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

Aye, my thinking was to give the kids' characters slightly better equipment than starting, just to take the edge off the early combats.

Nep is the only one among our virtual FTF group who has paid for the added features in Roll20. It contains the SRD, but I know (for example) I have access to spells from much more than the SRD, but I don't know if that's because Nep paid for expanded stuff. He'll have to answer that. I am also not sure what was in the starter set so it's hard for me to answer that question, but I do think we started it.

In general, with an experienced group of D&D players, playing 5e for the first time (I think using the starter set), it took our group a few hours to get thru an initial encounter that included an ambush by Goblins. But our group are all rules Lawyers and there was much arguing and explanations of how the new rules worked that had to be done.

If you've got a group who will just accept what the DM says and doesn't spend lots of time trying to min-max the encounters, I'd think an hour per melee could be a good guideline.

Could use Neps input.

That sounds reasonable to me, Zeim. I read one guy online who reckoned his group got through the entire Starter Set in 4 hours. Not impossible but they must have found shortcuts and ditched the tavern role-playing at the beginning.

The SRD is free. Wizards makes it's money when you pay for the other things. That sums up the situation. If you want the starter kit, you pay for it. I pay for an adventure when I decide to run a game and almost everything I need to run the game is included. I also pay up to the pro level to use the scripts. I keep using the word "pay". There's a pattern there

BTW, sorry about my slowness. Work, Crud and life has had it's impact. Slow might continue but I'll find time to move things along.

No worries, RL takes precedent

About maps, I usually don't say they're that important, but in this module they become much more so. That is by design as the game defines tiers of play.

Tier 1, which was Lost Mines of Phandelver, deals with issues that address villages.
Tier 2, where you are now, impacts cities, nations and kingdoms.
Tier 3, Deals with dangers to regions or continents.
Tier 4. The fate of the worlds or even the multiverse is in your hands.

That being said, we're in Chapter 2 (LMP having replaced the chapter 1 of this module) and in tier 2. By the time you'll have reached tier 3, you'll have traveled throughout the region.

So let's recap some major locations.

In the region that you know, on the western coast there's Waterdeep to the south and Neverwinter to the north. Phandelin is inland between the two cities. You are traveling further inland right now, east into Triboar. Further east is Yartar, the next town over.

While I agree ... especially in a 'single' F2F adventure ... they can be important because of the 'time frames' involved <g> But for a 'campaign' ... similar to what we are running here ... they can be =very= helpful!! So ... thanks <wink>

I should have asked, are there specific questions?

Your character's knowledge of
...the LMP map is strong.
...the larger area map showing Triboar and Yartar would require a medium DC intelligence check and knowledge would not be too deep.
...the largest map (the first one) would require a hard DC intelligence check and knowledge would be vague.

There are circumstances where that's different. Prior personal history and applies as well as other valid adjustments.

Just a reminder Neptune that Davroar is from Narfell. He would only have a passing knowledge though of the various areas in-between from his home to the west coast.

Old Chandan was from Kara-Tur, and Arus is from somewhere under the ocean, so I have ample excuse for knowing bugger all about the setting.

I think I have a firm grasp of the geography of the area in-game at least. Phandelin, Triboar, Yartar, etc.

Btw, for this one shot I'm running I've settled on the Starter Set and have generated all the characters with good old pen and paper. Tbh it wasn't that much of a chore and saved me a lot of money in D&D Beyond dlc.

Dugan,
That would not diminish his knowledge about this area, it would just add Narfel.

Neal - Isn't a Dwarf Cavalier a bit incongruous? Dwarves and horses usually don't mix.

Anyway, first time I played 5e was at Gencon when they rolled it out. Everything was done with pencil & paper so it's not terribly hard to do.

Actually, paper and pen work just fine. The only reason that our FTF group plays online is distance to the game... unless you want to drive up for the games, Z?

If I could afford it (both in time and money) I would..........

I feel yer pain Zeim. My local group 'dissolved' almost 2 decades ago <sigh> I miss it a lot :-/

But this is a great place to make up for that ... =IF= you slackers would git off yer cell phones and post <chuckle>

We play on Roll20 now because of that. Before then we set up a video camera over our gaming table and conference Zeim in. Roll20 is much better than that

Wow. I had forgotten about the video camera days. Yes. Roll20 is much better!

That was when 4e just came out.

Yes, I now remember all the time trying to line it up so I could see where all of the tokens were on the map.

Hah, nice! What sort of distance are you from the game table, Zeim?

Dwarves on horses btw. It's funny that it's considered incongruous when you think about it, because if you look at the actual size of dwarves in D&D they're perfect for horseriding. Between 4 and 5 feet tall. That's about the size of most Kentucky Derby jockeys and the average ancient Mongol.

It's this guy who'd have problems finding a horse.

Bit like a kids bike, his feet would touch the floor!

The amount of gold bling he's carry in that photo too! Even his reins are hung with gold bunting! His mate's probably nicknamed him Dragonbait.

Neal - I was remote, on a video feed. The rest of the group was a thousand miles away and pointing a video camera at a grid map where figurines were on a game map. I gave verbal instructions to the DM where I wanted him to move my figurine every turn. Crude, but it worked.

Yes, one thousand miles would be one heck of a distance to travel for a game session. Gypsy and I have been trying to figure out a way to make 200 miles work and I thought that was tricky!