OOC - GENERAL Campaign Discussion

[Job]

Hello Seon,

I made a couple of comments in red font in your character sheet. Please take a look at these questions/items.

Thanks!
Job.

EDIT: RP Notes - We now have to work up a logical plan/story as to how Ernest gets into the expedition.

• As you mentioned earlier, we can come up with an idea as to how Ernest can fly with Katie (Mr. Handy's PC) to join the expedition at Panama or Australia, or even to meet the ship on the seas. You'll need to work this in with Mr. Handy's character story, so keep an eye on our discussions regarding this over the next week or so.
• We'll need to roleplay the action that Ernest takes to apply. A couple of suggestions are 1) similar to Mr. Handy's character, he can submit a letter of introduction/application to Starkweather in NYC (which would technically occur prior to departure - chapter 1 or 4) and give a reason for delay in joining the expedition such as a prior work commitment. Or 2) We could have Ernest somehow connected to an expedition member such as Professor Moore, and we can roleplay his late addition through letters or meetings in Panama or Australia.
• I'm also open to any ideas that you may have.

Job.

[Job]

Hello Mr. Handy,

I've reviewed your character sheet for Katie and have no changes at this time, although please note that I could not see the images that you attached. Once you add your equipment, I'll give her sheet the final approval.

General Comment: Her MS degree in Physics is an interesting choice!

RP Notes: We now have to work up a logical plan/story as to how she gets into the expedition.

• As you mentioned earlier, she can fly to join the expedition at Panama or Australia, or even to meet the ship on the seas. I would not recommend a sea landing because she'd have to abandon her plane -- Professor William Moore only had enough room and fuel on the ship to transport the planes that are currently loaded.
• We'll need to roleplay the action that Katie takes to apply. A couple of suggestions are 1) she can submit a letter of introduction/application to Starkweather in NYC (which would technically occur prior to departure - chapter 1 or 4) and give a reason for delay in joining the expedition such as a prior flight commitment. Or 2) We could have Katie somehow connected to an expedition member such as Douglas Halperin or Professor Moore, and we can roleplay her late addition through letters or meeting in Panama or Australia.
• I'm also open to any ideas that you may have.

Job.

[royya]

I began to re-read the parts where Rucker joined and I must say - It's fantastic.
Good job Job, the happy memories are coming back.

[Job]

The rules might say so, but im not of the opinion of "have to be near madness" to cast/understand spells. Im of the opinion of making spells more accessible to the PC, not that it should be easy... In my experience of 15 years fooling around playing rpg's is that i once have gotten mythos knowledge, could never use it as my character went mad after few minutes. Was frustrating.

How interesting wouldn't it be (roleplaying wise) that the Phd in anthropology did understand what was happening, that it was a spell by a being far more powerful then himself, and that he could use the knowledge to defeat the being, help the group, instead of going mad for 1d6 months? or go catatonic for the rest of the campaign?

Philosophically, I agree that this would be fun to play out, peeking into the life of a human who begins to wrestle with his/her mythos knowledge and begins to test their powers, with successes and failures. I would not want to be anywhere near that fictional person in Real Life, but playing this out in our game would present all sorts of excellent roleplaying opportunities! If we get a superior roleplayer to handle this task, one who can subtly juggle the moral, psychological, and physical/extra-physical implications, then I'd be willing to run with it and let the story sort itself out, and will not shy away. I would not refuse someone the opportunity to burn brightly, yet flame out quickly in our game!

The seduction of a team member by the powers/elders and that team member's decent into madness would be VERY interesting to explore, although I believe that there would be a strong tendency for it to end badly, gruesomely, disturbingly. It would be glorious!

Dear GM be evil but let the PC play the role he made the char for (a little while) before he go bananas

I plan to add or enhance areas in the game where our teams might "recover" to some extent, but these areas would become noticeably less frequent and effective in the latter chapters. If a character chooses to dabble in the mythos, then they must accept the risk of going bananas... I will prolong the Fun (capital "F") as long as I can, and will do my best to make sure that the characters don't flame out too quickly. I'm looking forward to some enthusiastic debate about the insanity rules.

Job.

[Job]

I began to re-read the parts where Rucker joined and I must say - It's fantastic.
Good job Job, the happy memories are coming back.

Hello Royya,

All of your abilities and skills areas looked fine; no changes. I made a couple of comments in red font in your character sheet in the "Equipment" and "GM Notes" section. Please take a look at these questions/items.

Thanks!
Job.

[Job]

Hello BenTheRat,

I've looked over your character sheet and have no changes. Martin Louis LeBlanc is approved for use.

Job.

[Job]

Please note that we now have a "Reference" subforum for our BtMoM game (it can be found in a separate box just above our table of chapter IC and OOC links). Raiko graciously created this subforum at my request when I noticed that our list of topics was starting to get quite lengthy and confusing. You'll find your character sheets in this subforum, along with the threads of maps, photos, newspaper articles, NPC's, etc.

Our home is starting to take shape! The walls are up, the roof is on, and now I'm putting in the plumbing and electrical wiring...

Job.

[Seon]

Fixed character as much as I could and filled out the inventory, including plans on what to do in case of my inevitable descent into Insanity (Who said that insanity isn't fun?!). WIll work on backstory later.

[royya]

I began to re-read the parts where Rucker joined and I must say - It's fantastic.
Good job Job, the happy memories are coming back.

Hello Royya,

All of your abilities and skills areas looked fine; no changes. I made a couple of comments in red font in your character sheet in the "Equipment" and "GM Notes" section. Please take a look at these questions/items.

Thanks!
Job.

I will fix the equipment. I copy paste it from ENworld and the GM note as well.
I forgot to add EDU skill points due to age - I allocated the 20 points .

[Job]

Hello Anatomist,

I've taken one last look at George Barrow's character sheet and have added two last changes in red font. Please send me a PM when you've finished your update.

Thanks!
Job.

Anatomist,

I reviewed George Barrow's character sheet and left comments in red font where I had questions. NOTE: If anyone has a problem with me editing your character sheet to add comments in red font, let me know and I'll put the comments in a separate post. As a general rule, I'll never edit one of your posts; instead I'll suggest changes in an OOC thread. This just seems like a fast and easy way to communicate questions/edits on the character sheets, which are somewhat lengthy and complicated. And FYI, I always save your original character sheet in a separate text file before editing it, just in case I make a finger fumble or we later find a need to examine the original.

Next up, hopefully tomorrow night, I'll review Mr. Handy's and Seon's character sheets.

Thanks!
Job.

[Anatomist]

Hello Anatomist,

I've taken one last look at George Barrow's character sheet and have added two last changes in red font. Please send me a PM when you've finished your update.

Thanks!
Job.

Anatomist,

I reviewed George Barrow's character sheet and left comments in red font where I had questions. NOTE: If anyone has a problem with me editing your character sheet to add comments in red font, let me know and I'll put the comments in a separate post. As a general rule, I'll never edit one of your posts; instead I'll suggest changes in an OOC thread. This just seems like a fast and easy way to communicate questions/edits on the character sheets, which are somewhat lengthy and complicated. And FYI, I always save your original character sheet in a separate text file before editing it, just in case I make a finger fumble or we later find a need to examine the original.

Next up, hopefully tomorrow night, I'll review Mr. Handy's and Seon's character sheets.

Thanks!
Job.

fixt

[Job]

fixt

Excellent! George Barrow's sheet is approved.

Job.

[Anatomist]

You are giving us a heads up in this thread when we can start posting, right?

[Job]

You are giving us a heads up in this thread when we can start posting, right?

Yessir! I have a few more housekeeping items to complete (like adding a few more links to the key EnWorld items, some known details about Starkweather and Moore, and some minor information about the SS Gabrielle NPC crew), and then will kick things off with a posting here--and also some starting items in each IC thread--and I'll send a PM to each player.

I apologize for taking so much time to get things organized, but for a play-by-post campaign of this size, being able to find information fairly quickly is key, especially when some of that information is spread across two different websites. By the way, if you folks have any suggestions for improving how things are organized, please be sure to post your ideas or send me a PM! I'd be happy to hear from you.

I expect that we'll be starting things off during this week, within a few days. I am excited to get things going!

Job.

[Job]

At Last! (to echo our start of Chapter 5 - At Sea)

Our BtMoM campaign is officially re-started today! Be sure to check the IC threads that start shifting towards the top of our topics queue because you'll start to see things moving along, just as the inexorable momentum of the U.S.S. Gabrielle carries our intrepid explorers nearer and nearer to the crystalline wastes...

[Job]

Wow! There are a lot of threads running in this campaign!

Job.

[Anatomist]

Its gonna be a mess until we get some of them completed

Do i understand it right if i say you want us to use the OOC: thread of each chapter to post our rolls? It just seems convenient to me doing so in the IC: thread. Easy to se you know. Maybe a Spoiler-Button tag would be bether then moving it to the ooc?.

Rolls with [Spoiler-Button],[the rock and rolling goes here]

[Job]

Yes, you are right. We should probably use spoiler tags to post the rolls in the IC thread.

I was suggesting that we post them in the OOC thread because it would make reading the IC story line thread seem more like reading a novel, but I see where it can get confusing if we cross-post between IC and OOC threads.

OK, so let's post all die rolls with spoiler tags in the IC thread.

Job.

[Mr. Handy]

I've finally caught up on all the posts made in the last week. I've edited new pictures into my character sheet, and the equipment list will be added at some point during this weekend. I'll be adding Katie's telegram to Starkweather soon to the Chapter 4a IC thread as well. Please let me know when I can make an appearance to that thread.

I have an alternative suggestion for including dice rolls in the IC threads without disrupting the story flow at all. Check this out.

You've already been embedding links in text using a similar method. You can do the exact same thing with a link to a roll on Invisible Castle. Aside from the blue underlined text, it's completely transparent to the reader. If you want to see the actual rolls, you can simply click on the link. If you don't, you can ignore it. The text in the link should describe the success or failure of the roll. The link above has step by step instructions for embedding links to Invisible Castle rolls in text (and for using it in general, though those instructions are a bit dated - there is now a separate field for Campaign Name, for instance). I've been using this technique in Zombie Apocalypse for years to good effect, and I use it in my other games as well.

[Job]

Thanks Mr. Handy! That's a great suggestion for linking the die rolls (and one that should've been obvious to me...). *sigh*

Phew! That is one extremely informative link to your set of CoC guidelines for a play-by-post campaign!

Job.