. Ogre 4 (adjacent to Lumi) has over 40 hitpoints left, ogre 5 (adjacent to Lumi and Chandan) has just been dropped to over 40. Ogre 6 is in reserve, the most likely spot to open up being the one occupied by ogre 2.

I still have my action surge in reserve, this seems a prudent time to use it. If Kriv can dispose of 2 and 3, he can move back to position B, be back in range of the party, and be in position to tank the incoming ogre 6.

Edit: Crosspost. Should be able to reach A instead, and a bear mauling 3 seems good.

Edit edit: double crosspost. That's also cool.

AJ, I'll take your advice then and have Davroar move to position A and attack Ogre 5/

Exactly why I have him there <g> And my plan is to wait and see which foes are closest to death and target them <weg>

Ah OK, so the ogres have a 4x4 base effectively?

Actually ... it would be 2x2 ... or 4 squares <chuckle>

I think Ryssa would move up alongside Jaliera and then decide which ogre to attack.

Dugan,
I'll give that to you. It's really borderline and I don't want to do the math. As a brown bear he moves 40 on flat land and climbs 30. I would have him move in the difficult terrain at 30 and I think the math is close, but I'll foresake the algebra and say sure. That comes with the assumption (that a non-evil DM would use), that Davroar inched closer in the round before where he didn't act, to make sure he was close enough to enter the fray this round.

Yes, Ogres have a 2x2 base.

When Ryssa goes, she can move there and fire.

Sorry, yes, 2x2, thanks MikeD. I think I've been looking too hard at the 2019 Jeep Wrangler recently!

<heh heh heh> I don't blame you <g>

Thank you Neptune.

Edited in the rest of my turn, over to the next.

Thanks for ghosting Nep. Should be able to take over from here.

Thanks for the game, Neptune, Zeim. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and gained---I think---a good insight into D&D 5e.

In fact, if we were rating official D&D versions only, I think it's probably the best yet and takes the game in the right direction. A game of imagination.

Its flaws seem relatively trivial and can be balanced easily by the DM, using short breaks or magic items quotient. The flaws with the monk sub-class I played can be avoided just by picking a different one, and will probably be revised. (Haven't WotC already revised the ranger class?)

I'm not sold on the Lost Mine of Phandelver module as an introduction to role-playing games. It did a good job of introducing 5e to D&D players, but could probably do with more guided dramatic play for complete newbies. There were obvious social interactions with NPCs, where the object was to obtain a specific thing, but the writers don't seem to have made an important feature of the desires and aims of the PCs. So I'd probably still opt for something like John Harper's Lady Blackbird for introducing complete newbies to RPGs.

It's been fun gaming with this group. You realise we've been playing for around 4.5 years!? LMP will be a worthy entrant in the DreamLyrics Hall of Fame.

Well ... there are things that I like about almost every version of D&D, 5th included. But for me it is more about the GMs. We had two of the best here <g>

Thanks everyone for playing.

I've been thinking about what's next. The number of games over the years has dwindled and there are few D&D games (is this the only one?) So I was thinking of continuing. It would be a new module. PC's could continue on. Current players could make up a new PC. Current players could opt to not play. I could open it up to new players.

Something I've tried (with mixed success) to do with my home group, is the concept of a "Shared Campaign". Until a few weeks ago, I didn't know that this concept was documented, much less that it had been given a name. Then I was leafing through "Xanathar's Guide To Everything" and came upon this:


Now all this is about the WOTC Adventurer's League games, but I don't see why it couldn't be extended to here. You're only 5th level, and PC's can go to 20th. It's just that levels 5-10 seem to be the sweetest spot in the game from a capability and enjoyment level. You can finally do stuff and challenges can get slightly more interesting.

What are your thoughts on a shared campaign? Which do you prefer? Do you think you would continue on? If you feel like discussing via PM, go right ahead. You all know how to find me there


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As for tidying up LMP, we need to get you back to town. I'm going to assume that you take the path of least resistance and not explore more of the mine at this point. A post will go up shortly to sum things up.

I would be pleased to carry on with Ryssa and the rest of you, Neptune. We've had good players and great GM's in this module and I wouldn't want to back out of it now.

I enjoyed playing my druid character and with everyone here. I would sign up if there is a new adventure to be played, and I have no real preference on if it is a shared campaign or not. To me the shared campaign does offer a stronger case in reaching the end of an adventure.

Some comments on 5e. I agree with Neil in that I think this is the best version. What I particularly liked was the character creation. This is really good for newbies because it gets them to think of their character as a person. Really impressed with that.

And so, because I like my character and because others want to continue (especially Davroar) then I am in if you guys want to go on.

I am not interested in GMing however as I run two games already and a third would be one too many, even if for short periods.

Jaliera has made a pledge to return to her mentor after ensuring his dwarven friend is safe and well. Davroar had said he would go with her. Room for others too! As her mentor wants her to go adventuring, returning to bring him knowledge and items, no problem with going on another. I do hope this can be worked into the background, no need to play it out. Thanks!

Happy to keep Bern around <g>

Like Gypsy, I would pass on the GMing part ... but wouldn't mind if other players want to take a turn 'behind the wheel' <g>

Neil, you bring up a good point when you say "I'm not sold on the Lost Mine of Phandelver module as an introduction to role-playing games. It did a good job of introducing 5e to D&D players, but could probably do with more guided dramatic play for complete newbies."

Much of that fault lies with the DM. Zeim and I have run and played a certain way for many years. I've watched some other DM's running LMP (recordings on Youtube from Twitch) and can, with all honesty, other DMs do a much better job with that aspect of DMing. Zeim and I frequently talk about how combat/strategy oriented our home players are. Dramatic roleplay is far and away the easiest way to bore our FTF group. I'm sure that other DMs made that entire 1st half of the game much more roleplay friendly.

And to Gypsy's point, when I spin up the new game, the fulfillment of Jaliera's pledge and other such activies will be done on "downtime", a concept introduced with 5e. That and other such things should be worked out as part of the end of LMP and set the stage for the next adventure.

I also have a really tremendous module to run if I'm solo DMing (actually, I have a few but I'm leaning towards one in particular). It may be the last module that I run on Dreamlyrics. LMP was about 50 pages long. This one is 250. By my math, if 50 pages took 4.5 years, 250 pages will take 22.5 years which'll take us well into our octogenarian years <g>.

An experiment that worked well, I think, was the melding of DreamLyrics with Roll20. The graphics help bring things alive, especially during combat. No matter what, I intend to use the character sheets in Roll20. Even if we only do that, it's an enhancement to the game play.

The next logical step to move things along would be to have a periodic "live" sessions. The Dreamlyrics world moves very slow compared to the FTF world. If I were to guess, LMP would take 40-50 hours of FTF game play to complete. The one challenge for us is timezone. It's 8 am here in NY. For Zeim in Tennessee and Mike in Indiana it's 7 am and Pande will be snoring for another two hours as it's 5 am for him now on the US west coast. Those of you across the pond are just about coming back from lunch as it's 1 pm there. If we were to ever do that, a noon start time for me on a Saturday or Sunday would be the logical start time. While Pande will be having breakfast others might be enjoying dinner. If we had 4-6 FTF sessions per year, even if they were only a few hours long, we could make headway.

Pande, Zeim and Exeter experienced that a bit with Out of the Abyss. We had a fun FTF session but there was an initial learning curve to overcome. OOA ended up not being a good game for me to run for a slew of reasons but we finished the first chapter, which was rather interesting, I thought.

Lots to chew on, but let's continue on with LMP for a bit. We'll launch all those "downtime" activities before we move on. I'll add some spice to that. It really means we'll continue here for a bit to satisfy that and prepare for the next step.

Oh, BTW, you'll all be leveling up before the next game starts

The time is not a problem, but Sun is out for me. I have another commitment then.

Otherwise, nothing there would cause me to 'run away' ... yet <weg>

I've been thinking a lot about shared campaigns recently. They make a lot of sense if trying to run a long campaign. Ftf, mine and Gyspy's group have been running mini-campaigns of 12 or so sessions for many years now, but we're all agreed that our latest (Star Wars: Edge of the Empire) is shaping up to be a long one. The GMing burden starts to tire one out in a long campaign though. So far, we're doing more as players to determine what scenes we want to play out in each session, but sharing GMing could be a way forward eventually.

It's much like directors in a TV series. There are usually a pool of regulars and the occasional guest director.

Having said all that, after LMP and NDT I'm planning a break from message gaming, probably until December.

Neptune, you can't be blamed for a module's lack of dramatic role-play guidance. I'm running the 1986 module, Night's Dark Terror and that has none either. It's just how D&D modules are written. The only reason my message game version has any is because I'm using Dungeon World and Hillfolk, which are narrative/drama focused. (Yet those two systems are so bloody obtuse, I could never recommend them for complete newbies either.)

Ultimately we don't have to worry about that anyway, since we're all RPG Ancients.