CH 1.1-b: OOC Shank's Pre-Owned

Post any OOC you need pertaining to Shank's Pre-Owned here.

Before leaving shanks pre-owned Krosus would like to give the clerk a try and see if we could gain some respirators and and the part we need or who might have it. Will have the actual post up in a couple of hours

Dramasailor (and everyone should take note here), this post has you writing Lexi into the past by leaving while Krosus is talking to the shopkeeper ("Noticing him focus on her shipmate"). That's pretty much always a no go, as you're writing yourself out of time. We're doing things the same way we would at a gaming table: essentially, by not posting for a day & then posting after CCL on the next day, you sat there quietly at the table, listening, observing, and letting other players take actions. In this situation, Hawke has left, CCL has already had Krosus 'storm off' and you can't simply write that you left while the shopkeeper was focused on Krosus (that moment has passed as Krosus has already stormed off).

INITIATIVE

As FFG Star Wars uses an initiative wherein the PC's can exchange initiative slots across the group after the initiative roll, we'll use a modified version of it (as pretty much all PbP games use modified initiative rules to help speed up combat so you're not all waiting on each other, potentially for an entire day).

Basically, your rolls will determine where the PC slots are, using rules as written. However, rather than taking entire posts to exchange slots, or waiting half or whole days for another player, initiative slots for PC's will be first come, first serve, reflecting the group sharing them without taking the time to exchange/assign them. This will still allow for much smoother combat for PbP. And yes, this means you could have the best roll and go last in the round, depending on the situation. As a side note, PC and NPC slots will stay consistent throughout combat, but will remain first come first serve. An example below.

Let's say that out of the four of you (the PC's), three of you roll the top 3 initiatives, your enemies (NPC's) roll and are assigned the next 3 slots, and one of you rolls poorly enough to come in last. The initiative order would look like this:

PC-1
PC-2
PC -3
NPC
NPC
NPC
PC-4

In this situation, I'm waiting for the first three PC's to take their turns (first come, first serve, even if you rolled the initiative slot for PC-4). After that, I'll control all of the NPC's turns. After that, whoever hasn't gone for the PC's goes next. Then we repeat.

This will lead to us occasionally waiting on one another. What I would suggest (and will be doing myself) is that you check more frequently during combat, giving yourself more chance to post and keep the game going. This will also be a lot easier to do during combat as posts will typically be more mechanically oriented, requiring less investment of your time for the most part.

Well, you can count on it being brutal in a realistic way. I'm not going to go out of my way to run you guys through hoops. In simpler words, you're not playing on 'Insane' mode or anything like that. The difficulty of our game will come from the fact that your success really will depend on you, and I'll try to make the challenge believable (of course, from a SW sense).

I won't make anybody stay out that long, and how we brought characters back in would require some flexibility, to be sure. You could definitely roll up a new character immediately, and we would find a way to work it back into the game. Depending on the situation, this might put limitations on character creation. E.g., if you die now, it wouldn't make any sense to bring you back in with a Sith character from Akrultos. I wouldn't want to bend the game world that much to accommodate it. Now, let's say a year from now your character dies at the hands of a Sith Lord as punishment for disobedience or some such, while your at a Sith base of operations, say on Bonadan, we could work in an Akrultos Sith.

Ultimately, depending on the situation, we'd have to come up with something appropriate and cross that bridge if we come to it (I say if because I'm not 'out to get you').

What I'll add to your question is this: In all the game's I GM, both table top and PbP, I try to encourage smart play as part of a believable game. By believable, I mean that Bob the bounty hunter doesn't just run into the Imperial base guns blazing, expecting success. So, to encourage players to shoot for longevity, I reward not dying. The way I do this is simple: when rolling a new character, it will be of lower level/less powerful than those who are already in the group.

In the past I've done things like adding up the current group members XP total, dividing it by [group size +1], and giving them that much XP to create a new character with. This brings them close(ish) to the group's level, but tips the hat to those who've been around, and appropriately so.

Example:

Let's say out of the five of you, one of you dies. I add up the remaining 4 group member's XP and get a total of 1600 (each of those four averaging 400 XP). Now, to take into account the new addition to the group, I take the 1600 XP and divide it by 5 (living group +1). Doing the math, we get an answer of 320, which is how much XP the new character would start with.

Now, elaborating on the group's future from there, let's say the five of you continue on and earn another 80 XP on average, members would have: 480, 480, 480, 480, 400. And, let's say that two of the 480 characters die in the same battle. Now, we add up (480+480+400) and get 1360. Since there are three remaining characters, we would divide that number by 4 (still living group +1, even though we're adding two new characters). That would give us a total of 340 starting XP for new characters. After new characters are added to the group, the XP levels for the members would be: 480, 480, 400, 340, 340. As you can see, the continued success of the group is of value to keeping character levels higher as well (meaning, letting someone die is bad business for everyone).

I've also been known to do something far simpler, wherein I simply average the 'living' group members' XP and give the new characters that minus about 20-30%, depending. Typically, when new characters need to be made, I examine both options and decide which one feels right

Ultimately, the idea is to reward smart play, so that characters who do become more powerful have earned it, and rightfully possess the status to reflect it.

For your combat tracker addition, you can also just quote Ezeriah's post and copy it directly from there. I keep a google doc for my various character's combat blocks so I can easily grab them and drop them in each time.

An even better idea. Easy button.

Hey Ezeriah, while I was rereading the game thread today, and I noticed what I think is a mistake in how one of our enemies spent his dice pool against us.
The Rodian who attacked Tajanna should have only had 1 Advantage to spend against her, because of the Threat generated by Tajanna's Defence Rating roll.

You're absolutely right. I must have forgotten to change it after adding the boost for Tajanna's defense. Nice save.

Yay, no setback die for me!

Meribson, I just fixed it in the XP tracker (even though I'm sure it's too late now anyway), but from now on let's try to avoid giving things away to other players when the group is split.

I thought of that when I was writing the post, but figured that since Hawke sent a message to the rest of the group that they were under attack it didn't matter in this case.

You assume it got through.

I updated Hawke's post from this morning, I hadn't realized that the droids were blocking the route to the rodians.

In addition, I had been under the impression that the combat values were supposed to be in the first combat post only, which for Hawke was sending a message out and drawing his lightsaber.

Add an updated one with all combat info to the bottom of each new post in combat (whether anything has changed or not). This makes it so I can easily know and access what is current info.

I really need to get Lexi more force rating. Grr.

My vote is that we stabilize the surviving rodian, toss him into the back of our transport along with any salvage. I'm going to have Hawke take the rodian's arm with them.

Then when it's time to start questioning the victim any slaps to keep him on topic can be done with his own arm.

A) I agree with the idea.
B) I love using his own arm as an "encouragement: implement

Sadistic psychopaths, the lot of you. ;)

And we should probably check in with Lissi as soon as possible. It's quite possible that she was ambushed as well.