Official "Gah, missing" thread

[Ebiris]

Yes, Drac, I did think the dungeon would be finished last session. Sadly I underestimated how long it would take to look around a room of corpses and open a magically trapped door. If you'll recall, I also thought we might see a conclusion the session before last as well - I'm pretty bad at judging how much can be done in a session, it seems.

However, regarding your second point about not wanting any more encounters, I have to ask... what do you want? Because 'fighting monsters and exploring dungeons' probably will be the vast majority of this game, regardless of which dungeon you're in.

[Dracos]

'In that dungeon'.

I'm glad to get it, but some break up, some narrative too.  I've nothing against smashing monsters, but it feels awkward if the sensation is 'the dungeon is done?  oh wait, there's a few wussies to mop up'.  I'm looking forward to a fresh dungeon start since it'll be easier to get moving again and the flow of that specific dungeon really got lagging at the end and it just feels more lagging to fight some more before exiting it.

To reference rat's topic, I much prefer a couple exciting fights in a dungeon to "new room, new minor encounter".  If there's some big baddie waiting in the wings?  Cool.  But as it stands it feels like we've hit the climax of the dungeon and are just prolonguing the deuonment before we get to the next dungeon start or preferrably the payoff in role playing hookage.

Edit:

I'm probably sounding harsher than I intend, but I encourage you to note I can't see what you've got planned and don't know it, and am more negative as I've really felt sort of ineffectual as Serene in that dungeon and thus getting out of it has the silver lining of 'I might be more effective next dungeon'.

Dracos

[Ebiris]

You seem to naturally assume that anything else you fight will be a wuss.

I'm sorry, Drac, but I just don't like saying "Okay, you killed the boss! Everything else in the dungeon magically turns to dust!". It's lame and it wastes the work I put into making up the adventure.

Fact is, this game *is* going to be 90% dungeon crawling. I thought I made that clear from the start, so really, if that's not what you're looking for or will have fun with, it's a waste of time for both of us.

[Dracos]

Eb, a lot was simply the impression I took away from the dungeon, half from the dungeon and half from your repeated comments here.  It came off as a 'get to boss, dungeon over' style dungeon.  Hearing each week 'yeah, it ends there' kind of comments sort of make me not want to apologize for assuming what's left after it is mop up, especially when over half the players made the assumption and I'm simply being the vocally confused over it.

I think there's just miscommunication going on here.  But I'm also sensing that I'm just getting you hostile.  :\  I've disliked the tone of our last few back and forths.  I'd like to play but I keep getting the impression that  I make you miserable every time I open my mouth at all, which makes me want to just step out whether or not I like dungeon crawling.  Can we just continue and keep calm on it?  I don't really want a fight, nor am intending to go "Waaah, we're doing a dungeon crawling thing'.

I've simply been repeatedly confused over what we're facing and the hurt snap decisions on the whole thing haven't helped communicate what's actually going on.

I'd like to request NOT giving us repeated flags of "We'll finish the dungeon next week".  I believe you when you say that and assume there's not much left and that we're nearing the cool ender of it.  Also when something is phrased "lead up battles, major battle, cleanup" I'm generally not going to be interested in the cleanup phase.  I find the initial explore of the dungeon far more interesting personally.  If there's more left, there's more left and that's continued exploring, not cleanup and looting.

As I've admitted, and has been drug out far longer than it deserves or should need to, I was generally experiencing a sense of pointlessness with that specific dungeon and how it was built.  Thus when the lure is placed out that we're done and out of it, of course I'm glad and look forward to it and don't immediately catch on that 'no, the dungeon isn't over at all'.

and I got to go

[Ebiris]

Basically, I made some mistakes in how I expected this dungeon to go. I figured you'd do A, B, C, D, and E. Instead you did B, D, and E... so does that mean A and C vanish?

I'm sorry for talking about the game and how I think things will go, but that's part of the fun for me - I don't want to restrain myself from chatting because if I can't do that then it really is nothing more than a thankless grind for me.

And honestly, yes, I'll admit I have been hostile. You complaining over wanting to move onto the next dungeon when it's not going to be that different from the current one besides the scenery and monsters does leave me puzzled and irritated.

Really, you've been negative and uncooperative on this game for a while, now, and it's making me stressed and unhappy with it. I just wanted to have a simple, no frills, game of D&D, but you seem to expect a vast world of fully realised adventures and intrigue at every turn, which only makes me more depressed over my fairly linear plotting. I hope I'll get better at faking depth in the future, but even as I get better at GMing, I only have a couple of hours a week to devote to this, so it will always be a pretty simplistic game at heart. Expecting more is just going to lead to disappointment and annoyance on all sides.

[Dracos]

I'm sorry I've been making you miserable.  I wish you had come forward more directly as really I would've been amiable to simply "Trust me, there's more worthwhile stuff to do."

Can this be fixed and we go on gaming?  Or should I just drop and stop making folks miserable?  I don't demand intrigue, I can be happy with a linear dungeon crawl after dungeon crawl.  All I want is the feeling of meaningful opportunity to use my character's abilities in such dungeons.  If I can have that, I can enjoy the game.  If I can't, yeah, tell me either to build a character that can or to drop.

 I'm sorry I don't deal very well with mixed/confusing signals.  The entire point from coming home on sunday to today I've pretty much been getting a bunch of alternating signals on what's going on dungeonwise and it confused the hell out of me.  I was trying to explain above why I was misperceiving things in hopes of bridging the gaps, but that apparently just was taken as more negativity. :\

[Anastasia]

As a side suggestion I mentioned to Drac, if Serene is the problem, perhaps consider making a new PC, Drac? Tossing this out if that's turning out to be an issue.

[Ebiris]

I'll be blunt. GMing for you is a pain, Drac. I say things like "Hey, I've only got one adventure ready, so it might be a bit railroad-y," and then after being given the adventure setup, your character immediately asks for some other hooks. You say you're 'just RPing your character' but when your RP focus breaks up the game, it begs the question of whether it's worth indulging in. Same again for when you went off to explore the start of the dungeon all by yourself while everyone else had to kick their heels for half an hour.

I shouldn't need to have to tell you that there's more stuff to do, considering you'd seen several areas that you hadn't yet explored, one of which (the locked door) had already been established as something hopefully interesting.

I'll admit, I tried to handle this subtly rather than bluntly telling you my problems, because it's just not something I'm especially comfortable with. (the portcullis trap and the ghoul attack were both my ways of saying "Running off on your own can get you killed!" if you care. Pausing the game for twenty minutes while I scrambled to come up with pseudo-quest hooks in response to Serene's horribly blunt questioning of the quest-giver should hopefully have told its own story). But it seems like every week there's another problem and it's making me weary.

I don't want to ask you to drop, but honestly, it doesn't seem like I can cater to what you want from a game or a GM. I will make assumptions about how adventures will go, and those will come through in my conversations about where we're headed. If that causes such confusion and unhappiness for you, you'd be better off not playing.

If you think you can deal with that? I'm happy to continue - there will be plenty of places where a rogue/ninja can shine, so you don't have to worry about being useless so long as you have half an idea of how to use your abilities to best advantage. But my patience is very thin, right now, so if you see yourself having to bite your tongue in the future to avoid us going down this road again, lets just not waste any more time with it?

I really just want to relax and have fun with this, and lately it's just making me stressed. I don't want to have to kill the game just because one player is making it a chore to run.

[Ebiris]

Sorry about vanishing during today's session - power went out and only just came on abour 4 hours later.

We'll try and finish that dungeon next week.

[Dracos]

I was notified I need to be on campus at 12 on sunday.  Which means I need to leave at 11:35-40.  So I can only be there for the first hour and a half of the session this week.

Dracos
wishes he controlled the scheduling better.

[Ebiris]

We're also lacking Iddy, so... short session this week.

Guess we can get into Silverymoon and you guys can do your shopping or whatever, if nothing else.

[Carthrat]

Here's more gayness! DST kicks in this week, as I've ranted about earlier. As far as I know, this shifts the starting time (for me) two hours ahead...

Anyway we'll see how it goes this week, if it's a short session that's probably ok.

[Dracos]

There's a 99 percent chance I'll need someone to cover for me this sunday.  I've done what I can, but I'm the end of the project pipeline and there's only so much workahead and prediction that can be done.  Thankfully, Two weeks till vacation.

Dracos

[Carthrat]

I won't be able to play this sunday because I need to get up for a test on monday morning. Cor has Alvie, remember to make sure she takes her pills.

[Anastasia]

I may be late/not here for this coming session. I'm getting stomach sick, so if I spend the night throwing up? Well, y'know.