Posting frequency: I will try to post in the IC thread daily, I'd like all the players to try to keep up with this pace (not that that seems to be a problem 8)), otherwise we'll never complete the game (it's huge). It's hard to judge how long the whole campaign will take on a forum, but I'd hope to complete it in 2-3 years.
Dice Rolls: I will be using Invisible Castle for all public dice throws, this has the slight problem that I cannot access that site from work as it's blocked by the company firewall. So I'll only be able to roll dice when I'm posting from home. In order to avoid name clashes with other Invisible Castle characters, all our characters will be prefixed with [MON]; eg [MON]Elizabeth, [MON]Timour, etc.
In order to be fair with secret rolls Im also going to make them on Invisible Castle, this time theyll be in the style [MON]Elizabeths Secrets, [MON]Timours Secrets, etc. (do we really want to know Timours secrets
), so they will all still be auditable, but you wont see them unless I post a link, or you cheat.Ill include a list of links to the dice roll history of each character here once I start making rolls.
Chapters: I will start a new IC or OOC chapter with each time your characters do some "globe trotting," this links in with skill checks below. The campaign is non-linear so there isn't any way of knowing how many chapters there might be, for example you may wish to return to New York later in the campaign.
Skill Checks/Increases: A 'skill check' will be marked off every time a skill is used successfully. Skill increases will be checked at the end of every chapter, so there is a lot of room for skill improvement during the campaign. There are also other times during the adventure that skills can be gained / increased, such as during sea voyages.
Combat: I prefer to run combat by the players posting their intended action in the OOC thread, and then me resolving the round with one IC and one OOC post, this saves waiting for each character to take their turn in order.
Total Party Kills: This campaign is very, very dangerous; I haven't read Shadows of Yog-Sothoth yet, but I believe Masks is close behind it in deadliness.
There are several points in the campaign where there is a real risk of all the characters being killed or left insane at the same time. These "danger areas" can all be avoided, due to the non-linear nature of the game, but as any friendly CoC Keeper would, I'll be gently guiding you towards as many as possible.
The campaign is written so that a new group could follow in the footsteps of a dead one, and still have access to information gathered by their predecessors.
I genuinely hope that all of your wonderful characters survive the whole campaign, but remember that the Invisible Castle system means that there won't be any "fudged dice rolls" to keep you alive.
I think that's everything, hope you all enjoy my game.