Domhani Bairdéir [OOC]

[Scotley]

I'll give it a read.

 

[Maidhc O Casain]

For now, I'm going to allow multiple healings, and not keep track of each wound. The tracking program I'm using doesn't allow for it, and doing it myself is becoming a huge headache. This will make healing magic vastly more powerful than I'd intended (I want the players to really have to think about their resources and how to manage them, which means I need to keep you on the edge as much as I can), so I'll be thinking of other methods to limit the power of healing magic. Any suggestions y'all have in this regard will be appreciated.

Also, this seems to be a good time to ask for feedback about the campaign/adventure. Is everything up to expectations? Anything you'd like to see different? Respond about the game in general, or about the whole 'on the edge' feel - is it getting too frustrating for anyone, or does it add appropriately to the challenge?

 

[mleibrock]

Skath

Mike,

Here are my two cents, seems healing is almost a wasted skill, I know you want it to be difficult, but it is almost impossible to recoup the damage we are having inflicted on us. Either healing needs to be easier as only one of us can heal and only 3 times a day or we need to take less damage below. At this rate some of us are going to die and I will not have enough juice to do anything about it. I don't want to be the one to decide who is going to get healed and who is dispensable.

I am warming up to Skath but this below ground adventure seems overly tough, it just seems like every turn there is something to harm us, does not seem to realistic, would there be this many unrelated bad things there? At this rate, I'm not in favor of finishing clearing the tunnels, I say let's leave them for the queens men.

Mike,

Upon re-reading that sounded really harsh and I did not mean it to, I am enjoying this Skath's character and the party's interaction, I guess I'd just like some feeling of success rather than running with our tail between our legs.

 

[Maidhc O Casain]

OK, let me try to address some of your points, first saying that I'm glad to have the feedback and I'm truly trying to explain, not defend, in what follows.

It seemed from some of your posts that you were getting frustrated. And your feedback didn't seem all that harsh , but that's partly because of 'GM Knowledge' not available to the players - specifically the knowledge that, while the different rooms in the dungeon may not seem related, they are. Just not in ways that are necessarily apparant to the players yet.

One of my goals for this game is to put together a LONG term plot line, with stuff going on behind the scenes the characters may or may not eventually come to know. So, much as in real life, things may appear crazy or unrelated on the surface but they do have their own internal logic.

In regards to the healing, here is my frustration. It seems to me that combat damage in our games has become very black and white. The only concern in any given fight is whether or not the group survives long enough to kill off the last opponent - as long as everyone doesn't die the group will likely be fully (or almost so) rested and healed for the next fight. For example, if this were a typical game the proceedure would be for the group to return to the surface, and through whatever means are available (potions & spells, usually) the group would be entirely healed up by the time they returned underground. This is a simplification, and it doesn't always work out this way, but it seems the physical challenges are often isolated to each individual encounter rather than lasting across the entire adventure (or even campaign).

At the risk of spoiling some of the 'atmosphere', let me say that I will not kill anyone permanently - we all put way too much time, effort, and emotion into our characters for that to be at all enjoyable.

I thought it would be cool to instill a sense of ongoing struggle and challenge. Rather than struggling through one major combat, healing up, and then struggling through another, I want to put in combats that are (relatively) easy to get through - and no one has been near death yet, I think - but that add up to an overall challenge more like what you'd find in a book or movie. Make the game as immersive as I can. But that won't work if healing is too available or easy, because easier combats are also easier to heal up from. It should work out that Skath's healing is not only useful, but vital - those few points he can heal should be what allows the party to survive the adventure and get to the resting point (like Rivendell in 'Fellowship') where they can recuperate and be ready for the next challenge.

I thought online gaming would be a good medium for this type of game, but it may be just the opposite - it may be that because it takes so much real time to move through game time, this type of game is more frustrating than enjoyable. That's what I'm trying to find out through y'alls feedback.

The bottom line is this should be enjoyable for everyone, so I'm trying not to let my ideas get so solidified they get in the way of that.

 

[mleibrock]

Lucky

Mike,

Not knowing how much damage folks are taking is realistic and if I'd had know the first number was how much damage they had taken and not how much was left, I would have felt better, I am looking at these impossible numbers where everyone is almost half gone - thus my feeling of needing to roll 4 healing die. I do worry about not being able to retry a heal once I fail, maybe we could not retry with a 24hr period? Also...how much do we heal naturally with a day of total rest? End and body.

Your point about ongoing struggle is a good one and I see where you are coming from, I like this too, it is very realistic. I have always been a putz, I mean a puzzle man, and we almost had a puzzle but then the guy attached to the wires came alive and kicked our butts. I would like it if we had more intellectual challenges or ones where we have to cooperate to achieve a goal as well, the ice guys are cool and the melting interesting but I guess we do not know enough yet to be able to solve this mystery so as of yet, I can't.

Thanks for clearing things up.

 

[Maidhc O Casain]

STUN and END are recovered at the rate of the characters RECovery score per phase they would act in, if they use that phase for recovery. So, if the characters are resting, all STUN and REC in this game should be recovered within a minute or two. BODY is recovered at the rate of RECovery score/month of 'taking it easy' - normal day to day activities, no fighting/heavy lifting whatever. This can be accelerated somewhat by being in the care of a healer, etc.

My plan is to beat the crap out of the characters gradually over the course of an adventure, then have them in a safe haven of some sort training and recuperating for a fairly extended period during which we would 'forward time' pretty quickly.

BTW, there have been some opportunities offered to head for one such 'haven,' but the party voted to press on. This is fine (excellent, even, since it shows the players mindframe that I'm not beating y'all up too bad). Those opportunities will continue to be offered periodically within an adventure.

As I said, I'm not keeping track right now of which wounds have been healed and which haven't - I haven't figured out a way to do that yet without it becoming a major headache. Until I do, the '3 heals/day' rule is the only limitation (you can heal any given wound more than once per day). I'll think about the idea of healing only once per day - that seems reasonable - though philosophically that seems to be a limitation originating from the healer or the magic rather than the wound as I'd originally intended.

 

[draven14]

Cerallos

My thoughts are divided but for the most part all positive and I'm enjoying this. I have just come to accept that doing this online it may take us a month to get through say 30 or 40 minutes of game time. In some ways I think that's pretty cool.
The healing thing I'm kind of indifferent to, I think mostly because it's not my skill. But I do feel it has helped us and I'm thankful knowing one of us has that skill.

I have enjoyed our adventures and feel we work good together. I hate that we had to lose 2 players but what are you gonna do? Mike I think you've done a great job in continuing on for Athelstan and Longbow. I think the most frustrated I've been was the skeletor room. That was where I felt the most useless and I felt we took the worse beating. Plus it was frustrating to think that we had adequate cover but in fact we didn't. But like Mike said, we didn't come close to death and we did defeat the thing!

I am fascinated with what all is going on in the mines and what we continue to find. I do find myself being torn on the task at hand, I know we need to find out more about the mine, but our original mission was to find what's his name or what happened to him. But I still think as long as we agree as a team, which is what we did, then it's all cool. I kind of consider Bear the unsaid leader of our pack and that's totally cool to me and makes sense. I play my character as if I were him and this is how I would be, I wouldn't want to be the leader, plus I'm trying to keep in the center of my character's mind, what continues to drive him and not to forget that. I can't even remember now if the other characters know what that is. But anyway, I think Bear is doing really good at leading without being a overbearing, no pun intended, and he takes suggestions and other ideas well. I think we're playing our characters well, and the dialogue is enjoyable and it's cool to me to look back and think of all our adventures and happenings.
I do think feedback is important, and knowing that this system can't be perfect, I can't think of any suggestions really.
Thanks to everyone and especially to you Mike.
J

 

[Scotley]

Cool game overall. The group is a lot of fun. I thought the wire riding undead was awesome, even though Gavril didn't accomplish much after the first shot. As for the challenge level, it would be nice to feel a little more success or completion. It bothered me to leave the ruined house in the jungle without really knowing what was going on. We still don't have a full understanding of what the undead meanace from the very begining of the game is about or if it is related to the events at the jungle house or in the mine. Perhaps if all this had occured over the course of four of five weekly face to face session instead of the last 18 months, we would have figured out more mysteries. The slow play speed makes slowly unfolding plots really really slow. We are vanquishing foes and moving forward, but I don't have a great sense of accomplishment. As you know I've stuggled with the same issues in my own game, so I know there are no easy answers. I don't mind getting my ass kicked regularly as long as I survive. I don't know that I agree with your movie analogy on healing. Most films we see the main character take massive damage and then still come back at the end strong. We won't even talk about movie villians. However, I do agree with you that being able to heal up completely after every fight doesn't seem quite right. In that sense I am content with the limited healing we have. I do appriecate what you are trying to do with the longer story arcs and deeper plots. That is certainly the type of game I prefer, but having a few more pieces of the puzzle would be nice. Gavril is certainly great fun to play and I hope he isn't too annoying to adventure with.

 

[Maidhc O Casain]

Jeremy, Scott, thanks for the feedback. I had a way in mind to get you guys 'a few more pieces of the puzzle,' that wouldn't be too far out in game time. But with the real time we end up spending (necessarily so) that could work out to next year sometime in real life. I think part of the problem is that while there are actually several 'clues' as to what's going on that you guys have at least briefly noted, you lack the context to start putting them together, and the clues may be too vague to even be recognized as such without that context. I know what they are and represent, but that's because I have the whole picture. I'll try to find a way that's not too contrived to give a little more of that context.

The other thing to be aware of is that the extended real time required to move the game forward seems to create a false sense of urgency in players. Using the Mansion as an example - it seemed like there was a feeling of having spent a huge amount of time there and a need to press on to the mine (which, to be fair, was the given mission), but the characters didn't spend much time there at all - about a day, if I remember correctly.

The same is true of the mines. True, there's no way for the characters to know how big this complex is, and it feels like they've spent months there (because the players have spent months there). But the party has actually only just spent their second night since discovering the area.

 

[arkansasdave]

Points?

Hey Mike P! How many character points do I have to work with? I am trying to figure some stuff out, but I may be going a little overboard, and I don't want to get my hopes up