OOC

[AQuebman]

One add-on to this I would LOVE if when you post you put which round it's for just so if someone wants to post on ahead they can do that without causing me any confusion.

[ragnboneshopper]

One add-on to this I would LOVE if when you post you put which round it's for just so if someone wants to post on ahead they can do that without causing me any confusion.

OK, will try to get in that habit. Cheers!

[AQuebman]

Thanks, that way you can post ahead if you know your going to be busy and it'll help with pacing.

[AQuebman]

Sorry for the delay life smacked me around this weekend but i'm ready to post tonight for sure.

[ragnboneshopper]

No prob, life happens...

[AQuebman]

Yeah Weekends are always the hardest for me sometimes i'm around a ton and others like this past one I am really super busy. Post is up and combat might be over depending on intended actions. I'll wait until either Tuesday night or tomorrow if a consensus has been decided about next actions amongst the party.

[ragnboneshopper]

That's the end of Round 3. It is clear at this point the beastmen are in an all out retreat. Unless there is continued pursuit we can pull out of combat.

I'm not too comfortable with what might be thrown off the upper floors of the tower, in our direction, so not too keen on hanging around just outside the tower...

Fire was one thought, but not sure we could muster quite the needed conflagration... and then there's the innocents and if we should try to save them...

Not sure, myself, but thinking my characters would pick the heroic route, now knowing there are possibly people to save...

[AQuebman]

The closest cover is the ruined building north of the tower on the eastern wall just as an FYI. You could hide in the tall brush but you'd have to drop prone and commando crawl around to gain any chance of stealth.

[ragnboneshopper]

Good to know!

My characters will go ahead with what I posted for "Round 4":

After Burt's wild attack against the cornered beast-man goes awry, he realizes how the fear and bloodlust had taken him and he all but collapses backward away from the grisly corpses, leaning on his pitchfork for support and holding the back of his arm across his mouth as if to keep his soul from leaving his body. [retreat, holding actions]

Rolfo steps up and pats the farmer's side. "Steady lad...no end to this yet..." He shakes the man slightly and then moves in front of him in a defensive position. [advance toward wall, holding actions]

Heltel, meanwhile, has moved to follow the beast-men up the wall with a mind to see if there is a door that might be somehow wedged so that the beasts can't make another foray against the party from above. He goes cautiously, just climbing and looking for now and not approaching the door's threshold.


OOC: Strength check for Heltel? Or can he find an easy way up? Let me know and I'll add it later if needed...

[AQuebman]

Sorry for the slight delay. I'm a QA by trade and my business comes in huge waves and then tapers off so that's why I have been quieter then normal. Things should be back to normal now.

[Vargr1105]

I really suck at English acronyms sometimes. What does QA stand for?

[AQuebman]

Quality Assurance. Basically I work ij an IT office and try to break the programs the developers create. My workload builds during a cycle and tapers off while they are programming.

[AQuebman]

Sorry guys work emergency pulled me away so I couldn't update last night. Tonight for sure update will be coming.

[Vargr1105]

GM AQuebman, you seem to have misread my intended actions for the characters.

Being the useless band of academics (and child) they are, they will attempt to surround and assail a single foe until he is out before moving to the next. Strength in numbers and all that.

I meant the group of 4 would concentrate on one enemy before moving as a group to face the next one. Yes, even if this meant wasted attacks. Kunno and Landural (the worst fighter of the band, who I have been roleplaying as a bit of a coward) would never have broken ranks and charged alone like that, especially not when they are exposing themselves to twice the number of foes by doing so.

[AQuebman]

Hey Vargr,

I can provide a map if you would like but pretty much everything is balled up. Kunno and the sages are all together The first beastman was killed and then the next one was about 5 feet away, my apologies if the distance seemed further than that I was more trying to represent Kunno and Landural moving past the first two and attacking not that they hauled off on their own. On my map your party of 4 are all next to each other in a ball.

Goratrix & Eldarial attack first while Kunno and Landural are moving up
B2
B1
GE
^^
| |
K L

Kunno and Landural move past Goratrix and Eldarial and attack the second beast creature
B2
KL
GE


Then after the 2 beastmen were killed the others that were down the street charged down the street at your balled up group.

I can tweak it so that Kunno and Landural never go up and attacks but since the beastmen moved second in initiative they still would have come down and still would have attacked and likely killed someone. The only difference would be that Kunno and Landural would have left another alive.

I hope that all makes sense, I think how it is actually worked out more in your favor because you took one less attack.

[Vargr1105]

No don't tweak anything, leave it as it is. I'm not mad

I think the DCC multiple-0th-level-per-player approach is not something that fits PbP very well. And I just noticed, why bother giving any PC a personality if they are all most likely going to die? Why bother with names or dialogue even? If we just went with "Farmer #1 attacks", "Elf #2 moves to the left" we'd have all this wrapped up sooner, LoL.

[AQuebman]

Well the intention is that you have four personalities and they build and grow from farmers and crafters into true adventurers but yes the funnel is intended to be brutal. Honestly DCC as a whole is brutal 3rd level characters for instance are rare and powerful and the book is very specific about that. Honestly you guys have survived better then I anticipated to this point and I hope some of the death's haven't discouraged any character building with the ones who have survived.

One of the hardest points of running DCC period is that it's built for more PC's then most games. For Instance i'm playing around with a few of the 1st level modules to see how they run and those recommend 7 1st level characters, assuming you have at least that many from the funnel.

Then again your all farmer's and crafters, so at least in my head death being common seems logical to me. Trust me the class abilities add a lot more meat to the PC's. I also feel like I know all your PC's by name and get a bit more a feeling of their personalities as we press onward. If there's anything I can do to improve the feeling of characters being more than Farmer #1 let me know.

[ragnboneshopper]

Yeah, I think it helps to know before character creation that maybe one in four characters will survive beyond 1st level. That way you just don't worry about thinking up an elaborate background ahead of time. A farmer is just a farmer, etc. You make the rest up as you go, and the ones that survive take their 0 level adventures as their adventuring background. It's gritty, not glamorous!

[AQuebman]

I think it's okay to make backgrounds and have character development just don't spend a long time and let the story and adventures carry things forward. You can have fun characters who end up as short stories instead of as long glamorous adventures. Sometimes your a blacksmith who has his head cut off by a trap and sometimes your the Cooper who goes on to become one of the greatest wizards the world has ever known. I think that is fitting of Appendix N and many of it's authors which was the hope for DCC when it was created.

I know i've been reading Lovecraft a decent amount lately and there aren't many of his characters that even make it past a few pages heck a good portion of at least his early work the guy starts off the rails and it goes from there. I realize that style of roleplay is very different from a lot of other systems though and expectations were unknown going into this. Be happy you saved your home base and a town full of people...

[AQuebman]

Hey guys really sorry i've been deathly ill again for the 3rd time already in 2013 . I'll try and update today as long as I don't pass out first.