General OoC discussion

Heh; I just realized that I included in my description of the short rest a call to declare how many hit dice you will use...of course at first level, you each have only one hit die at maximum, so the option is really more "Do I spend my hit die now or not?"

I won't spend mine yet... Xana is feeling super confident, all will be well!

I want to make sure I'm reading this correctly: it seems like Albertus, Theran, and Aanbo are making their way upstairs while the trap is resetting, but the others are staying downstairs?

Albertus is heading up, yes.

Aanbo intends to head upstairs, and will try to avoid the tenth step.

Theran is headed up, yes.

OK, now everyone except for Xana has explicitly said they're going up the stairs. @Moofsalot I'm going to assume that Xana is going up, too. Let me know if that's not what you wanted.

She's following!

Sorry for not posting yesterday; our whole family has been sick and taking care of my recovery and everyone else has cut down on the normal amount of time that I spend on the computer.

Praying for good health!

Hope you feel better soon!

I should have mentioned earlier, but I am on vacation this weekend so may be a bit slower to respond through Tuesday.

Get feeling better! Family is always the priority, so take care of you and yours. Don't worry about us.

I realized that I haven't updated the "Maps and Other Resources" thread since I started the game up again. It now has maps of what you've explored of the three floors of the Forest Ruin, for easier reference. You can find that thread here.

I think you’re doing great, and I feel like anything you’ve experienced a,ong those lines is just a problem inherent in PbP, sometimes it’s just hard to absorb and remember all the narrative and tactical data. And sometimes folks can miss updating their sheets (I very recently had to go back thru several pages of posts to update some of Al’s resources). It’s just one of those things, I guess.

I agree with WhiteDwarf.

I don't think it's a GM issue... I would posit it's more likely a player issue. It can be surprisingly easy to read something wrong or miss something and not realize it.

Or forget. I usually try to reread some posts so I'm in the right frame of mind to post IC...but I'd be a liar if I said I didn't sometimes trust my own memory because I don't have the time to reread things (unless I want to leave everyone hanging till the next day or whatever).

I agree with WhiteDwarf that this is just the pain of pbp. Dungeon crawls are especially tough for this, because minor details are important, and there is a lot of information to convey (for the DM) and consume (for the players). I've never seen it done without some rough edges, so that is to be expected.

For the record, I am really enjoying the game and think you're doing a great job in the DM's chair!

One thing people do nowadays is run a discord chat for OOC questions. It provides a "live" element for above-the-table discussions. Often it is quicker to pop into discord for a player to ask a question or for a DM to give a reminder to a player. This might seem like extra work to check two places, but I find it smooths things out so much that it's worth it.

I agree. Nothing you've done wrong. PbP is tough in that way. The passage of time and the lack of verbal clues can sometimes muddy the waters. As Len said, dungeon crawls are especially susceptible to that. You're doing fine :)