I play whenever I can, which is unfortunately not very often. I currently DM a game in 4e and play in a 5e game. We've only met twice for the 5e game, and we've missed a month already, so I'm not to sure how long that one's going to last unfortunately.
That reminds me— I should say— We are doing an episodic campaign. If someone wants to try it out but can’t commit, that’s fine. I am expecting some people will drop in and out based on their schedule, which is normal for online groups. You are treasure hunters. If your character is missing, its assumed you’re just on another mission.
Sign up has been posted. https://www.writingforums.org/threads/official-dungeons-and-dragons-sign-up.158760/ Please post your official race, class, and character name. You can always edit it later. If you have questions, please either ask here or on the Discord server. https://discord.gg/tV7Z9wK First session is August 9th.
@Edgelordess I'm responding to you over here to keep the sign-up thread from getting too cluttered We're starting at level one. I think everything should probably be in order by the first actual session. edit: By the way, you can ask stuff in the discord too! It might be quicker to get responses.
Hi guys. A scheduling problem has come to our attention. We’ve been talking about it in the Discord off-topic channel. There’s no way Jenissej and Mink can play at the same time. Their schedules are too different. So our choices are Someone can’t play. Dragon Turtle can suggested we have a rotating schedule. We could play at 6 pm central on Thursday (so @Mink could play). And then next week we could play at 1 PM central on Saturday (so @Jenissej could play). Pros: Everyone can play (maybe?). Cons: Mink and Jen are both forced to miss 50% of sessions. Any thoughts? Feedback?
Since 7 pm CT is 2 am at my place, I wouldn't be able to play all sessions anyway so I'm fine with rotating schedules.
I think a rotating schedule is fine. It also helps people to have more opportunity to play. I know there'll be days when I can't make it simply because work is a pain in the rear. Edit: I misread...it's 4:24 am and I'm tired.
Okay, we’ll do the rotating schedule then. We seem to have a very solid consensus. In the future, I will start a PM thread to keep people informed about the schedule. It will always be Thursday at 6 pm central (one week) and Saturday at 1 PM central (one week). Late is fine. Just make sure you’re ready to go when you arrive.
FYI Izzy posted this in Discord, but I’m also posting it here. Please join the campaign in D&D Beyond... it will make it easier for other people to view your character sheet. https://ddb.ac/campaigns/join/199392496811745 And please make your character in D&D Beyond if you haven’t already. It’s so easy I’ve decided to require it... it makes it a lot easier to view and check character sheets for potential problems. Also, it helps show off character art if you want people to know what your character looks like.
OFFICIAL SCHEDULE ANNOUNCEMENT! All times given below are in Central Standard Time (UTC -6). We will play once per week, rotating between Thursdays at 6pm and Saturdays at 1pm. This week only, we are playing both Thursday and Saturday. Our first session will be this Thursday, August 9, at 6pm CST. Our second session will be this Saturday, August 11, at 1pm CST.
Mine was play-by-post in a forum, so you didn't have to have everyone together in one place at the same time. I think the biggest thing for me, and what ultimately led to the game dissolving after about three years, was prep time. Especially during battles, because I made maps for all of the encounters. Since you've run games before, you know how to prepare. The other big thing was letting the players drive the story arc, whether it completely followed what I had in mind or not. The more freedom the players had, the more engaged they were and the more likely to show up to post regularly.
Centuries ago, in a Call of Cthulhu adventure, I prepped an entire town, places and people for all kinds of scenarios, and a couple of more sparsely populated "spare" towns in case they went chasing after some red herring. Because I knew that there was no way on earth they'd follow my main plot line. They followed my main plot line to the letter. It seems slightly unreasonable of me to be annoyed with them.
Haha. There's some irony. I'm used to players going off on some shiny side trek that I didn't anticipate and having to improvise on the fly. One funny experience I had with Call of Cthulhu was with a bunch of people who had only played Dungeons and Dragons, where often the default ends up being to attack the bad guys. They were investigating a house thought to be used by cultists in downtown Baltimore, and ultimately started shooting into the house at people and I think one of the players even had a grenade that got tossed in through a window. The police arrived, killed one of the characters in a shootout and arrested the rest of them, and the players were incredulous until I said "you guys just started a shooting war in the downtown of a major U.S. city. What did you think was going to happen," and the light suddenly went on in the players' minds. They were much more circumspect in later sessions.
I remember the story--not sure if it's true--of a months-long Call of Cthulhu campaign that ended with complete failure and the destruction of all life on earth and possibly in the universe...because a character didn't have pocket change for a bus. I love that.
@John Calligan asked a question in the Progress Journal thread for the campaign. I'm replying here because I want to talk about it, but I don't want to clutter the Progress Journal too much. Yup! We're using Roll20 as a tabletop simulator and Discord as voice/text chat. This is my first time using it (I've led campaigns for years, but always in person). It's working out really well, IMO, maybe even better than in-person. There's drawbacks to online play, but also a lot of advantages. I'm digging it. It's way easier to get everyone organized. It's also way easier to use battle maps and make character sheets. We're going to start a longer story arc in two sessions. I'm not sure how well it will work with people dropping in and out. But I guess we'll see.
That's awesome. I used roll 20 for a couple of years, but haven't played for a while. The drop in and out thing was always a problem. I got around it by running things pretty episodically, like spreading out a mega dungeon levels with traveling adventures, and writing in a lot of excuses for people to come and go without breaking the flow. I love all the assets you can buy in the roll 20 store. Anyway, gonna check out the log. Cool stuff
