Discussion - Future of our group (version 2)

[reiphil]

Current Core group:
Phil
JP
Stephen
Mike
Micah
David

With David leaving in June, our numbers are going to drop into just acceptable group running. Without a place like AGR to call home and with players moving about, it is hard to pick up new members/sustain the group. However, I would still like to game with everyone.

Before we start deciding the next game or if there will even be a next game, we should try and see if we can set up a core standard of how we as a group want to play and proceed.

Time: We should set up a better time to accommodate everyone to play. I think Sundays are ok, but perhaps we should shift the time to be 2-7, instead of 1-7. What has been happening is that people end up a little late, or pick up food and want to eat pre game, which means they show up at 1 with food, and are eating which makes it hard for everyone else to concentrate or for that player to get into the game. What I propose is that if we are to continue, perhaps, we should start at 2 pm, but allow people to start showing up at 1. This allows for time to discuss character changes, or resolve anything that happened the adventure before, and eat or talk and chill.

Fresh Attitude: I think we need to bring back the game to its roots. Regardless of who is DMing and for what system, we need to put away the feeling of wanting to do the highest numbers in the game, and go back to the roleplaying roots. That means we need to stop the power gaming, stop the focus on only following rules, stop the focus of just trading hits until something dies. With the articles that Joseph posted, I think everyone needs to flow back into RPing. I tried to do this with BladeRaiders, but unfortunately, mostly everyone seemed to just devolve back into combat roles, and instead, what I wanted was a lush RP environment in which people tried to do anything they wanted. The group as a whole needs to stop running into every encounter with their swords and spells raised and try to see if there are better environment variables to work with. As a DM, I don't want to railroad anyone into NOT fighting, but encourage the fact that fighting isn't always the most beneficial way of completing an encounter, and I want to see that in the group.

Learning systems: With whatever system we run next, I think everyone needs to learn the system fully. It makes turns go by faster and allows us all to concentrate on the next action quickly. Too often, in every game, we have the "I do this... no wait, I forgot i had this, so I do that, no wait... I can't do that so I do this... Oh wait, that does this? I don't wanna do that." It interrupts the flow of action in the game, understandably we want to follow the core rules of a game, but people need to be flexible, run with what they have, and plan out their motions so everything can go faster. No more 5 minute turns, etc.

Place: With David leaving, I don't mind running any game at my house (it actually encourages me to participate more, as it is my house), and I also don't mind playing at other people's houses. However, with the last session we did, perhaps we may want to look at a web-based solution as well. Using something like Google Hangouts we can all communicate via webcam or just mic to interact with the game. The con of this though, is that we'd need to get Mike into an acclimated environment to be able to use google hangouts and we also lose the attentiveness of the group. It's too easy for me to be browsing Reddit (which I already do on my phone during some games as i'm waiting for my turn). However, this allows us to essentially meet the times as we don't have to worry about driving to everyone's houses, and it also allows us to play cross country, meaning we could keep David in the loop or, if time allows, even have Kyle or Joseph jump back in too!

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Honestly, with David leaving, I kind of feel inclined to say we all go our separate ways due to the aforementioned "issues". But I also feel encouraged to keep the gaming group going as we've all had some excellent and fun adventures. Those gaming experiences and experiencing it with the group are what makes everything worth it for me, and I think if we can distill ourselves back to basics, we can bring the gaming group back alive.

But yeah, JP, Stephen, Micah, David, post your thoughts.

I'll also bring this up with Mike next session.

[David]

Well, given that it is likely the only way for me to stay involved in the long term, I am obviously in favor of the Google Hangouts option.

I feel like some of the "learning systems" problems recently have been mostly my fault. If Birthright is giving people too many headaches, I can always continue Parodos as a normal 4e game.

[reiphil]

May 5, 2014 11:29:23 GMT -8 David said:

I feel like some of the "learning systems" problems recently have been mostly my fault. If Birthright is giving people too many headaches, I can always continue Parodos as a normal 4e game.

It's not just your fault, but a fault shared with all of us. BladeRaiders was kind of a pain too as not everyone understood what they could do, making their options more limited. MnM was the same as we always tried to do things outside of the box (mechanically speaking) that we couldn't.

[kore]

Time: 2-7 official start time with a one-hour prep for whatever sounds great!

Fresh Attitude: I agree, there should be more options/solutions to obstacles/encounters than hack-n-slash, but that is a two-way street and if an option doesn't exist or the PC doesn't have enough information to figure "it" out, of course it devolves into shoot first, ask questions later. It's no secret that I power-game/min-max my characters and as I consider this approach to building my characters I think that it demonstrates a desire for more RP, at least in 4e. When we're regularly pushing 6+ rounds for a combat encounter, we need to mitigate that time. I min/max so as to facilitate putting an end to combat as quickly as possible, provided more desirable/available alternatives aren't available. One way is everyone get their act together, as you suggested, but that alone won't solve the problem. 4e combat is extremely layered and there are a lot of mechanics at play of which we don't/can't take advantage. When we're dinking away at team monster with one standard action attack per player per turn, of course combat it going to take long. This substracts from RP opportunities/time and an improvement in combat efficiency is one important means to mitigating combat length. I don't think the take-away from the articles Joseph has been posting is "stop power-gaming". They definitely point toward facilitating RP, but RPing and power-gaming (min-maxing) are not mutually exclusive. I think some of what I'm saying, with regard to 4e specifically, points to the third standard you mentioned.

Learning Systems: I learn by doing and much of that sample dialog has been spoken by me at one point or another in the other systems we've played, like at my first session of Birthright. The expectation I put on myself is that I will learn quickly enough to not be a drag on the gameplay.

Place: My preference is playing in person and as many distractions there are for me when we're all in one room, there are 5 more if I was at home.

I don't see any of these issues, including the number of PC (as of David leaving), as prohibitive. Obviously, I have a lot to say on the RPing issue and I think the power-gaming aspect is a matter of perspective.

[reiphil]

I think that we very rarely try and do a round of seeing how to stop an encounter unless it looks helpless. There are many times where we're put in situations in which we don't just do a "I take a look around to see if there is a rockshelf to knock down" (if we're next to that kind of area) or just doing bullrushes to knock an enemy off a cliff, etc. I kind of understand that it's a two way street, however, as much as the DM can describe the area, I don't think they should also be expected to try and point out every avenue of attack that the PCs should have. I think the player should be allowed to transform some actions into minor or free (for 4E specifically) to benefit from looking around instead of feeling like they wasted an action to do nothing. For example, if there is a huge arcane sentinel guarding something, it sucks to make the wizard spend their turn trying to arcana out a solution, instead it should be a benefit to check to see if they can disable it otherwise.

In regards to power gaming. I completely get your perspective, but coming from a DMs perspective, some encounters are used to push the party to certain limits. It is tough when one or several PCs completely breaks that mold in which the average becomes trivial. That means that to put a challenging experience, the DM then has to put in a more challenging encounter. What this entails then, is that unless everyone is power gamed, then we get into results where half the party is ok to continue, and half the party isn't, which makes it unfair. The only way power gaming fully works is if everyone is playing at the full potential for combat, thus making even "challenging" encounters more in line with average. If everyone was "average" then some encounters may take longer but in general, everything /should/ have a more balanced feel. However, the thing about 4e is that it's too gimicky in encounters/powers, meaning at certain levels we just have too many options and it makes the encounters even longer or more trifling to deal with when we have to search our vast array of powers for a counter attack, an immediate interrupt or reaction. And it further detracts from the encounters when in the middle of the next players turn we may discover "oh yeah, I had a riposte, so can I do that?"

4E tried to mitigate this by going back to essentials, but by that time it just felt too restricting, especially with multiclass options, etc. Don't get me wrong though, I do enjoy the essentials classes, but they are tough to play in comparison when playing with characters that have multitudes of powers.

On your other points, I understand learning by doing. In fact, I am much the kinesthetic learner, but there does need to be a balance. I am not trying to point anyones fault's out specifically, as it is an issue with all of us. I had my own troubles with Birthright to begin with and even had some issues starting out on MnM/BladeRaiders. However, I do feel, in general, we could all be more prepared for the system in trying to understand the core more. I get that the first session or so might be a little slacking due to that, but in some campaigns i feel that people are still learning months in.

And yeah, i understand the place preference. Maybe we can work out some kind of combination that has anyone who can be physical present, and anyone who can't use web based.

[earthwizard]

Hi guys,

I dropped by the forum to see if there was an interesting discussion going on - and I was rewarded.

If you choose to do an online game, I'd be interested in joining. I am in Chile for the next ~2 months, which is US east coast time zone (3 hours ahead of CA). I mentioned on here before that there is are a couple of online tabletops that can facilitate game-play. In August I'll be in London and following that I honestly don't know where I'll be - fun times ahead!

As for choice of RP system - I think it is important that everyone know/agree upon the rules. D&D 4e is a set we all know, although it might be tedious/challenging to transfer to an online table. I've heard rumor that D&D Next PHB will be released Aug 19 for $50 and contains everything you need to play a full game (and the DMG will be completely supplemental).

Kyle

[reiphil]

I think DnD Next is supposed to drop in July (starter's kit) with the full PHB dropping in August. So I'm trying to hold out till July for the next game :X

[earthwizard]

FYI - Amazon sale for pre-orders of D&D Player's Handbook (Release date August 19):

www.amazon.com/Players-Handbook-Core-Rulebook-Wizards/dp/0786965606/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1400772847&sr=1-1&keywords=player%27s+handbook

Retail $50 - Pre-order Sale $30

I just ordered one. Get 'em while they're hot!

[kore]

Done!

[reiphil]

There's also this: www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Starter-Set-Fundamentals/dp/0786965592/ref=pd_sim_b_5?ie=UTF8&refRID=0HKM8461C3ZBNWGNVSWZ

That comes out july. It will be the starting material for my next game...

[Brian Williamson]

May 22, 2014 7:35:54 GMT -8 earthwizard said:

FYI - Amazon sale for pre-orders of D&D Player's Handbook (Release date August 19):

www.amazon.com/Players-Handbook-Core-Rulebook-Wizards/dp/0786965606/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1400772847&sr=1-1&keywords=player%27s+handbook

Retail $50 - Pre-order Sale $30

I just ordered one. Get 'em while they're hot!

Thanks for the heads-up!

[earthwizard]

Hey All,

I finally played a game on Roll20 this morning. Here is a quick recap if you are interested in electronic tabletops:

We had a full game of players - 6 players, I think. The game session lasted ~2.5 hours, and we played with the last D&D Next playtest packet that was issued.

In-Game:

The party had entered the family tomb of one of the party members. There were several undead around and it appeared some of them were skeletal tomb guardians who were on "our side". The party is actually investigating some goings-on by a baddy named "Vladimir" - blood rituals or some such thing. Since my character was new, I was just dropped into the situation. My character's (5th level human fighter) memory is kind of in a fog. The party thought I was in a drunken stupor by the description (who knows - maybe I was. My character doesn't remember). After the party splashed water in my face and gave me a lay-on-hands, I came to and the party seems to be battling undead. So I join up with the party. We fought one encounter and passed an obstacle (magical ice) and got through a portcullis. There the game ended, so not too much in-game stuff I'd say.

I think I impressed the others when my first attack roll was a crit, so that was fun. Otherwise, I didn't get a chance to really show off my class features. I would have gotten an extra attack, but my first hit destroyed the skeleton!

We probably would have gotten a little further through the adventure if there were fewer players. It seemed people were doing several things at once. But that happens when you have 6 players.


Online Interface (Roll20 for VT and Google Hangouts for voice chat):

It was the first time I've played with this group and online, and I have to say I enjoyed it. There were a couple hiccups, but overall it was a good experience - and a great solution to geographically scattered game groups.
I don't know if it was the fact that we had 6 people or that we were playing online, or maybe a combo of both, but the game went just a little slowly.

We had only a couple of hiccups with the tech. Primarily there was a voice echo over the google hangout. I thought I was causing it, so I put on headphones and it turns out another player was causing it. There were some non-player voices in the background at a couple moments, but it wasn't disruptive.

The Roll20 interface allows dice macros to be generated, so just a push of a button produces attack rolls + damage with or without advantage. You can set a macro to roll all ability checks, so just one button produces everything for every skill check. For example, DM calls for perception, you push one button and look at the WIS result. DM calls for athletics - you push the same button and look at STR instead.

There is a nice map with tokens. Fog of war can be enabled. Chat features allow for easy access to private whispers, etc. There is a feature to take care of roll modifiers as well.

It looks like some of this stuff (esp. map, tokens, and macros) needs to be set up in advance by the DM to make things as smooth as possible in-game. So, there would be a bit of a time investment for whoever DMs. I can't say if that time is significant or not. I guess you just have to try it to find out.

As I said, overall I think it is a great option for groups who are geographically constrained. It's not the same as being in the same room with everyone around the same table, but it is probably the next best thing available.


Kyle

[kore]

Very cool.

My concern would be the aggregate RL distractions. It's bad enough when we get into side-conversations while we're sitting in the same room or checking our phones for whatever, but throw in a SO, friends, kids, the TV, other online activity, etc. across half a dozen people and it could easily get mired. An honest contract of expectations should be discussed.

[reiphil]

Basic rules will be free

www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20140527