OOC

Thread for OOC chatter.

Hello everyone. 👋 Thank you for the invite, Nezzeraj.

Thanks for the invite Nezzeraj! Let's jump right into character creation...

Hi fellow victims adventurers!

Hi. Avraham here, or Avi for short. Been playing TTRPGs since the late 1980s—exclusively D&D or one of its myriad offshoots. Played BattleTech, but only in CRPG/MMO (anyone remember EA's short-lived Battletech 3025?). In real life I work in a statistics-based STEM feel, so I know my way around a spreadsheet or some basic programming. My PbP style tends to longer posts; I often try to write as if I'm narrating a book. If I ever get on your nerves, please reach out to me and let me know!

Also, in general I am off-line part of the weekends, from Friday evening through Saturday night. However, I plan on posting Friday morning/afternoon and late Saturday night so I expect to have no problem with 5x a week. However, there will be some days in October where I will be out a few days in a row, but it shouldn't be more than 2.5 days, so I expect to be able to post at least 4x a week those weeks. I will let the group know when they occur. Thank you.

I liked your stress meter fixed div, very creative!

Unfortunately, it looks terrible in mobile, as it is too large and doesn’t show anything. Can you reduce its width?

Thanks! Sadly I'm not sure but I will try! Update: fixed!

Maybe I'm obtuse. Where is the stress meter?

@nezzeraj, Anton Beliov has been submitted.

Accepted! Welcome aboard lol.

It works in the mobile now. Thanks!

It just shows in the first page of the gameplay thread.

I don't see it using either FireFox or Chrome. Am I missing something obvious?

It is in the upper right hand corner. I use Chrome.

Now I see it; the Gamersplane header was blocking it. Thank you.

Yeah it's tied to whatever page the post is on so I have to repost it on every page.

I will be unavailable between Wednesday afternoon, October 2, and Saturday Night October 5. nezzeraj, if necessary to move the story along during that period, please play my character as best you think I would. Thank you.

Ok, thanks for letting me know!

I thought rounds — particularly crawling rounds —were more loosely interpreted in shadowdark, meaning that a round passes whenever all players and the DM have taken a turn (moved, taken action, etc).

In my mind some 4-5 rounds might have passed since we entered the chamber with the illusory guards, but I see you considered it was more like a dozen or so rounds. I’m fine either way, in particular since distances between an within rooms is abstracted. Moving forward I’ll assume focus spells are mostly contained (at best) to a single room / encounter.

Yes, that's roughly how it works. But for the sake of PbP with asynchronous turns and tracking light timers, it makes it much easier for me to make standardized time keeping of 10 minutes per room. This also helps with added time pressure since it would take 4 hours to explore every room, but there is only 3 hours to escape. Use your time wisely! Lol.

Hello. I will be out for a couple more sets of 2.5 days and then I should be good for a while. I will be offline from the afternoon of Wednesday October 16 to Saturday night October 19 and once again a week later from Wednesday afternoon October 23 until Saturday night October 26. If necessary, during that time I trust nezzeraj to run Clarence as an NPC to keep the story going. Thank you.

Thanks for letting me know!

Lol final boss right there. Too bad no one used the rope they got from the torture room to make crossing easier :P

I didn't realize until the bridge that we are very non agile group with at least 3 of us having Dex modifiers of -2. So in that sense, the bridge was going to be a problem. I do however regret not making use of our items. LOL

I had already forgotten we had the grappling hook.

The dangers of PbP gaming is they last so long it is easy to forget things. Happens to me all the time!

It’s gonna be hard for the Lord of the castle to measure up to the bridge! Has the module peaked too early?

Speaking of peaks, wait until trying to climb on the peaked roof to reach the raven!

We have three pieces and six members? Sounds like some player versus player could cut this game’s time in half!

Muhahahaha!

I was wondering when the first person would mention that possible solution.

A pleasure to have gamed with you @htech ! We’ll try to make sure your death was not in vain!

I will stay here and read it til the end =) Thanks for gaming

Thanks for playing! It was an awesome way to go out lol.

And we are finished! Thanks everyone for an amazing game, I had a great time! This adventure was a blast and seeing you explore it was so much fun. Please feel free to ask any questions or behind the scenes stuff you are interested to know!

Thank you very much, nezzeraj; it was a blast! You were great as the DM and I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Thanks for the game all! The Count barely showed his face, which counts as a success in my book! See you in the next one!

Thank you for the game it was a good time. You did a great job nezzeraj!! Poor Frac.

Thank you for the game everyone! See you in the next one!

Thanks everyone, especially nezzeraj, for the fun game!

As far as questions:

1. Who was the lady in the glass coffin?
2. Who was the aging baby KCC was carrying?
3. Who and where was the red headed damsel?
4. What was the deal with the wedding party?
5. What was the chanting?
6. What is the curse and how would it be broken?

Thanks Nezzeraj and all the other players for this great time. I, like Redcroc, have plenty of questions about the adventure module:
- what should we have given of ourselves to escape from the cauldron room? A hand, a finger, an eye?
- who was the spider-woman, the count's bride ?
- had we found the last artifact needed to fight the count — I believe we had the blade and the Tome? — , would we have had any chance to make it out, realistically ?
- are our characters now vampire spawn? Does their flight mean they are spreading the curse?

Great questions!
1. She was he Count's wife and one of the ways to exit the casle.
2. The baby is not an npc but a haunted effect that works like a clock, aging every room until they die and things get scary.
3. The damsel was a member of a previous party who got separated and fell asleep in one of the rooms you didn't explore. The dead guy in one of the rooms was part of her former party.
4. The wedding party was a ghostly event. If you make three mistakes before you leave, bad stuff happens.
5. The chanting was from one of the Count's brides and a dangerous enemy. It was also the same woman with the void eyes in the nursery, but that was more a haunting effect than an actual encounter.
6. The Count is the curse and you break the curse by killing him.
1. You can give anything that causes hit point damage and permanently scares you. A hand is a little extreme, but the module suggests a finger, eye, or tooth.
2. The spider-woman was one of the Count's 3 brides.
3. Yes, you have a chance to win. The sword is very powerful against the Count. The tome has many useful spells, but isn't necessary if you have a spellcaster with good spells. The one relic you didn't get helps protect you from some of the Count's abilities.
4. You were only partially converted. Mechanically anyone who drinks blood after the start of the adventure needs to make an ability check that increases the more blood you consume, but most everyone restrained themselves for almost the whole adventure so it didn't really come into play. You will naturally be cured from the vampirism if you don't drink any more blood.

Cool!

If you ever have a hankering to DM again, I'd be very happy to serve as fodder, I mean play, in a campaign! :D

Agree whole heartedly

Actually I just bought a Shadowdark mini megadungeon adventure that I might run next...

Dang! That's all pretty cool. Excellent adventure. Thanks for sharing it with us, Nezzeraj. Like Avraham, I'd be happy to join any future games you organize.

Interested!

Same here!!

That sounds fun! I feel slightly guilty playing since I had never heard of Shadowdark before this game and it seems pretty popular right now. LOL

Ok awesome! No need to feel guilty though lol. I heard great things about Shadowdark but I didn't really need another OSR game but after trying I gotta say it's pretty smooth! Ok, well with the holidays coming up I'm not sure if I'll have it up before the end of the year, I'll have to see how long it takes me to read through and prep. See you all in the next one then! It starts at level 2, but if you want to keep your same character I'll allow you to use them at your current level.

I would like to play Varos with proper weapons.

Hear, hear!

Ok, after reading the adventure I had originally picked I decided it wouldn't make a good follow up. (I will run it sometime in the new year as a sequel to the intro adventure in the core rulebook). But luckily I got another adventure on sale that I think will work much better. It's a puzzle dungeon that has a very unique mechanic that I don't want to give away. So we'll have to decide how you all got back together, if there was a time jump, or to retcon the ending a bit and all of you were dropped off by the raven in the same town. What do you all think?

Yes!

The Raven need not be trustworthy: he might have just dropped us all wherever it wanted to…

Lol good point! Or maybe he wanted to get back to its egg so dropped you off at the closest village.

He seemed noble and trustworthy when I dealt with him, for what it is worth :)

But is Clarence a good judge of character, wondered the young Priest…

Clarence is an excellent judge of character (WIS 15).