General Thread

Thread to discuss anything not directly related to the story.

Hi folks! Thanks for running this, SpiritualSock511! Dig this game tons and have plans to run it myself. How are you planning on running it? As full-on tactical and crunchy as possible, complete with hex-based battlemaps and all that?

I plan on making my own PC. Is the weekend too late for me to brew something up?

Hi @Harrigan! Glad to have you in the group.

I plan on running the rules as standard as possible, so it should contain all the crunch as originally intended. However, we may need to shift as we go. My concern going into it is that the play-by-post format might slow things down too much, and I want to keep the game engaging.

For combat, I think the best approach will be a hybrid of battle maps and theatre of the mind. I will post an image of the battle as it starts, and then try to post snapshots whenever relevant.

An initial post would look something like this.



In this example, there are 2 characters: Tony and Albert. Tony is facing northeast and Albert if facing Northwest. I imagine that it would play out something like this.

Tony "I take cover south of the rock."
Albert "I stay where I am and lay prone."

Even though Tony has moved. I probably won't update the map at this point. When I do eventually update the map, I would have Tony behind the rock, and use a color or symbol to indicate that Albert is prone.

All that said, I might find that this approach doesn't work well at all and have to change it up. When that happens, I will make suggestions to the group and ask for feedback.

Alright Harrigan! Hopefully we'll fare better than in Stoneheart Valley.

Indeed, ForeverDED!

And cool, SS511. I've played it both ways (full maps, full TotM), and it *can* be slow when you go all-out. However, that's kind of what the game is intended to do, so....

I'm game for it. What are you using for your maps and tokens, above?

Maybe slow isn’t the right word. Slow is fine with me as long as everyone is having fun. I tend to lean towards maps personally.

I downloaded the battle maps directly from the Free League website. I take a screen shot of them and paste them into Excalidraw which is basically a digital white board. The tokens are just basic shapes I draw on top.

Weekends are busy for me and I'm usually unable to post much. I'll catch up on Monday morning.

@SpiritualSock511: Can I try to calm the boy down with a skill check? Would that be Command or Persuasion, or just straight Empathy?

@Knighthawke, I noticed that we haven't seen Jed's reaction in the Chapter 1 thread yet. I wanted to check in and see if there's anything I can help you with. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to let me know.

@Dmbrainiac: Yes, you can. In this situation, use your command skill. My reasoning is that the boy is essentially "incapacitated" by stress.

However, you don't speak Polish. You'll have a -1 modifier. Instead of rolling d12 for Empathy, you'll roll a d10. If you attempt to calm the boy down, roll a d10, a d8, and briefly describe what you do. On a success, the boy will calm down and be more compliant with the group. On a failure, the boy doesn't calm down, and you're stuck doing this one action for a little while.

Question for @Everyone

Hey everyone,

I've been thinking about how we can handle the game when someone is unable to post for a while. Life can get busy, and we understand that. Our group is relatively large for play-by-post (5 people), so I want to ensure everyone has the ability to keep engaged with the game if they are able and want to.

One idea I had is that if a majority of have responded to a situation, and someone hasn't been able to post for their character or explain their absence for a couple of days, I could step in temporarily and make what I believe is the most reasonable action for their character. The general guideline for posting is 1 a day, so I could step in if they haven't posted in 2 days, but the rest of the group has and the people who have posted agree on a plan.

I'm open to suggestions and want to have an open and friendly discussion about this.

What do you all think?

and please feel free to speak up if you feel that the idea is bonkers! I rather be told I have a wrong idea than to remove the fun from the game.

Sounds perfect to me. That is what I usually do in the games that I run.

I think all of us here are, or have been, GM-ing, so we know what it's like to want to keep things moving along. Games that stand still lose their momentum and die. I'm only on my first GM'd game here on GP (and PbP), but I've been running campaigns via email for decades. Once things got going, a leader arose in the group who would steer things with occasional input from the rest. And after getting to know how certain people ran their characters, I would NPC them accordingly in their absence. When critical choices came up, I nagged them. I didn't want to be responsible for their character's death.

Until something like that happens here, I think you'll just have to proceed after the overwhelming majority agrees to an action. You stated your posting terms when you launched the game in the tavern. We have to be honest with ourselves whether or not we can make that commitment. I dropped out of a game here when I realized that the time I needed to put into the game was more than I could commit to.

That being said, I'll let you know right now that on the 27th, I'm going to be offline. I've got hernia surgery that day. If that slows things down, feel free to NPC my guy. If not, I expect to be back online the next day. Sitting at a computer is about all I'm going to be allowed to do for the next few days anyway.

Sounds good to me. I get terribly busy with work from time to time myself, but I try to get my players and GMs a heads up if I’m going to be slow. Auto-piloting a PC or having them fade into the background for a bit when the player isn’t around is totally fine with me.

I ran PBeM games for about 5-10 years before switching to PbP in the early 2000s, ForeverDED. I know that drill all too well!

my apologies! I’ve been tied up this weekend planning with the wife a trip to see her mother get remarried next Sunday. In addition, it was a true Monday at work, and just now getting some free time for the evening….

I am also very fine with you stepping in and taking actions for Jed or any other character so as not to hold things up. :) I figure Kowalski was knocked senseless when the Hummer overturned and is just coming around for the next round of combat…?

You haven't missed anything quite yet!

No worries @Knighthawke! The other characters are helping Kowalski into the Humvee as they all attempt to get away.

@Pedrop Welcome! Feel free to post questions and participate in the General chat.

To the group, Pedrop asked to be a spectator to our game. He’s curious to see how this system plays out in pbp.

Thanks a lot for adding me! Hi all! Much appreciated. I won't bother you with my posts until I would fully feel that they would bring something valuable for your game. Especially as I was out of time to even enlist for this game:)