Obligatory OOC thread :D

Just opening one of these in case you need it :D

So, because the rules for the rolls actually "read" the roll name to get the information it needs, it's a bit easier to check the results if you guys use the character sheet. You should have your character name at the bottom of the page, just under Add new roll. If you press it you can click on the right 2d6 button on the character's skill table. Hopeful this will get all the colours and symbols right :D

I'm afraid I am actually lost. Did we initially get told we're travelling by foot and plans changed to ship travel, or are we still travelling by foot?

The ships is the name of the guild that controls the town. There is no actual boats

Ok, let me check this OOC first. @testlum can you tell me where did Emryn talk about sailing? I'm asking because it's the first time I'm using these many private messages and it looks a mess from my side. I'm just waiting for the post where this will all go wrong 😅

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I also checked the first post where the mission was introduced and I can see that wasn't very clear."The (other) dwarves are planning to follow directly to Fireshear by land, avoiding wasting time in Luskan, where they will have their goods shipped north by the Luskar Deliverers". I meant it as 'ship'-ed sorry 😅

So to clarify, the idea is indeed for you to travel by sea, which is faster than by land, while the caravan takes a short-cut (not wasting time in Luskan) and meets you later at the start of the Ten-Trail (where they will need a guide to cross the mountains to Icewind Dale).

Oh, I was referencing this bit:
I had the impression that we were travelling by land when it was mentioned Agna would be helping guide the caravan through Ten Trail in the opening post! It's actually fine if we end up getting there by sea, I'll just have Agna be a bit put-out in-character like she is now :P

Ah, after rereading I get the misunderstanding. I thought, and by extension Agna, that we'd go with the caravan all the way from the start instead of separately.

Oh yeah, I though it could be that. That was meant just as narration. I hope Emryn is be introduced just after that on your text.
Yeah that didn't end up as clear as I first thought xD You will definitely be doing the Ten Trails by land. And you're hired as guide to help crossing the mountains at the end of the trail. The Luskan bit is more of an extra favor you were asked (since you know how bad winters can get) so we can have you in Luskan to meet the others.
Cool! A bit of personality doesn't hurt :D I guess the dwarves are also famous for disliking water, it will be interesting to see how the others' play that given their secrets :D

For me it was this

Fizel has understood the "ships" Emryn is talking about, are not real ships, but the name of the pirate gangs that rule Luskan.

I thought that meant there was no sailing planned, we were going by land

So this is a bit of confusing Sword Coast lore but it's not that relevant for the story, just a little foreshadowing...

Luskan is traditionally supposed to be ruled by pirate factions, which are called Ships. Each faction has more than one ship, so it's "organized pirating", not each crew for themselves. Being from the City of Sails, it's would not be too strange the Luskar Deliverers would use ships (except for Agna who is probably a bit unaware of big city things)

In game, only Agna has actually seen any travel plan. Fizel and Izuhn have no information about how the travel is going to be, because they have not joined the Deliverers yet. This means that, because of the private messages I'm using, Eyes and RAAM didn't really see anything about how the party will go north yet. The plan to be revealed in character soon is the one here: Luskan to Fireshear by boat and then by land to Bryn Shander (the "capital" of Icewind Dale), so there's going to be a bit of both.

For the Search roll I was going for the clue and not the background so the way the roll went was great. I was just throwing my best guess out there though so feel free to offer alternative suggestions at any point.

oh yes, I noticed you wrote "looks around trying to figure out" just in time to assume it more of a paying attention thing. Hopefully that was good, but since I thought about it, I took the opportunity to clarify a bit what's the difference for the future :D

If Izuhn wants to answer Fizel's question, go ahead, since Emryn is not with you guys.

When you send private but don't post anything public

I know!! It looks a bit weird, but while the dwarves are chatting, I poked the orc just to keep myself from slacking and maintain the good pace :D

@CESN Ahh, I just wanted you to see, in case you were hoping the rest of us saw nothing at all

Thanks! It was actually super confusing when I saw it the first time 😅

I try to avoid happening since it looks so weird to have an empty post. I should have made at least some OOC comment but it was a bit rushed 😆

No worries

the day is not going well for Agna 🤣

I love channeling my inner grump.

Oh, after checking the rules again, I am not sure how level up works.

Does the doubled roll need to be higher than my current skill level, or my current character level? Does character level even exist?

Oh yeah I just updated that bit :D
There are no character levels, only skill levels.
Yes, it's only if you roll above the skill level, so for your intimidation, lv 6 is already the maximum, though you can get a bonus up to 7 (5+7=12)

PS, forgot to add that you do gain an experience related to intimidation. That's like inspiration that you can use for a +1 bonus.

Thanks for the explanation!

probably no need to be a note here since the website question could be useful for the others :D @bowlofspinach may have dwelled deeper into GP secrets than me, but...
I don't think there is, you could try a private note, though that has the potential to break the thread yeah no, doesn't work, it broke the thread because 🐛🪲🦗 . xD
Yes, I see everything all the time so you only need to name me if there is no one else, basically just to make the note work (though technically you could send a note to yourself)

You can always just let the person know manually instead of automating it.

Normal stuff going on

(Heads up: Only you can read this blue text)
Bla bla, your character dies, bla bla

Definitely nothing suspicious happened

Just add a private tag around the blue and voilà

Going to duplicate this here so it doesn’t get lost in the OOC text.

The marked spots on the map are those you have been to already, not necessarily where you have to go. Since you don’t know the city well, you may. It know where some of the places are and may have to ask around or search for them. Or maybe you know a little history of the place …

Say, is there a way to make it so that Leaflet doesn't keep forcing the map to the upper left when I click a marker? It's incredibly annoying xD

I know! I've just asked on discord about that. It's weird because I've seen games where the maps behave properly. Maybe @bowlofspinach knows something?

I don't. I've never worked with those maps before

rumor has it it's a spoiler tag bug... lets see...

plan so far (it's going to change for sure):

- One-Eyed Jax first for Dragonbait?
- cross Dalath's Span bridge, go to the Ruins of Illusk for Vanifer?
- then Cutless Island and Hosttower of the Arcane for Rool and Maccath?
- head back and then check Fel’rekt and Nezznar?

(by the way, if you played any other 5e adventure, you probably recognize the names xD )

ok so I'll try to keep at least to a once a day post to keep up the good pace. Eyes, remember you can retro-play whatever was missed in your next post :D

This is Illusk

After her time in Luskan, Agna will embrace life at sea.

Ok, I'm confused, I think this is one of those times there needed to be a lot of private messages or notes.

Either the skeletons are illusory in which case I don't see how they would effect me, or they are physical in which case I should see them as well.

...or there is something previously foreshadowed still around ;)

Actually the other players should have no clue what is happening to Fizel because of the private messages.

Ok

Is there a way that we would like to use to signify that we're up to date and ready for the GM to respond without making an IC post. I don't think Izuhn has anything to add yet so I don't want to force anything. No need to rush anything but I also don't want to be the hold up.

there was a thread recently about this actually. Since I try to move this game forward at least once a day, I don't think it would be needed. with this post rate it is more likely that you wanted to post and I moved forward :D

Alright! That's the end of the Luskan part an the start of the trip to Icewind dale! I saw this on another Frostmaiden game and I thing it is actually a cool idea to try and adapt the game to the players. so poll time :D

Answered the poll, I'll add some more detailed feedback later ^^

Poll answered.

Feedback!

cool thanks for the feedback. I'll have to re-read again when I have the time, but I'll start posting the shared text in blue, so anything you read in black means at least one player didn't see it (that way)

blue didn't work because of the OOC, so I'll do note :D

So the festivals were a little add-on to make the city feel more alive. I read a bit about it and found they have a temple to the Frostmaiden in Luskan, so I thought it could be used for a little foreshadowing. It's related to the overall arc, but it's not a major point. So in OOC, they are called wet parades ; a ritual were the participants run around the city with their clothes full of ice to climb six sacred pillars (the Kisses of Auril). Completing the ritual is believed to assuage Auril's wrath, bringing an easier winter, which, is rumored to be harsher and earlier this year.
Magic is free-form, but because it is a big part of D&D classes, I thought we would start by grounding it to something. There is actually nothing stopping a druid from casting eldrich blast in this game, but I thought starting with a limited amount of spells would make it easier.

Players can choose the skill to roll for their abilities; however, this has to be defined in the ability. For example, Force of Nature will only work with intimidation and strength, because that's the bonus it gives you. Magic is basically an ability, but I split it up to highlight it to make it clear every "class" can be a spell caster. I'm not entirely sure which sub-system you mean. The only subrule I can remember is that magic allows for multiple targets with the other skills (in principle) don't. But maybe you mean something else didn't notice?
Yeah, the deliveries are basically an encounter of the week plot hook to get you north to the real adventure. As written, they are meaningless, but I'm using some of them as important events that you may, or may not come to realize in character. For example, Maccath's delivery is planned to have major long term plot consequences. You won't see it immediately (in PbP it might take months!), but it is there, working in the background.
Yeah exploration is a tricky one with many different interpretations. I'll try to keep this one in mind. Once you make it to Icewind dale, the adventure will briefly turn into a sandbox, so that might help :D
That is a good question. Me and Bowl were playing around with making a PbP system before we found PbA (the truth is I was too lazy to read D&D rulebook again). So we kept playing with it, mostly because of the character flexibility the system "promises" (we did have someone playing as an sentient artifact...)

I think the rolling and probabilities are very comparable but there are minor differences at the leveling system, which are probably just personal taste ( also, success range feels much more exotic 🤣 as is not roll under or above 🤯). With this leveling up system, I don't need to spell out the max level is 6, because you won't be rolling a double 7, or the max range is 5-12, because you can't roll more than two 6s. I think PbA is not self bound like that. Ideally, this means more freedom because I don't need to define 5 or 6 abilities to limit the character progression, so no need to define classes or abilities before hand (originally, there weren't even skills lists!). On the other hand, its a "level by using system", so you can't really customize or plan your character ahead. Overall, this one is probably more on the free-form side of the scale than PbA (it was intended to be a one page system!) but they are very similar.
It is a good point. Naming things is like the hardest part of actually 😅
Ahah yes, I noticed there some confusing moments that, I hope, were due to the private notes. I'll drop them and, since colors look a bit weird (on my screen at least), I'll just fall back to the regular notes.

I'm talking about the custom abilities that key off Magic rolls - the "spells" that can be empowered for multiple targets or bonus damage etc. My impression was that they don't need to be locked to any particular skill. For example, a "Charge" spell could roll Strength and be empowered to knock over the target.

Ah I think I see what you mean...like the magic skill itself is not relevant and could be removed? It's a good point. The skill represents your skill into manipulating the Weave, so anything magical would, lore-wise, fall into that skill. While magic is using it, arcana is understanding it in a structured manner.

To be fair, players experienced with this system don't need skill groups...The reason for some skills was purely for the groups to be symmetric (5 x 4 skills) which would help balance the character creation. We can review the characters later and improve the skill list actually.

Hmm I wouldn't say Magic is redundant, for the same reasons you gave! More like, I think other skills should be able to build and empower custom abilities that are not related to sorcery.

Oh, and I forgot to mention in my feedback post, but I'm a fan of the gain EXP on doubles mechanic. It's simple and neat.

Hey all, I'm going to pull out of this one. I overextended myself on games and I'm most confused in this one.

Thanks for letting me try.

Ah, sorry to lose ya.

Thanks. See you around, I just bit off more than I can chew.

Hey Eyes. No problem! ahah chewing too much is a very common GP problem xD
Thanks for trying this out and for your input and comments :D

I noticed Agna's fatigue was at 1. Since you have been at sea for a few days, I put that as 0 as you'd have rested enough to heal.

Gotcha. I honestly forgot she even had the fatigue. I assume Agna has a physical wound now?

Not yet. The hands just managed to climb on you. Mechanistically, as long as you can "pay fatigue" you shouldn't be wounded. The idea is that you, being the hero, can always avoid an attack, but it may require a difficult dodge that puts stress on you. (maybe fatigues should be renamed stress 🤔 ). It's this fatigue/stress that will than lead you to make mistakes and get wounded.

Because wounds give you a -1 penalty, once you get them, you enter a dead spiral, so fatigue basically works as a buffer to balance that out.

ok. just read the new posts! Failing means Agna will be grappled and prone in d&D terms. Basically, they're trying to get you on the floor to restraining you. They are not attacking yet

Okay 2 questions then.

1). Would I be rolling at -2 for me or just -1? In other words, does the -1 on Agna effect my roll?

2). Would the fish man require just another hit to kill or would it be a crit to kill?

So this definitely not clear in the rules but, since the difficulty behind Agna's penalty still applies (you don't want to hit her!) I'd say it's -2 penalty to help. Having Str lv 4, -2 penalty gives you a modifier of 2, so that's 42% chances of helping!

Fizel actually can't help because he would have a negative modifier, but he can kill one hand (or the fish man) for free since he is part of the party (I have to set up his sheet again to roll for him)
the fish man dies with 1 hit, but since there's no actual difference between the enemies as far as the rules are concerned (they don't roll!), I switched it simply because it felt anti-climatic 😆 They are all basically the 'same enemy' in different 'skins' so I opted for what felt more cinematic if that's ok (you need one success per enemy here).

If you think its confusing or taking your agency away, let me know and I won't be doing that very subjective call. I'm going with the rule of cool, but this might not be cool for you 😆

Just a suggestion, but maybe it'd be easier for you to deal with Fizel using NPC rules instead of still considering him as a PC?

Nah, I'm cool with the change. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't some sort of 'boss' monster for the effects of the rolls. I also figured it was most dangerous and needed to be taken out quickly. We'll see how things play out though.

It would actually. I haven't given up the idea of replacing Eyes, so I'm still thinking about him as a PC 😅

That's the one-two punch, testlum. High five for the successes!

Hah, let's see whether the sailor actually makes it out :P

ahah with two successes the sailor is immortal now :D

She said to go, but not where 🤣 Agna may be in for a surprise.

well... from the map you don't know where the exits are yet (except going up the ladder again), so it would be a good assumption she is trying to find another way out. Though she might just as well be trying to get out of danger, or at least into a more advantageous position that a narrow room :D

Based on past experience, I don't hold much hope that she'd want to get away from danger :P

Any chance I could use my previous experience of seeing the horrors of the man damned inside out and realizing what was actually going on to add the +1 here?

You could but in this system is not the result that gets changed (this is the counter-intuitive bit of it). It would only extend your success range, which would have no effect on the roll since a 4 is always a miss.

You could use it for a raise, which could be dangerous, but could rescue your fail if you get a 5-8 (since there's one less PC, Fizel could help for another +1). That would be 56% chances of a last minute success vs 34% of messing pretty bad.

I always forget that lol! Old habits die hard. We'll keep the fail and I'll narrate that.

Since you were following her, she should be in the same room (though I only mentioned the reaction of one of the sailor to avoid cluttering the thread with NPC monologues xD). Though it is indeed very interesting if she were to have vanished without you noticing. I will totally go with that :D

ahah sorry, I slotted in a little "dungeon crawl" from Ghosts of Saltmarsh to have something happen for on the high sea for diversity

No worries, run the world as you see fit! Just because monsters are approaching doesn't mean we have to fight them after all :P

Glad we're back in. I'll have a post up most likely sometime tomorrow my time.

Sorry for the delay!

No worries, I only got back home late last night and unpacked today. I'll be mostly back to normal by tomorrow afternoon.

Hah, we're in the same boat then - hopefully in-game too, soon...

Alright! With this little adaptation of a one-shot sailing adventure almost done... lets see how this is looking like now :D

Plot so far is basically winter is coming and you're meeting it face on xD

This was a bit of a more common dungeons type of chapter so for the pillar balance...

Maybe a bit more insights about the system?

I really liked how you guys manages to describe this last part without much input from me :D

Well the main question would be if you guys are up for the next chapter: arriving at Fireshear and meeting with the dwarven caravan Agan has been waiting for to get on the road to Icewind dale!

If so, I'll try to get another player to take over a new character (or maybe Fizel himself)

Feedback v2!With that, I would still be open to continue playing for a while - especially if we add more player(s) to the mix!

EDIT: And as RAAM says below, thanks for hosting as GM!

First off, thanks for a fun game CESN! Here's some more in-depth feedback from my perspective as well.Much of my feedback probably boils down to my preferences of the pillars. Social > Exploration > Combat. I'm still having a good time though and I am ready to continue on to the next chapter. Izuhn is eager to be back on solid ground!

It would also be great to add in 1-2 new players if possible.

Too erratic It seems the main issue was dungeons ship crawl. Too much combat doesn't seem to be a good thing and I'll try to keep that in mind as a few crawls are to be expected for a D&D campaign (entire chapters in the book even! 😞 ). Related to this I guess is Combat. It is the weakest point of the system, so if you have any ideas on how this could be addressed let me know 😀 I sort of tried here and there to imply the consequences, but I had to use OOC far more than I wished for...

It felt rushed The ship itself is a sort of "run against time" one-shot so I guess the adventure itself is a bit rushed. The original one you're just fighting until you find what you're looking for and then the octopus attacks and the ship sinks in 10 turns or so. I sort of counted "turns" but when mostly for the narrative pressure of something bad happening soon... Though I can see that if combat was managed a bit better, there could have been more time to explore.

What was going on Probably adding the pressure to escape didn't help here. But! There were a few items that were found on the ship so we can deal with those during the "downtime" for the travel. You won't know everything that is happening, but you will learn something 😀

Overarching plot Being a huge campaign, the plot will be very slowly to be revealed (why I should be updating the story so far... sorry about that 😅), with many things happening around it. This one was taken from a different book, but adapted to the overarching events which feed into the main plot. The hag's grudge against Agna was opportunistic but not accidental! I might be able to make her an unexpected recurrent enemy at some point (depends how things go...). What happened here will have major impact on the long run though... I will use OOC reminders to help tie things together when I can :D

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By the way, coming up and solving challenges you invented yourself is a bit of legacy from the early "GMless" attempts for the system. It is still one way to have players influence the world besides just acting, so you can totally do it if you have an idea, but you don't have to. I'm here to fill in the "gaps" 😀

IMO it might be preferable to stick to one format? For example, Ironsworn has both GM (guided) and GM-less (cooperative) playstyles but it's fixed from the start.

I also wonder if adapting an adventure module intended for D&D might be working against you. D&D in general has the 'fight monsters, get stronger' gameplay loop which isn't quite the vibe I got from the system.

True, it's particularly difficultimpossible to do GM-less when it's a pre-written campaign xD But feel free to add anything to the narrative you feel its cool and I'll roll with it :D
This is very true as well! I was supposed to redo @bowlofspinach cyberpunk one shot but I guess I'm just lazy ... But she did mention it wasn't that bad when I tried this one the first time (even though it crashed and burned and all hell broke loose 🤔). The system should be able to handle it :D

Seems like just rerunning the same adventure when you already have so much descriptive text written out would be easy and very well suited for a lazy person 🤔

oh you hold me in such high regard xD

Now the real question is do I let the Dm speak for my character about the town, or do I just make stuff up and see how well they can work with it lol

🤣 I’ll send you a note later with some info if you want and then you can improv from there. It’s not a bit my town so there isn’t much around really

Sounds good

@testlum making me think now haha. Momma was the only name I came up with. I see why everyone loves Agna 🤣

Actually there is no thinking involved. Thank you you just made my secrets and backstory so much better by forcing me to come with a real name

Haha, no worries. I'm glad the scene worked for you.

That's cool, I'm sure Momma could find a place for them to crash for the night
I think testlum is right on this one as in it feels more like local history/culture to know where the merchants would prefer to go. However, it can be search if you're looking for something out of place... like 5 new caravans next to a bar :D I think we could eventually use Insight for finding rumours as well...

Gotcha. Will edit post with history. Wasn't sure if it meant just book history or not.

yeah I trid to keep it very general so we didn't need to list every skill from D&D while keeping the groups balanced... doesn't work exactly the same for everything.

ah! also no need to reroll, I can just take the level of the skill and check the against the new range :D

and anther one xD

Couple of questions for the GM.

I've been attempting two different conversations (or actions) in a single post a couple of times now. Is this okay or would you prefer me to focus on one thing at a time? I'm trying to juggle keeping things simple and keeping the pace of the game I guess.

I've just failed trying to strike up a conversation, if I want to 'try again' my options are to offer a 'hard success', 'twist', 'push hard' or to give up (and if it were appropriate someone could help if I hadn't failed so poorly). Is this correct? How do I go about doing this in play, do I need to state which of these options I'm doing or do I just work it into the narrative. In this case I'm thinking of 'pushing hard' - would I just narratively describe my new approach/extra attempt and roll again?

You mean keeping the PC-PC interaction (now Izuhn) but also moving on with the plot (the gossiping patrons)?
It can feel a bit asynchronous, so we assume it's not actually happening at the same time, but I'm fine with it.
I agree it can be a good way to keep up the pace and still have some personal interactions :D

Maybe we could and some OOC comment and/or line break to differentiate them?
Yeah so we are avoiding the "try again" option here to prevent just keeping on rolling forever. The idea is to try a fail forward approach, where failing still moves the action somewhere.

Those are the options yes. So generally you can come up with some interesting problem (twist), pay a price (Push hard and hard success) or get some help (give up is also on the table I guess...) Ideally, you'd just narrate it into the narrative but it might be good to add an OOC clarification since its a new experimental system on PbP.

There is, however, a "hidden option"... the ability to Raise a Roll, which basically allows you to re-roll and turn it into a success at the risk of fumbling.

Sorry all, I've overestimated how much free time I would have available to devote to this game. Rather than overextend myself, I think it's best if I bow out now. Thanks for the opportunity, CESN, and I hope you all have fun playing. :)

Okay, yeah I agree something to break the up will help.

I think I understand the 'reroll options' now thanks. Not 100% on the difference between Push Hard and the Raise Roll options but that's okay

That's a shame @Dmbraniac but thanks for the well wishes.

No worries! Happened to everyone at some point 👍 see you on another game 😁

@CESN are the elements still in the east or have they been dealt with and just left damage?

official wording is that they have been contained. Kalannai did tell Adaia that they should investigate the area again once everyone has been relocated.

What Momma knows for sure is that local militia (that is, the miners), went in and managed to evacuate the residents. But you know how these things go... too soon to know the exact details and lots of rumors going around :D

OOC, this is clearly the local side quest hook 🤣

I sure hope we aren't overwhelming you with like three conversations

Right! I noticed that when I was explaining as well. Raise Roll is the original option implemented and then to explain fail options I added the Push Hard, but that's a bit redundant. I need to have another look at the rules and update them properly xD They come from different perspectives but ended up being very much the same (well, raising the roll is now worse than just pushing hard)
I'm ok with it! If it gets a bit trick for everyone to follow 3 different actions simultaneous, let me know :D

I don't mind having multiple scenes at the same time, so if it works for you @CESN, I'm good too!

Love it when the rolls just reinforce the character, it just makes sense that Adaia has no idea how to emphasize with the locals.

Izuhn is quite in demand, eh?

One of the advantages of being a dwarf. No one can resist the beard!

Think you accidentally double posted, @riley

Good catch, removed one

Ah great to know! Thanks. I try to have 5-10 post a week so it’s not too stressful for anyone (a bit skewed to the 5 side 😅)

And while we are on this topic … just to let you guys know, with work and holidays, this might get a bit slower in the next month or two.

Thanks for the heads up CESN. I'm in it for the long haul so let's just keep on trucking.

I'm good with variable pacing too, it's bound to happen in PBP.

That's a good approach yes :D I'll do that if everyone is ok with it. Though in this case I left it open to give you guys the time/opportunity in case anyone wanted to tie up some of the RP. I'll move it forward tomorrow :D

@CESN Doesn't Agna's double success on Medicine equal a crit? I thought that meant she won't have any penalty.

If I raise to hit more enemies and fail the second roll then does the first roll fail too?

ah it does! Sorry I missed that roll! Agna is totally fine! Still failed reaction (i didn't apply the penalty) but now it's clear it was because she was cleaning her eyes :D
No, it takes one of the 2 to success for it to work :D You do get fatigued for pushing harder.
However... magic can have multiple targets. You can empower a spell at any time but taking a -1 penalty to all rolls. So in this case you'd go from SR: 5-11 to SR:5-10 in both rolls!

might be relevant to add OOC that there's 3 of them :D

🤣🤣🤣

ahah yes that could be. Just keep the flames away from any friendly ice creatures.
It can actually work as a +1 bonus to melt ice.

With my first 'session' wrapping up I just thought I'd say I've been having a blast - glad I could get into the game.

Looking forward to what happens next (I'm sure we won't freeze to death). Keep up the good work CESN, and team :)

Great to have you along! This game turned out pretty different from my starting expectations but I'm having a lot of fun.

Yes, certainly glad you're here, Riley. I think three is a good number for our game.

I'm very much enjoying this game. I find its style and player agency to be unique and interesting.

Nice to know you guys are enjoying it :D

we might make it to Icewind Dale before the end of the year 🤣

Hello everyone, please excuse my absence. I'll be back to posting tomorrow hopefully. Things are quite busy at the moment and I ran into some unexpected circumstances. All is well but I haven't had much extra time.

hey RAAM, thanks for letting us know. no problem 👍 I'm a bit busy these next two week myself so that's great timing

Yeah no problems from me - waiting on you to respond to the dwarf but if you're only going to be a day or two no problems - otherwise I'll have Adaia step in.

I already had 2 fatigue from some pushed/failed rolls. Would they have been cleared resting prior to setting out?

I think fatigue clears whenever we begin a new chapter.

yeah testlum is right. Though there is still a the "dnd" short rest option which can heal 1 point of fatigue. but basically everyone starts at 0 each chapter

Quickly asking @testlum what Agna will do :D
Just in case you got distracted with the "confidential" note for riley 🤣🤣

Agna is sleeping and I think questions to Alvan are answered for now. There's a bit of Izuhn/Adaia RP going on, but let me know if you want RP a bit more or call it a night

Adaia is happy to call it a night

Let's hit the hay then.

For the record, I'm okay with and even interested in running the full section of the adventure. I think Izuhn's statement reflects the state of our story though so that's why I went that way.

Yep, I think detours aren't quite fitting with the current story, so I would rather press on. Do you mean that we'd miss out on half of this particular adventure thread or the campaign?

Ahah no, not at all 🤣 it’s fine I was just making a joke 😝 it was a really nice way you guys found to handle that in character actually 😁

I’m actually thinking how to reward this sort of "quest completion". wondering how you can actually decide what happens later on when you think this might impact the story 🤔

I thought I'd give some feedback since we talked a bit about doubles below skill level not being useful. At the same time, choosing when to raise rolls feels a bit arbitrary. What if raising rolls was limited to whenever someone gets a double, by adding some kind of twist to the situation?

Also, I think none of us has received a single wound so far in the game, so having 10 wound boxes for each skill category feels like a lot. :P

One more set of doubles and Agna goes straight to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200

Hahaha, don't worry you rolled a non double inbetween so it wasn't 3 in a row. Big level ups this session though

Agna couldn't talk if her life depended on it, but it was a very enriching experience 🤣

Giving a heads up that I'll be busy this week so might not get much posting time.

no problem. This little scene is very simple so we can just slow down a bit and assume Agna is doing guiding stuff if needed :D

At this rate Agna's going to have some mean stats for a Bard. Something to keep in mind if guiding doesn't work out.

she's already max level? (and still manages to fail...) 😱 I guess double should be a penalty now 🤣🤣

So, I only vaguely follow this game, but... does Agna just roll doubles on every single roll she makes? 😆
Because it kind of seems like that to me

yes, that's her secret character background. 🤣

I swear I didn't hack the dice. :)

That's a nice idea :D I just have to make sure you know that's the cave Agna saw and where you were going to find shelter from the storm.

Perfectly illustrated plan 👌

By the way, let me declare that I just completed a playthrough of the Icewind Dale video game. If you want to use elements from it, feel free though! I'll do my best not to metagame :P

A lot of people seem to be like adding Kuldahar but I think it never made into dnd lore actually. Maybe we’ll have a reason to visit it as some point. I did considered some quests from the oroginal games at some point, but it’s the sort of slot in as required (like this avalanche).

Also, as far as I can tell, only the Neverwinter MMORPG rpg should have some spoilers.

quick check on how everyone is doing everyone as it seems the game slowed down a bit. I'll guess it's life meddling again, but if you are lost or the scene is just halting let me know :D

Yeah, in a bit of a busy spot, will post by the weekend latest!

I was waiting on Adaia to get a chance there. Things are a little busy with Thanksgiving but I think I should have a post up tonight or tomorrow.

No all good, I did get a little lost at one point but we moved past it. Getting slammed at work at the moment so the days do slip by sometimes sorry.

Still enjoying it :)

Cool, we can slow down a bit. I forgot it was Thanksgiving already 👌

Okay, I'm pumped for our riddle but I'm also stumped lol. I figure that we can discuss it here.

It seems to me that we need to pair up the two sections of the journal with the riddle maybe being the key somehow. That may all seem obvious though. What does everyone else think?

Great idea! this would probably go smoother at the table but I’ll try to give you some hints as well. There are still a few dark tunnels to explore (the steps and voices) if you think you need to. Though you might be able to some a good idea of the solution with what you have now.

I guess the characters themselves - Adair and Izuhn - may eventually exchange a few ideas IC 😁

Yeah I think I'll need to sit down and have a really close read to work it out. Although some IC questions and conversation might be needed to solve it at this point. You're on the right track (I think), we need to get the right stones into the door based on the riddle and the journal notes.

This is what I have so far:

Protection (Stone of Protection - Dusty rose prism) of the Leadership (Stone of Leadership - Marbled pink and green sphere) leads to Mastery (The stone of Mastery isn't dark blue) but Reserve (Stone of Reserve - Vibrant purple prism) your Intellect (Stone of Intellect - Mixture of Two Colours) for Self-Preservation (Stone of Self-Preservation is Silvery).

Protection, Leadership, Mastery, Reserve, Intellect, Self-Preservation

So how is the riddle going? I’m not sure how well these things work on PbP but I’m running it more or less as it is 😁 you should have most of the information (well, some pebbles are still missing) and are definitely on the right track 👌

Yeah my next post will be that we're missing some pebbles, but we know what they look like.

Are all the holes in the door empty?

Okay, so this is what I have so far:

From the riddle, I bolded the gem names and underlined the ones in the pebbles bag.
Protection of the Leadership leads to Mastery but Reserve your Intellect for Self-Preservation

From the door in order 1-13, I bolded the gems from the riddle and underlined the ones in the pebbles bag.
1 - Reserve
2 - Insight
3 - Regen
4 - Leadership
5 - Fortitude
6 - Supreme Intellect
7 - Absorption
8 - Awareness
9 - Sustenance
10 - Intellect
11 - Mastery
12 - Self-Preservation
13 - Protection

One caveat is that the riddle could refer to Supreme Intellect instead of regular Intellect.

I assume we need to place just the stones from the riddle in the door. In which case, we are missing Intellect, Mastery and Self-Preservation.

I'll make sure to say something IC to this effect. But it might be more useful to lay it out like this.

Yes they will all be empty by now

By the way, should I proceed to post? Still waiting on the resolution for Agna's failed intimidation roll, but her being ignored could be the effect lol.

ah damn! I was going to reply and got distracted by something else and then just thought I did it already xD

Should Adaia do that IC, or here is better for you?

Updated with the latest stones. Underlined are the stones we have, and the bolded ones are those included in the riddle.

1 - Reserve
2 - Insight
3 - Regen
4 - Leadership
5 - Fortitude
6 - Supreme Intellect
7 - Absorption
8 - Awareness
9 - Sustenance
10 - Intellect
11 - Mastery
12 - Self-Preservation
13 - Protection

It doesn't but that would have been an excellent idea. I guess the Adventure League wasn't designed that way xD

I think that note was supposed to be for riley?

By the way, I think the riddle mentions every stone unless I missed something, not just those you bolded @riley.

Oh I'm super blind haha, good catch. No idea how I missed that...
Yeah you can ignore that then. Just missing the two stones then

yeah it was for Riley… end of a long day 😅
Ahah! Agna should totally point that out IC in the grumpiest way 🤣 I noticed Adaia was focusing on the first part of the riddle only but it wouldn’t make much difference in the end once you crack it

RAAMtentacles zzz’ed now from 20 days of inactivity. I checked the Absences thread and couldn’t find anything. I don’t think this is unusual for the end of the year so, until they are back, let’s say Izuhn went with Helda and the dwarves to explore the other part of the cave. Just to let you guys know so you don’t feel you have to wait for their input

Yeah, RAAM went absent in another of my games. Hope they're just busy with the holidays.

Ok, so that was the little "avalanche survival horror" scenario. Icewind would be reached in the next one, but RAAMtentacles is definitely inactive and riley hasn't log in in more than a week. We can keep going with just grumpy Agna, but given how this is a long campaign, it's probably not ideal.

Yeah, I don't mind putting the game on hiatus. Perhaps if riley returns we can pick back up.

Apologies, I thought I had made a post attempting to close the door. The game has definitely slowed down without RAAM, so I hadn't checked in.

Ah yes you did, but it failed so it took a bit longer to complete (also give time for Agna to run)
I'll be away for two-three weeks, so we can check if you guys want to continue or if we just say you made it to Icewind Dale when I'm back to full speed.

So it's been more than a month, I think we can count this game as closed now.

Since it's supposed to be a playtest, is there anything you'd like feedback on or ask about @CESN?

I'm back from my two-three weeks break! (still a bit busy until next week moment)

But I also see riley zzz'ed... so it's a Agna's solo now 😅
* I think we can start with the previous polls.

* Then what are the main issues you had with the system (given it's rules-light) and what you think worked well :D

* I tried to run different adventure types to check which worked best for the system (though all within D&D context).. What type of game you think it will work best for? (when did it work best or worse)

Overall, I think the pacing was unfortunately off. Part of that may be on having a different focus from Agna's point of view and what she sees as "derailment" from the main goal of getting everyone to the Ten Towns safely. IIRC it was mentioned the campaign followed story beats based on what's written in Adventure Paths (are they called that outside of Pathfinder?) but it didn't sadly work for me, especially the NPC deaths feeling a bit scripted.

I do appreciate how you worked to integrate player agency into the story. For example, when I decided that Agna's success revealed a cave where the caravan could shelter, it was in that same cave where they stumbled into the demonic(?) ruin.

Looking back at the game, I feel like I might have liked spending more time in social situations. My issues with combat being floaty I've already mentioned before. That's also why I think it does not suit running a D&D adventure where combat is the primary focus.

Going deeper into the mechanics, I am still not sure what experience from doubles are for (when rolling below a skill, rolling above and improving that skill is great). Choosing between using Agna's skill at Magic to Talk Sense or simply rolling Intimidate felt pretty samey, but that's chiefly on me for inventing an ability like that.

The resolution mechanic of 2d6 to beat target number is pretty easy to understand, and I'm a fan of the level up on doubles like mentioned above. The individual skills could be refined a little more (for example, Nature and Survival, Arcana and Magic) but it's a solid replacement for stats. I also like that wounds would possibly impact multiple skills under the same category, though it didn't really come into play during our game.

EDIT: Hah, imagine if I'd rolled another double with my fat-fingered insight check.

Thanks for the feedback!

I do agree part of the problem might have been me trying to stick with the original D&D concept and balancing the players motivations. I do remember Agna not wanting to explore the "burning village" but someone else wanted to check what was going on (or not going deeper into the caves and having Adaia being a wizard and wanting to explore the ruins). These little side things take way longer on PbP than IRL xD
Yeah they released some Encounter of the Week introduction to the Rime of the Frostmaiden which were supposed to be very light one-shots. The NPC deaths were so scripted they even counted as Adventure League awards xD I tried to keep the last one alive but those were some terrible rolls. The Rime was advertised as an horror adventure like aliens or the thing, this was their attempt of having something pick the caravan one by one.
This probably contributed to the weird pacing as well, since combat didn't go down that well. The D&D "ship dungeon" clearly didn't work here.
The doubles were supposed to be like a sort of metacurrency (Bennies, Fate point, etc. ) to get a bonus since the success probabilities are generally low. But the rules were not very clear on this and they were way too free-form to be usable. I was re-thinking doubles as re-rolls instead of having the default ability and that might make it a bit easier to use.
D&D is definitely not the best paced system since it's basically moving from combat to combat which some introduction of where to find more combat. I think I'll try re-running a different thing once I have time to have another look at the rules
ahah if you manage to find an advantage you will success on your insight 👌