General conversation/OOC commentary

I'm going to a con this easter, and for the first time my daughter is coming as well. She is 6 and I'm looking forward to see how she feels about the RPG and boardgames designed for her age group

I had trouble last combat with the current combat rules. And this combat it is even worse. Sorry I can't predict the future for my character's reactions. I will let the GM do that. I'm out of here.

I on the other hand enjoy @spaceseeker19 GM style. It is very PBP-relevant to announce your actions without knowing what the others might do, and then see GM summarizing the round at the end.

I understand the frustration. It's particularly bad when initiative splits the party into two groups: one before the enemies, and one after.

There's three options I can see that might help (but I'd like to hear your ideas):

1) Have a group initiative rolled once for each "side" in a combat encounter. I'd call on one player each encounter to roll for the group, and I'd roll once for each opposed faction. That way all the players would act together, either before or after the other combatants.

2) I could split the narration so that the PCs that go before the NPCs would declare, I'd describe the results and the enemy turns, and then prompt the PCs that came after what they will do for their turn.

3) We could continue as we have been, but then, if the situation has changed significantly for a PC, I can prompt the player to see if they still want to do what they declared or do something else. Even if we don't choose this option going forward, I'd like to do this for Princess this turn, retroactively.

What do you think?

I’m really ok with the way it is now. But will do however pleases the group. All good, for me.

I have no issues with the current combat style.

EDIT: I like how you recount all the stuff that happened during the round. Makes it very easy to know what all happened without me needing to check who went first, or who all went in what order. I think it's great.

As a DM, I generally like the idea of some consequence of being down and dying. I often instigate a house rule in which a character who goes to 0 HP comes away with some permanent reminder of that brush with death: a scar, a tic, a phobia, or a flaw, as determined by the player. But that's for my own custom games, which tend to be a little grimmer and less super high fantasy than the Dungeon in a Box adventures. It's also a cosmetic change that will only affect gameplay indirectly (such as NPCs reacting to the scar in future), rather than an immediate mechanical drawback. My experience of the encounters in Secrets of the Greenwold is that they are all tightly-balanced enough that an additional mechanical drawback could prove disastrous.

What do the rest of you think, regarding consequences of dropping to 0 HP, with regards to this campaign? Would you like to have a short-term drawback like a level of exhaustion, would you like to choose some obvious cosmetic change to the character that "shows" their ordeal permanently, or would you like to continue rules-as-written?

I prefer it to be just normal. In real life, people can be resuscitated, so given that this is a fantasy world where magic can heal grievous wounds like they’re nothing, I don’t see the need for extra detriments. Another point against it is that martial characters are the ones more likely to need to roll these saves, and really martials don’t need even more of a nerf.

If the player wants to rp it affecting them somehow, that’s their call.

Same here. :)

Grifter makes a sound case.

OK. So let's say that you can, if you choose, describe some lasting-but-mechanically-insignificant change to your character each time you survive nearly dying. My players have really enjoyed describing the accumulation of scars in other games.

I have some sad news, folks: we're down two players. There's always a lot of attrition with play-by-post. In this case, JoshuaMabry has stepped away from the site due to changes in work schedule that have made it too difficult to keep up with the posting schedule. GeneCortess has quit this game out of frustration with low initiative.

I do not plan to interrupt the game for this. We're close to the end of this first adventure, "Caravan of Peril." I propose to continue running Gunter as an NPC (as I already was) and do the same with Princess for the remainder of the adventure. Then, we can retire those PCs and see if any of the other players who'd expressed interest in the game would like to join at the natural transition point of the start of the second adventure. As an alternative, we could try to do what I sometimes do with absent players in real-time D&D games, and have the present players (that is, all of you) play the characters collaboratively. In that case, I could recreate the PCs and make them public, and you four could decide what Princess and Gunter will do each round. That presents a number of challenges, but I'm willing to try it. It has the advantage of all the PCs being controlled by players, which I like.

Barring responses to the contrary, I'm going to go with the first option as it seems easiest, but I wanted to check in with you all. Which approach would you like to take?

FYI: For the end of round four (since we know that Bramlin is reviving at the start of round five), my inclination would be to have Princess throw her dagger at a goblin, then for round five, try to climb into the wagon again to attack or heal as necessary. Gunter could try to Toll the Dead and/or run to get a horse to pursue the wagon if it continues to move away.

I did heal Gunther, we could say that I didn't and shot at a goblin instead. Gunther would be dead and it would be one less NPC to keep track of

I’m fine with just retiring them at the end of the chapter. Is there a reason why we need to have 6 players/characters?

I find that the sweet spot is around 4-6 players. Anything less and the game flow is very depend of player participation, and the encounter design becomes tricky. Anything more and it gets to noisy.

Easiest it best.

Agreed!

A 4 PC party works for this campaign, but 5 is better, and I think 6 is ideal for a number of reasons (survivability, ability to continue if people drop out, etc).

Sorry for the wait, everyone. I'm going to wait just a little bit longer - a few hours - to give @WhiteDwarf a chance to chime in as to whether Bramlin wants to take that short rest, before I continue with the trip to the bandit camp later today.