OotS #462

[Prince of Happiness]

This is a comic strip we're talking about here. The 30 seconds is deliberately wasted

Not as bad as the time lost watching the Kull movie, but much the same feeling.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

So would it be safe to say the waste byproduct has impacted upon the rotary oscillator?

 

[sckeener]

I didn't mind that oots wasn't in the throne room. I guess I assumed the player of Roy was getting to run the good NPCs in the throne room....namely Soon.

 

[Someone]

Disagree, it is described as the Secret Lore of the Saphire Guard, not the Secret Lore of Me Personally, and in the scene where Shojo first sends Miko after the Order, he references the destruction of the other gate specificly (the Redmountain Gate has been destroyed) and Miko tells them before the trial that the charge related to destroying the magical gate. It makes more sense to me to assume that Miko knows what the gate is and where it is.

Reading some old strips looks like you're right; the guard knows about the gates. I'm not sure if they all know about what they do.

 

[DaveMage]

Well, we knew (from the Oracle) that Xykon was going to head towards another gate at some point, so it stood to reason that the gate was going to be destroyed anyway.

The fact that Miko did it now vs. the other paladin at the beginning of the battle really doesn't matter, does it?

 

[Mystaros]

What happened here is what we classic players call "PC's Lost Track of the Action."

Note in #461 that it appears that the PC's have been arguing all this time, since they got away from the archers in #455. This is typical when the leader of the party is down and out, and you have a party that is otherwise not cohesive. During this time, Redcloak got in the castle, challenged and defeated the cleric, got into the throne room and started defeating the guardian spirits... that's a LOT of time. And what are the PC's doing?

Arguing about how to get into the castle!

In the old days, adventures didn't simply sit around waiting for the PC's to show up, just so that they could be the "heroes" of the "story". The PC's were the "heroes" only if they made the right decision at the right time; otherwise, they failed, and Bad Things happened. Victory was not handed to them in a script. A good DM has a timeline of events that will happen in the future, and takes into account changes that are made if the PC's intervene.

If Sam and Frodo had started arguing about who got to drink the last drop of water in Mordor, Bad Things would have happened.

If Luke had argued with Rebel Command instead of trusting the Force while on that last run on the Death Star, Bad Things would have happened.

Of course, in those cases, there were scripts. OOTS is not a scripted novel or movie; it is a recreation of a Dungeons & Dragons game.

The world does not revolve around the PCs. And the PC's in OOTS are about to find that out the hard way...

 

[Kahuna Burger]

What happened here is what we classic players call "PC's Lost Track of the Action."

Note in #461 that it appears that the PC's have been arguing all this time, since they got away from the archers in #455. This is typical when the leader of the party is down and out, and you have a party that is otherwise not cohesive. During this time, Redcloak got in the castle, challenged and defeated the cleric, got into the throne room and started defeating the guardian spirits... that's a LOT of time. And what are the PC's doing?

Arguing about how to get into the castle!

In my game, the players would have argued for maybe 5 minutes, at least half of which would have been spent trying to get the DM to tell them whether their charcters can aim a catapult. (the DM would have been happily rolling against his own npcs while Haley's character patiently says "I rolled a 16 on my int check, can I know if I could aim this thing through the window or not?" three times) and then the DM says "OK, your characters argue for 15 or 20 minutes and then there is an explosion."

 

[Felix]

How is it Chaotic? She sees the other paralyzed paladin was about to do the same thing before he stopped.

It is my inkling that Miko's motivations include something other than preventing Xykon from controling the gate.

 

[SteveC]

I liked this one. I know that Xykon and Red Cloak are the bad guys, but I am really looking forward to their new book. The lines about them having a shot at the prize made me think of a bad cop-buddy movie, which always makes me smile.

And Miko is about to add "mass" to her new "murderer" trait. Azure city is about to go boom!

--Steve

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What happened here is what we classic players call "PC's Lost Track of the Action."

Note in #461 that it appears that the PC's have been arguing all this time, since they got away from the archers in #455. This is typical when the leader of the party is down and out, and you have a party that is otherwise not cohesive. During this time, Redcloak got in the castle, challenged and defeated the cleric, got into the throne room and started defeating the guardian spirits... that's a LOT of time. And what are the PC's doing?

Arguing about how to get into the castle!

I concur.

Another way Rich could have done this is show the OotS arguing, arguing, arguing over the course of a long strip, show the KABOOM, Xyxon and Redcloak escaping and Miko standing there triumphantly in the ruins and then given us a flashback, but this works just fine for me.

Hoping and expecting all other players on the field will wait around while the PCs get their crap together is what leads to this sort of thing, and rightly so.