In reply to Ryu Zaku (msg # 30):

I admire your willingness to reflavor things.

I'll be going with direct the strike, to reflect his past as a warrior and leader.

I prefer not to use themes.

Ugh...that took longer than I wanted.

But Snow is all done, and ready for final inspection.

Alright! I'll get the quests areas set now that I think everyone (?) is done with their first drafts of characters. I'll look them over, find ways to challenge and reward them, and then if anything seems incorrect I'll inquire about it.

The map will take some time to make, but I REALLY think it will be worth while, if this goes smoothly as I hope. Much work now, for very little post start. I don't have an eta yet, but I will probably have better idea after I get three or four areas done. I can estimate what the post char gen prep work time will be.

I'm looking forward to this!

I have a few changes to make to mine from the original version (mainly changing of gear) but most of the rest of the stuff is there. I see we now have actual character sheet pages so I'll copy my stuff into there once I've finished up :).

I would like to poll all the players on an introduction.

If the preparation stage of this goes well, I may do a diceless five/five post, where the players have solo introduction and we summarize the events (for expediency) in a total of five posts each. Certain prospects, such as imprisonment and death, will not be on the table, but may net some loss (such as damage or even healing surges) or some net gain (extra gold, possibly a single magic item, or a bit of secret information). Ultimately though, I want to focus on the core of the campaign which is with the group assembled.

This is diceless, but not statless. You'll have an open hand of "rolls" to be played like cards, and while you'll know what you "roll" before you take an action, rolls used cannot be undone, and modifiers may some degree of variation. This is what I mean by diceless. Conflict, of any kind, will have the toll on the entity involved that is at the disadvantage after every post you make. So a combat, for instance, will revolve around one 1 round of actions, your character's and the antagonists'. I will use the affects of that round to help determine the outcome. I will break my post into two parts, separated by an "hr" break. The first will be the resolution of your post, and then the introduction of the next scene. It will be a very short choose your own adventure type, will more limited actions than when the game fully starts.

I need to know if you all would be interested in a diceless introduction, which has the potential for gain/loss and will ultimately give us some useful preparation of getting to know your character's attitude, personality and approach to conflict.

This is something I encourage you to think about. I won't be ready for a week at the very least. I have some RL events, and want to be more thorough on the mapping.

Hmm, that's something I've not seen before. I'm not sure what I think of basically having a predetermined set of rolls to "spend" on seeing if bad stuff happens to my character before we even start. It also sounds like some kind of situation is gonna come up that requires that many die rolls to be made, rather than any pssibility of it ending up just as straight RP. I assume this would be a private thing, player-to-GM, for us to get ino our characters a bit before they all actually meet each other?

Overall verdict - undecided.

Oh, one thing I don't think I've asked yet - can we roll our own dice or do you have issues with players who cheat and so disallow that? I much prefer actually rolling a physical die - it feels more like I'm rolling it, and the few occasions I've been in a game that used the automated die roller here it always seems to go badly :P. But if we have to use the automated one, then, well, I'll have to use the automated one.

I am intrigued, I must admit.  It sounds like a great way to do introductions, and it could yield a lot of interesting character stuff.

However, it does throw some of my plans askew.  I was under the assumption that we were "established" already--a bunch dishonored types who have stuck together out of desperation, taking whatever work we could find etc. etc.

But if we're doing all that background stuff we have to answer the "why do all of these jerks hang around with each other?" question.  Which, with a vampire in the party, requires a little more explanation than normal.  And even with years of "ronin-ness" under his belt, Snow's first impression of a vampire is going to be to shove his sword down said vampire's throat and demand he Praise the Sun.

So that's a character interaction I was hoping we could "skip over" and get to the good stuff.

However, that awkwardness aside, I'm willing to try anything once.

Verdict: Tentatively for it.

I'm all for establishing some introduction, especially because of my unusual origin story and the non-standard setting; I'm intrigued to see how the two mesh together (although I do see some possible parallels already :D).

I've updated the character description,  and am eager to play this out!

Verdict: Yes, please.

Most play-by-post games don't last that long, at least not with the same players, so my preference is to start to play the game with the rules we signed on for.

Then since we aren't unanimously unopposed to the idea, I guess that's going to be a no.   Well, I'm still happy just to be playing so no complaints from me :)

Just for the record, I've made sure my character (who was originally made for a previous game with this same GM but it died after only a few IC posts, can't remember exactly why) isn't really bothered about who they hang around with. That is, I've seen the word "vampire" mentioned a few times here (presumably you mean vryloka? There isn't a race called "vampire" in Fourth Edition as far as I know...) but as long as you're not trying to suck my blood or that of some innocent creature, it's fine. But you can find out who/what my character is when you meet them, and I'll do the same with you :).

There was, apparently, a Vampire "class" made for a horror supplement that our good Lord Winter is trying out.  Due to the lack of supplement support, it's actually a little weaker than other classes but he's trying to make it work anyway. (and good for him, says I)

Yes, you can be "vampiric" in 4th Edition in at least three ways: a class (which I think is a brilliant approach, even if it's not terrifically made), a race, and a feat. My character is a half-elf vampire. His sheet is currently visible if anyone would like to look it over.

Usually, Vryloka is better used to represent those descended from vampires, but who aren't necessarily full vampires themselves.  You could easily visualize characters like Blade or Vampire Hunter D as Vryloka fighters or rangers.

Personally,  I think the vampire is really good.   It falls off a little bit in terms of damage at high tiers, but is GREAT in terms of survivability to get you there.   There's also some really cool powers that have a lot of use out of combat and for cinematic purposes.

Speaking of interesting powers, Dragon's Breath or Dragonfear?

Dragon Breath--there's a feat I'm going to take at level two that let's me Mark anything caught in my Breath hit or miss.  That's too good to pass up.

In reply to Sir Snow (msg # 37):

I'm totally for you all knowing and having worked together previously. Most players (like 90%+) I GM for don't like that. I MUCH prefer it, actually, and if you'd all be do that that would be great!

So it sounds like, from what I'm seeing, some (or all) of you will already know each other. I'll start you all in the same introduction, and you can PM each other or work in the new OOC thread (once the game starts!) to figure out who knows who. Either way, I don't want long solo introductions. It's either short and sweet, or nothing at all. I don't want to do a rolling system for the introductions. There's no point, seriously. If you roll bad, you'll be horribly punished. If you you roll okay, it will have zero impact, and other than a few posts of dialogue, you'll miss the objective. If you roll exceptionally well, you got very lucky, and I seriously doubt more than one of you would, so that person would have a huge advantage. Until all players are met, I prefer to keep an even footing.

As for roleplaying, no that actually the point of the introduction. It wouldn't be traps and zombies to survive, but things like overhearing a dispute between a drunk drwarf and an elven woman by a wagon. The dwarf would attack the woman, and you'd be there to interact. You'd have a number of ways to diffuse the situation. You'd just be guaranteed the same net effect, but it would resolve depending on what you did. Understand? And players would experience a toll of gain and loss, about equally. It's nixed though, which is fine. As long as you all can work together, and will start in the same mindset, that's 100% better. ;)

I've skipped over the parts where people have been describing their characters since I prefer to keep player and character knowledge as close together as possible, 'cause otherwise I risk getting confused and accidentally having my character act on information they shouldn't have (ie, meta-gaming). My intro to my character will likely be what it normally is - a physical description of what an observer will see, and a description of whatever they happen to be doing at the time. I don't plan on hogging half a thread with some epic long description of my character bursting onto the scene and taking over the action or anything :D.

Was that a yay or nay on the "rolling our own dice" thing, btw?

In reply to Diamond (msg # 48):

Believe me, I prefer to roll my own RL dice. I have three sets of metallic dice, not even plastic ones feel real to me anymore. I love my copper and steel dice set., and bought my best friend a set of brass dice. I have bucket list commission planned to eventually get solid gold ones if my financial situation ever has a windfall of success. Though the gold ones will probably never leave their crystal case. *chuckles*

For rolling your own dice, I'm perfectly fine with it on one condition. If another player really doesn't feel comfortable, then we'll all roll on RPoL.

Some people get squeamish by others rolling their own dice. I know enough about number grouping and statistics to tell if someone is cheating. I don't want anyone else to feel uncomfortable though, TBH. That's my only concern. I look at it this way, if I was at a face to face table, 97% of rolls I'm going to just assume the players are not cheating, since I won't be looking at the dice. If ever I need a specific roll to made very objective, I will ask that player to roll in front of me, and in this case on the dice roller with a label.

I deliberately refraining from answering before, because I wanted others to have a chance to say "sure!" or "Please, no." It's something that's not worth losing another player's trust, and thus engagement over. If after a few days there's no objection, I'll allow it until such a time as it becomes a problem.

Fair enough. I mean, if it's a tabletop I wouldn't expect everyone to be constantly leaning over trying to see what everyone else has rolled...well, maybe if it's a really important roll, like a Death Saving Throw or something, but that's more a case of "Omg what did you get?" than "Hmm, I am suspicious you might cheat". 'Cause if you're gonna cheat at a tabletop RPG, what's the point in playing?

My d20 tends to roll in phases...like, I'll roll low several times in a row, then it'll switch and I'll get a bunch of high rolls one after the other, then back to low again, with perhaps the occasional mid-range number every now and then. Running a session at tabletop the other week I kept rollng 8s for some reason, with the occasional 1 thrown in. I think it was during a fight so I suppose the players got off okay on that :D.

Exactly. :) I played several hundred table-top campaigns to say nothing of sessions, and seldom was a player craning their neck to audit fair rolls. Still people on RPoL have different standards. Which is fine. When in Rome.

No objections from me.   The only time I care to impose dice rollers is when there are competitive events between players.   Otherwise, do what feels the most fun.

Back when I used to be insistent on using rollers,  we had one occasion where a player was using a dice bot over a chat program and somehow rolled a natural 101 on a d100. The random number generator was supposed to churn out a random decimal between 0 and 1, multiply it, round down and add one.  Well, apparently the possible values INCLUDED 1.00000000, and so we had a good laugh about how he automatically succeeded at everything for the rest of the session,  and decided to let everyone roll regular dice if they wanted.

Fair warning, I'm going to go quiet for a few days. It seems like Caaru is the only one who needs my help right now, and so I'll probably answer their questions as I can, but I'm going to intently focus on the mapping and quest pins. Every post I have to read or reply to takes time from reading the sheets and my own notes, and also writing up the quests and NPCs and working on editing the map. So PM me if necessary, but I'll probably not check this thread for a few days. I want to get this part done, and it's involved. So it's going to take awhile even with focus.

Just for the record, the stuff I'm asking about isn't anything major, just tweaking a few final features :). My character is (and indeed already was before this game was set up) pretty much done. Note that I will be adding an avatar once we actually start and you (players) see what my character looks like - no spoilers ;).

Also, haha, that guy rolling a 101 on a d100 is very funny :D. Bet that put your group off using automated rollers (or at least, that automated roller) for your games :D.

What's the risk there, as you see it?

My view is that I don't care if anyone metagames, as long as they're making an effort yo make the game enjoyable for everyone. It's not worth the effort to police it, that I've ever seen.


There is actually an answer to this. There's a fundamental incentive that drives "cheating" in RPGs, as well as over-optimization and other mis-behavior. If the GM (ideally in cooperation with the group) takes steps to keep that incentive from being present, most of that kind of behavior goes away, or at least is less detrimental.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:25, Tue 29 Oct 2019.