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[Ebiris]

Feedback for session 2

Our first real session after the unfortunate issues with session one keeping us from getting much done. The scene in the Eagle Inn started off a little bit slow from my end since it was just the PCs talking to each other and planning and I didn't have to exercise any description or NPC actions, but it's nice to have all you guys interacting and getting to know one another. I feel a bit silly for forgetting ravens can talk, but hey, so did the player who actually owns one so what the hell.

You guys didn't have that much time to get shit done after taking 10 for gathering info, and when Henrietta and Rudy went off to hire boats I rolled how long they'd take to get back, intending to have the Nixie depart for its smuggling rendevouz on the 30 minute mark (so if Glenn hadn't stuck around to keep an eye on it you guys might have been left scratching your heads when you came back to find it gone). Luckily the dice were kind and everyone was back within 10 minutes.

Sneaking with a rowboat is pretty impossible but Henrietta did a good job of keeping everyone distracted. It was only a lucky 20 on Trucy's perception roll that had Rudy and company spotted as they boarded, which coupled with Miranda's hex was unequivocably hostile enough to start hostilities.

On the one hand, having Vark front and centre probably made things a little easy, since he got ganged up on and killed quickly, leaving the other thugs failing their morale checks. I could've had a more involved battle by keeping him held back a bit longer and arrive on deck after the first round of battle, but Henrietta's diplomacy brought him onto the deck earlier than he otherwise would've shown up. He would've surrendered or fled himself if he'd survived one more round without a decisive swing in the battle since his hp was low, but Glenn's firebomb was way more than he could take.

I did like that you guys weren't so bloodthirsty as to murder everyone trying to run or surrender - I can't promise that everyone you show mercy to will prove worth the trouble, but it's nice that you aren't in the stone cold 'fuck it, they'll just cause more trouble later' mindset. Rudy at least seems to have a potential friend (or more?) for letting Vark's girlfriend get away, and Henrietta is already making plans for her hat-mocking apprentice.

I perhaps should have given the gondolier a little more description and personality, given that he ended up in the thick of things, but I was half expecting him to get ditched so everyone could use Rudy's boat rather than splitting the party, so didn't belabour his presence at first, and then once things were underway I didn't want to suddenly put a lot of focus on him.

Miranda's failures at climbing and swimming were sad but also amusing. At least she managed to have a bit of a confrontation with the gondola hijacker rather than sitting out the fight entirely.

Despite the deadliness of low level d&d combat, you guys came out of this one smelling of roses, but you had a good advantage in terms of morale and skill against the smugglers, and for the most part they used more 'soft' attacks - attempts to push people overboard rather than stab them, for example. The Rhagodessa could've been really nasty, but you guys got down while one thug was still alive and it wasn't able to ohko him, so it was well distracted and unable to really focus its really scary grapple+bite on any of you guys - Glenn's high AC saved him from a bite that likely would've downed any other PC had it hit.

All in all, a very good first 'real' session. I had lots of fun with it, and it should hopefully set a nice tone for the party to go forward into more dangerous adventures without recoiling back and grumbling about wanting less dangerous professions.

[Yuthirin]

Oh yeah, me and Gondola Boy are best friends now.

For the record, if Miranda had been able to get to her, she'd have probably killed the woman that shot her. She's got the classic "you hurt me, I'll make you miserable for ten times as long as should be appropriate" witch thing going on. Either that, or she has Daddy Issues. >_>

All in all, as far as our first combat scene went, I think it was great. :D

[Carthrat]

I don't like to give feedback right away honestly, I prefer having a few sessions to get a feel for things before talking about this stuff.

Suffice to say it was pretty funny and I liked the session. Was hoping things wouldn't escalate before I got a chance to swagger, but hey.

[Merc]

I had fun both sessions, yes. Obviously, I don't have much to shine with social scenes though, neither having the charisma or skills to often try it. I mostly seem to enjoy myself with banter with Miranda and her eye-eating raven while the other two do that.

As for Glenn and combat, since the mutagen makes him lose -2 wis, I'm trying to play off that as just being a bit more rash/reckless/impulsive and just slightly loopy/demented at times. Hopefully, doing okay there.

[Corwin]

It was fun, fun was had. I was a bit sad that we didn't actually get to try and bullshit our way through and things degenerated into combat. But maybe next time! Another thing I want to comment on is the GI check/our target leaving. I still think that trying to find out more details on our target and the environment where things were set was the right move. Say we had gone to the boat straight away. What was there for us to do? Try to come up with something random on the spot? Skip to combat? This way, we managed to create a halfway decent plan despite none of us really having the right skills for this sort of job, and managed to get in fun banter (mostly Rudy of Vark, there) which otherwise would have been the standard and bland baiting of some generic villain. So what I'm basically getting at here is that I would've been pretty upset had that ship sailed without us. It feels like it'd reward charging in blindly and with a combat mindset, you know? I guess there's the taking 10 stuff, but considering we had two rolls to make and would've been bound by the result of the slowest anyway....

Man. However it seems from the above, I had fun! Really! Getting a young, inexperienced deputy was neat. Doing the whole Indy thing was also enjoyable. The gondolier can get more personality after Miranda personally thanks him for sticking around. In fact, as a result of how much fun this setting seemed to me, I'm considering trying to stick around in town for a while, rather than try to get on the road like I imagined originally.

[Ebiris]

Well, regarding the boat leaving, that shouldn't necessarily be seen as a write off.

It would've come back within a few hours, and set up an entirely different sort of encounter - the animals would all be gone, so there'd be no Rhagodessa problem (but two more thugs in the battle), and the smugglers would've had their pay from the buyers, so there'd be more cash to loot. On the other hand, there would've been no actual evidence of the smuggling, which could've made it harder to pin wrongdoing on Vark and get Lavinia's money back - you probably could've bulled through and retaken the ship anyway, then used testimony from cowed smugglers, but it creates entirely new problems and opportunities.

If you'd rushed in gung ho at the start you might have had less info, but the ship would've been docked on the pier rather than moored out in the harbour, so it would've been easier to board, and there would've been less smugglers on board for you to fight. But any fight would've been far more visible to witnesses and potential interference.

If you guys wanted to be real heroes you might have tried sneaking aboard as the ship departed with the intent of disrupting the smuggling handover and bringing everyone to justice/getting the most loot, but at the expense of an extremely difficult battle with two sides involved, and the difficulty of actually sailing yourselves back to port.

I'm not going to say you did this the best way or the worst way, but you did it in a way that worked and got the job done without any real pain on your end. What I'm trying to get at is a more living and natural world, where things move and change rather than all moving at the speed of plot to land on preset encounters. You guys took your time on this one, and it worked out pretty well. Taking less time could've worked out well, taking more time could've worked out well. Although had you waited until the next day you'd have had considerably more problems getting evidence of the smuggling or even collaring any smugglers, since they'd be dispersed and blowing their cash at that point.

[Ebiris]

Feedback for session 3

Gondola boy finally managed to shine early on, and become well acquainted with Miranda. Will romance bloom, or was it just a tawdry one night thing? Time will surely tell! I did enjoy the RP this session, you guys managed to more fully cement yourselves as a team and establish your personalities, so there wasn't that much else to do for NPCs when you were all bouncing off each other so well. Hopefully Trucy managed to come across as a bit more than a random goon with her various shipboard skills and banter with the team before she got locked up, and we'll surely be seeing her again.

Likewise I'm glad Rat approves of Maril even after she stole his borrowed boat, and Miranda's implications of revenge should give some hooks with her if she happens to make a reappearance.

I wasn't sure if you guys would actually accept Lavinia's generous job offer, since I know there's been some desire for travelling and the like, but you guys solved the Nixie problem so smoothly that she was genuinely impressed, and your show against the iron viper only cemented you in her good books. Saving her all that money in fines for the impounded ship also gave her plenty cause to be generous towards you. Of course, the vault still holds other mysteries that must wait till next week to be uncovered...

Speaking of the snake, it shows how harsh even light DR can be at low levels when no one has power attack. It was basically built that way, so I can't complain - its offence wasn't much, mostly relying on poison that you guys saved against - that's why it spread its attacks around rather than focusing, to try and hit as many people as it could with the stuff. A pity Miranda couldn't do anything against it, but as a trainee necromancer hopefully she'll have undead goons to handle such work one day.

Any questions or comments, please toss them up here - with the game only having one session a week it's good to have discussion keeping things involved. On that note, how do people feel about having a play by post section for stuff during the week? Primarily for RP stuff like say Rudy's date that was today arbitrated down to a quick charisma check. It's not something I'd want to hold up a session, particularly if it's just one PC, but it could be fun to have something like that running on the side, both for getting to know NPCs and intraparty interaction, or stuff like shopping trips or info gathering.

[Corwin]

Figured the snake had DR, decided to see if low-grade energy spam would work better. Kinda annoying Hat spurned my heroics, but it happens.

Lavinia's offer worked for me since I wanted to stay here for a while to get a feel for the region, and it seemed like fun. Also, I wanted to check up on Trucy.

Speaking of, it might be fun to do stuff like checking up on her via post, but I bet it'd go terribly slowly, as every forum game ever. Also, we'll only be able to do it if a session ended with us in town and there being no rush or deadline ahead. That feels pretty rare.

[Merc]

I don't mind doing stuff by post if it comes up, just a matter of having time for it. Not -usually- a problem, but one never knows. One thing I'd probably want to do along that nature (once I have the money for it, so at least a month in service), is getting permission to build an alchemical lab on or near Lavinia's estate if we're planning to continue working for her for a good period of time, or just find a place where I can, near wherever I live, preferably.

Out of curiosity, what were the effects of the snake's poison, had we failed the fort saves?

[Ebiris]

The snake's poison was 1d6/1d6 str. Do note that I had it work like 3.5 poison with an initial save and a save after one minute. After the session I was informed that Pathfinder poisons work differently, with smaller damages spread over several rounds rather than two big lumps. I'll correct that in future.

[Carthrat]

It might be best if we do things in broad strokes with forum posts, but I can gladly talk about what Rudy gets up to in his spare time.

We must follow our passions! Art!

[Yuthirin]

Forum posts during the week could help us sort out side stuff and whatnot, to help us get closer to the meat of it all when we actually all get together.

[Yuthirin]

Miranda was frustrated by the fact that she was not very effective against the viper, but she'll get over it now that she has been paid, and she has promised Henrietta she'd take her to a nice seedy bar, and see a bar fight. She may even try to incite it. :D

As far as Miranda is concerned, she's already traveling. She's from Jovar, so most of the area is relatively fresh to her.

[Carthrat]

That dungeon was not the best.

First up, I can't say the theme or style was too appealing- there was nothing that made me want to explore it so much as get out, especially once the note was located. I guess I'd admittedly showed up to the place expecting a tense confrontation with smugglers- nothing wrong with eschewing expectations here, but a slow-moving slog through a dungeon, fighting some pretty banal monsters (crabs! ZOMBIES) was really the opposite of what I was hoping for. Dungeons, to work, need to have truly cool set-pieces, locations, weird things, and occupants, and to my mind there was nothing that really gripped me there. Tension and fear can also be helpful, buuuuuut the nature of a dungeon crawl honestly seems to make that hard, and I lack the patience to really enjoy such things anyway.

It was unfortunate that Miranda was KO'd for 4 sessions, to say the least. I suppose we should have rested, but the threat of disease and significant wariness about resting in a place like this were against us there.

I think it would be more cool if you streamlined things for us more; really, when it comes to finding creative ways to knock down doors, climb walls, organize complicated trapdoor-opening schemes, etc, to make the result clear quickly so we can move on, rather than blow long periods of time on stuff that won't work.

I am skeptical of how fun the 'dungeon' part of D&D is as a whole anyway, but when online in particular they really drag; even a perfect game will still have relatively simple things taking aaaages to work out, there's no tabletop miniatures board or anything to visualize things with (and it's a pain to set up online), more advanced dungeons force you to take security precautions and tend to rely on a sort of genre-savviness to get through, so much time is used on prince-of-persia style environment negotiation, and worst of all they're slow, as players we might be able to do better but it's really hard if you're not all that interested in the dungeon in the first place.

I WAY prefer fast-paced action to dungeon crawls, or having strict time limits that force us to negotiate them rapidly without second-guessing ourselves, and having the adventure designed around, I dunno, daring escapes or hardcore assaults, swift in-and-out stuff where you don't have much time to stop and think or rest. Barring that, having interesting inhabitants or phenomena to interact with is a sure way to get my attention and spice the place up, as well as any way in which the dungeon could serve a long-term purpose in the game (thus setting it up for later use.) But this wasn't really those, as far as I could tell.

I really liked the game before the dungeon, which I'm now glad is over. The NPCs so far have been pretty fun, and storming the smuggler boat was a riot, so I'm hoping we can have more adventures in those veins rather than dungeon crawls like this.

[Corwin]

I'm not convinced that resting was a viable option of bringing Miranda back. When we stopped coming after the zombies, the zombies came to us. If we had tried to 'rest', then disease aside, I expect that rest would have been interrupted by an attack. Miranda could only reasonably be around for the ghoul, then, which I doubt she would have been able to damage anyway unless we gave her a silver dagger we had no idea we should have used. Even with limited genre-savviness, why would anyone favor a silver weapon, however masterwork, if silver does less damage in 3.5?

I wholeheartedly second quicker resolutions for things that don't work, I've mentioned this already last week, I think. And really for things that do work. While not pressed for time in any particular way, why not have the equivalent to 'taking ten' for bashing open rusty locks? I can get the realism of a low damage roll not doing much against a lock, but that realism is weighed against me knowing it can't possibly stand in my way. Any time I need to spam 10# rolls is a time where I want to get something over with quickly, and given that I clearly can do this and even prefer it to rolling out the ten dice one at a time, each time pausing for confirmation of success/failure... really, I don't want to be 'forced' to choose what I consider a lesser evil that breaks immersion just to get out of something even more tedious.

I said IC that everything in that dungeon hated us and wanted us dead and I was fairly spot on. The problem with this, as Rat touched upon, is that I have zero incentive of going to such dungeons. I'm not in it for the money, and knowing how terribly fucking scary everything about such dungeons is, there is no way in hell I'll ever return to one IC. We seem to have alternatives, not being the standard D&D adventuring group who simply must go from one grave-robbing to another. What I'm getting at here is that if you actually like such dungeons, it is unfortunate because Henrietta, at least, has been scarred for life and will do her utmost to avoid them in the future. Additionally, visualizing it without a map is doubly hard for me, and just asking you for our remaining options and picking them one by one at random is not terribly exciting. That effectively turns the dungeon into a linear series of rooms where you lead us from one to the other, which might actually have been less difficult to visualize.

Seconding Rat's last paragraph 100%.