[D20 CoC] Beyond the Mountains of Madness Campaign - Recruiting Alternate Players

[Job]

I came across this topic of interest about halfway through Commander Byrd's "Little America":

"The performance of the snowmobile is gratifying. Arnold Clark is doing a good job with it. It is nothing more than a ford chassis, fitted with skis in front and double caterpillar treads behind. It has attained a speed as high as 25 miles per hour on the smooth Barrier surface, and, in hauling loads from the barrier cache to the base, has equalled the work of five or six dog teams. I wish we had another."

Apparently, our engineer (and sharp-eyed researcher who dug up the web reference) on the Starkweather-Moore Expedition may have worked a miracle in locating 5 of these units for our trip.

Of course, I haven't mentioned the troubles that the Byrd Expedition later had with the snowmobiles...

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Job (the tortured one).

 

[Bobitron]

I won't look into the later troubles, just hope for the best.

 

[Job]

Leave it to my company to fly me into a hurricane...

I finished preparing my presentation on Commander Byrd's Expedition of 1928-1930, and today I fly to Orlando to hopefully deliver it tonight. The powers that be have not cancelled my conference due to the hurricane, so I'll be driving to the airport in a half hour and I expect to have a few interesting stories about the storm.

Wish me luck!

 

[The Shaman]

Wish me luck!

Good luck and safe trip!

 

[Bobitron]

Best wishes, Job. I hope you have a safe trip.

 

[Job]

I have returned! The hurricane turned out to be nothing more than a torrential rainstorm with high winds (for that Orlando area, that is) and my conference was very interesting.

Many attendees were interested in my presentation on Byrd's trip to Antarctica and asked a lot of questions; some were scratching their heads wondering what a 1929 expedition had to do with their work, and I did my best to explain how the follow-up Miskatonic Expedition in 1930, and the Starkweather-Moore Expedition in 1933, would add to the world's knowledge of that hidden continent and the foreshadowed cosmological events.

Uh, not really. But that would've been fun, eh?

So I've posted the first of a few missives that I'll be working on this weekend. Thanks for your patience.

 

[Job]

Poll-time!

I'm taking a poll. Which do you think will occur first?

1. We'll finish this BtMoM campaign?
2. Bethesda will distribute it's Xbox version of CoC Beyond the Mountains of Madness (recently announced as a follow-up to it's brand new CoC Dark Corners Xbox game)?
3. All players who are currently playing in this campaign will have gone utterly insane trying to complete it in a play-by-post format and will be replaced by a completely new set of utterly insane players?
4. The DM will have gone utterly insane in attempting to complete such a huge campaign in a highly-detailed play-by-post format and will be replaced by a new, also utterly insane, DM?
5. The Stars will be Right and the Great Old Ones return?
6. All of the above will occur simultaneously, thus calling forth Azathoth itself to re-establish chaos? YIKES!

BTW, this poll is also open to any lurkers who've been strangely compelled to watch over this vast undertaking.

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Job (the tortured one

 

[Bobitron]

I would say choice two, closely followed by four.

This game is a huge investment in your time, there's no way I'm leaving.

In other news, taitzu had expressed to me he is having internet connection issues. I'm not sure when he'll be back.

 

[Job]

The good news for TZ is that he's OK to rejoin us whenever he solves his connection troubles. I'm not especially demanding about forcing players to drop if they don't post within a certain period of time, and so far all of you, my players, have been pretty lenient with me regarding my occasional detours for travel and work. We fortunately have enough players that we'll be fine if one or two of them are AWOL for a period of time.

If an occasional lurker requests to join us, I'll post a notice and send a PM to our inactive players (i.e. those players who haven't posted in 2 to 3 weeks) that we're considering replacing their character. If we don't hear back from them within a reasonable period of time, we'll make their character an official NPC crew member and allow the lurker to join us.

If we find that we cannot move the story along without a certain character taking an action, but the player hasn't responded in a long while, I'll roleplay that character as an NPC.

Our only point of no return will be the departure of the team from our last port-of-call to Antarctica. After that time, it will logically be a problem for introducing new characters, so from then on, any new players and all replacements for babbling, incoherent, incontinent characters must come from the NPC crew of the S-ME (from which there is a fair assortment of roles/skills to choose from).

BTW, for all of you who have a character in this campaign and would like to create a replacement character (acknowledging the inevitable ) who will serve as an NPC crew member until needed, I'm willing to grant you that option.

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Job (the tortured one).

 

[Taokan]

Option 6, personally. (All of the above will occur simultaneously, thus calling forth Azathoth itself to re-establish chaos? YIKES!) And mutated giant badgers will rain from the sky, thus inspiring Job for yet another campaign.