Welcome (OOC Chat Area)

Hi Huffleypuffleys. Just checking in and seeing how you are faring. Any dracolichs yet? What about energy-draining specters? Vengeful demigods? Night hags? Pit fiends?

Seriously, going well? I can’t speak for the others but it’s a blast so far for me! :)

Yes, very good here. Enjoying our RP together!
Bru is a pleasure, I enjoy getting my dwarfness on. :)

All dwarves are Scots. That is how Tolkien created them 😈😈😈

I'm... A little on the fence about all of this, truthfully.

I'm enjoying it thus far. Everything's moving along nicely, the posts are well thought out, the NPCs and the hook are interesting, and the players are all pretty active. How are things on the Ravenclaw end?

Tolkein took them from the svartalfar of the Eddas and the names have more Scandanavian origin, though lots of Viking influence in Scotland and England as well. I'm convinced the whole Scot thing came from Star Trek.

Could go Mbuti or Mbenga to avoid western cultural bias in your dwarvishness though not sure how all the glottal stops and other different sounds would be translated.

Or, keeping the English and artificer/industrial theme that dwarves tend to fall into, go full Morlock and get a nice class warfare vibe going with the Eloi (Elves) being the pastural bourgeoisie while dwarves represent the proletariat.

Makes sense, I wanted to type that I’d seen a YT vid years ago, talking about dwarves being hijacked for Scottish accent, but couldn’t remember the whole content, this tracks.

The pacing of PbP is definitely not for everyone, especially compared to the fast paced discord games you had mentioned you played previously. I find it works well for me because I don't have dedicated blocks of time, but I have time at some point every day. The group so far seems active, so hopefully we will get a consistent pace going.

I have one game currently where the 2 most active player (including me) are trapped in a pit and the release mechanism is where the remaining group who rarely ever post are. The DM is trying to prod some actions, but I might die of old age in real life before my character escapes the pit.

That DM's too nice. :) I don't mind people missing a post here and there, I'm going to do it too and life comes first. But in a situation like that, I would absolutely NPC the idle player to keep the story moving.

Glad to hear it. Loss of momentum can kill a pbp game

The pacing isn't the main issue. I have something else against this game.

I find the game interesting. I find my character very fun to play and the group is quite active.

I feel like I should put a tiny bit of context to this, lest it seem like I'm not taking a player concern seriously. He's explained to me that it's not the game itself, but rather just the concept of a game of this size. We've been talking out the details over Discord.

Dipper's right. It's all a bit much, especially for my first serious game. Y'all should know I'll be leaving game. Sorry, guys.

This shouldn't effect Ravenclaw, so y'all keep on keeping on 👍

Ah well, such is life. We all wish him the best.

All best to you, plenty of games pop up here, hope we can do something together.

Best of luck! I hope you find something that works better for you.

Both groups are in sort of a "free play" mode, and I didn't give much guidance on how to handle that. Which was deliberate, because I want things to be very open-ended, sandbox style for you. But I suppose I should have given guidance on my lack of guidance. ;) So here:

- You're free to go solo, split up into small groups, or travel as a large group. All up to you.
- You're free to go to one of the places I mentioned in my post, or free to find somewhere else. If you're looking for somewhere else, just go ahead and post that you're looking for it, and I'll take care of progressing the story in my next post. That might mean finding it right away, or hearing from an NPC that such a place doesn't exist in that town, or getting a lippy/irritated response from an NPC that knows where it is but doesn't feel like helping, or who knows what else. But it will be some kind of forward momentum. ;)
- In both groups, at least one person pre-emptively told me that they were going someplace and I didn't address it because time hadn't moved that far yet. My bad, I didn't mean to make you feel ignored, it *will* be addressed. But do remind me (it wasn't the case this time, but who knows, maybe I didn't see something, and it doesn't hurt to make sure I did see it) and do use your next post to sort of continue the nudge in the direction you wanted to go.
- I told both groups that you probably had enough time for about X stops (X was different all around) before your next "scheduled" plot time. The question of whether to schedule every stop in advance or just go one by one is another one that is up to you, but it's important that the discussions occur In Character, and while I certainly appreciate the heads up if you're telling me all the places you're headed, I'm never going to assume that your plan survives contact with your first stop. Whatever happens at that first stop might change your mind regarding the second. :)
- Time is ticking In Character, but less so out of character. I don't care if this open-play section takes 3 rounds or 15. It'll take as long as it needs to take for everyone to feel like they did what they wanted to do with the time (or, of course, until we hit X stops, at which point I'll point out that your time is running out - but even then, it's up to YOU whether you respect that fact or go rogue with it.)

Remember that both groups also have a tavern they can go back to if they're done with town exploration early and just want to spend the time knocking back a few and getting to know each other in roleplay. ;)

@Dipper, regarding the rule of three, does a DM post reset that? Does it count as one? Or should we wait for three player posts and "ignore" a DM post for this purpose?

Alright, so... it's obvious to the Hufflepuff crowd at this point, not so much to the Ravenclaw one, but I want to keep y'all in the loop because even at hard times there needs to be communication. I'm not giving up yet - I really want to continue. But, I'm having a bit of a motivational problem at the moment. I won't bore you too much with the details except to acknowledge them:

1) Work funding crisis. Might be laid off in the next few weeks and I'm having a hard time doing anything in that vein.
2) Losing Aisede the way it happened may have impacted me a bit more than I thought. Processing it, I guess.
3) I did my Ravenclaw post Monday, then started by Hufflepuff one and kinda ran out of steam because they went in a lot more different directions so it's basically four posts. Passed out, then... forgot I hadn't done it. Just stumbled onto that surprise today when I popped in, and it was kind of a gut punch.

So... mental health for a few days. The hope is that taking the shorter break will prevent the burnout of a longer one. I haven't read anything said the last few days, I'll catch up on that when I'm ready to get back on the horse. I'm aiming for Monday, August 19th. Hopefully that doesn't put you guys off too much.