OOC Thread

Oh interesting... Does that apply to me as well? Can we both learn new spells from the book(s)?

Right, and I can't learn spells higher level then possible at level 1.

The PM list sounds good, as well as how much time I reasonably have to studying for the day without physical percussion. Probably not all night as I want to recover my detect magic slot.

Only wizards would benefit. As a cleric, you don’t need spellbooks, and you cast different spells anyway.

Also, remember the cost. Level 0 spells cost five gold to copy and level 1 spells 10 gold.

What is the process for gaining XP and leveling in a PbP game like this? I realize the pace is drastically different from a live game, but I’m wondering how progression works. I’m not suggesting anything is wrong, just curious.

Funny you should ask. I was just thinking about that last night.

Obviously there hasn’t been a lot of combat yet, but you did gain XP there. I also hand out story-based XP. For example, avoiding a fight with the Crows was worth XP. I’m tracking it offline and I’ll let you know when you reach a new level.

At that point, I’ll open a thread for advancement chatter, and ask you to summarize your new class abilities so I have an easy record of them.

Perfect! Thanks. :)

There is information to come that may change that. Once the rat has debriefed us, I will have information and a suggestion.

11:30 pm here. Roughly

I call this episode "a mother and her unruly surrogate disciples concoct a plan."

Look, I really didn't care for the "analysis paralysis" comment Yelnar made. There are several things that need to be discussed that could actually help us be more successful in this raid, but every time I try to get the discussion going, someone starts jumping ahead to tactics. No one has even mentioned the vault Verrian discovered, which could very well contain magical weaponry or something else we could use.

If people just want to skip ahead to the action, okay, but I think that dishonors the nuances that 78 has built into this campaign.

Edit: Thank you, somebox, for referring to the vault as I was writing this.

I’m afraid Yelnar very much sees it that way, and was trying to couch it in as diplomatic terms as he was able.

Suggesting that we should squander our opportunity for a magical vault we don’t know how to open that we have no idea what it contains seems far from ideal. Yelnar is not going to see that as relevant in the short term.

I’m not actually trying to jump straight ahead to tactics, had I been awake while a lot of that posting went down, I’d have done my best to interrupt Ember to allow you to finish. You’ll note I’ve already brought up hearing from Froak in what he saw.

I’ve worked pretty damn hard to not have Yelnar dominate story during this portion of the story, but his patience isn’t endless, and unless things that he feels are tactically relevant are brought up, he absolutely thinks attacking in the near future is the best course of action.

I also tend to wall of text post first thing in the morning when there’s a whole bunch of stuff been posted overnight.

I'm not saying we can't attack in the near future. I'm saying that if we don't actually discuss the information we gathered during the spy mission and use it to inform our plan, then there was absolutely no reason to have the spy mission. And if we're not going to take time to discuss tactics (as opposed to just proposing something and doing it right away), then this is a) not going to be a very interesting campaign, and b) will probably be fatal sooner rather than later.

I do think we could do with less interpersonal drama than we had for a while, but I think we've been curtailing that recently. But that doesn't mean we should do away with talking altogether.

My impression is that the breaking of the storm is imminent, and that’s adding a sense of urgency.

That sense of urgency is perhaps at odds with the pacing of a pbp.

As for the spy mission, I think what’s actually made people less interested in the outcome of that is the discovery of Willitam and the people in the tunnels. Their long term intelligence largely trumps the single hour of spying that was done. The revelation that the Crows regularly receive reinforcements is to me more significant than any other information revealed so far.

OK, just read the latest post. Maybe Verrian needs to stop acting like anyone who disagrees with what she thinks is a child and that she couldn’t possibly be wrong, while rarely actually making counter arguments. That would be helpful. I did my best to post reasons why Yelnar feels that way that could have been argued against, but the reply is just passive aggressive and unhelpful. If there wasn’t enough time to make a lengthy reply that’s fine, but just put in that it’s a reserved post to come back to.

I am going to avoid posting for at least a couple of hours.

Your character accusing mine of "analysis paralysis" for simply trying to get the party to have an adult discussion of this extremely dangerous encounter we are planning is also passive aggressive. My patience isn't endless, either.

I feel like at this point we have multiple avenues to explore (mysterious vault, scary creature, potions, wack thunderstorms and why Elora doesn't get sick from them), so it's pretty freeform. That being said I want to stress how chill I am doing whatever course, Elora might not be happy but if it makes sense it's fine to me as a player.

I think most of this conflict arises from a couple of fundamental issues. The first is that not all players are looking for the same kind of experience. The second is that some players are reading the cues and signals provided by the GM in very different ways.

It has always been my read that this campaign was designed to rely heavily on investigation and putting together clues to decide the best course of action. I got this from the campaign description and from the depth and breadth of resource material provided, so that's the kind of campaign I was expecting. We started at level one, which signaled to me that we are going to be making slow progress and should be taking a thought-before-action kind of approach until we know more about this strange new world. I built a character for that kind of campaign.

Similarly, I've been paying attention to various hints dropped here and there that, to my mind, suggest that regardless of who is being held in there, we're not yet ready to storm the Citadel and expect to live. Again, we're still just level one, and we now know that there are at least 20 Crows in there - quite possibly more - and most of them are likely to be significantly higher in level than us. In addition, we have no idea what their magical capabilities are. Just because they have been killing most magic users doesn't mean they don't have any among them, and we should probably give some thought to why they are holding the most powerful ones instead of killing them. This is the kind of thing I like to try to generate IC discussion about - it's certainly the kind of thing other groups I'm in would find fertile brainstorming material.

But more to the point, it's the kind of thing that I think the GM put in there so that we would notice it and ponder what it means. And that would lead to us finding something important that would later help us in battle, or out of a tight spot. That's the whole reason that I'm always having Verrian try to get people to talk about these clues.

But I understand that not everyone finds this playstyle interesting. I'm really not trying to keep us out of action, just out of action that I am pretty certain will lead to a catastrophic result for the party. We are rushing into this raid on the assumption that the storm is a device meant to give us an element of surprise. I tend to think it's a device to demonstrate to us exactly how out of control the magical energies are outside of the wards, which will probably give us some more clues about what's really going on.

Similarly, I don't think the magically sealed vault is a distraction that we are meant to put off until we accomplish the "real" objective of attacking the Citadel. I think it may contain something that we actually need if we're going to succeed.

I never intended my character to be exactly what she is right now in this party, but playing her as created and responding to some of the things that have happened have had this result. She's not looking down on anyone who disagrees with her, she's responding logically to very illogical actions and lines of reasoning. I get that that's a little overbearing. But I've been playing her that way because she's very alarmed at the cavalier approach we seem to be taking. Again - a clash of player expectations and interpretation of the GM's clues.

So I think what is needed is to see if we can all get on the same page, or close, about those things. And perhaps get a little guidance from the GM to help us do that.