OOC Discussion

Right? Haha. Different types of personalities in a party makes for a better time in my opinion. Erran may be a merc, but he's a good guy greg deep down. Haha.

Oof, sorry for my absence yesterday. Had a busy day.

So what kind of themes do you guys like in games? Political intrigue, drama, action, horror, romance, etc.?

Generally? I enjoy really fleshed out, complex characters and plot lines. I'm always a sucker for a good mystery and occasional betrayal.

Dramaction with intrigue, but not melodrama. I like characters with depth, and plots that no one was seeing coming.

Exploration, and to echo Auroran... plot, characters, mystery. There seems to be enough creativity going on to have character interaction/development amongst the group keep going.
I am interested to see if combat will fall flat for me in pbp. Maybe those that have done this before can say what works best to keep the combat from being tedious.

I imagine good descriptions on my end and role playing during the fights help a lot.

Do you have a preferred formula your like us to use in combat? (E.g. Roll d20 plus bonuses for attack and roll damage at the same time) Or just dice as normal? (Roll attack. Confirm. Another post for damage factoring in all circumstances?)

My biggest concern is speed, so go ahead and roll everything at once. If you Ready and action to "Attack the next person that comes up to me," go ahead and roll the attack there, too, just so if it happens, I already know if it hits or misses.

Also, as a side note, I'm going to go ahead and roll Initiative for everyone instead of sending out a notice and waiting for 5 responses before jumping into it. I think the only special thing people are adding to their Initiative is that Devanis has advantage on it.

Sounds good, we will get the right rhythm down. On initiative, just remember the DEX bonuses ;) To keep it simple I will not attack with the familiar unless it is part of a party plan, I will have it take the help action to give someone advantage on attacks, and maybe give Flare a sneak attack.

Of course :)

We'll begin the Descent in a few hours when I have a chance to write it up!

What are your thoughts on perception checks? At the table we would all see our rolls and hear what you would say, unless it was maybe special enough to pass a note. Here there is opportunity for "realism" where everything is in private until we express it to the others somehow. As much as I would like to play the selfish young criminal who doesn't share information with strangers, I think that is unfair and also adds a lot of overhead. It would be ok with me if "you see a cave with a pool of water" were said "aloud" because we would tell each other anyway.

From a streamlining perspective, you could even give us a indicator that your description is complete and it counts as a group perception check, so there is no need to roll or maybe rely heavily on passive perception numbers.

I don't know, I'm a just rambling as this is new to me and I am thinking about running one too.

Oh, and I will throw a wrench into it soon with a familiar that can scout ahead with Devils sight and invisibility

So my typical gaming takes place with a group of friends playing over Roll20 and Discord voice chat. I've been playing that way for a while, and I'm a pretty fast typist, so I can whisper messages to people depending on their roll results quickly. We even go one step further and set all of the rolls to whisper only. The goal with that is so players can't ignore someone that says, "Eh, there's nothing here," just because he rolled a nat 1, and people can't calculate what HP some familiar enemies might be at, and it's up to them to do what their characters would do in any given scenario. I think my group is a bunch of pretty great roleplayers, so it's not that I'm questioning their ability to resist the metagame temptation, but it's more to further uphold their suspension of disbelief, I suppose? Additionally, the nice thing with Discord is that if there's something long that I need to tell someone, I can quickly drag them to another Side Chat and tell them in a matter of seconds before bringing them back to the main group chat. Obviously that isn't something I can do here. There are some players that like to keep their secrets, and some that don't, so whispering things lets people do what they would like, and I like to offer that opportunity.

Aaalllso, I find it much more interesting to give characters more opportunity for dialogue, in explaining what they see, in the way that their character perceives it. And getting a description of a monster that someone else sees around a corner may be somewhat less intense than getting a description of the character's look of horror and how they whisper, "Run. We need to run," without knowing what it is they've seen.

But a lot of that is Roll20 and Discord and PbP is a different beast entirely, with a big concern about pacing of the game. I certainly don't want the game to feel sluggish or bogged down by unnecessary rules. My desire to run games isn't dependent upon whispering roll results, so if you guys find it to be more trouble than it's worth (or don't see the value in it in the first place), then I'm more than happy to keep results public. I can't stress enough that in no way am I doing it because I think you "wouldn't RP it right," or something. I think you guys are fantastic, and I'm feeling very lucky to have such an awesome group for my first game.

But, that said, it is my first time DMing a PbP game, and I know not all of my DMing habits will translate perfectly into play by post, so just let me know if you want it another way :)

I like the idea of thinking "outside of the table" and using the medium to drive a different sort of game. The appeal of PbP, to me, is the collaborative writing experience, and I would be happy with no rolls at all (especially since the roller really seems to hate us ). I am good with RPing what the character sees and almost never talking OOC.

The way you run your Roll20 game also has a great appeal, and I am cool with trying something like that too, we can do hidden rolls but I think that would be too much bookkeeping for me when I run a game here.

With my table group, I have floated the idea of doing all of party's perception and insight rolls for them behind the screen so that they can't metagame at all, but I think everyone likes the feel of the dice too much. I completely understand that....

I understand, and I certainly don't think that "one is better than the other," or anything like that. It's just how I'm used to running games. But again, if it's something that the group prefers, I'll switch to posting things public.

My wife's birthday is coming up and we're doing a party tomorrow, so I'll be gone for most of the day. Might find an opportunity to post, but if I don't, then do not fret; I'll be back on Sunday :)

NZ has the shire and this
Caves...

Great! That's pretty accurate. And yeah, it won't always be tight corridors and tunnels.

Sorry that posting has been patchy. I have a big Biochemistry exam coming up on Monday that has been occupying a lot of my energy.

On the plus side, on Thursday I found out that I was accepted into the Masters in Teaching program that I was trying to get into!

How's everyone else doing, both concerning the game and out?