Goodman Games

Hey all, with the recent release (at least to KS backers) of Tales From the Fallen Empire on PDF I figured I'd strike while the iron is hot and see about interest in starting up a PbP game for it.

Recruitment is totally open to people who missed the kickstarter but plan on picking up the PDF once it is available for 'public' sale as it's going to take me a little while to start digesting the book anyhow so it's not like we'll be starting right away. Unfortunately it would be pretty much unplayable if you were not planning on buying it as there are a lot of changes to the base game of DCC, and a lot of setting specific lore that would be absolutely greek to you if you didn't own it.

I'm kinda leaning towards running it on ENworld, largely because I much prefer ENworlds dice roller rather than Invisible Castle, but I'd be OK with running things here too if that's the consensus.

I also like using Obsidian Portal as a campaign manager. If things take off I'll spring for the Acendant membership, my little home game has no use for it, but it has some features that would be handy for a PbP.

I've already got two folks who've expressed interest, but I'd be looking for 2-4 additional players. I will be running a funnel adventure, using the standard DCC chargen rules (using cultural backgrounds from Tales) with the following exceptions (plus other assorted house rules):

0th level hitpoints start at max (ie 4 modified by your Stamina)
Luck (and only luck) is rolled using 4d6 drop the lowest.
The only character classes available from the core book are the Thief and the Warrior. (that's right we're going clericless)

Related to the tragic lack of a healbot, characters have a 'healing pool' equal to their Stamina multiplied by their level. With one nights rest they can subtract any number of hitpoints from this pool to recover lost hitpoints on a 1-1 basis. For example Barri the 1st level Sentinel looses 6 hitpoints in a battle with a bandit, but he has a Stamina of 14. That evening he sets up camp binds the gash on his arm, and gets a good nights rest. By subtracting 6 points from his 'healing pool' of 14 he completely restores his health. Alternatively if desperate measures are required the healing pool can be used without resting for the night. If a character spends a turn recuperating he can restore hitpoints from his healing pool on a 2-1 basis. Barri's 6HP of healing would cost 12 hitpoints from his pool. If things are truly desperate then the healing pool can be used in a single round at a 4-1 basis representing a character digging deep into his or her inner strength and pushing their bodies to the absolute limit. In this case Barri could only restore 3 hitpoints, at a cost of 12 but there may be occasions when those 3 hitpoints mean the difference between life and death. This healing pool refreshes upon leveling up, and occasionally more frequently if the character has several weeks worth of rest.

I'll be using Dave Arneson's rules for treasure and XP. Basically, you can gain 1XP for every iron piece worth of treasure you recover from an adventure, but you need to blow it. This can be spent however you want. Ale and whores, sacrifices to gods, totems or patrons, gambling, charity, get rich quick schemes, or whatever fits your character best. The key thing is that you can't get anything 'useful' out of it. I'd encourage roleplaying this out, and I will give bonus XP to characters who give me interesting plot hooks while they're whooping it up.

Sounds great! Count me in so long as you do not run it over at ENworld. All other choices sounded fine to me. Have you considered UNSEEN SERVANT... http://www.unseenservant.us/forum/index ... bf2a0290e2 ? It also has an easy dice roller

I'd be interested in playing also. And give a second to the Unseen Servant forum. Great bunch of guys over there.

What pace are you expecting postings? Weekly, Daily? Multiple times a day? I could be in.

Rostranor wrote:What pace are you expecting postings? Weekly, Daily? Multiple times a day? I could be in.

Weekly?! How the heck can someone run/play a game with 1 post a week? Please, make it daily. If someone has time to check their email than they have time to post a message in game forum.

As far as posting frequency goes I can probably keep an update schedule of a post pretty much every day, more during combat. In actuality I would probably expect posts every 2-3 days since there is the inevitable waiting for others that will occur. If you go quiet for a bit particularly outside of combat then no big deal your PC just fades into the background a bit.

Generally what I have done in the past is I'll roll initiative for everyone at the start of combat. If we get to your round in the imitative order and you don't post in a reasonable amount of time I will take an action for you. I keep this action as low risk and as close to your characters personality as possible, IE I won't spellburn, I won't burn luck, I won't use any expendable resources, ect.

One other thing I've seen used in PbP's with some effect and might implement if people want to is to restore the old AD&D role of "caller", who would ideally be someone who feels they can commit to a more frequent posting schedule. Particularly if we set up on Unseen Servant and have our own subforum I'd create a thread that would serve as a sort of bridge between the OOC and IC threads where people could post when the group is doing something together (IE dungeon exploration). When I present a situation in the IC thread like "you approach a T intersection" then the players can post in the caller thread with stuff like "Bob the Barbarian will approach the intersection and look both ways." "Sabby the Thief says we should go left!" "Sinbad the Sorcerer will cover our rear" and "Simon the Sentinal will cover the right corridor while Bob goes left".

Then, once the party as decided what they are going to do (or a reasonable amount of time has past) the caller can post the actual actions of the entire party in the IC thread. The caller is then responsible for dictating the actions of players who haven't posted. I've found it helps create a better narrative, and can help keep the campaign moving if someone goes quiet for whatever reason so we're not sitting around waiting for posts.

I think this thread is in the wrong forum, should it be in the DCC RPG Community thread?

Mr Hemlocks,
Because if the expectation is that everyone post everyday all the time it isn't going to happen, well at least for me it isnt. My experience has been that when a game starts it starts off strong and then starts to tapper off. If the expectation is to post everyday 7 days a week I don't think its a real expectation of what is actually going to happen when applied to real life over the extended period a PBP game can take. If the pace of the group is "damn dude we rolled init 3 hours ago what's your action?" Then the pace isn't going to work for me.

Imperialus,
I like your idea of a caller/ Party leader. I'm interested on where this goes.

I am interested in playing. Thanks!

Rostranor wrote:I think this thread is in the wrong forum, should it be in the DCC RPG Community thread?

Doh! Thanks. Mind you, I think this thread has largely filled its purpose, we've got 5 in it right now, plus another who's expressed interest in the larger Tales thread.

Mr Hemlocks,
Because if the expectation is that everyone post everyday all the time it isn't going to happen, well at least for me it isnt. My experience has been that when a game starts it starts off strong and then starts to tapper off. If the expectation is to post everyday 7 days a week I don't think its a real expectation of what is actually going to happen when applied to real life over the extended period a PBP game can take. If the pace of the group is "damn dude we rolled init 3 hours ago what's your action?" Then the pace isn't going to work for me.

This is my experience too. Generally speaking I'm not a post nazi. 2-3 days without any action from the part of a player is normally the point where I'll jump in and post an action and/or move ahead without their input. Like I said, I can generally commit to daily posting, but I'm a Jr. High teacher so my schedule has a few major bumps in it surrounding things like report cards and marking major projects so... Generally all I ask is that if you forsee an extended absence of a week or more let me know.

Imperialus,
I like your idea of a caller/ Party leader. I'm interested on where this goes.

I've never used it as a GM, but I've been on the player end of a game where a caller was used and it worked very well.

So I got a recruitment thread up on The Unseen Servant here:

http://www.unseenservant.us/forum/viewt ... =21&t=2159

imperialus wrote:
Generally what I have done in the past is I'll roll initiative for everyone at the start of combat. If we get to your round in the imitative order and you don't post in a reasonable amount of time I will take an action for you. I keep this action as low risk and as close to your characters personality as possible, IE I won't spellburn, I won't burn luck, I won't use any expendable resources, ect.

If I might suggest (even if I'm not playing): waiting for each player to post in the iniative order means it can take days to resolve a round.

Here's the method I use for online games:

1) As GM/judge, I roll initiative for everyone, i.e. one roll per PC and a single roll for all opponents.
2) All PCs that beat the monsters, go first.
3) All monsters go
4) All PCs go, in any order.
5) repeat (3) and (4) until the battle is over

Importantly: all players may post in any order when they're up.

This means:

- no time is lost waiting for everyone to roll init. GM/judge holds an excel file with PC initiative bonuses. (Players rolling init often takes two days, sometimes three, as you wait for at least one player who doesn't post within one day.)

- Players post in any order when players are up. However, what order the players go in, is irrelevant, since they all go in-between the entire monster group anyway.

The only drawback of this method, in my opinion, is focus fire - see this post for detail.

This allows me to resolve one round per day (as I ask players to post once per day when battle occurs), with no time lost for rolling init. It really, really accelerates combat and I strongly recommend it, from experience, for online games. We used to have all players roll for initiative and then wait for players and monsters to go in order of intiative - it took forever compared to this method.