Battle Royale of the Gawds continuation

[green slime]

Clockworkjoe:

I am aware how much time and effort you had to put into the organisation and running of your game.

I for one appreciate the effort.

However for me the fun was spoiled by calls of DM partiality. Having people unjustly accuse the poor overloaded DM at every move, is just ludicrous. That combined with some really snotty attitudes from certain players that I interacted with during the early stages of the game killed all enjoyment of the game for me.

As a player, everyone feels hard done by sooner or later. But as a player, in this type of game, you have to have the maturity to just suck it up. Sure, it sucks, sure, you wonder "how in the hell did he know this?" Most probably they didn't. They just got lucky.

In Love, War and GoDs, some people get lucky breaks. In a game of this character, it is the ability to exploit lucky breaks that make a winner. Not just a twinked out bucket of cheese. You loose by making a mistake, not by your clever strategy. Having a clever strategy just means you are more likely to be in a position to utilize those lucky breaks

It is a game. And in EVERY GoD, the DM has made unfortunate mistakes. They (the DMs) are ONLY human. Ranting and raving about DM manipulation and scheming is just not fair to the DM.

When I had applications out for my abortive GoD, you have no idea the amount of work just to get the majority of the potential players to follow the rules as declared.

Some such as Dr Midnight, and Number47, did send in characters that abided by those guidelines as laid down by the DM, or only required minor tweaking. Gaming with these fellows is a) always fun b)always a challenge c)always civilized. Hats off to you two!

Others just disappeared, never answered multiple emails to correct their characters, others kept on trying to add on magical items that were strictly off limits, miscalculated stat generation (never too low), granted themselves more feats than permitted, tried to squeeze in PrC's, classes and races which were off limits and spent more money on equipment than was given.

It really is a real *censored* being a DM for some people around here. Just some simple rules to follow, and they can't manage. No thanks, no appreciation of the actual work load, nor any realistic expectations on character survival. Just some inane belief that nothing bad should befall their character(s).

I knew the GoD at character level 15 was going to take a Humungous amount of time; the ability for these high level characters to avoid almost certain death with some special ability/feat/item is incredible.

 

[clockworkjoe]

I did screw up on some rulings. However, I was not partial to Martok . If I was, then I would have advised/altered his character to be able to kill Therron and Jade in the first 3 rounds. But Martok's main advantage over Therron came from 2 spells, Maze and Forcecage, both of which are commonly used high level spells. Martok's placement was random as was everyone else's. I still think the tree was a valid ruling, as I gave most players a lot of leeway in rulings, like Dr. Midnight's Nimblewright, and I gave Macallan the more favorable interpretation of the shifter rules allowing to shift into a dragon. In most cases, I gave the player the benefit of the doubt, so I don't see how the tree gave Martok a huge advantage.

You see the thing was that I wanted to experiment a lot in this game as you can tell. I wanted to try new things, and new situations. I'm never satisifed without some experimentation in a game. So, I came trying new things every round, which turned out to be a bad idea in the end.

I apologize to all the good players who were left out in the end, and if there is some way I can make it up to you guys, just let me know.

 

[Number47]

Well, you can continue to participate and have fun in other Games of Death. I really hope you can use Seasong's to revitalize your interest and wash away these bad experiences.

I just really wish the players who didn't want you to be a DM hadn't bothered playing. I thought you had made it very clear that you were more than a judge, but an actual Dungeon Master. This what killed the fun, you fighting with players over what your role was. I, at least, came into the game knowing that you were not Mr. Ruleslawyer. I knew that there would be rules mistakes. It happens.

 

[reapersaurus]

great, now green slime is portraying cw as the oppressed DM, who spent his efforts solely to provide us players with a Game that unfortunately had players that wrecked it.

fine.
however you want to spin it is inevitable, i guess.

What I'm wondering, is that if anybody has any questions or curiousities about some elements of characters?

The two off the top of my head are:
1) how did Doc Midnight get to play a Nimblewright (CR 7), and add 5 HD, then add 5 fighter levels? So a 15 HD nasty (cool) construct is now an ECL of 10? Shouldn't he have had to use DM Advantage #9 : special background to play a creature?
2) How did Macallan get around the limitation of Wildshape that limits the forms to those of his HD and lower?

 

[Number47]

I wondered a lot of things about every character, myself. I don't have or know all the rules, so I simply trusted the DM.

Unless I miss my guess, the Nimblewright had little chance of winning. With no con, it had fairly low hit points and it couldn't recover those at all.

 

[clockworkjoe]

great, now green slime is portraying cw as the oppressed DM, who spent his efforts solely to provide us players with a Game that unfortunately had players that wrecked it.

fine.
however you want to spin it is inevitable, i guess.

What I'm wondering, is that if anybody has any questions or curiousities about some elements of characters?

The two off the top of my head are:
1) how did Doc Midnight get to play a Nimblewright (CR 7), and add 5 HD, then add 5 fighter levels? So a 15 HD nasty (cool) construct is now an ECL of 10? Shouldn't he have had to use DM Advantage #9 : special background to play a creature?
2) How did Macallan get around the limitation of Wildshape that limits the forms to those of his HD and lower?

1. It was his special advantage if I remember correctly, and the +5 HD is balanced out by the fact he had no CON to boost his hitpoints. Furthermore, I gave him only 50k gold as opposed to 200k, which I felt balanced it out.

2. Macallan made a good case that the rules could be interpreted differently and like I said I gave most players the benefit of the doubt.

A lot of you didn't know when I made the tree ruling and other rulings that seemed to favor one player over the other is that I made allowances for a lot of people. I tried being generous to as many people as I could without going overboard.

Another problem I've thought about running a GoD is that 3E rules are made for players next to each other not PBEM. The DM running it needs to make a lot of house rules to streamline the game.

 

[reapersaurus]

this is quite tragically funny.

Norman's Advantage was Fandom. In other words, he didn't even pay for the creature. And the DM didn't even bother to check his own created rules, and some of the vocal players shrug and go "Meh - no big deal."
And no effort was spent trying to estimate the ECL, as stated by clockwork that it would be. In Dragon 293, a 15 HD Shield Guardian with 48 less attribute points and no feats and weaker abilities is rated by WotC at 23 ECL (!).
You don't use it's CON as a justification for not making the player pay for a 5 HD advancement - that's taken into account with the ECL estimation.

"Macallan gave a good case?"
It's AFAIK straight-forward in the D&D Rules - Wildshaping is limited by HD.

I guess green slime's & number47's approach was different than mine:
I expected a fair combat, with some attempts at following rules, while they expected a slam-bang pageant that simply played lip-service to the rules and fair play, instead concentrating on the fantastical effects and stylized Arena and roller-coaster actions of the Gawds.

Actually, remembering back, clockwork even told me that he wasn't checking the entries of the other players - he singled me out for rules-checking, and even started denying me by-the-book rules after he said he hated my character concept.

So I guess the major question that should be clarified in any Game of Death from the beginning is whether or not the focus is on impartiality and correct rules, or on the spectacular.

 

[Number47]

This comes from a player who also got a lot of special, not-paid-for, perks. Nobody else was allowed to use Oriental Adventures, but you "made a good case for it."

 

[reapersaurus]

no, 47: I asked form the very get-go for one PrC, and it was approved.
That wasn't an advantage;
just a small addition to the large host of sources of material that were included (I shouldn't need to detail the over-powered things that other players were allowed).

Everyone knew from the outset about my PrC, everyone could have used it, and it actually is quite the disadvantage having people know what class you are entering in a GoD, but I purposely wanted to be above-board and in-front about my character so there would be no statements exactly like yours which doesn't apply.

[rhetorical] Why do you bother posting a post if it's as blatantly incorrect as that? [/rhetorical]

 

[Number47]

You were one of the last to have a character in, thus those of us with characters already in actually couldn't use it. From your character sheet, there is obviously more than one thing from OA in it. If you want to be open about your special perks, that's your business. Others chose not to.

So you asked from the get-go to have one PrC, and it was approved. Dr. Midnight asked from the get-go to play a construct, and it was approved. Single Malt asked from the get-go to be able to shift into dragons, and it was approved.

Oh, but I guess that's somehow different.

By the way, you clearly did not want an even match. You have hollered all over about how nobody could ever touch Therron because you used a broken OA prestige class that nobody else had access to when they made their characters.