The Eye of Anubis: OOC Thread

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Hmmm, yes. How much to turn a +1 club into a +2 club? I still have some cash left over after my previous request and some scribing plans ... Though I may need more treasure soon. ^^;

[Kaitou Kage]

To go from +1 to +2 would be 4500 from Kuzan.

To go from +0 to +2 would be 6000 from Kuzan.

[steveflam]

Don't have enough ready gold for that. (Its +1 already..... He's willing to spend 3000 gp to better himself, so to speak. Any suggestions, or I just keep da gold?

[Kaitou Kage]

Give me a while to look through the books and I'll see what I can come up with.

I am not completely sold on taking Arms and Armor yet -- so far only two people have spoken up (one being the group mage) and it doesn't sound like either is going to have the money to make it worthwhile.

On the other hand, if you folks have +1 weapons already, you can make good use of augment crystals.

[steveflam]

Got the augment crystal already

[Kaitou Kage]

There are all sorts of augment crystals.

[steveflam]

What you're saying is I can have more than one on my greatsword? I have the crystal of energy assault already......

[Kaitou Kage]

You can have one at a time attached but you can switch them around as you need.

[steveflam]

Right-o. I was wanting Ishaq to have even more power, if that's even possible heh!

[NeoTiamat]

And a cutscene for you guys, just for the Fourth of July!

Enjoy!

[Rock of the Fraternity]

My enjoyment of your prose is somewhat tempered and spoiled by the knowledge that Cavendish has apparently foregone subtlety and scheming for brute force ... *gulp* Here we go again ... By the way, this situation reminds me of the cliché of a police officer killed 'just one day before my retirement'. It's pretty sad, but it still reminds me of that cliché. Also, I am less than happy that we are now apparently known as 'the faceless killers' in Phiraz ...

[Rock of the Fraternity]

P.S.: Due to scribing costs, Lia does not have enough cash to scribe any Fly scrolls right now. You'll have to wait and hope flight is unneeded until we hit book 7. Incidentally, do you guys still want her to write in Keen Edge, or has that ship sailed?

[Kaitou Kage]

Kuzan can cast Fly.

[NeoTiamat]

My enjoyment of your prose is somewhat tempered and spoiled by the knowledge that Cavendish has apparently foregone subtlety and scheming for brute force ... *gulp* Here we go again ... By the way, this situation reminds me of the cliché of a police officer killed 'just one day before my retirement'. It's pretty sad, but it still reminds me of that cliché. Also, I am less than happy that we are now apparently known as 'the faceless killers' in Phiraz ...

Well, Cavendish has a history of deciding to smash things by brute force when his schemes don't work out. This time I figured I'll give you guys a little bit of warning (and worrying) before the fact.

On the bright side, one less Smiler.

On the not-so-bright side, twelve more undead Sipahi.

[NeoTiamat]

Now then.... parsing the feedback. The following people recieved bonus XP for feedback: Whistler, Lostboy, DocBeard, Nathan, Andre, Kuzan.

Let us summarize the basic points of all the feedback, then I'll answer them one by one. In no particular order, the points are:

1. The book was long. Really, really, really long. This had some positive sideeffects (more suspense), but was generally considered a negative.

2. The puzzles were popular. Some people kind of wanted the puzzles to be more connected to the backstory of the keep, they also commend me for not causing anyone to kill each other over the puzzles.

3. The Ethereal Soul-Visions were popular.

4. Too many red herrings / loose ends. Also, the transition was somewhat disjointed.

5. New villain was popular, as was the fact that he was not Cavendish (or the Anubite).

6. Really good back-story.

7. Enemies were somewhat too hard. Exciting though, and seemed to get strong emotional reactions, from some folks at least.

8. The sense of closure was popular.

Did I miss anything? Now, to cover the points one by one.

1. LengthThis is a mixture of my fault, your fault, and no one's fault.

• My fault: Book Five was simply too big. It had too much background, too many things to do, and all of them had to be done in a specific order. In the end, it worked out to something like Castle Tristenoira or Castle Ravenloft, where I could run a small campaign off the material I had for Dezbar Keep.
  
  Your fault: You people like to talk. On more than one occasion, I believe on one occasion people talked for a solid week. This did not do anything good for the pacing.
  
  No one's fault: This Book happened right in the middle of finals. People were going on vacation, people had exams, people had thesis committee meetings. Real Life reared its ugly head in a grand fashion. Despite taking two and a half times as long as Book Two, it had the same page count.

What this resulted in was that about six weeks into the ten week-long duration, I just got very tired of Book Five and started doing everything in my power to just get it over with. Quite a bit of material got dropped or not followed up on in favor of just finishing the Book. This had its own negative sideeffects, but I would not be surprised if otherwise we'd be in Dezbar till August.

2. Puzzles: Ooookay.... this I did not expect. Well, if you guys like puzzles, I shall try to oblige in the future. The trick is finding riddles that you guys don't already know.

3. Soul-Visions: I'm glad people liked them. They will return (not everyone's gotten one, after all.

4. Red Herrings: This is partly due to my impatience, as described at point 1, and partially due to the fact that people had a tendency to explore in great big packs, and also not to explore new places. This might be my fault to some extent (probably is), but my original idea for Book Five involved a lot more exploring in groups of 2-3, and a lot more Ethereal-shifting. Towards the end, however, people just stopped exploring and trod the well-worn path from the dungeons to the courtyard to the library.

The most noticeable example of this was when the Ethereal crew returned to Sikarba'als Lab instead of continuing onward and finding more phantom images. A lot of material got cut due to that and my inability to find a way to get you guys back in the Ethereal.

And, of course, all of this would've taken even more time.

5. Marchosias: This worried me a lot, since I wasn't sure (was actually doubtful) that anyone was scared of him considering Nathan kept disparaging the snakeskin pants and Lia called him 'Fiendy McBirddog' all the time. But I'm glad to know he was popular. And he is not the last one-Book villain you will meet.

And the fact that he was a fiend is highly intentional and highly relevant to the over-arching backstory of the campaign. Think about it.

6. Backstory: I really enjoyed the chance to exercise my writing chops here. Even if I did have to resort to some info-dumps. Still, I'm going to try and make it more interactive in the future, but a haunted house story, which is what Dezbar was, is fundamentally about the past.

7. Enemies: Well, we had the Bed, Ishmael abd-Rabbo, and the Cistern Serpent (a young adult Styx Dragon). The firelings didn't really count, though they were mildly edited Cinderspawn from Libris Mortis.

My ideal fights are ones that are challenging enough that you can die, but not so that you must die, if you follow. Of course, I'm fast becoming disillusioned with 3E monster-making. Yes, there are very precise rules governing what you can do, how to upgrade monsters in every which way, and how that affects CR, but if the CR seems to be a crapshoot, why bother?

Anyways, I am working on getting more group fights in. Unfortunately, I need to somehow do that while still making the main foe survivable enough, which at the moment I seem to do best by giving them SR and AC through the roof.

I'll probably start getting the monster fights right just as we finish Book Twelve. *sigh*.

But I digress.

8. Closure: Well, duly noted, and I shall keep it in mind. As I've said before, Book Four is an outlier. Most Books will either involve you killing the villain (when its a stand-alone) or foiling their plot while the villain high tails it out of there (when its Cavendish).

And lastly:

Keep your puzzles flexible and don't be too proud to say, 'You know what? That sounds good, I'll give them the go anyway.". I say this because it is the most common mistake for any DM, new, veteran or anything in between, to make.

Camel tears anyone?