I bet after all this talk of TPKs the fight ends with nobody dead. We've only had one player killed by monsters the whole time we've been playing.

True, however the current party has no healers (unless Puyet can heal people, i don't know). We've still got our work cut out for us if we want to make it through this alive.

I'm still betting on zero casualties.

Puyet can heal people, but just twice.

My talk of TPKs aside (I've always underestimated on how resilient PCs can be, especially for the Arena), it's still very swingy. A run of excellent rolls on our side and terrible rolls on their side (those 2 fours are a start) can still turn this around. Still, assuming everyone rolls averages, Pang would win. The marauder has been standing around doing nothing, and yet nigh everyone has been bloodied :p

After those shit rolls I'm inclined to favor Shin's perspective, especially since wvlf at least has decided to start busting dailies. Still, it's the first fight of the adventure.

Okay so now that the party's primary meatshield is dead and their highest-damage striker has done nothing useful for the third turn in a row* it might be a good time to start discussing exactly how party selection will work for this guild business.

Just in case, you know. It's still winnable. Technically. With a bit of luck.

Now, I originally suggested just letting you hash out the PCs for a given adventure amongst yourselves, but this approach has several problems:

1. It would take fucking forever.
2. It would be biased against players who weren't paying close attention.
3. It would be biased against players who are disliked for one reason or another.

A good way around problems #2 & #3 is to just put up a list of all "standing by" characters on the wiki or something, WITHOUT the names of their players attached and with a little personality/history blurb for each one or something. Obviously the characters from players who are currently ineligible due to hitting their adventure limit would be greyed out (I've decided to go with a 2-adventure limit rather than 5 since even for the shortest adventures that's a solid 4 months of active duty and usually much longer). Then I (with my privileged knowledge of who is who) would just PM the relevant player after their PC is selected. This all kind of depends on everyone being honest, of course. Yeah.

A good way around problem #1 is to compartmentalize the selections. Each person leaving active duty (whether just taking a break or on forcible leave) would just pick their character's replacement, eliminating a lot of inter-party squabbling. If a given player wants to switch to another of his/her OWN characters at any time during their active period I see no real reason to deny that. If halfway into your first adventure it turns out that Minotaur Bard wasn't as fun as you thought it would be, just swap him out with your magical guild summoning ring doodads that I'm going to give you. Easy-peasy.

None of this is totally set in stone of course; suggestions?

And also, again, if you've got like a rough PC idea or even a complete character waiting to go PM me with it so I can start building the roster for the uh... guild yet to be named. Even if we end up not needing said roster right away it's good to get this squared away early.

Also I should mention that if the party does wipe here than Zeph, Hawkeye and wvlf will still be under their 2-adventure consecutive limit and will be eligible straightaway for the next run (with a new PC, of course). An adventure that prematurely ends less than a third of the way through hardly counts.

"Freeport Allied Guild of Sellswords"? Too subtle?

Garr you said you'd probably be taking a break after this one anyway so I decided Garrmondo was the best choice for making an example out of. Nothin' personal bro :(

*Zerg don't edit your posts to try to make me look silly it's not nice

Changing characters in the middle of a fight, or even just an adventure, though, sounds kinda silly.

I'm not sure the whole thing makes much sense. Are we just randomly picking people? Might as well. Past the first adventure, everybody is going to know what characters belong to whom. And on top of that, nobody is going to want to keep the character they're building a secret.

In all fairness, it is probably going to come down to letting us decide for each adventure, then big daddy stepping in and saying "LET YOUR BROTHER PLAY THE GAME TOO JESUS CHRIST I NEED A DRINK! YOU FUCKERS ARE GOING TO GIVE ME A HERNIA!"

I am currently too lazy to think of something that works, however.

All of this is awesome except for

Yeah, no. Having contingency plan characters for when shit gets out of your current build's comfort zone cheapens the challenge, ruins improvisation and creativity, and will virtually guarantee player success.

It will also result in a certain Singaporean shitslinger making 35 base characters all min-maxed for certain situations and then warping them in as needed. Fuck that. Pick something and stick with it and go with the flow or shit is going to get real bunk real quick.

Edit: And yeah, just tell people who the characters belong to. You'll find out quick enough anyway, and if people don't get chosen for some reason, maybe the person behind the character can learn why that is. WHO KNOWS. http://colonelskills.belkanairforce....terysolved.gif

The guild system is great for participation and refreshing the party members every now and then. Though, I'm quite curious as to how Pang intends to balance the encounters. Since it's basically a mix-and-match now, you're bound to have people at different levels, and some with more stuff than others.

I didn't edit my posts to make you look silly. I edit my posts because I'm indecisive and haven't decided anything yet!

Oh, and my character does nothing useful because you give me a status ailment EVERY ROUND fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

I don't think you're the highest damage striker he means though. :3:

I act useful, Deni and Skills tell me off for being so serious. I act useless, Pang criticizes me. :shrug:

Though, I'd argue Glenn is a better striker than Cal. Sneak attack though situational far outpaces quarry damage now, and there's usually no problem gaining combat advantage for rogues.

Edit that post again and I'll see to it you lose the ability to do so forever.

Well, as it is some people have more stuff than others since by default new characters enter the game with 3 items, kit, and cash and that's it. I don't see a huge problem in incremental gains in wealth as a reward for endurance. Any character who officially retired but ends up coming back somehow is going to get their shit culled back down to newbie levels, though. Fair's fair.

Different levels isn't going to happen, everyone is assumed to have roughly the same XP totals at all times, active or inactive. It might be cute to split the XP for each encounter 20 ways to justify this but I think we can handwave and just assume everyone else is keeping busy offscreen, killing rats in somebody's basement or something.

Yeah, I was thinking in terms of UGH THIS IS LAME WHY DID I PICK THIS rather than OH HO A DEMON LET ME GO GET MY LEVEL 22 DEMON HUNTER HE HAS +300 VS. DEMONS but you've got a point and that shit probably would happen. Scratch that idea then.

I still want to find some way of not turning this shit into a popularity contest though, while I'm sure some of you have legitimate reasons for your grievances that's no excuse to poison the game with them. If I can get over my deep, bitter hatred of LeHah long enough to let him play I would hope the rest of you can forgive Zerg someday for his Zerg Sperg. Plus Dope asked to be added to the queue the other day, and... well. I'm just trying to keep things fair, you know? I don't know if there's actually a way to do that without sticking to the "NOW WAIT FOR THREE YEARS" system and god knows I don't want to do that either.

Shit it would be nice if I didn't have to devise a SYSTEM TO ENSURE FAIRNESS and I could just say "be mature, faggots" but HERE WE ARE PEOPLE

Yeah. Bunch of little kids, aren't they? Canadians. :tpg:

You could always arbitrarily enforce the two-adventures per person, and slot the next guys in line right in. More turnover and still fair.

Well, yeah, but that removes the entire function of the guild concept really (and that's something I want to hold on to because it allows for plot hooks beyond "YOU WANT SOME MONEY SO OFF YOU GO"). Plus I think it's more interesting for anyone who hasn't played recently to have some kind of shot at getting in rather than just looking at the queue, seeing themselves halfway down, and sighing. Maybe it's me but knowing who's going to show up well in advance is kind of lame; I could just autocratically pick the adventures for you guys and list a queue for that too but I let you hash it out because it's more fun and unpredictable that way.

But on the other hand even if I COULD somehow keep the character roster anonymous (which I honestly can't, it takes 30 seconds to say "Acer, which of these dudes are yours") it would only reward people who are good at creative writing over those who aren't. Which doesn't sound terrible ON THE SURFACE but I think one of the benefits to the game is the way it can help you stretch your creativity a little. If you look at, say, Glenn, he started out as a cipher but now he's got a real personality with a tragic history and a lost love and all that jazz. It's fun to see things like that develop. So maybe it's better to just leave out the blurbs too, just name, race, class and go.

(Yes even NAMES will tend to reward the creative but christ maybe not everyone's name will have to start with G from now on that opens up a lot of room.)

So there's no real way to enforce fairness other than saying DAMN IT BE FAIR YOU RETARDS and that's what we're going to have to go with I guess barring any revolutionary ideas.

I'm just going to bounce random suggestions off that might solve some of these issues.

1) A minimum downtime to coincide with a maximum uptime. Two adventures have been had? Then you must sit out an equal amount at least (or more if the backup size is significant. I don't know how many people are interested? 12 or so?)

2) A randomizer, if we can't come to some consensus. Could lead to potential hilarity parties with no healer, or 5 rogues, but that might be no fun for anyone. I don't know.

I really have no issues with just hashing out groups as we go along amongst ourselves, but in order to be somewhat fair in the least we're going to need some structuring and rules so that everyone rotates in with some frequency.

I think certain groups will gravitate towards each other no matter what is done. I don't think that can be prevented, considering.

Just in case the rest of you are interested in trying your best to avoid a TPK, here's the enemy stats as far as I can calculate (it is entirely possible I might have missed some damage).

Monitor: 29/110 HP (26%) <-- priority target; kill to prevent more warder reinforcements
Marauder: 85/110 HP (77%) <-- has the ability to knock weapons off. Your melee hit may well be a miss.
Warders: 1 HP each. <-- secondary targets; kill to prevent marauder flanking

Suggested Actions: (P.S. you should know your characters more than me. I disclaim responsibility for failed plans.)

Puyet: Flattening Charge vs. P10 (Glenn activates Guided Shot if practicable). If charge hits, Furious Assault. Inspiring Word on GFZ. And you still got a move/minor left.

Glenn: Delay till after GFZ.

GFZ:
Option 1 (Eliminate Minions) Stand up, Sword Burst. If all miss, Blades of Fiery Wrath. Aegis of Assault on N6.
Option 2 (Escape) Teleport to Q10 with Rubicant Blade (include Puyet in teleport to O10 for flank bonus). Booming Blade monitor with -2 prone penalty. On miss, Blades of Fiery Wrath. Aegis of Assault on P10.

Glenn:
Option 1 (Eliminate Minions) Blinding Barrage from P8; Fast Hands switch to Sword in preparation for melee. You'll be very exposed if the minions/warder don't go down though.
Option 2 (Eliminate Warder) Fast Hands switch to Sword. Move to Q11. Clever Strike P10, Nasty Backswing on miss. Both attacks with combat advantage.

P.S. Pang, the last picture was entitled "You could have saved him". I don't see how though :(

Including the active party the total "interested" list is 20 people but this includes people who may well have been joking. Still, I'll be damned if I'm not going to make an honest attempt to get Maris to play if I can.

But yeah, minimum downtime seems like a good solution. Let's say 2 up, 3 down to start with.

I can't believe I didn't think of just spinning the Big Wheel of Party Selection. That's pretty hilarious and I might just go with that instead of giving you goons any say in it at all. :tpg:

An all-rogue party would be brutal as all hell assuming they cooperated at all. Of course they wouldn't, but

Given the large base of interest, could we not try having two groups from the guild running around doing things? I've been interested in trying my hand at DMing for a while now, and if we've got 20 or so people willing to play, then running two separate adventures using characters from the guild doesn't seem quite as silly. It might make some strange and inexplicable things happen (ex. having a nap and leveling up thanks to the XP from the other group) but i don't know how confusing things might get. Just a suggestion.

Why not? That way, Pang will finally get to play. I've always been curious regarding his playstyle :p

Though to minimize confusion I think you should start off in a new "universe" (since you and Pang playing in each others' sandbox, and yet must collaborate as DMs to determine events).

I don't see a problem with this idea. While running a totally separate game in a separate setting would eliminate some (very minor) issues involving consistency, I think that the occasional accidental contradiction is better than having a list of people signed up for two separate games in separate worlds with maybe a whole separate list of houserules or whatever; I think there's value in providing a consistent experience there. And it's really not hard for either of us to scan each other's threads and incorporate whatever. Like, for example, Zerg, I think you killed off poor Iggy Conmara a little while back. So now that's canon. See how easy?

Together, friends, we can beat the Forgotten Realms into a bruised, unrecognizable lump.

Just to be clear, if Hawk decides he'd rather not ride my coattails (so to speak) and just does his own thing I completely support that as well, whatever gets more people rollin' and less people trollin'

Additional Spam:
I remain guarded, yet optimistic. The bitter memory of promised Shadowrun still weighs darkly on my heart

Are you kidding? For the first while i won't be so much riding your coattails as hanging on in desperation while being dragged through the dirt. Dirt with large rocks scattered all over the place. I'm hardly confident enough to try running a game, let alone one without the help of a more experienced DM.

On another note, this conversation is making me :( because of the implication of my character's imminent death which i'd rather not think about right now.

On a note for Pang's sadness:

I've actually been toying lately with the best way to adjust the Shadowrun campaign rules for online. It is a little more complicated than the D&D 4th system, and by a little I mean holy fuck jesus movement rules.

So I'll probably just run a game of sci-fi mutant D&D.

Really? Christ, Zerg.

The Arena post in question is located in http://www.gamingforce.org/forums/showpost.php?p=766688

I'm pleased that someone was paying attention, but am saddened lurker didn't notice that the Brooch of No Regrets has "Conmara" inscribed on to it. All the hints I dropped there to tie into descriptions given by Brigid -- unrecognized :(

But no, I - or rather Ebony didn't kill off Iggy. That was supposed to be his leprous tee-totaling father, who I'd like to think was named Hubertus. Who didn't die from cirrhosis after all. It was only later upon re-reading the Crusader thread that I realize Iggy was also a halfling prowler with the exact same stats.

The tools belonged to his grandfather, Griddley (name provided by Brigid). I figure, if the grandfather's name starts with G., maybe the father's was H. and the son's was I(gnatius)!

___

But point taken, Pang. I've set events of the Arena in the relative past compared to your campaign to minimize any inconsistencies, but a few major cameos or cross-overs wouldn't hurt.

Gonna stat out Bombastus Hamfist for the Arena nao~~~