OOC chat

If we want to talk about anything doesn't that fit elsewhere, we'll do it here.

I've pushed the max number of players to 5. I think that's pretty high, but it also makes more sense on your side.
So I'll adjust :)

Any news on start date?

I'll start it right away!
The Fifth player never posted, right? I'll get a new one.

Sweet!

I should be done with my character by this afternoon- I'm going with a half-elf oath-of-the-ancients paladin. We're doing 15/14/13/12/10/8 on abilities?

Choose standard array or buy point as you please.
What kind of half-elf will you play? SCAG comes with lots of them!

Oh, shoot, I only have the PHB. I might toy around a bit, but I'm happy with vanilla half-elf if you're ok with it.

Hey, I'm not the one who mentioned it but I've heard that there were places where safe copies of the pdfs could be found to "check them out" before you go to your FLS to buy them. Or, you know, just to have the digital copy they should give you with the physical book (I mean, come on! No PDF with the books?!)

Oh, I'm well aware. I just haven't gotten around to reading through a lot of those, either. If you think my character will be underpowered/burdensome to the team because of it, though, let me know and I can adjust

Nop, for two reasons :
1) it's actually very hard to make an underpowered character in 5e, given that you don't go against the archetype you pick
2) the additional option are just that. The core races and classes are not only fine, but actually good choices

Don't worry about it, your character will be great :)

My character is vanilla half-elf (by choice). You're in good company!

Ah, good. I've played a bit of shadowrun 5e, and power level of the character has far more to do with how many books the player's read rather than how experienced the character is. 3e was a little like that if the DM said "everything in unearthed arcana is fine"

Yep, Shadowrun is an amazing RPG but tends to suffer from what I call the "Pathfinder Syndrome" (too many books published with too many options resulting in hard to balance design).

My mistake in that one was my first time GMing, I didn't even think to allow or limit books... I should've stuck to CRB XD

Just a heads up that next week I will be offline for most of it as I am going camping with the family, please feel free to post for Zegar as required to move along

AquaBlack informed me that IRL struck and that he won't be able to follow the game's pace. I'm sorry to lose a player so soon in the game. I'm not sure how to get someone in as this point of the game in a way that would make sense, so I prefer to reduce the party size and continue with the four of you.

Well, you'll have plenty of gold to spend on... huuuu... whatever you find to spend you golds on?

LOL not the town we left from. That is for sure. Might be able to get a cheese burger, but that is about it.

Not even sure about the burger part, but you'd for sure find some cheese!

Might not be beef in the burger, but there is plenty of roasted meat right now available.

TLDR:
I'm very sorry about the sudden slowdown. I should be back on tracks by monday. IRL is a bitch.

Longer version:
I'm been working for the past 8 months on a pretty big project, and recently became one of the main lead software engineers on that project. Which is awesome, but also tiresome. The project if very demanding, and even if it is getting better, there still is a lot to do.
On the personal side, I'm pretty busy as a father (and stepfather) of 4 and... [breaking news] well, soon to become 5. Yeah, I know how it sounds. It's just not that crazy.
Anyway, the current rush is coming to an end and I should be back on tracks by monday. Like many here I do most of my posting at work, which means that my workload has a direct impact on my posting rate. I hate it, but that's a fact I can't deny.

---

Aftermath:
I should have notified you of my inability to keep up to my own posting rate. That's on me, I'll do better next time.
Now, I've been thinking about this for some time and I'd like to give it a try if you're willing to: adding a rule to enforce posting rate to everyone. Including me, of course. Something like :

Game flow
To ensure a decent game flow, everyone must do his best to post quickly. If a player's turn has come or if he has been prompted for action for more than a day, the next player can skip his turn as play. If saves had to be rolled, assume they failed or roll them yourself without any bonus.

Initiative order
To limit back and forth posting, participants of a fight are split in four groups as follow:
{highest half of the party's INIT}
{highest half of the opponent's INIT}
{lowest half of the party's INIT}
{lowest half of the opponent's INIT}
Which group goes first is determined by the single highest INIT. Yep, that init bonus you picked now helps the whole party.


What do you think?

By the way, chr2m is facing difficulties at work too and PMed me that he'll bow out of the game. I thought he'd post here to let you know, but apparently he already left freed his spot.

Given that he's almost hugging an unknown creature straight out of a nightmare, the fate of his character might be less that happy. On the bright side, one of you is about to have a promotion...

I vote the Halfling

whoops, happy for the Dwarf to take command

Damn...

I've been thinking about it for a week now and I'm still not comfortable with that decision, but I'll have to let the PbP gaming go.
There are two mains reasons to that:
- first, I hate being unreliable and I've been very inconsistent in my posting rates in the last couple of months and I don't see any good way to avoid it from happening again
- second, while allowing me to play every day, PbP actually requires a lot of time that I'm sometimes struggling to find. One reason for that certainly is that English isn't my native language, but I also spend a lot of time checking references and other stuff that add up

I've started to feel increasingly frustrated regarding the games I'm trying to push because PbP games moves so slowly and are so easily killed by losing momentum, something that happens no matter what you do because some players or GMs will bow out. And while I've loved playing here for almost two years, I think I'll put that daily gaming hour into another project.
I've hired a map artist some time ago to draw maps of the Oakfall realm, and I'm completely in love with his style. With the free time I get by stopping PbP, I'll actually learn how to publish actual RPG material and start working on a fully fleshed out Oakfall setting. Yup.

Anyway, I'm extremely sorry to stop the game so abruptly, but it feels like the right thing to do. Don't feel bad about it, go check out the tavern and start playing another game.
For those who want to stay in touch, I'll read my PMs for a few more months and I think I've put a gmail address somewhere in the OOC thread.


Happy rollin',
Your (former) GM

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TL;DR: PbP takes too much of my time, I have to bow out. Sorry about that, I liked playing with you guys. Keep having fun!

These things happen and I am sorry to see it happen here but I wish you all the best in your endeavours to establish Oakfall, I must say this was one of the best backgrounds and environment I have seen and for one would love to get hold of a finished product (when ready)

All the best and thank you,
Math

Best of luck.

Best of luck to you.

Thanks everyone!
Mathfuric I love putting some effort into the games I run so that they feel right. The Forgotten Realms brings a bit too much to my taste and I'm sure I'll have fun designing my own pantheon and writing the history of the Oakfall realm. Don't expect it to hit the market before two years though, there's a lot to be done and it's something I'll be doing on my free time. With four five kids. Man, I must be insane :D

I'll certainly put a notification on Reddit whenever the project hits a milestone.