OOC Thread

[LeadPal]

Quite right. Let us enact said plan posthaste!

[LeadPal]

And a fine plan it is, if I may say so.

[LeadPal]

Why thank you!

[SP7]

I agree as well!

[Black Plauge]

I make no comments on the suitability of plans one way or another. I simply ask for clarification when I don't understand them.

In this case, I think it's pretty clear what Ieza wants to do, I just don't know if anyone else agrees with her. Give me one other party member who says yes, and I'll gladly start the ball rolling in that direction.

[LeadPal]

Honestly, I'm pretty sure no one cares. So let's just do it.

[Mercutio]

LP is right as far as Taraka is concerned. He's not a leader unless he's solo, and he's deferred to others as far as all these decisions are concerned.

[zachol]

Let's go with that then.

[LeadPal]

I'd definitely like some more input from you guys though. It feels like I'm driving everything.

[Mercutio]

I'm sorry. I'll try to be better.

[zachol]

I really don't get what's going on anymore.

Edit: I mean, it's my fault, but I feel like I really don't have the head to figure out what's going on.

[LeadPal]

In a year and a half, has anyone, DM or player, opened a dialogue about this game's issues? Because I feel it might not have died if we dealt with why none of us cared enough to post.

[Black Plauge]

Let me turn that around on you, what do you think the game's issues are? I'm scratching my head myself, trying to figure that out. Sure, I've sometimes updated things a bit slower than I intended, but usually it's only been by a day (two at most). The rest of the time I feel like I'm waiting for you guys to do something. Is there something that I failed to provide that you guys needed to stay involved and interested? Some way that the story could have been pushed forward without making it feel like you were being railroaded? I'm a firm believer in letting player actions dictate the course and pace of the story and so have always tried to give you guys as much room to maneuver in as you wanted.

[zachol]

I'm pretty sure I haven't read posts closely enough and don't really know where we are and what we're doing. At the time it feels like yeah, I know what's going on, but my hold slowly deteriorates and your posts make less and less sense until I just don't feel like going on.
Also too much room. A lot of people here that feel like good DMs give me too much room, then I make bad decisions, then they post the legitimately bad results, then I feel discouraged.
It's felt more and more like I could easily make a bad decision, and I wanted someone else (who knows what's going on and knows what we should be doing) to post, since if I posted I'd screw things up.

Ril is a pretty cool dude that I'm interested in, and I bet if we were all sitting down in the same room this game would be awesome.

[LeadPal]

I just lack enthusiasm. Rather than being jazzed to clear these rooms, I feel like they're in the way of the fun stuff. I'm sure there is fun stuff, but I can't see us ever getting there; I'm so weary from trying to move the game that I'm not even sure I could enjoy it if we did. I've pretty much been posting on autopilot.

[Mercutio]

I think railroading gets a bad name. It's not always inappropriate. In some respects, like z said, I think too much openness stifles as much as too much control. In this case, I'm not sure I know what's going on, and I *know* that Taraka is clueless. He's not a leader. He's an outdoorsman.

Beyond that, I can't tell if it's the mechanics behind the character or just not a very well-developed character (I'm leaning towards the latter), but I'm just not as invested in Taraka as I should be. I've felt that way since early on when he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. I'm not sure what I'd do to tweak his build to make it better. I thought, for the class, that he was fairly well min-maxed, but he's not at all.

Overall, I think it's a combination of things--too open a world, too little enthusiasm from players, a general sense of "I don't know what the hell's going on," and I haven't fallen in love with my character the way I usually do.

[Black Plauge]

I guess the funny thing about railroading vs. the sandbox is that this is a pre-written adventure with a fairly linear story line. The room I'm giving you to maneuver in is in how you accomplish the story, not the story itself, which is far less room than I've given to other games I've run. And yet it still appears to be too much.

On the issue of player confusion, that has, in part, been deliberate on my part. One of the things that I really didn't like about the Scales of War when I ran it for my F2F group was how little and how haphazardly the different adventures were tied together. In running it for you guys, I've tried to make the connections more deliberate and so there are some elements here in the first adventure which foreshadow and lead to some of the later adventures, but which by themselves may seem slightly disconnected. As written, for instance, several of the rooms in the dungeon have gnomes, rats, and wererats in them. While the adventure explains their presence by an alliance between the hobgoblins and the mischievous (and sinister) gnomes. However, that's really a throw-away line designed to increase the variety of the monsters in the dungeon. The players never find out about this alliance and it has no bearing on the campaign. Given that I took those gnomes et al. and revamped them into the Kieran, tying them to a later adventure's villian and giving them some motivations that allowed the party the opportunity to interact with them they way they are doing rather than just killing them. Of course, as of yet, the party has only found a couple of grunts in that group and so there isn't a whole lot of information to be gained yet. The leaders who actually know what is going on are a bit deeper into the dungeon.

[zachol]

On the railroading vs sandbox thing, with this game there's clearly a "point" or an end that the DM (or the designer of the module) wants us to get to. I naturally want us to get there. I personally like playing along with what the DM has in mind. When there aren't too many cues on how to get where we're supposed to be going, though, I feel confused.

[LeadPal]

I hate railroading, myself. If I didn't know this was part of an adventure path, I'd suggest abandoning the dungeon to become travelling sellswords or something. I don't really want to explore scores of rooms in a PbP, especially when it feels like the other players don't want to explore either. Of course, if railroading is what's needed to hook everyone else, then I can understand it.

Adding Kieran to the story was a great idea. I've definitely gotten the sense that they serve a greater story purpose, and that there's more to learn about them deeper in the dungeon.

[Black Plauge]

I'd fully endorse the idea of becoming traveling sell-swords. It's an angle that I can work into the campaign relatively easily. The problem is that you'd want to abandon this dungeon to do that. That's flaking out on your current contract and wouldn't bode well either IC or OOC. In both cases people (IC patrons or me as the DM) would be wondering if you'd just do that to the next contract that came along.

So I think the issue as to be rephrased as what it is in this adventure/contract, that would motivate your interest and participation. You have a fairly straight forward mission: rescue some prisoners and recover some stolen artifacts. You've followed the thieves to their lair and need to go in and get them. The lair is a large complex and there are complications hinting at larger issues than a simple rescue and recovery mission. Summed up like that, the story sounds like something that should be interesting and fun to play. However, the game has clearly stalled out, indicating that something about the game isn't catching your attention. Is the amount of combat really that much of a killer? Or is there something else that's just sucking your motivation away? Merc mentioned the fact that his character simply isn't playing the way he envisioned (through a combination of bad build and luck). Is it the same for the rest of you? Are their other issues involved?