Six month status update

[Ebiris]

Well, it'll be six months three weeks or so, but it felt a more meaningful milestone than five months.

As you may or may not know, Dune has elected to drop from Snowfall & Swordplay

So I ask the rest of you - what are your thoughts on the progress of the game? Having fun? Annoyed by something or other? Going through the motions?

Honestly, I'm feeling pretty bummed out - I've enjoyed the various challenges of running the game, and done my best to try and build it up as we go along with the maps and persistent plot threads and so on, but Dune's departure reminds me that I haven't really been able to satisfy everyone.

Honestly, I'm not even sure what I can do with feedback, since it's been clear already that different players have different desires (the gridmaps, for example, haven't been universally well received, and some people seem to prefer a more flexible approach to the rules than others), and I've got my own inherent preferences I'm not so good at compromising on.

Mmm... just think of this as a chance to clear the air on anything that's bugging you, I guess. What I'm really getting at is: Do you still want to play?

My own answer to that is sadly uncertain. As I said earlier, I've genuinely enjoyed the challenges of GMing, and it really is satisfying to run a good session. But I guess I'm not sure how many sessions have actually qualified as 'good' lately...

I feel like I've learned a lot from S&S, and even if the game does get canned, I think I'd try to run something else assuming I could scrounge up the players, so don't be shy about saying for example that you're happy to play with me as a GM but feel that S&S has run its course. It was never intended to be much more than a bunch of loosely connected dungeon adventures - which is basically what it has been so far, even if wheels are in motion to kick off more far reaching plot arcs.

Well, that was vague and rambling and rather indecisive, so I guess I'll now turn the floor over to you guys.

[Carthrat]

I do look forward to S&S each week.

And that basically says it all. Sessions aren't perfect and there are often things that irritate me or bug me when they come up, but I wouldn't stick around in a game I didn't enjoy.

I've really, really liked the grids and attention to movement and spacing and such. You've shamed me, really, but it's a treat to be able to accurately determine exactly what my options are without *needing* to constantly bug you (though I guess I do that anyway. Eheh.)

The thing that annoys me most, paradoxically, is that attention to detail. It is a weird problem, but there are simply times when it's not fun or expediant to pay attention to exactly how the rules work. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of back in the first dungeon, with the portcullis (where I hear we had to remake checks that ultimately meant nothing), and perhaps more recently, when Dune was talking about the AoO vs the dragon. I'd probably have given it to him. It'd make a pretty cool scene.

I guess thinking about stuff visually is important, too. Think about it like stunting in Exalted; if you have a really cool idea and express it well, you can literally *break the rules*. You can't count on it, and you can't do it all the time, but sometimes it just *fits*, you know?

Hmm, my other complaint is one that I wouldn't normally make. But the bad guys, dude. It feels like you're whipping up a lot of very tough foes, and when we can't handle them (shame on us! But yeah;) they act stupidly to compensate.

I guess how you interpret that is up to you, though. There are times where it's very lame to literally kill a character (like when he's being NPCd).

Well, I'm not sure what I'd do with a comment like that.

Hmm, last thing would have to be the sudden spurt of levelling we just had. I'm probably alone in this, but I don't desperately need huge chunks of XP and loot to stay happy. It felt weird in weekly, and it feels weird here to increase in power by leaps and bounds so fast... though, in this case, we actually had a sunny blessing to go with it! That'll be my rationalization.

Combat itself, I'm liking it. I'd prefer a more rounded game, perhaps, with more to do than fight, but I don't mind, per se; I do like how the environments are becoming more complex and we're having to take different factors into account. Feel free to get terribly crazy; environmental factors MAKE fights. And open up all sorts of options for me, personally. >_>

One thing, too. People tend to focus on flaws, I think. I did it here, too. But don't take that as discouragement! I think this is a cool game, I'm likely to keep playing, and if you decide you want to run something else, I'll probably play in that, too.

[Merc]

Given that I gave up my one chance of the week to sleep mornings away to join your game, having to wake up at 5:30am (work) or 7:45am (BF) otherwise, well... it'd be pretty damn lame if the game died just two sessions after joining. =p

Anyhow, I don't have much to say on your GM'ing, based on just two sessions. Nothing to really complain about, and the only thing I can say I really liked is the availability of map grids.

You also update them far more regularly than that lamer Rat does in BF, which is awesome.

[Anastasia]

Hi. <_<

Honestly, I'm feeling pretty bummed out - I've enjoyed the various challenges of running the game, and done my best to try and build it up as we go along with the maps and persistent plot threads and so on, but Dune's departure reminds me that I haven't really been able to satisfy everyone.

You can't always make everyone perfectly happy. You can try, and you might even succeed on your end of it as far as you can. But you're going to run into human nature sooner or later, and someone's gonna end up unhappy. It's nothing against you, I think you did a bang up job for my run in S/S. My malcontent issues came from the rules - which you can't make everyone happy with, especially when they have fundamental gripes with them - and other PCs. That's nothing to fault yourself over.

I know you know the following, but I think it bears a reminder. Sometimes the GM can do his best and you'll be unhappy due to factors outside of his or her control in a game. It happens despite everyone's best efforts, so don't kill yourself over it. You have a large berth of happy PCs, keep on going with them.

Condensed? Don't go all mopey over this and lose your momentum. You can't win 'em all, but you can win the important ones.

EDIT - Missed some stuff.

Honestly, I'm not even sure what I can do with feedback, since it's been clear already that different players have different desires (the gridmaps, for example, haven't been universally well received, and some people seem to prefer a more flexible approach to the rules than others), and I've got my own inherent preferences I'm not so good at compromising on.

It's time to play Crappy Simile and/or Metaphor Time:

GMing is like parenting. Sometimes you do things you dislike to make your children happy. This is one of the most difficult parts of GMing, one I happen to naturally excel at. You can't go so far as to let the PCs take advantage of you and become spoiled children, but sometimes they deserve the trip to the arcade! Being able to smile, nod and say it's okay despite what you feel is something that's worth cultivating within reason.

God in heaven, I took that image way too far.

[Anastasia]

Hmm, my other complaint is one that I wouldn't normally make. But the bad guys, dude. It feels like you're whipping up a lot of very tough foes, and when we can't handle them (shame on us! But yeah;) they act stupidly to compensate.

I've noticed this myself, but I've been writing it off to Eb learning the ropes of D and D balance. It's a tricky thing and there's another flaw. It's one thing for a PC or two to die, I suppose. It's another for a party kill because you underestimated a monster or overestimated the player characters.

So eh. There's no clean and easy answer. The red dragon was overpowering against us, especially in conjunction with it's movement capacities in a very movement centric game. On paper it might've looked better, but as it was? We could've been wiped out or boxed into a corner pretty much with ease, soooo.

Hmm, last thing would have to be the sudden spurt of levelling we just had. I'm probably alone in this, but I don't desperately need huge chunks of XP and loot to stay happy. It felt weird in weekly, and it feels weird here to increase in power by leaps and bounds so fast... though, in this case, we actually had a sunny blessing to go with it! That'll be my rationalization.

To be fair, it is a weekly game. The passing of real life time can influence this. It was only about a week in game for this dungeon but it felt like, well, a long time to me. We spent about six weeks at this, after all, so levelling up doesn't feel wrong.

[Corwin]

I'm with Merc, except for the whole waking up on a weekend thing.

Thought about this some more... the fights are fun. I think I'd personally prefer villains who nastily use everything at their disposal over villains that are powerfully overwhelming. So it's not the CR but how they use it, I guess.  ^^

It would be nice to have more chances for the talking in between the fighting. Talking that actually matters in itself, and not serves as a prelude for another job. But I figure not everyone might find this fun, so....

The grids, I like them. I'd be entirely too comfortable with simpler ones if these are too much effort. It's nice to have them look aesthetically pleasing, naturally, but their purpose is really to show us where everything is, and how we can act.

I believe it would have been better had Merc's private log been kept from being posted until we knew about the dragon and about his char IC. I only mention this because situations like this might happen in the future, too, and I figured I'd offer this up for discussion.

I dunno about the leveling and such. It all depends, really. Rat doesn't like it, but he prefers to reach a certain level and game there. If you don't plan to stop somewhere along the line and keep on going at that level, it really wouldn't matter. Personally, I don't really mind either outcome.

[Dracos]

*waves to Dune* I'll miss ya. :\  It was good to get to game with ye.

I'll be back starting with this weekends session (Given no massive surprises.  Which I'll shoot laser beam eyes at), and well, it's been six months.  I've been having fun and been appreciating that it's been flexible with my insane schedule so, yeah, I'm hoping we're continuing.

Without having read the last one, I think there has been a bit of a push towards stronger enemies over smarter ones, with the sense that we've been maiming a lot of really strong enemies anyway.  I, contrary to rat, don't think a strong move towards smarter enemies will necessarily solve everything (you've got a bunch of smart players too and several breath the rules level folks, which always makes it hard), but I wouldn't be opposed at all to some sort of aiming for a more middle ground sense: Smarter enemies that aren't quite as overpowering.  Or possibly using some other method of flex balancing.  One I've seen used well before is giving tokens of 'helpme' to folks when they're doing good/smart actions and allowing them to get a little help with them when things aren't going their way (Whether enemy balance is too hard, or bad rolls or whatnot).

I really liked the gridmaps, btw.  Much more than I thought I would.  I'm usually not big at all on that kind of thing preferring to just ask and get answers, but it was nice.

I vaguely have a wonder on how much I might be building against the flow of the game with Gourash, trying to amp in specific areas greatly rather than a lot of specialty stuff, which seems to be the flavor of magic in the setting, both in purchasable avaliability and general treasure; which is neat, but makes me think I've got too simple a concept for much of it.  I dunno, maybe I'll expand it with Dune stepping out, but probably not as I've been having fun with Gourash and feeling it fit the mix well in general.

As far as leveling, I agree with both rat and dune oddly enough.  It did feel weird to level so much in one 'adventure'.  At the same time, it was nice to have progress over a bunch of weeks and there were a lot of big baddies there.  As far as leveling out?  i tend to prefer the 12-16 range personally.  We're under ten still and as such I'm not blinking an eye at moving up quickly.  As far as play wise, we've barely gone around the block and clearly we're dealing with an environment well suited to handle all the way up into the 30s, what with astral beings spying on us and devils and demons alike annoyed in their own ways.

On rat's comment?  I absolutely adore stunt type things, as in exalted or otherwise.  Rewarding folks for doing neat stuff to me tends to result in more neat narrative battles rather than a reliance on safe technique.  I could attack the troll... or I could try and cut the tree down on top of him.  We're more likely to be tactical the more tactics are rewarded, as has been seen.  We're more likely to expand the creativity, the more that gets rewarded too.

*shrugs*  Anyhow, just barely got back.  I'll see you..fridayish?  I dunno.  I hopefully won't be late as I think the time might be starting at like 5 in the morning for me now.  ^^;

Dracos

[Ebiris]

Okay, first of all I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to respond, here. It's nice to get detailed feedback like this, and I'd like to take a chance to explain some of my thoughts on the points raised.

Regarding the pointless checks in the first dungeon - yeah, I haven't done that since then. I guess at the time the intent was to be very exacting on the detail, as well as keep your attention on areas you might consider 'cleared' - for example you guys actually missed one moderately challenging encounter and a fair bit of treasure in that dungeon by not looking everywhere (there was stuff on the second floor that you'd have needed to climb up to access, as well as stuff behind the collapsed passageway that would have required some effort to clear). I guess that hits on my tendancy to award things by taking the time to think about the terrain and layout rather than just saying "We take 20 on our search check, what do we win?"

Stunting... Hmm. I like Drac's example of cutting down a tree onto a troll. In that case I'd probably give the troll a reflex save and if he fails then he'd take some damage (less than a proper attack) and have to spend a round moving the tree off himself (or longer if he blows his strength checks) rather than attacking you guys.

On the other hand, I don't feel AoOs would be warranted at all on the dragon. It was only CR 7, and as the battle proved, you guys would tear it apart quite quickly given the chance - I might have let someone with a melee weapon ready an action to hit the dragon as it strikes, but AoOs are too much since you guys could probably outdamage it. To make that fight more interesting, I loaded it up with aerial combat feats so it could take advantage of flyby attacks and reach to strike you with impunity unless you diverted from your normal tactics - Between Amonet's lance and ranseur, and the looted glaive, plus the bows dropped by all the Gith, you guys had plenty of ranged/reach options to battle with.

When it came down to it and Alveria expressed an interest in talking with it, I was happy enough to go with that - I figured with a suitable bribe the dragon could be talked out of finishing you off, and I really just had it land because aesthetically it fit better for it to be conversing that way rather than flapping its wings to hover in the air as the conversation went on. Had I known you guys were going to charge it I would have kept it airborne and not moved init forward until dialogue was concluded.

Still, overall I do want to see more stunt type stuff, since it makes for dramatic encounters. As an example, Gourash clambering onto the mechanical crab monster was great fun, and it worked too, since he distracted the pilot before Alveria got crushed/thrown. Hmm... y'know, on that note, I wouldn't have been too averse to someone say trying to leap and grab onto the dragon as it flew past them - there'd be a few checks involved in that, but it'd give you plenty of chances to hurt it if you lacked reach weapons.

I am liking the greater variety in terrain in combat and the changes it forces in your tactics, so expect more of that, for sure.

Levelling has been a bit fast lately - I have tended to award more experience for some creatures than they perhaps warranted. For the Gith battle I actually awarded the exact experience as given by the encounter calculator on the SRD, just divided between the creatures killed as I felt appropriate - I'll probably stick to that method in future. Honestly, I hope you guys do get to level up quite a bit more, simply because I've never played a D&D game that got that far, and I'd like to see you guys get at least to your teens, level-wise.

As for weaker villians who use every vicious tactic at their disposal... well, you guys are accumulating quite the stable of defeated foes with grudges. I only need 2 more to round out the Githyu Force... (besides which, there's a dragon's hoard out there without a dragon, now, but he's probably got some kobold minions watching it. I remember reading once about a low level kobold tribe that fucked up a high level party with nasty tactics and traps)

More party (and NPC) interaction would be nice, I think. This week's coming session at least shouldn't have any combat, more of a chance to relax after this big adventure and figure out what you do next, so should be opportunities for that. Besides, with Alveria at least wanting to stay inside Silverymoon for a while that gives opportunities for more cerebral challenges to keep you occupied.

About Merc's log, it was my plan to keep that secret, since the dragon's sudden appearance was meant to be a big 'oshi-' moment. Sadly I was undone by my own gridmap after someone pointed out in PM that I'd uploaded one with all the sprites I was using for that session showing off the map, including the dragon. After that I figured it was no surprise...

Anyway! Thanks again for posting, guys, I think this has been a productive exercise and am feeling far better about the coming sessions of S&S.

[Dracos]

Notably?  I find the situations where I can be clever within my characters general genre more satisifying.  Certainly ranged is a change in tactics and I'm sure rat swooned at the whole thing, but to me it's just a "Well, yeah, I could make this a more rounded character towards that...and coincidentally less conceptually fun and more  conceptually the generic warrior".  We've got a good troop with good flexibility for a lot of things, but I much prefer things like the giant mechanic crab (which offered possibility for creativity) then situations like "horde of archers" or "Flying unit that won't be tricked to land ever" which mandate a specific tactic because in repeatedly matching to that, it just gets more generic.  I'm not carrying a bow largely because I'm not a believer that every damn fighter should be a model archer as well.  Maybe I'm just whiny on ranged weapons but I think scenarios like the Gith keep or other environmental scenarios provide plenty of instances to reward those using them without mandating that we just ready ourselves to switch on the dime to such.

 The whole kobold with tons of traps thing?  I've played that game before with Shade with a character fine tuned for such.  It was really really not fun, as I think rat can attest as well,  You'll probably run it much better, in fairness, and I've not yet gotten a chance to see how Merc joining and Dune leaving will alter the dynamic, but I glance at our group and I can't help but think: "Boy, that's going to be a really slow going session with our team".

Mmmm, well, late night musings anyway.  Half incoherent.

Hopefully I'll see ye tomorrow sometime and we can chitchat a bit, same with Rat cuz that hoard of treasure is well sizable and I'm not sure w hat's going on with it either way or what, if any, Varul is taking in fairness.

Dracos