NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="kinem" data-source="post: 5126361" data-attributes="member: 24234">I agree, Rhun: time for a roll call!And here's some food for thought: Most D&D games feature a mix of combat, player interaction, and conversation between PCs and NPCs.  PBP handles combat OK, IMO, if you use group initiative.  I didn't start out using it as a PBP DM, but I saw the problems with RAW initiative and thought of a better way for PBP.I'd like to see more player interaction, but the part that seems to cause the most problems is PC-NPC conversation.  That's because there is typically only 1 or 2 PCs that feel comfortable handling it, unlike in combat where everyone does something.  This can slow the game if the 'face' player is not posting often, and even if he is, the others can feel left out.  What to do?In some of my previous PBP games, in which the PCs had to infiltrate enemy lands, language was an issue.  This was a realistic part of the challenge: if you are going to an exotic land, how exotic can it be if they speak the exact same language you do?  And what self-respecting adventurer would confine his travels to non-exotic lands only?  I never had any respect for TV shows in which aliens on every planet speak perfect English, and the only time accents or language barriers come into play is when people from other countries on Earth visit the heroes.The worst was an Underdark game, in which one PC was a drow, and he was the only one who spoke their language.  The PCs could cast tongues spells but never bothered to do so as the duration was limited.  Needless to say, the other players felt left out.  I was hoping they would be more proactive about acquiring better language and disguise magic before heading into the UD, but they weren't and my NPCs didn't offer it.  In retrospect, I should have made sure that every non-drow PC had a "ring of tongues" (not just a pemanent casting, since dispel magic is not exactly a rare spell).Here in X5, set in Mystara, it is assumed that the 'common tongue' is the same throught the continent.  It would have been more realistic to give the isolated nation of Hule its own language, which a PC or 2 might know, but I wasn't about to make that mistake again.Even so, the basic problem of unbalanced NPC interaction remains.</blockquote>

Verification