The Eye of Anubis: OOC Thread

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Well, Lia can airlift him if absolutely necessary.

[NeoTiamat]

The Grand Feedback Request

Alright! It is basically the end of the Book, just some wrap-up to go before Book Seven, so I'll post my feedback request now. A two parter now:

Part One: How did you like the Book as a whole? I understand that it started kind of slow, but it rather picked up along there towards the end. In particular, this was my first real experiment with what you might call an 'Ensemble Cast', since all of the named Fey were fairly major in their own ways. So in addition to every thing else, how did you like the Faerie? (For those with poor memories, that's Featherflute, Atheling, the Lorelei, Ivor Stahlrheim, and Spite and Malice).

Part Two: How did the combat go? As before, this is probably my most serious attempt at a 'group' fight, and also my experimentation with wide-range control spells and disables as opposed to heaping chunks of damage.

250 XP per Part.

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However! This is also the end of Book Six of Twelve. Which means we are exactly halfway through the Campaign. So..... what do you think of the campaign so far? Do you like the format? Do you like (or hate, rather), the villains? Is there something you want to see more of? Less of? And so on, and so forth. If I had to subdivide it into Parts, I'd go....

Part One: Antagonists, Recurring and Otherwise: In particular, what do you think of Cavendish and the Anubite, and how do you like/dislike the various one-offs (Cevdet, Marchosias, Featherflute & Co.)

Part Two: Overarching Campaign Myth Arcs: There's the big plot with the Eye of Anubis and Menetnashte which is slowly becoming more and more understood. Right now we've gone past the 'Mystery! You know nothing!' to the "Okay, we know something". Starting in a few more Books I'll actually start explaining things. What you think about other multi-Book phenomenon (such as the Expedition itself), goes here.

Part Three: Themes: As you might have noticed, I'm somewhat pushing the Books towards getting more 'gothic'. How's that going? Do you see any overarching themes in the campaign? (Yes, literary analysis. I do this to myself, so I'll inflict it upon you too). I've got one or two intentional motifs that I try to work in often.

Part Four: Misc: Anything else you want to say about the game.

As before, you get 250 XP per Part, but they had best be respectable parts. So yes, if you do all of this, and do it well, you can get 1500 XP.

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Lastly!, House Rules:

Basically, we've been playing for some nine months now, give or take, so how do you like/dislike the house rules we have so far? Do you even notice them? Are there any house rules you particularly want to see instituted or removed?

[steveflam]

I can't post until late tonight, but I'd like to go sell the magic eating armor with either Charles or Lia, preferably Lia.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

The what now? I don't recall any 'magic eating armor'. o_o And for sales and purchases, I recommend Charles: he can haggle like nobody's business. ^^

[Rock of the Fraternity]

And just like that, we have arrived at Rock's wonderful begging corner! *applause*

With the sixth book drawing to a close, and the opportunity to do some shopping before us, I'd like to expand my repertoire of spells. Unfortunately, I find myself in the grip of a poor cashflow situation. -_- In other words, Lia needs money. Badly.

- To start off easy, I need 20 gp to scribe Earthen Grasp into Lia's spellbook. This spell is evidently useful, in that it would allow Lia to restrain key opponents -- provided they fail their save -- and keep them out of commission while we deal with their cronies.

- I would deeply appreciate 800 gp for the purchase and scribing of Displacer Form, which NT has confirmed is for sale. The benefits of this spell seem self-evident to me; just one spell, and Lia will be able to devote the attention to allies and enemies that she'd otherwise need to buff herself for battle.

- I have not confirmed with NT whether the Scrying spell and its highly expensive focus mirror are for sale here, but I would like to ask whether anyone thinks it useful enough for our little group to spring for the money if the spell and item are available. Spell and scribing would cost another 800 gp, the 2 x 4 mirror costs 1000 gp at least. Of course, we might also shill out for the much cheaper focus for the Cleric version of the spell, and ask Kuzan or Andre to cast it for us from time to time.

- Resonating Bolt would cost 600 gp in all, Shatter would be 600 gp as well. These are both strong sonic spells, which might prove useful if we run into any more fireproof enemies down the road. I'm not counting it out.

- I am still deciding which 5th-level spells to go for during the next levelup. Right now, it's a toss-up between the following: Cone of Cold - *False Vision - *Greater Fireburst - Hold Monster - *Mass Fly - *Rary's Telepathic Bond - Refusal - *Shadow Evocation - Telekinesis - Teleport - Wall of Force.
Marked with an asterix are the spells that I, personally, think are essential. However, if someone thinks any of the other spells is a must-have for the party and is willing to pay for it, I'll be more than happy to abide by their decision.

If anyone has any Sorcerer/Wizard spell that they think is absolutely essential, feel free to drop me a line. If you have the scribing cash and the scroll, I'm sure we can work something out.
I'm not just asking because I'm greedy for cool spells. (It is part of the reason, but not the only one.) I feel it's important that we keep mixing up our arsenal of tricks. At least one of our enemies has been keeping a close enough eye on us that he knows about our past and much of our capabilities. Expanding our bag of tricks seems like a smart move, in hopes that we might finally surprise him.

This has been Rock's begging corner. Thank you for your attention and good night. *bows*

[NeoTiamat]

Couple of notes that come to mind:

Scrying - In addition to being expensive, a four foot tall, two foot wide mirror is also fragile. Lugging it around every which way on camel-back is not going to be easy. Not to mention that I have my doubts that Bahadur, wizard though he is, would just so happen to have a spare mirror lying around.

Also bear in mind that you know that Cavendish, at least, considers Nondetection a vital part of his daily dose of spells.

Teleport - As a rule of thumb, I frown upon people teleporting outside of the map area in any given Book. I've got no problem with you teleporting from, say, Dead Camel Drop till the Little Valley of the Dead, but I would like to avoid people teleporting from Kermanshah to Ravnika. I may write this up as a house rule later, along with some spurious IC justification (OOC, it lets loose a minor logical problem in D&D, namely if you can just teleport there, why not do that instead of outfitting an Expedition).

[Kaitou Kage]

Question 1.1

Intriguing, I'm a little sad I missed out on a chance to give Kuzan a challenge, but at the same time, I'm glad I didn't take it because Kuzan got enough heaped on him this book. The characters were all fascinating, though I really wish I'd gotten a chance to talk to some of them. The Atheling, for example, I wanted to talk to a little bit and learn more about this fey business. The Featherflute made a good inscrutable master. Spite, Malice, and the Lorelei were all cool, and the Lorelei's story was actually very tragic, but well-told. Certainly, the cast was well-played, and I don't think it slowed things down, though I imagine it created quite a headache for you sometimes, having to deal with so many characters simultaneously.

Question 1.2

Hum...

Disables are tricky, they are. I didn't get wildly upset with this like I have in the past, so I think I can say some things more objectively.

The combat was very different, but no less dangerous than many of the others. I can't speak for others, but I can speak generally and say that it can be rather frustrating for a player to essentially have to sit the fight out because the majority of his abilities and all (or most) of his most effective skills are useless. We have several ranged fighters and while the windstorm was a very effective defense, it also effectively removed the ranged fighters from the fight. It's kind of like telling a wizard he can fight in an encounter, but he has to fight in an anti-magic field. That negates the wizard's usefulness almost entirely.

Otto's crisis of breath took him out for nearly the whole combat, then knocking two folks off the edge meant they were out for good, too. Khalil went down fast, that was an unfortunate case of bad luck with dice. And while we still won, we were operating at less than half-strength rather quickly because most of the characters were “combat dead” early on. Again, I can't speak for the people actually affected by that. All I did was sit up there and play by myself for the fight. But generally speaking, it really sucks when your character can't do what he's made to do.

Question 2.1

Cavendish is a sonofabitch and I can't wait to see him go down for good.

The Anubite is a very good “wild card” sort. She started out as a villain, but I imagine most folks like, myself, are wondering just what her motives are. Sure, she's supposed to protect the tomb, but it seems like the relationship between her and us is evolving. Whatever it is becoming, it's no longer a black and white “she's against us” kind of thing. I don't doubt she'll do anything she can to stop us, if it comes to that, but at the same time I wonder why she helps us sometimes – as in Kuzan's case.

Cevdet was a curious villain, one I do wish we'd spent a little more time getting to know. Since we didn't see him until the end of the Book, that was mostly our own fault. Still, despite your rampant hatred of it, I liked Book 3 >_>

Marchosias was a bastard, albeit a scary one. I'm sure if we'd actually been in that situation rather than just role-playing it, there'd have been a lot less bravado portrayed among the party members.

Question 2.2

I'm really interested to see how this story reveals itself, especially because of Kuzan's direct stake in things now. Other than that, hum...I like most of the Expedition characters, though I really wish I could come up with an excuse to talk to more of them more often. I'd also like to see some of the screen time rotated around a little bit. Not really sure what else to say here.

Question 2.3

I didn't think of this latest book as particularly “gothic,” though I'm also not a person that has a good handle on literary devices and styles :/ Book 5 was pretty gothic as I understand it. It was downright spooky at first, toward the end it went from spooky fear to a fear derived from urgency, which worked just fine for me. The pulpy action style of the first books suits me just fine, though, so I'm not going to complain much about the writing style. I'm really not a difficult guy to please in this regard.

Overarching themes? Hum. Aside from Hazlan, it seems most books have a major player that's either directly related to Menetnashte/the Eye or is very interested in getting to them.

You've got a fairly systematic approach to most of your books. It's usually easy to tell when we've reached the climactic turning point in each story arc, and when we're about to make that big last stand for whatever it is we're fighting for. Don't change this. This is not bad! This is actually very good for gaming! It gives the players a real sense of the importance of whatever event, and enables our reactions to work accordingly! Predictability in style is not always a bad thing, and in this case, our being able to tell when we've reached the climax is good!

Question 2.4

As I mentioned above, I didn't get emotionally invested in this to the point of getting freaked out like I have before. So, I think I can make criticisms with more objectivity. For the sake of brevity and to not look like a nag in front of everyone, I won't include most of the thoughts I have here. I do want to discuss with you in private, though. Instead, I'll offer two thoughts: A frustration in one area and a suggestion for the future in another area.

The frustration is that enemies always seem to make their saves. Now, my memory on this sort of thing doesn't extend back terribly far, so I might've forgotten a rather large slew of failed saves by enemies. This could just be really good luck on their part. I'm sure that in some cases, what seems like high saves is just a lucky roll. On the whole, though, it feels like the enemies make their saves way more often than not. Naturally, this leads to a feeling of frustration on my part, at least, that any non-direct-damage offensive spell we do is doomed to fail, which leads to a feeling of apathy toward them. Should I bother to take bane, for example, to curse the enemies' attack rolls? It doesn't feel like it because it feels more like the enemies are going to clear that DC 16 Will save without thinking twice. A part of me wonders if sanctuary, nice as it is, is a wasted spell slot every time I take it. Should I bother with hold person if I know we're dealing with humanoids or am I facing a “don't roll a 1” situation?

Sure, a lot of these spells can end a combat decisively and often anticlimactically. A well-placed deep slumber or a cannily-used halt undead spell can end the fight abruptly by turning one of your baddies into so much dust on the ground. By the same token, if these spells are doomed to “don't roll a 1,” then why do we have access to them at all? If we tried magical manipulation tactics like Spite and Malice did, it feels like they'd be all in vain because enemies will just save and we won't get any ground. Spells like the ones I listed have specific purposes for a reason, but it's starting to feel, to me anyway, like they're pointless in this game. Then, the above situations lead to a sensation that you're trying too hard to play against us rather than just give us a challenging fight. See what I'm saying? On the other hand, the enemies will throw these things freely at us and we have to suffer the major effects.

Suffice to say, sometimes encounters are going to just end and not in a dramatic way, nor in the way you expect. This, I think, is something a DM really needs to learn and accept – and I know it's come up before. The PCs should get more chances than “I hope the enemy rolls a 1” to fire off those “save or bad things” sorts of spells instead having to deal with impossibly high defenses on the enemy's part. Ideally, you're not playing to kill us, you're playing to give us a victory and you should let that victory come even if it's not how you want or expect instead of giving us brick walls to deal with.

I could be way off on this, and since I don't actually get to see monster stats most of the time, it's entirely possible I'm just going off assumptions that play out in combat. Whichever the case, it is a point that's nagged me for a majority of this book and feels like it's stretched back even further.

If I AM wrong on this, something you may consider is telling us what Knowledge skills will work for finding out about this monster and give us some (blatant) clues about what sorts of spells are more likely to be effective. I'd love to see players able to use some of those “hopeless”-seeming debuff spells and have them work. Most monsters will give telltale clues about things like reach, natural armor, etc., that we should be able to get the gist of just by looking at them. Why not saves, too? Plus, there're rules for determining information about monsters – encourage us to use them. You've got home field advantage in that you know all about us, but most of the time it seems we don't know anything about what we're facing, which is frustrating. Throw us a bone – several would be nice.

Now, the suggestion.

One thing I'd personally like to see is encounters that deliberately play into our strengths. You know what all the characters are capable of, and you've been running the game long enough that you should have a basic idea of how we play the characters. So, I think you're at a point where you should be able to design encounters that take advantage of our abilities instead of encounters that either work against us or are ability-neutral. Players really like it when their cool abilities are useful, and as a DM it should be more rewarding (in my not-so-humble opinion) to see the players be able to make use of what their characters can do.

Taking Kuzan as an example (since I really don't know the full extent of other characters' abilities), he's a surprisingly mobile character. He's got a good climb and balance and class abilities to augment those. He's extremely alert, moreso than many (if not most) of the party members, I'd wager, and is about to get super-alert. For magic, he's obviously good with healing spells. And, a side people don't get to see much anymore, he's actually pretty darn good with lightning and, to a lesser extent, cold magic, too. He's also pretty good with getting around spells. So, create encounters meant to take advantage of those things. Maybe someone has to get across a narrow path or scale a wall to push a button, or there's a monster that has vulnerability to lightning magic even when nothing else seems to work. Something like that. Things that are meant to take advantage of certain aspects of different characters.

You've got eight characters, all with different strengths. It seems like most of the game has had encounters that are pretty neutral in terms of characters' strengths and weaknesses. They're easy to make and generally easy to handle for both PCs and DMs. We get the diplomacy checks and the spot/search/listen and the knowledge checks

House Rules

I can't really think of any that apply that aren't already in the game. The latest ones are very nice, though.

[Kaitou Kage]

(OOC, it lets loose a minor logical problem in D&D, namely if you can just teleport there, why not do that instead of outfitting an Expedition).

Because IIRC, you can't use regular teleport to pass domain borders and I don't think the range is long enough to make that worthwhile anyway.

Rock, my response to you is it looks like you're trying to spread yourself too thin. Versatility is handy, but there comes a point where too much is too much. So, I think you need to work on focusing your character's selection.

We want you there to do damage, not cover every last tiny possible contingency, so take spells that enable you to do your job.

Take Mass Fly and Firebrand.

The only other thing I might suggest is Wall of Force since it can be used to split the battlefield.

If teleport becomes a need, Kuzan can do it.

I know you're in love with illusion spells, but they're really not nearly as handy as other things. If you need a bag of tricks spell, there are vastly more preferable options. Illusion spells have never been as useful to the group in this game as spells that just belt out the damage.

But seriously, don't spread yourself thin. I don't know why you insist on doing this when we've ALL gone over our battle roles together and you agreed to have Lia be a damage dealer. Stick to what you're expected to do first. Once you have that covered, worry about the more frivolous things and trust the others to cover their ends of the bargain.

[The Whistler]

Wheee feedback!

1.1: I'm with you on the iffy pacing for the first bit, but from the meeting with the Anubite on out this was probably my favorite Book since 2. I actually liked it for the same structural reasons as I did Ravnika, in that all of the PCs had something awesome to do, both separately and together. The concentration of "This is your moment, Champ, so get up there and knock 'em dead" moments was really very high, which is pretty much just the way I like it. And that's only a pacing comment--in terms of tone and writing style and such, the whole dang party was pretty much pitch-perfect. That's a credit to all the PCs, too: y'all were great.

1.2: I'm with Kaitou on most of his comments, here, though I'm not sure if complaining about not being able to shoot things is equivalent to saying "DM pull punches plz." I do think, however, that there are ways to hinder us with creative battlefield-controlling effects while still leaving us with a number of (albeit restricted) combat options. It's a balancing act regardless, but still pull-off-able. And I still had fun writing my battle posts.

2.1: Cavendish: Evil! Really! I'm not sure I've ever *read* someone so unapologetically malevolent without it degenerating into self-parody. I mean, given his "type", you think he'd be a moustache-twirling comic book character by now, but instead he's just very, very effective. Great work.

The Anubite: Good counterpoint to the above: there's a considerable amount of character depth there, and plenty of moral ambiguity and mystery to dig into. We need somebody we can speculate about, so she works in that capacity.

Cevdet: Wish we'd seen more of him, but I'm biased by that being my own subplot, so I'll let other folks take the lead on this one.

Marchiosas: His book had muddy pacing, but *he* had a great narrative voice. Subtle, Faustian stuff, which is what I want to see in a devil.

The Fey Court: Easily my favorite one-off(s) so far. Really colorful, a great variety of personality types, and not "traditionally evil", if that makes sense.

2.2: I don't know how you possibly have the time to plan out all of these disparate story threads, but they're working: I convincingly have the idea that there's something *extremely big* going on behind the scenes, and I quite like the feeling of the Expedition being a single active core amongst eleven billion mysterious factions.

Couple small things I'd suggest: don't depend on plot dumps, if you can help it (gradual is good); and I'm with Kaitou in that I'd like to see more of our regular secondary cast come to the fore. I know some of this last can be accomplished in SideRP, but I know I'd like to see some of the ensemble get their own moments in the public spotlight as well.

2.3: Okay, normally the "How are my literary themes coming across" would be the sort of question my English Major brain would jump on, but it's weird: it's perversely difficult to get a handle on how intellectually significant the storyline is when I'm so immediately enmeshed in it. Kinda like trying to figure out the chemical composition of the running track when you're in the middle of a marathon.

Even though I can't pinpoint why, though, this whole thing is panning out really well as literature--and that's part the DM's doing, and partly the PCs', but it's working. I mean: Character development! Atmosphere! Freakin' legitimately poignant moments! I've been hit in the gut by some of these past scenes the same way I am when reading really good genre fiction. Kudos, guys.

2.4: I'm noobish enough that pretty much any combat will be entertaining to me (Ooh! Pretty colors! Unnecessarily long discourses on magic item principles! etc.), so in lieu of comments on how the mechanics are going, I'll put something more specific out there: at some point, could we have some sort of battle situation that we *aren't* thrown into more or less unexpectedly? I like what we've been doing, but just for pacing's sake, something like a stronghold infiltration or a big we-know-it's-gonna-happen-tomorrow battle scene would be neat: i.e. something where the party can hash out a creative plan of attack a good bit before the fact, and where the fun comes from seeing how well we can implement it.

[Nathan of the FoS]

So in addition to every thing else, how did you like the Faerie? (For those with poor memories, that's Featherflute, Atheling, the Lorelei, Ivor Stahlrheim, and Spite and Malice).

The Book: This one struck me as being oddly herky-jerky; the sequence of events didn't flow as nicely for me as in some of the past ones. It was more like, "Oh...we're going to the statue of Beyrath tomorrow?...all right...oh wow, there are a whole bunch of whacked-out fey people here...uh, how did all this happen again?" Stuff like this is hard to avoid, of course. In Book 3 we did kinda the opposite thing, where we just did whatever and it took a long time and was kinda frustrating, but everything was organically connected. This might possibly have been just me, as I recall not being around as much as usual during the early part of the book. I really liked the idea of the fey challenges and what-not, but it turned out rather disappointingly from my perspective, as Charles got sidetracked by a bizarre and pointless conversation with...well, we'll forego a full description, since Andre is now required to uphold the lady's honor. More on this to follow. The conclusion was pretty nice, all things considered; being out of contact for the length of the Trial of the Soul was too bad, since some interesting things happened then.

WRT the fey: I hate the Lorelei with a semi-rational passion. Spite and Malice should be sent to bed without supper. Atheling was a little hard to figure...at first I thought he was some kind of projection of the Featherflute's psyche, which actually might have some truth to it, although it's obvious he is actually a separate being from his later actions. The Featherflute was very interesting, in his non-communicative way. Ivor was annoying, because he kinda gave us the runaround and made Charles look like a total fool twice, but I ended up feeling kinda sorry for him, which spoiled the hatin'.

Continuation to follow!

[yalenusveler]

1.1 I liked the book as a whole. Excluding the books featuring Johnnyboy, I thought it had the strongest "Antagonists" as a whole. Because honestly, in their own twisted way, they were tragic characters, and I couldn't help but feel bad for them. This might also be because I'm a sick bastard who did a 15 page paper defending Medea in high school. So YMMV.

I liked the Fey quite a bit. Tragic, strange, monstrous, wondrous. You hit the notes well. Featherflute was suitably creepy as heckl, and my brain kept flashing "Directed by Guillemo Del Toro" at me.

The Riddle contest was a bit of a stumble. It was one of those situations, and they crop up in about everything, where it becomes more of a test of player ability than of Character ability, and some people that can royally tweak off.

I liked it because i felt it fit thematically. Technically, from a gameist standpoint, it could've come down to opposed Int checks, or something similar, but that would've made it loose something in my eyes.

1.2 The Trial of the Body...was scary. We had two blasters/controllers, and meatwall. And the blasters had psionics, which were a "new thing" to the campaign. It wasn't a BAD fight. Yes, we had some near insta-takeouts. But that happens sometimes. It's the nature of the game. However, at the same time, Kaitou Kage raises some rather good points I don't see the need to reiterate.

2.1 Now...on to the people who's job it is to make the story interesting! namely, the villains!

Cavendish is an evil abomination, and Andre will dance and laugh with inhuman glee the day we destroy him. If EoA were a comic book, he would be our Joker. Utterly psychotic, totally unrepentant, and with the panache and flair for the dramatic to make it look stylish. I love him like some people love listening to Howard Stern. I hate him...but I want to see what he'll do next.

Cedevet Tarik suffered from essentially being the Boss Fight waiting for you to open the special door. We learned WHAT he was doing...but still...I know you dislike Book 3. I still think it was far from a weak book. Though we never got to know him in a way...it was almost a good thing. Far easier to dehumanize the enemy when you don't have to know if he happens to like the same sort of music, or he supports a theater troupe in his spare time.

When he's not killing kids in a mad scheme to augment mystical power, of course.

Fienddog McHotpants...was a fiend in hot pants. He was unmistakably evil, and suave at the same time, or at least as suave as one can be in hot pants. The keep was a barrage of creepy, and had some definite nice scenes in it. And honestly...who are we to question the fashion tastes of the infernal?

Now...on to the Fey. I Adored them Blame personal Bias, but they were forces of nature that happened to decide to wear almost human faces. Fey should be weird, and almost understandable till you realize that they do not really think in a mortal mindset. They were tragic even when they were being amoral. Because quite honestly, they were there to die. Even if it took them centuries, they that had the potential for eternity...were slowly fading away. And all for Love.

And finally, the Anubite. Who more and more, i don't think really belongs under villains. Again to use the comic book analogy...she's the Punisher.
The Punisher is a Marvel Comics character. He's non superpowered, and tends to fight predominantly tech based/organized crime villains. His shtick basically is the fact that when it comes to villains, he is an utterly ruthless killer. The rest of the Marvel Universe knows about him. Some have tried to bring him down, seeing his methods as too extreme. Others try to ignore him, lest they be forced to look at how far they could go if pushed. And some will work with him, choking down the ethical questions such a decision forces.

Anyway...knowing what we know now, her actions are ALMOST justifiable. As we learn more over the coming books, I have a feeling either we will directly be involved in an alliance of convinience, or really wishing we were as she lays dead, and we realize just what we potentially unleashed

3.1 Honestly. Don't worry about emulating gothic. Ravenloft does a lousy job of it most of the time anyway. You're hitting the good points, while avoiding most of the pretentious . And you have a big theme that's been going. Strongest in books 2, 5, and 6 in particular. Namely, Love as a gateway to suffering. Love hurts. Love makes you do stupid things, love makes you vulnerable in so many ways.

Ravenloft...is a world far from friendly to love. It's why the I.HATE.LOVE speech wasn't "She's crazy and eeevil!" it was "nope, she's crazy and perceptive about the way the world works" on the Lorelei's part. And yes Nathan, I will defend her quite a bit. I have a very rational defense too

3.2 Well, what Kaitou said, but again, you've explained your reasons to me. As for tailoring encounters to our strengths..you've got a party of 8 PCs with a diverse spread of strengths. You're already occasionally tearing your hair out as is. We don't want you turning into Lex Luthor DM.

On to book seven! And who wants to go exploring ancient caves with a newly minted priest?

[Nathan of the FoS]

Part Two: How did the combat go? As before, this is probably my most serious attempt at a 'group' fight, and also my experimentation with wide-range control spells and disables as opposed to heaping chunks of damage.

Continuation!

The combat went...oddly. It was a near thing, there; if the fey had gone first I'm not at all sure we would have won, because if the giant had knocked Ishaq and Tomas into the ravine in successive rounds before Ishaq got his hits in, I don't know how we would have done enough damage to him to keep him from knocking anyone near the candle over the side. This was also yet another point in the "what our party needs is a druid" column. For Charles, at least, he spent the fight doing things which, by his build, he is monstrously unsuited to doing, because the things he IS built to do were either impossible or useless. It turned out well enough in the end, I suppose, but it was rather nerve-wracking in a frustrated and frenetic way. On the other hand, we were called on to exercise our ingenuity and think outside the box, which is good, in a nerve-wracking and frenetic way. So it had its pluses and minuses.

We've discussed this before, but I would still like a combat/combats in which we're matched against a larger number of weaker foes. This may be too incredibly hair-raising logistically, but Kuzan's remarks about the futility of certain actions are important, I think. If the AC of all the critters we face prices Charles out of the market to actually hit them, and their hit point totals mean that unless he's sneak attacking he can't really damage them, and sneak attacking requires actually setting up circumstances in which sneak attacking is possible, and creatures against whom it's effective...then, uh, go team?

ANY-way. These things will always be with us, and we don't spend that much time in combat, all things told, and massive skill points mean that being a rogue when not in combat is pretty good fun, so I suppose it all comes out in the wash. I will forebear to write my other essays on this subject, although I'm sure you would all be entertained to learn how the preceding means the Spell Compendium is a blight on game balance.

I'm also wondering exactly how these combats are being arranged on your end; to have the enemy do something which plays into our hands may make fights short, sweet and non-dramatic, but it would be nice to actually surprise our enemies by our tactics (if they deserve it). On the one hand, almost all of our opponents can be said to have legitimate reasons to know about our capabilities; we have, IIRC, been fighting against opponents with significant arcane information gathering abilities, and who have the advantage of fighting on turf they've chosen; strategically, we've been limited to reacting to circumstances imposed on us by our enemies. That we are relatively weak and uninformed is, in some sense, the point of the campaign, but this feeds back into the previous comment--fighting people more our own size (so to speak) is a nice change. (Book 3 was pretty good on this point, I think.)

[Nathan of the FoS]

Part One: Antagonists, Recurring and Otherwise: In particular, what do you think of Cavendish and the Anubite, and how do you like/dislike the various one-offs (Cevdet, Marchosias, Featherflute & Co.)

I gotta hand it to you, you've got the condescending hypermalevolent villain down. Cavendish is Cavendish...he walks the "over-the-top" line pretty regularly, but he's never plunged down the slippery slope of Camp yet. And, frankly, if you can avoid going over it, the line is the place to be. Charles doesn't have quite the visceral hatred for him that many of the other PCs do, but I do.

The Anubite, as has been said previously, is kinda her own thing. Charles actually has a fair amount of fellow-feeling for her. Also, she's kinda cute, and Charles digs an older woman. So she's got that going for her. The fact that she'd kill him in a eyeblink if it suited her (still fairly obscure) purposes is a mild drawback, but, hey, if Andre can cozy up to Malice and the Lorelei...

Cevdet was a nice bite-sized villain with a suitably awful set of deeds behind him; I thought he was a success. Marchosias made me want to go bathe after talking to him. (It wasn't just the hot pants, either.) Even more than Cavendish he smirked and sneered and pontificated and deserved his comeuppance--a comeuppance which might have come a bit prematurely for dramatic purposes, but which was very satisfying as a finale to the Book. The Faery Court were, in some ways, the best of the one-off villains; there were several of them, we got to interact with them significantly, and they weren't infinitely evil (several were highly evil, yes, but not like Marchosias), so they were nice and multi-faceted.

Part Two: Overarching Campaign Myth Arcs: There's the big plot with the Eye of Anubis and Menetnashte which is slowly becoming more and more understood. Right now we've gone past the 'Mystery! You know nothing!' to the "Okay, we know something". Starting in a few more Books I'll actually start explaining things. What you think about other multi-Book phenomenon (such as the Expedition itself), goes here.

We do know more...quite a bit more. Perhaps even enough to start figuring out what questions to ask. What's the relationship between the Anubite and Menetnashte? How much of what she's said is true? How many cooks do we have in this kitchen, anyway? How much information do we already have that would shed light on Menetnashte and the Eye?

Part Three: Themes: As you might have noticed, I'm somewhat pushing the Books towards getting more 'gothic'. How's that going? Do you see any overarching themes in the campaign? (Yes, literary analysis. I do this to myself, so I'll inflict it upon you too). I've got one or two intentional motifs that I try to work in often.

We have a LOT of crossing water...Book 1, battle in a rainstorm; Book 2, crossing the river to Cavendish's lair; Book 3, traversing the flooded mine; Book 4, Cavendish decamps into the lake with his skeletons, then we flee across the Ousserd; Book 5, the battle in the cistern and the purification of the waters; Book 6, information gathered at the riverside and then the battle on the cliffs of the Kermanshah, the Lorelei's river boiling below. To think I twitted KK about his choosing a storm priest for an expedition into the desert.

We also have a lot of fey. And undead. I blame Cavendish. And they don't seem to like each other much--the whole "life vs. death" thing, I suppose. I hope we can work this to our advantage.

Part Four: Misc: Anything else you want to say about the game.

It's quite the humdinger. The amount of effort lavished on the game is obviously immense, and it shows. There are really good set pieces, the NPCs are well-drawn, the number of interlocking plots is impressive, and, mirabile dictu, you have succeeded in keeping 8 players in a PbP game for, what, eight months? Ten? It's got to be some kind of world record.

Lastly!, House Rules:

Basically, we've been playing for some nine months now, give or take, so how do you like/dislike the house rules we have so far? Do you even notice them? Are there any house rules you particularly want to see instituted or removed?

I don't particularly notice them, no; things are working pretty well on that end, I think.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Even though I can't pinpoint why, though, this whole thing is panning out really well as literature--

As one who is merely reading it, I agree here. Quite excellent in that regard, and from both the DM and the PC's.

[lostboy]

Part One: How did you like the Book as a whole?

At the start I thought this was the weakest book so far, however the ending redeemed it. It started rather messily and for a good long while I was wondering exactly what the point of the pc's being there was. I get the idea that the people souls had been nicked but they werent dying etc so just felt the motivation to investigate and put all our lives on the line was a tad weak, (compared to previous books anyway).

The fey stuff at the end was good though, and very well played out by you NT. I had absolutley no idea what a fey was before this book, and wasnt keen when they were first mentioned as I had a bit of a knee jerk reaction towards little elfy things that fly. But to be confronted by something out of Pans Labyrinth or Naked Lunch was really eye-popping. The portrayal IC provoked exactly the right mixture of fear/awe and ewww!

The tests etc were a nice touch though and really amped up the suspense and urgency of the situation, without it being a total combat-fest.

Part Two: How did the combat go?

I can see where other people are coming from about disables. I think there is a point here about removing ALL someones effective abilities in one go and leaving them tumb twiddling. However on the other hand if we were facing intelligent opponenets its exactly what would happen I suppose. I wasnt too dispointed at goign down early on, as I felt Khalil had done his bit, I think I'd have felt pretty gipped if the salt bag had missed and then he got fried, but it just came down to a run of good dice rolls, followed by some abysmal ones.

Just thought Id add a note about the other fight in this book, I though that was handeled really well, particulalry the shadow assassin. It gave everyone something to do and also nearly killed quite a few of us. This book in general has seemed far more deadly than any other so far.

Part One: Antagonists, Recurring and Otherwise:

Cavendish - awesome, but agree with Nathan dont go too camp with it.

The Anubite - works really well as the mysterious element in the game, Whistler summed it up nicely.

Cevdet - who was he again? Weakest villain by far, we had almost no relationship with him up until the point we twatted him. OK he had an evil plan but he needed more fleshing out for us to care about him.

Marchiosas - again awesome. I LOVED this guy...

The fey - see comments above, interesting mix of personalities and motivations, but perhaps a bit too alien to be true villains for me.

Part Two: Overarching Campaign Myth Arcs:

It's intriguing but I have yet to be able to grasp quite whats goign on. Im looking forward to how it pans out but Ive got a sneaking suspicion there is a few real twist and turns in the plot coming along (although if I could roll sense motive checks better I might have more of an idea....)

Part Three: Themes:

I must say Ive noticed three recurring themes runnign through this:
1) water (thanks to the rebuild Khallil can swim now thank god)
2) bargaining or creating pacts with higher powers / npc's (selling our souls?)
3) Transformation (everyone seems to be evolving in some way, some phsyical, some emotional, some mental but things are definatly changing for the pc's)

Part Four: Misc: Anything else you want to say about the game.

It rocks! I'm as glued to it now as I was when we started, that my friends is the hallmark of an excellent game. True there have been weak points and strong points but the ride as a whole has been excellent. I think kudos should be given to NT for his writing skills, the narratives have been absorbing, creepy and well paced.

Lastly!, House Rules:

Good, Im also pretty new at 3.5ed D&D (this is my 2nd game ever), but they all semm to make a lot more sense than the standard ones. Extra skill points are useful and allow a lot of skills to come into play, rather than concetrating your meagre points in one or two and never using the others.

Im also a big fan of the rebuild option, there are so many choices of character development that soem are bound to be less than useful, so having the option to re-develop your character is a great idea.