The Eye of Anubis: OOC Thread

[Kaitou Kage]

Otto Schultheiss, cartoon-style

Artwork might come a bit slower for the next couple of weeks. Two ten-page papers both due on the 14th.

Of course, I say that now. Watch it not turn out that way.

*slacker*

If I pace myself on these papers, I might be able to have time to draw, too <_< We'll see.

[The Whistler]

The colors! The colors! Yay being vibrant!

Thanks for the graphical awesome. And I can relate with the papers--should be doing my thesis right now oh god oh god...

[Kaitou Kage]

Research really stinks sometimes >/ I know what I want to say, it just sucks having to find all the sources and references to be able to support it. Whoever invented grad school should be shot ;p

I could just frontload myself with artwork this week and then stress about the paper next week... Hmm...

Anyway, glad you like it!

[NeoTiamat]

Go Otto!

Anyway.... sorry about lack of posting, Tuesday is my Hell Day as far as classwork goes, and it's not over yet.... *grimace* Just did a presentation on Corruption in Kenya, which is a fun topic. Gives me ideas for Phiraz, at any rate.

Should have a post up by 7:00 PM this evening at the latest, and it'll be a great, big, huge honkin' post with lots of plot advancement and all that good stuff.

[NeoTiamat]

Something to keep you busy for a bit!

XP Awards!

3,000 XP each, which brings you gentlemen up to the following:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Charles Martel, Level 7: 23,825/28,000

Lia Mournswaithe, Level 7: 22,150/28,000

Allikhain Gellantra, Level 5: DECEASED
Ulsaon Lowbane, Level 5: 12,750/15,000

Otto Schultheiss, Level 7: 21,250/28,000

Tomas Eisenwald, Level 6: 20,350/21,000

Kuzan, Level 7: 26,925/28,000

Khalil al-Atim, Level 7: 23,600/28,000

Andre Theroux, Level 6: 20,375/21,000

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unless I'm mistaken, this means Otto, Khalil, Charles, Lia, and Ulsaon all go up in level, and Andre, Tomas, and Kuzan are all close. Mind you, however, that the Rec. Level. for Book Four is still Level 6, which means a bit of a bonus XP cut for some of you folks.

Anyways, get with the character sheet updating!

[NeoTiamat]

And continuing with my many posts.... it's

DM Poll Time!

A two parter this time. Each one is 100 XP.

• <> First question is, as usual, how did you like the battle?
  • -I tried to do something slightly different this time by including more minions in the form of Masal and Nizam, not sure how well that worked out. Masal fell rather quickly and Nizam ended up not helping.
    -Also, I've been informed that I use a *lot* of miss chances, which in retrospect I realize is true, and will try to move away from. This isn't intentional, mind.
  <> Second question is, how did you like the mystery this time around? Particularly compared with Book Two?
  • -In Book Two, I had a very direct plot-structure, Inn-->Stefan's-->Marilena, before it got interrupted by the duel and my inability to resist a dramatic scene. On the one hand, it was borderline rail-road-ey, but on the other hand, it allowed me to keep a tigheter pace and keep things more interesting.
    -In Book Three, I pretty much tossed you guys ideas and watched what happened, and gave minimal guidance. On the one hand, you got to figure out on your own, but on the other, the book was glacially slow at times. In fairness, it was also the start of school, which may have had an effect.
    -Basically..... which structure do you prefer? And when in doubt, should I lean towards granting PCs greater choice or towards keeping the campaign's plot nice and fast-moving?

[yalenusveler]

I liked the fight. Despite Tarik having a miss chance, and being at LEAST level 10/11, It felt like we had more of an actual chance in combat, opposed to Cavendish, which felt more like solve the puzzle to make the unwinnable combat winnable. So i give the combat definate high marks...but I agree that you do tend to like the whole Miss chance thing, and perhaps stepping back from it for a bit would be nice.

As for liking the structure of this book's central mystery as opposed to last book, on one hand, I liked the more open movement from this Book...on the other, the faster pace of last book was neat. But there was some damn good interaction during the "slow" times..so it's kind of a tossup for me between either pacing style. I see merits in both, but I actually rather enjoyed the open endedness...

So ultimately, I'm torn. Either style is fine for me

[Nathan of the FoS]

I tried to do something slightly different this time by including more minions in the form of Masal and Nizam, not sure how well that worked out. Masal fell rather quickly

Hooray tactics! Hooray massive paladin chopping action!

and Nizam ended up not helping.

This might have been my favorite thing about the combat--even within the combat there was the non-combat option. Even before Nizam swapped sides I didn't feel like we were in that much danger (except for Lia . Being a mage in combat is not much fun.)

More to follow.

[steveflam]

I liked the battle. He was very difficult to injure for us spellcaster types! DM knows his stuff, bravo. ANd that goes for all the villains thus far. Hats off Neo!

I liked the mystery athis time around as well. Though Ulsaon wil forever from now on think all the villains are Cavendish heh!

P.S - Guess who has 2nd level spells? Moi!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! * Go me, go me , go me.....*
*does a little dance and pirouette in a bikini(Ulsaon that is)

[Kaitou Kage]

Regarding the combat:

I agree with Andre. We actually felt like we had a shot here. The Cavendish showdown and the subsequent run through the ghoul-gauntlet really felt like it was going to have a bleak outcome and at least one, if not several of us were gonna die. That's both good and bad.

On the other hand, I got a sensation that we kinda ran Cevdet over. It's hard to find a middle ground between portraying "Wow, this is going to wipe the floor with us" and "Wow, this fight's pretty easy." The miss chance helped make it a little more difficult, but Cevdet's a wizard and wizards tend not to have much HP, even with assorted buffs.

I think this fight was better overall than the Book 2 final boss battle, but I think there's some room for improvement. I do like how you did the minions, but I don't think the real idea of using minions was really present in the fight.

Using the Cevdet scene as a hypothetical example, here's my suggestion on how to make it better.

Have Cevdet be closer to our level. Seventh or eighth level, max. Keep the krenshar as Cevdet's ally. Keep Nizam as a wild-card that is possible to convert to our side. Then, add a few other creatures around CR 3 or so. Cevdet's a wizard and if he's tamed a krenshar, I'm sure he has a couple of Large monstrous scorpions as pets in his cave.

So then you have:

Cevdet, level 7 Illusionist
Krenshar (CR X, goes down quickly)
Nizam, Wild Card, might switch sides
2 Large Monstrous Scorpions (toned down just slightly to about 25-30 hp)

The scorpions will provide enough of a distraction that you'll have some more time for Cevdet to shine. They're too strong to be ignored, but they're not strong enough to be anything more than a speed bump. That is good. The purpose of minions and goons is to provide a couple of small speed bumps that don't really endanger the party directly, but still provide enough of a distraction to make the encounter a bit interesting and give your main bad guy a chance.

With this group, we'd probably take out the scorpions in 2-3 hits each, but that's also 2-3 hits per scorpion that's not on Cevdet, giving Cevdet a bit of time to be irritating. I think that would help alleviate the concern you've expressed to me regarding this encounter.

The tl;dr version is: Weaken the main guy, and provide a couple of easy-to-whack-but-still-in-the-way speed bumps to buy a little time.

Regarding the Book:

We've discussed before, but here it is for the record. I like both the mystery and the "railroad" delivery. I think where things fell through here is the clues weren't concrete enough to give us a better sense of direction. So, we floundered around for a while, trying to figure out where to go next, but we didn't have much to go on. It's fine to provide a few different paths that all lead back to the same spot, but I think the clues were a little bit vague. Always remember that the DM will make the connection before the players do, usually. So when giving hints, try to make them things that seem stupidly obvious to you instead of just plainly obvious.

I think the mystery worked, just needs more solid direction

[The Whistler]

I'm pretty much with Kuzan on the "make it longer" issue, if only because I love having more time to chew scenery. Only other thing is, it would've been even cooler if you'd played up the illusion angle more: booby-trap the room with disbelievable effects, have him get into our heads more, and so forth. As it is, he only got to throw one off, which made it more of an evil-wizard-in-general fight--which is still great in and of itself, but hey, bells and whistles are cool.

Also, damn but you're good at set pieces. Underground stalactite waterfall ethereal crystal shard sanctum with children and a lab = A++.

As for pacing, I like both tactics for different reasons, and I think which one is best to pick will probably be dependent on what the plot structure of the book lends itself to. I think it wouldn't be too difficult to combine the best bits of both, though, in a pinch: do a punctuated equilibrium sort of thing. Like so:

-Start the book with a plot event or two
-Send everyone off in opposite directions to investigate different things, or keep everyone in a single team but keep their options open. Let people do their own thing, then--
-Get everyone back together for a Major Game-Changing Revelation or Plot Twist.
-Let everyone do some more independent investigation that builds off that new information.
-Rinse, repeat.

Of course, me saying this doesn't actually mean that it's actually possible or applicable, but if there's one thing I've learned over the years it's that I am very, very good at giving people useless suggestions.

[lostboy]

Hmmm, let me say it was awesome and the campaign so far has been really well done.

Re: The battle.

To be brutally honest I thought it was way too easy. Tarik didnt really provide much of a challenge (except to Lia!) and his monions were pretty ineffectual. The fact that getting through the underground river would have been more deadly if you hadnt let us take 10 must say something. Id go along with Kaitou we needed more juicy minions to kick about for abit. However I suppose as a straight combat it was fine, he rolled, we rolled, he lost we won, but it didnt have anywhere near the sense of hopelessness and drama the end of book two did. I guess Im saying the battle at the end of book two whilst it felt a bit like Cavendish was unbeatable had a cinematic quality and tension to it, that this one didnt. because of that and points below I didnt care as much about Tarik as the bad guy, and subsequantly found myself comapring it unfavourtably to book two, but thats just me...

Re: The Book.

Again I think Book two was tighter and better paced giving that sense of tension. I for one was always thinking damn how many hours do we have left before they string us up for the murder? This book whilst refreshing as a change of pace felt a bit too open and forgive me a bit woolly , there were several parts that didnt make much sense or seemed only tenusouly connected. BUT way to go in inspiring knee jerk reactions, paranoia and a myraid attempts to second guess the DM! Also Tarik being only a bit player until the very end didnt give him the chance to be developed as a charcter and gain the kind of menace and interest that Cavendish had, and as I say above didnt make him a very memorable villain.

Butr on the whole it was still really fun to play, you get my thimbs up.

[The Whistler]

I admit that some of why I liked this chapter was because I had a really good excuse to vicarious-ego-invest in the central conflict--because hey, Otto had an awful lot riding on finding the guy and avenging himself, so I got to get caught up in it--and because I got to push the character in some neat directions. But your mileage may vary.

[DocBeard]

Bitches don't know about my Divine Vengence charged full attack.

Or my Frostshock.

Personally? I agree with Andre as far as the mystery goes. The two different styles give the game a real episodic feel to it, like you're going to switch up how you'll handle a given adventure, and we have a variety of enemies to worry about, instead of the one overreaching mastermind that's so common in D&D. It feels a bit like a TV show or a comic book, and in my eyes, that's a very cool thing.

There shouldn't be a default "better" version, because what I dig about this game is the variety. In one fight, I got to shine because I play a straight up paladin against an enemy who doesn't expect people to just go, 'My fist is blazing red with decency! Happy ending PAAAUNNNCCCCHHHH!'. In another, Charles got a chance to be super awesome because he had the skills(Bullshitting.) needed for the problem(An apprentice who's wavering on the morality of his master's actions.). What I really like is that I honestly don't know which one of us is going to need to step up and be Jack Hero to save the day next book, because even with your bad displacer thingy habit, you've presented us with challanges that feel varied, and enemies that have noticably different MOs.

I'm not saying I don't want recurring characters, but that I dig the fact that we have multiple venues of sinister intent to deal with. It keeps the game from feeling like a wash cycle. Does that make any sense?

[Nathan of the FoS]

OK, back in the saddle.

So, as has been said above, this was a really different feel from book 2, where we had the impending murder trial hanging over us. Here it felt more like we were just, y'know, in the neighborhood for a bit of do-gooding (at least until the plot intersected so dramatically with Otto's backstory, at which point it gained Total Urgency for one of us and thereby became more important to everyone).

I like the "mix" dynamic, as described by the Whistler; Book 2 was more urgent, but it would be really frustrating and wearing to have them all be like that; the linearity (linear like a railroad, baby) of the plot creates a lot of intensity, but, well, it's nice to run around and do stuff of your own free will every so often. Book 3 was a nice change of pace that way, although it did drag a bit; the non-encounters at the windmill and with the spiders, and the general trip through the Vossath Nor Mind Machine, dissipated a lot of momentum. This is often unavoidable, but it was a little disappointing that it happened so much for us in this book.

WRT the combat--as above, I felt like we were never in that much danger, especially once Tomas hit the poor (?) krenshar like a ton of bricks and Nizam switched sides. Again, the non-combat option in a combat situation was super-kool and much appreciated. Once that happened it was all of us vs. Tarik, and that was never going to last very long. Another few minions would have upped the ante considerably, which would have been more exciting but...well, possibly pretty scary. More use of illusion would also have been good; it was a little disappointing to hear about CT as an illusionist and then see him use Transmutation, Evocation, Necromancy and Enchantment (if that last spell was enchantment?) when we actually fought him.

The staging was, again, really freakin' cool. Good fight, good result, everybody come back for the next book and we'll do it again.