Out of Character and Rules Discussion

[ehiker133]

Mar 14, 2013 11:18:59 GMT -6 crusssdaddy said:

*tiny voice* "I'm not dead yet!"

"I feeeeel happy!"

[Deleted]

need to change the name to Fated to Live if we survive this. Or perhaps Fated to be Crushed.

[Mushgnome]

Thanks everyone for your participation! How was it for you guys? Thoughts/feedback/rants/memories of the campaign?

[ehiker133]

All in all, I had a great time, Mush! Thanks for taking so much time out of your life to run your campaign.

There was a lot about the campaign that I enjoyed. I loved the randomness and weirdness that sometimes happened, like Shade's transformation after the cryogen chamber incident and the individual challenges he had to go through afterwards. It created new situations for me to work with, regarding NPC interactions and party interactions.

There were a few things I felt didn't flow as smoothly in the game. Maybe it's just because I'm not used to the concepts of larger campaign battles where you're directing men to fight for you. Even when I first started playing D&D, none of the people I ever played with used the concept of meat shield hirelings who stood in front of the PCs and died while we fought over their heads with ranged weapons and stayed safely alive. So I'm just not used to having underlings and hirelings and retainers.

I was also unfamiliar with the dice rolls a lot of the time. I think I prefer the D20 system.

I'll work on a "What Happened Next" for Shade.

I certainly understand your desire to take a break from DMing. Be sure to let me know when you start something else up - I'd be happy to join in!

[kipper]

Awesome, that's all I can say. I am amazed that Breath and her henchwomen remained largely unscathed, only losing one to the exploding Princess (where else could you say that except CARCOSA! ;D). Awesome.

[Mushgnome]

Thanks for the kind words!

The biggest challenge for me as a DM was balancing encounters. With the unfamiliar Chainmail system, I was not able to rely on my D&D experience and instinct to guess whether an encounter would be "easy" or "challenging." You guys actually quite impressed me by your ability to handle massive encounters with minimal PC casualties. 100 deep ones? No problem! 200 zombies? Bring 'em on! 50HD colossus with save or die attack? This! Is! CARCOSAAAAAA!!! In order to keep the challenge level up, I was going to have to start throwing Cthulhu and so forth at you (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Also this was my first PbP game, it ended up being more different compared with tabletop than I expected. I learned some valuable lessons that I hope to apply to my next campaign.

In the end I succumbed to a trap I've fallen into in real life again and again. I love rules so much, I really geek out on learning new systems and mashing them together, sometimes to the detriment of the game. My friends in my regular group sometimes roll their eyes when I show up to DM: "What crazy homebrew game system did you bring today?" They said Chainmail and Carcosa couldn't be combined, but we did it! And we mixed in some LotFP too! Hooray for us! Unfortunately I admit there were times when the rules became a distraction from telling the story I wanted to tell. I strongly considered changing the campaign-in-progress from Chainmail to d20, but in the end, decided it was best to make like J.J. Abrams and start fresh with "parallel universe" continuity.

Rest assured the next game I DM will use a familiar d20-based system we all know and love; there will be no Chainmail or Carcosa; there will be a bare minimum of house rules and homebrew elements. And yet, I think I've found a "hook" that will appeal to Chainmail Carcosa veterans. I want returning players to say, "oh yeah, this is DEFINITELY a mushgnome game!" but not get bogged down on details like "wait, does AC4 count as heavy foot or armored foot?" And I'm hoping there might be a couple of players out there who want to play with us, but just weren't that interested in Chainmail and/or Carcosa; I want my next game to be accessible to all without a steep learning curve. We are all gaming veterans here, so let's use our shared, familiar, common rules to spin some tall tales of weirdness and adventure!

Anyway that's my "teaser," stay tuned for the "now recruiting" announcement one of these days.

[crusssdaddy]

I didn't really dive into deciphering the Chainmail rules so I just kind of went with the flow -- your brief descriptions and on-the-fly judgments made that easy.

I thought sometimes we were having too easy a time of it in combat, so the added lethality at the end was welcome.

I prefer my characters to have no more henchmen than a porter or maybe a man-at-arms, which gives me a chance to distinguish them by personality. A gaggle of henchies becomes sort of a faceless mob, so I'm definitely of the opinion that less is more.

Good take on the setting, thanks for letting us into your world.

[Deleted]

Thanks a ton Mushgnome i'm sorry I didn't get to join in earlier. I hope if you run something again that you will post over on the Unseen Servant Boards as well as I couldn't have join in on the madness if you hadn't .

I agree less tends to be more in a PbP format specifically. I am running into that trying to run the funnel in Dungeon Crawl Classics and it doesn't work great in PbP

[Mushgnome]

Mar 19, 2013 10:21:25 GMT -6 crusssdaddy said:

I prefer my characters to have no more henchmen than a porter or maybe a man-at-arms, which gives me a chance to distinguish them by personality. A gaggle of henchies becomes sort of a faceless mob, so I'm definitely of the opinion that less is more.

This is a good point. The whole henchman thing would have been more fun gathered around a big table with a bunch of minatures!

Mar 19, 2013 11:55:41 GMT -6 @aquebman said:

Thanks a ton Mushgnome i'm sorry I didn't get to join in earlier. I hope if you run something again that you will post over on the Unseen Servant Boards as well as I couldn't have join in on the madness if you hadn't .

I agree less tends to be more in a PbP format specifically. I am running into that trying to run the funnel in Dungeon Crawl Classics and it doesn't work great in PbP

Thanks for joining in, and you betcha Unseen Servant members will be welcome next time!

[Deleted]

Just want to add my thanks for letting me join this crazyness. I just caught the tail end of a two year epic story (I'm still reading through the past adventures , but I had a great time.



Definitely keep me in mind for whatever you have planned next.

[Deleted]

Indeed. I absolutely loved what I participated in, and I'm looking forward to the next game.