OOC 2 - More Rambling, Ranting, and Such

[hedgeknight]

My goal is to finish this brawl up by the weekend and get your group moving on toward Grunwald. I know posting is usually slower on the weekend, but that is my goal. Will work on the next round (and maybe the last one depending upon a few rolls) tonight/morning.

[AQuebman]

Sounds good to me. I prefer the single punch rule. What we don't realize is that combat in D&D is much more than just one swing here and one swing there. There are actually several things happening in those segments of time and maybe there is a punch or three in there, but only one actual attack roll is used (barring specialization of course).

My rolls came from using the two weapon specialization that Oggle has though I may have mucked that up and it should be 2 a turn it'll be good to know for the future either way. Agreed i'm not specialized in any way and I think the rules even go into opportunity attacks for attacking unarmed it can get kind of messy depending on what book your reading and where at lol.

I could easily see it argued as well that my two weapon spec only works if I have weapons and not with my fists either way is fine if we want to clarify that for sure. I just threw together what I could find and took a wild guess with what I needed so Hedge modify away as needed. Looks like Oggle got a just beating either way lol.

I hope I haven't made it harder on anyone by throwing a big party splitting divide between us all.

[Alethan]

I hope I haven't made it harder on anyone by throwing a big party splitting divide between us all.

I suppose it all just depends on how it gets wrapped up.

[rtdersch]

Sounds good to me. I prefer the single punch rule. What we don't realize is that combat in D&D is much more than just one swing here and one swing there. There are actually several things happening in those segments of time and maybe there is a punch or three in there, but only one actual attack roll is used (barring specialization of course).

My rolls came from using the two weapon specialization that Oggle has though I may have mucked that up and it should be 2 a turn it'll be good to know for the future either way. Agreed i'm not specialized in any way and I think the rules even go into opportunity attacks for attacking unarmed it can get kind of messy depending on what book your reading and where at lol.

I could easily see it argued as well that my two weapon spec only works if I have weapons and not with my fists either way is fine if we want to clarify that for sure. I just threw together what I could find and took a wild guess with what I needed so Hedge modify away as needed. Looks like Oggle got a just beating either way lol.

I hope I haven't made it harder on anyone by throwing a big party splitting divide between us all.

We'll get it all back together here shortly. Nokrugh still has questions for the elder he'd like answered.

[AQuebman]

Well what I guess I meant by that is that I hope nobody OOC is upset about it in character I love real life conflicts that can be played out I think they are really neat but i'd hate for anyone to be upset about it in any way.

[rtdersch]

Well what I guess I meant by that is that I hope nobody OOC is upset about it in character I love real life conflicts that can be played out I think they are really neat but i'd hate for anyone to be upset about it in any way.

Totally agree. I hope we're all adult enough to recognize that in-character commentary is not a personal attack on the characters owner. Besides, I don't think any of us knows the others well enough to level personal attacks against them. By the by, I find everyones characters interesting in their own way....even the elves.

[AQuebman]

Well what I guess I meant by that is that I hope nobody OOC is upset about it in character I love real life conflicts that can be played out I think they are really neat but i'd hate for anyone to be upset about it in any way.

Totally agree. I hope we're all adult enough to recognize that in-character commentary is not a personal attack on the characters owner. Besides, I don't think any of us knows the others well enough to level personal attacks against them. By the by, I find everyones characters interesting in their own way....even the elves.

Agreed

[hedgeknight]

Well what I guess I meant by that is that I hope nobody OOC is upset about it in character I love real life conflicts that can be played out I think they are really neat but i'd hate for anyone to be upset about it in any way.

Totally agree. I hope we're all adult enough to recognize that in-character commentary is not a personal attack on the characters owner. Besides, I don't think any of us knows the others well enough to level personal attacks against them. By the by, I find everyones characters interesting in their own way....even the elves.

No worries at all, fellers! This is all good inter-party conflict/confrontation "working out the kinks" role-playing! I love it! I absolutely approve of Oggle's fiery personality and I really like the fact that Nokrugh backs him up - that shows that two characters who didn't know each other prior to a few days before, can establish a bond, a friendship. And others are chiming in with their individual personalities...it's all good!

I envision a gathering around ye old table in the Stone Bow in Grunwald when you get back and hashing all of this stuff out in game. Really looking forward to that.

[rtdersch]

Well what I guess I meant by that is that I hope nobody OOC is upset about it in character I love real life conflicts that can be played out I think they are really neat but i'd hate for anyone to be upset about it in any way.

Totally agree. I hope we're all adult enough to recognize that in-character commentary is not a personal attack on the characters owner. Besides, I don't think any of us knows the others well enough to level personal attacks against them. By the by, I find everyones characters interesting in their own way....even the elves.

No worries at all, fellers! This is all good inter-party conflict/confrontation "working out the kinks" role-playing! I love it! I absolutely approve of Oggle's fiery personality and I really like the fact that Nokrugh backs him up - that shows that two characters who didn't know each other prior to a few days before, can establish a bond, a friendship. And others are chiming in with their individual personalities...it's all good!

I envision a gathering around ye old table in the Stone Bow in Grunwald when you get back and hashing all of this stuff out in game. Really looking forward to that.

I don't know Hedge, the elves and human seem to like to "go to bed" to early for us half-breeds and dwarves! I do agree however that interparty conflict, to a point, is a good thing. Otherwise, we might as well be playing My Little Pony....first edition of course!

[Alethan]

Since we are throwing opinions out there, I'll state mine.

I disagree. I'm not a fan of it, for the most part.

Certainly I don't think everything between party members should be peaches and roses. it does have a place in the game. But I think too much inter party conflict is distracting, specifically as it relates to play by post gaming.

PBP is slow by nature. Everything takes 100 times longer to do via forum than it does in a tabletop game, if not longer. Case in point: with what I would consider very minimal inter party conflict, the Legacy game is going on 2+ years now, I believe, with a fairly regular 2x to 3x per week pace, and I don't think we are even a quarter of the way through the module at this point. That means, unless we do some Skype gaming or one of us wins the lottery and flies everyone else into town for a weekend (who am I kidding? If I won the lottery, I'd fly everyone over to a castle in Scotland for a week), we still have probably six years of gaming with just this one module.

Depending on the pace of the game, one stated action could be all you do for anywhere from a day (in my experience, nobody has ever kept up a daily post pace for very long, though) to a week (closer to average, even in games that state a 3x/week posting pace). So even slight, what i would consider unnecessary, interruptions to the normal goings on in the game can set you back weeks, if not more.

In addition to that, I work with a lot of really great people in my job. Also work with a fair share of asses. I have all the inter party conflict I need in the really real world. . I like my games to be fantasy! You know, where everyone gets along!

But I'd say my biggest reason for not liking IPC (new acronym for the books) probably goes back to my first real gaming group in high school. Two of the players were twin brothers, and they were the complete opposite of what you think of when you think of identical twins who finish each others sentences and like exactly the same think and speak and act the same way. They. Fought. All. The. Time. It got really annoying after a while because it was just so much extraneous crap, in-game and out.

It does have its place, of course, like when you throw together dwarves and horcs and elves into a party. There is going to be conflict to some degree, at least at first.

Everyone has their own gaming styles and preferences. We game for different reasons, come from different backgrounds, have different goals. So I don't make fun of how someone else games, even if it annoys the shit out of me. If they're having fun, and it isn't really detracting from my fun, then who cares?

Bottom line for me, I certainly won't stop anyone else from gaming how they want, even if it includes IPC. But I probably won't do much to prolong it, either.

[Computer +1]

Well if I got a vote I would say it was good role playing. That being said I believe Darkstar may have lost a bit of respect for the parties involved but hey, he's just a figment of my imagination so who cares!

I think finding a characters voice is the best part of any role playing game and based off of this fight I would say you guys found yours all right!

Not everyone likes this kind of interparty fighting but so long as no character ends up dead I think it can add a lot. I didn't always feel this way, as a matter of fact I was quite upset when a snotty mage of mine got knocked out, but it only made the ties between the characters stronger in the end.

[hedgeknight]

It does have its place, of course, like when you throw together dwarves and horcs and elves into a party. There is going to be conflict to some degree, at least at first.

And that's the key I think > "at least at first"
With a diverse group of characters, not everyone is going to see eye-to-eye all the time, and this is a minor diversion, that I'm convinced will work out for the better.
Could it have been handled differently w/o a fist fight? Probably.
But while some were punching, others were role-playing, and hopefully, we are now ready to move on.

I don't promote it either, I prefer all of the characters to get along and work together, but sometimes stuff like this just happens and you roll with it and make it work.

[Alethan]

Like I said, unless it has an immediate and direct impact on me, I'm all for players playing their character however they want and, as Computer +1 said, encourage everyone to find their voice for that particular character. The more in tune a player is with their character, the better the game becomes. My favorite games are the ones where I stop thinking, "OK, what would XXX do in this case?" and my response becomes more automatic, because I already know how that character would react to the situation.

You're right, Hedgeknight. Eventually the party has to develop some sort of trust-bond between all of the members if it is to last as a cohesive group. Not saying everyone has to get along all the time, or even most of the time. But all of the characters have to feel a level of trust with the rest of the party. I don't know if I could play a character that stayed in a party, risking his neck for them and counting on them to back him up, if he didn't trust them, at least on some basic level. Or he'd have to be a pretty chaotic character who didn't REALLY put his neck on the line for anyone else and didn't REALLY expect anyone else to do the same... Might as well find a DM who wants to run a fast-paced one-on-one game, then!

(That brings up a totally different topic of discussion I want to air out on the general forum at some point, about a DM hosting a game for just two (maybe three) players, to see if that might be the way to keep a high post rate game going.)

In a game I'm in on another board, the DM routinely has party members who split up to do different things. He happily opens up new threads and encourages players to take their own route. I think that becomes such an easy thing to facilitate in the PBP format. If the game leads some people in a different direction, then it is easy enough for the DM to make it happen. Or if the party is big enough, and you want to split objectives to try and accomplish things faster, then that is easy to do, as well. I'm absolutely not at all saying I want to do this in this game... just an observation on some of the benefits of PbP gaming. IIRC, I think dmw71 and Argennian have both mentioned casually at some point in their games that they are always open to people doing that if they feel that is what players need to do with their characters.

One thing I like about Argennian's game is that he has other people playing in the same world he's created through other venues (a monthly desktop game, I believe). What would be cool is if there were three or four different parties, on different PbP forums, all playing in the same world. In the PbP format, it would be easier to handle a situation where two of them interacted with each other, say in the same city or... maybe even on the same adventure. Talk about giving your players a reason to ramp up their posting rate! What if your party was on a quest and they found out another party was already on the same quest!

Ah, the possibilities... this is what I love so much about PbP. It definitely has its place in RPGs.

In any case, I'm absolutely loving the game, Hedge, and always look forward to the next posts to see what we're going to do next.

[hedgeknight]

I'm heading to an appointment for my son, but I'm eager to respond to some of your comments (in a good way!); but it will have to wait until late tonight or tomorrow.

[hedgeknight]

(That brings up a totally different topic of discussion I want to air out on the general forum at some point, about a DM hosting a game for just two (maybe three) players, to see if that might be the way to keep a high post rate game going.)

In a game I'm in on another board, the DM routinely has party members who split up to do different things. He happily opens up new threads and encourages players to take their own route. I think that becomes such an easy thing to facilitate in the PBP format. If the game leads some people in a different direction, then it is easy enough for the DM to make it happen. Or if the party is big enough, and you want to split objectives to try and accomplish things faster, then that is easy to do, as well. I'm absolutely not at all saying I want to do this in this game... just an observation on some of the benefits of PbP gaming. IIRC, I think dmw71 and Argennian have both mentioned casually at some point in their games that they are always open to people doing that if they feel that is what players need to do with their characters.

As I've said before, and will undoubtedly say again and again, this is OUR game, and if a player(s) decides they really want to do something different with their character, then by all means, I am in support of it! So, I'm putting it out there for all of you, if your character wishes to do something different than what the main group is doing, then please let me know and we'll work something out. I can't promise that the game will skip along at a faster pace, but I can promise I will support your decision and work to give you a good pbp experience.

In any case, I'm absolutely loving the game, Hedge, and always look forward to the next posts to see what we're going to do next.

Thanks Ethan - I'm having a lot of fun too.

[hedgeknight]

Question: how long does it take for temporary damage to heal? Overnight? A day?

[AQuebman]

It does have its place, of course, like when you throw together dwarves and horcs and elves into a party. There is going to be conflict to some degree, at least at first.

And that's the key I think > "at least at first"
With a diverse group of characters, not everyone is going to see eye-to-eye all the time, and this is a minor diversion, that I'm convinced will work out for the better.
Could it have been handled differently w/o a fist fight? Probably.
But while some were punching, others were role-playing, and hopefully, we are now ready to move on.

I don't promote it either, I prefer all of the characters to get along and work together, but sometimes stuff like this just happens and you roll with it and make it work.

I agree and can see all points stated but I would like to point out that Oggle didn't throw punches until they were thrown at him first. Vocal barbs yes but blame the barbarians for turning it into a bar brawl

[AQuebman]

I think in PbP especially due to having more time to think and plan a splitting party is much easier to handle than an in person game. I have thought in the future running more than one campaign in DCC or splitting up groups considering that game is intended for the adventurers to be knowledgeable up to about 100 miles max which leaves a lot up for DM's to play around with.

All things in moderation i've found Oggles personality is an emotional and passionate one but not one always looking for a fight hence why I avoided fighting at first and tried to walk away. I think we just need to rp things out and see how they go but at least in my experience assholes are easier to tolerate if they hold their weight so maybe the elves and I never get along but if Oggle proves he will defend them to the death in whatever our mission may be then perhaps that's the glue that keeps our group glued together.

No clue on temp hp hedge sorry.

[Alethan]

Question: how long does it take for temporary damage to heal? Overnight? A day?

I'm ashamed to say I had to look this up in 3.5 Rules...

Healing Nonlethal Damage: You heal nonlethal damage at the
rate of 1 hit point per hour per character level. For example, a 7th level
wizard heals 7 points of nonlethal damage each hour until all
the nonlethal damage is gone.

Mostly because that means admitting to having downloaded a copy of the 3.5 rules.

I've only ever played part of a 3.5e game long enough to know I didn't like it. But I couldn't find any information/mechanic on healing non-lethal damage in any other D&D or cloned rule book.

[hedgeknight]

Works for me, Alethan - thanks!