[OOC] General Discussion

Hi!

This is the place for general game discussion.

Hi there! I'm currently leaning strongly towards a monk of some variety. Unsure specific race at this point.

Monk sounds cool! Maybe we manage to have actually a balanced group...
But: for the others that are already on-board, feel free to play whatever you have the most fun with.

Are you cool with the Human Variant? I wanted to go human barbarian.

Sure, human variant is fine. As I wrote in the game description, every officially released character option is allowed.

Hi All
I'm looking at going a Stout Halfling Rogue, heading towards Arcane Trickster when we get that far.

Okay... so now we have 5 players in the game and I welcome you all! As I explained in the initial forum post I plan on doing a short prologue and that continuing with one of the official modules for 5th edition, except Storm King's Thunder, as I'm playing that soon as a player. And I don't really like Chult, so I do not plan running Tomb of Annihilation, either.

What I'd like to do is to ask you guys which of the modules you want to play.

- Princes of the Apocalypse
- Curse of Strahd
- Out of the Abysse
- Hoard of the Dragon Queen / The Rise of Tiamat
- Campaign written by myself

The option to play a completely custom campaign written by myself is there, although I haven't really planned anything so it could get kind of messy and very improvised at times...

Personally i have seen so many Strahd spoilers, i could easily skip it. I'm happy if you want to homebrew it but could happily try any of the others.

Halfling rogue sounds like fun!

In terms of campaign/module, I'd be down for Princes or one of your own design (even if it's messy and improvised...or perhaps BECAUSE it would be messy and improvised...)

Of course any module would have a fair amount of improvisation and customized content. PotA would be the easiest for me, because I have played the module myself over the last 1 1/2 years...

PotA sounds good then :-)

Sounds good to me!

I was thinking of going wizard. Possibly war casting. Having a bit of a hard time deciding to be honest haha. I am here though.

I too have played some Strahd, mostly the opening. Pota sounds good to me.

Okay, I think I am a good fit then because I will probably play a bard. If not, I'll likely choose to play a cleric. Either way, a niche is filled. ;)

So we're looking at:

Monk
Barbarian
Rogue
Wizard
Bard or Cleric

Not a bad grouping. Seems like it would end up pretty balanced in the long haul. :)

I really like that it is balanced right away! Very nice. I'm really looking forward to playing with you guys!

A little word on all things concerning micro-management:

- I do not track things like encumbrance or expenses in absolute detail. As we will likely not be able to play out every stop in every tavern, I will just tell you at specific times what you spent for food, lodging and so on. Of course, if you want to buy a specific wine that is 500 gp a bottle, that is a different thing.
- And please do not calculate the exact weight of every penny and every ounce of water you are carrying. As long as everything seems reasonable, you are not suffering from any negative effects due to encumbrance.
- I will not deal with specific coins and having to change gold pieces to silver pieces etc. Generally just treat your money as if it was a bank account. Just subtract the amount of money and that's it. In my head i generally calculate everything in silver piecec anyway.

As it is my first time as a play-by-post DM, I might be wrong on some of the next points, so correct me if you want.

On formatting your posts in the main game thread:

- I feel like most of the games on here are written, unlike a novel, in present tense. That mimics the conversation that happens at a game table and is fine with me. You can choose to write everything in first person or third person. Everything a character says will be written between quotation marks marked in bold (e.g. I didn't do anything, the condemned prisoner said in a shaking voice.).
- Inner thoughts or intentions can be written in italics.
- [Everything out-of-character should be in square brackets]. I find the OOC button tends to make the text too emphasised.
- I will use the color green to give you instructions. So if I want you to make a check or describe your marching order, that text asking for it will be in green.
- I saw that you can make posts as one of your characters. Please do that on the main game thread, so we can easily refer to your character sheets.

On dice rolls:

I have discovered that you can add dice rolls to your posts. So do that when I ask you to roll a die. Additionaly if you feel like you want to examine something or you might have knowledge about something, you can make the check without me asking for it. I will then answer with the information you gained if there are any. So if you think: "Well, my character might know something about that mysterious magic artifact we just discovered.", please go ahead and make an arcana check right away. If I, for some reason, think that you were not allowed to make a check, I will simply give you no additional info. This eliminates some of the back and forth posting on the forum, asking for a check and so on.

That all makes sense to me. One thing from my side, the dialog I've seen most commonly is in bold, as opposed to standard quotations:
Knowing myself... I will try to switch to quotes if that's the preferred method, it just may take a bit to sink in. :)

As for the dice-roller, stealing shamelessly from myself in another game on this site (more for your information, but if others are newer with it as well):

You use the advanced tab at the bottom of the post (Picture 1), you can add basic rolls there (Picture 2) and when you post it will append the results to the end of your post. When you add a dice roll, there are three areas you need to consider (Picture 3):

--> Reason (green box in image): A title for your roll. In this case, I'm putting in an attack with a rapier where I'm able to apply a rogue's sneak attack damage.
--> Roll (blue box in image): where you put your actual dice formula. In this case, I'm putting my attack roll as well as damage roll to make for a faster flow.**
--> Visibility (orange box in image): Control for you to dictate who can see which parts of the roll. Typically, I use Hide Nothing and Hide Everything most frequently. Hide Nothing is the default and allows everyone in the forum to see the Reason, the dice formula, and the result of your roll. Hide everything still allows people to see that a roll was made, but not the reason, dice formula, or result. Handy for DMs and players if they are making hidden checks for whatever reason. The DM can always see full roll details, regardless of your visibility setting. Finally, as a note from the GM perspective, you can hide rolls (their results and reason, not their actual presence) by using the "Hide Everything" setting. I've included a third example roll so you can see how that shows up. Handy if you want a single player to make a hidden check of some variety, or if you want to hide the rolls your NPC characters are making.

Now, some notes about the dice roller to keep in mind as you post:
--> You CAN add modifiers to a roll, so long as they are integers. Meaning you can do 1d20+5 to get a possible result of 6 - 25.
--> You CANNOT add modifiers to a roll that are other dice. Meaning you CANNOT do 1d20+1d4. If you were to type this in as a roll (as shown in the second roll example below), the site will give you 1d20+1 and a second roll of 1d4.
--> You CAN include multiple dice in a single roll (as in my first example). Separate each dice formula by a comma. It will put the results in multiple lines under a single Reason.
--> Reroll Aces is NOT reroll 1s. It is actually exploding dice meaning if you roll the max possible on a die, it will do another roll of the same die and add it to the total. I added an example below of 10d2 with Reroll Aces checked off.

Okay, I've seen both quotes and bold text being used for dialog on here, even mixed to gether in one post. I don't mind doing dialog in bold, so lets do it.

And thanks for the in depth example of the dice rolls. Especially the visibility options weren't immediately clear to me, so that helped a lot!

All sounds good to me, thanks for the detail on the dice roller too. I am starting a PBP game for a local gaming group with time poor members so it really helps.
So we are starting at lvl1 with kit either as supplied or purchased as per the cash outlay in the PHB?
Cheers
Ps if i keep forgetting to post as Teffen please remind me :-o

Yes we are. Just choose wether you want to buy the stuff or just get it via the class. Don't forget that you get some starting equipment and wealth through your background as well.