Author Topic: Feedback, Complaints, Concerns, Likes, Dislikes for Campaign #1 [Joy the DM]  (Read 45869 times)

[Ashley] The way Joy runs this, believe it or not, I am also surprised sometimes and I also sometimes hear her thoughts and she'll just change her mind so I don't know what's going to happen until it's happening.

You won't understand this unless you write a novel or two, eventually you don't know where this is all coming from, not even Joy, and it's so odd that it often meshes together and works.

So I was surprised by Summer, and I know now why Summer was necessary but at the time I didn't know what Summer was going to say or do, what she'd be like and I didn't even know Summer was Ulla until later.

I also think we're going to have to fight a giant spider even though Alice doesn't think so. It makes sense to me.


[Joy] sounds like foreshadowing to me.

[Ashley] wait, so if Alice doesn't think we have to fight a spider then we definitely do right?

[Joy] I will not know myself until the moment one spawns or doesn't.

There were a lot of plot twists!
It was clear that our first quest wouldn't be a smooth escort mission but Cat was surprises the second thing we encountered after that cougar was a full grown dragon!
And yeah that part 2 of the goblin den was such a zerg rush of goblins and wolves. The bandits running away was also unexpected and of course Cat's duel with Ashley.

Obviously that Summer was not the dragon in disguise!
I still don't fully believe it.

Also that demon. I mean wtf?

>Also that demon. I mean wtf?

Archdemons and demigods are the two vying factions that rival the gods in the material plane and other planes. Both can be thought of as level 20+ adventurers. They cannot take on a god in the god's home plane but can keep gods at bay in other planes. They also sometimes "kill" each other. This simply kicks them out of the plane they're in and into another plane, usually the ethereal plane. SheShe and the Mechathereal goddess are in the Ethereal plane currently.

So archdemons and demigods (they're equivalent) will sometimes align with interesting vessels to foster them. SheShe has aligned with Yulya, the nameless Mechathereal Demigoddess has aligned with Ashley. They sometimes don't ask for permission. If they don't, they eventually have to or they will be forcibly removed. Ashley was given the choice to accept or reject her recently.

Why him? Because he knows about the ship... along with a few dozen others and rumors are spreading.



rumors are spreading
lol Alices worst nightmare
im still excited about her ship though. and the entire Alice backstory
« Last Edit: April 28, 2025, 06:50:16 PM by Kashtan »

Yes, the celebrity Alien


Now that we understand things better, SheShe added a usage on Healer's Kit, it still is required to treat cut or pierce wounds due to critical hit, it's not needed for Blunt injuries. To compensate for the cost, it also heals 1HP but can only be used once per critical injury. For 5 gold, it technically heals more than a 50gp healing potion (2d4+2), that's a pretty good deal. I am not changing our game at this time.

SheShe worked out this as an interim solution to: "Why not fast travel?" and "What's the benefit of slow travel?"

Slow travel .67 x speed will add stealth if trained, .5 x speed will add counter tracking if trained, stealth if untrained.

Fast travel 2x speed: Roll Fortitude (best of STR/CON) for each party member every hour. Critical failure adds 1 level of exhaustion, 3 failures will add 1 level of exhaustion. Exhaustion takes 8 hours of rest to remove. Fast travel is noisy and will add to the chances of an encounter.

Gotta go fast!

I think in reasonably secure places like the High Road, it makes sense to go faster. But with Ashley's STR/CON we probably won't get far before she drops dead. At least I have +2CON. But if I fuck up that roll... Fuck, I'm actually weaker that Ashley with -1STR! I can't wait to evolve into a less embarrassing form.

Bear was watching another counter-tracking video because they had to escape bandits. They made it two hours before Bear rolled critical fail and made them even slower.

Oh, I forgot to mention that any travel beyond 12 hours a day also follows this rule. You risk exhaustion.

Now that said, exhaustion isn't that bad. It has a blanket -2 proficiency on everything affected by proficiency, AC is not affected, and since until higher levels, you only get +2 proficiency anyway, higher levels of exhaustion only affect speed. So even having exhaustion 2 won't stop you from traveling.

I am also allowing concurrent recovery for exhaustion so if you have exhaustion 3, 4 whatever, you can get rid of all levels on long rest, specifically sleep. For now this seems broken but it's very unlikely to get exhaustion 2 except by critical hits and as a front liner, Bear's had exhaustion 2 after a battle and requiring 16 hours of rest after an encounter seems pointlessly harsh.

I'm, to put it mildly, not happy about the way you speed things up from one inescapable scripted event to the next.
I was looking forward to Hot Dog and my wild dog ears and strategizing to set up traps and suddenly I am out in the snow bitten half to death by some ice wolves. Same yesterday with setting up the camp. I spent hours on ideas - for nothing.

We have a paranoid cleric with 5WIS and a drone operator who can survey the entire area. Also an ermine that can tunnel through the snow. Yet we waltzed into a trap like idiots - because you just put us there. I know we're slow, but the game's quality won't improve if we can't make any relevant decisions at all.

In my defense, I specifically said tell me what you're doing for the next three hours and you did.

In Bear's memory of playing in the long long ago, there was a time when they used to say "ready" when doing certain scene changes, if everyone wants to do that or something similar than I can accept that.

In this case, I asked you what you wanted to do:

"Cook breakfast"

That requires fire, smoke especially with wet wood, and if 4 bandits lit a fire all night and in the morning in your area outside your fortress, are you going to let them do as they will?

This isn't Germany, no loitering, no trespassing, no foriegners (non-bandits).

https://youtu.be/b1_RKu-ESCY?feature=shared

[Ashley] You have to admit you are kind of being a terrorist by throwing their pet's mutilated head over the wall. And whatever evil monolog you yelled into the wind as well as what you're planning on doing to the victims. I thought we were supposed to be the good guys? I will probably die but I'm with Joy on this, FAFO.

Also, the attacks were made by rolling 1d4 for each enemy 1=Yulya, 2=Cat, 3=Ashley, 4=Alice, so this is how it ended up.

Lastly, the attack on you was already rolled before your 3 hour rest. It was already concluded by fate of the dice that you would be counter-attacked because of the desecration of their dear friend Mr. Jeffrey Weinstein.
« Last Edit: July 14, 2025, 06:47:37 PM by Angry Bear »

I don't think the issue is that the bandits attacked us. I expected this. I'm surprised they didn't do this at night.
But if you told us beforehand we wouldn't be able to  keep a fire going or keep watch we wouldn't have spent time on strategizing on that.

And you know how much Alice loves her ears and Cat's cooking. No wonder she's mad you skipped over that scene. I would have preferred to scan the area with Ashley's wasps before exiting the tent or even let them come to us and set up traps but we also must be more clear next time. But it's hard to say what we want to do if we do not know what the next scene will be. I think the best solution simply is to state what is supposed to happen in the next turn (sans surprises of course).

In this particular scenario, they knew where you were all night because you had a fire.

The timing of their attack was purely to align with the following triggers:

A fire is lit and any of you exit the tent and the dice rolled was sufficient to indicate you were ambushed. There was a chance you didn't get ambushed.

Scanning the scene wasn't an option according to the dice and your choices. Unless you scanned the scene in those three hours I gave you. So the lesson learned here is when I give you a window to do things, do everything you want to do as I stated. Even Ashley didn't know what was going to happen other than she knew the dice said something was going to happen. It could have been a bear passing by harmlessly or a chance that nothing happened because you also have perception and sometimes things happen you should be very concerned about but they didn't find you and you didn't notice them. 

They can't miss a smoke signal though so they had the opportunity to set up the ambush in secret.

The only issue in this that I could have done better is to tell you what the next scene was so you could be more aware, but then how could you ever be ambushed?

In this case, you were ambushed because of your actions and specifically you did not try to remain hidden outside an enemy base after you taunted them.

So given this logic, the same thing may happen again.

To address the main concern, if you are looking for a particular scene to occur, ask for it in the meta thread. I could have snuck it in hour 3 of your rest.

Sometimes I forget I have to deal with a Bear brain.
To be clear I'm not mad they attacked us and got us good. That was to be expected. They knew where we were and that was intended. That's why the plan was to have an intimidating camp with large fires showing we do not need to hide. Come if you dare! It's psychological warfare. Of course it's a bluff but better than hiding and freezing to death. Instead we got the worst of both worlds. No fire so we were attacked by beasts and Bandits ambushing us At least one of both should have been avoidable.

As Tamamo said I just wanted to have a proper breakfast with Cat, admire my dog ears and then at least get a chance to set out in an organized manner instead of waltzing up to the mine in a row. If you had said next scene you'll exit the tent to go to the mine, we would have prepared. Regardless of the outcome and if they had ambushed us in the same way, that's not relevant here. Relevant is that we have a chance to try our best with our abilities.

I really recommend stating what the next scene will be if there's a significant event like venturing out. I remember we had this and you asked us if we're ready to leave.

"Cook breakfast"
That requires fire, smoke especially with wet wood, and if 4 bandits lit a fire all night and in the morning in your area outside your fortress, are you going to let them do as they will?
Yes, exactly. As I said, we needed a fire. There was no point in hiding. They knew where we were for the entire time. Not making a fire in the morning changes nothing. That's why I terrorized the enemy and planned to make a large camp in sight with fire. To show them we're not afraid of them and so powerful and numerous we don't even consider them a serious threat. If a cat can't run or hide, she'll make herself as big and threatening as possible to intimidate the enemy. Basic tactics.

[Ashley] You have to admit you are kind of being a terrorist by throwing their pet's mutilated head over the wall. And whatever evil monolog you yelled into the wind as well as what you're planning on doing to the victims. I thought we were supposed to be the good guys? I will probably die but I'm with Joy on this, FAFO.
I'm an alien monster and professional pest remover. Never ever forget that. I am generally really nice but yeah, FAFO. I'm far from done with those guys and terrorizing the enemy is an effective strategy that may even save lives if we manage to make them give up or leave rather than fight. I'm not here to kill humans but we tried to be nice to the bandits last time and failed miserably. There will be no second chance. So unless SheShe determines someone in there is not an enemy, nobody will get out of the mine alive, whether human, werewolf, orc or giant spider. The ear collection must grow!