I’m an experienced player looking for a new game. I would really like to play through Tyranny of Dragons or Keys from the Golden Vault, but I just want to play. Currently running and playing biweekly games IRL, but only playing once every 2 weeks and throw some cancellations in the mix, it’s not enough!
I am looking to be a player, so I would need a DM and a party.
Current Campaign(s): Dungeons, Darkness, Drow, and Demons, an Out of the Abyss Adventure, Dungeon Delvers, a Dungeon of the Mad Mage Adventure, Jungle of Evil, a Tomb of Annihilation Adventure
Like I said up top I would really like to play through ToD or Keys. What do you guys think?
Some unsolicited advice if you're planning to do this game as a play-by-post campaign via this forum...
I've participated in a few different play-by-post games, and I found KotGV particularly difficult to play in the forum here. Really, any campaign that's very open (i.e., the party has an objective, but there's no clear choice of how to approach it or even what the next step is) would probably be difficult unless the players are all online around the same time.
With play-by-post, it's pretty straightforward for the party to make decisions like, "follow the road or cut through the dark forest" and "continue straight along the hall, open the door on the left, or descend the stairs to your left". It's more difficult if the adventure features a lot of complex, open-ended social interactions and leaves it entirely up to the party to decide how to approach the objective. It might help if all of the players are in the same time zone and posting around the same time of day as the DM so that you resolve a lot of back-and-forth interactions quickly. Otherwise, if your players are mostly posting once or twice per day at different times of the day, a simple conversation with an NPC can take a week IRL to resolve. It's difficult to keep a play-by-post game like that from losing all momentum and then stalling out.
With KotGV, it also feels natural for the party to split while doing their initial reconnaissance of the mark. If you've got a group of players who have been playing together for a long time, that works fine. But if you're just building a party from strangers who came together in this thread, I think that an adventure like ToD works a little better. It's just easier to build party cohesion if the whole party is thrown together very quickly in a few encounters whether they're all together and the foes or puzzle or whatever is pretty clear.
If you decide to play KotGV, you might want to consider doing some more straightforward encounters for LVL 1 -> LVL 2 before you start in on the first heist. Maybe the ship or caravan that is taking the party members to their first destination is attacked, and the party has to fight off the bandits. And then the party chases after the bandits to bring back something that was stolen. That way, by the time the party hits the first heist, they have some experience working together.
Well, I’m looking to run it on discord. It makes it easier to get notifications and actually post more often. Do you happen to have any tips or tricks on running a game through discord?
As far as the difficulty of playing something as open as KotGV, would it not just be easier to follow an initiative order outside of combat? Like a per day initiative roll for non-combat turns completely separate from the combat initiative?
Well, I’m looking to run it on discord. It makes it easier to get notifications and actually post more often. Do you happen to have any tips or tricks on running a game through discord?
Yeah, something like discord might help if the DM and the whole party is able to post and interact around the same time. That also means that you normally need to be in the same time zone or span just a few time zones. It gets much trickier if you're party is a mix of US/Pacific, Europe (CEST), and Australia (AEST), for example.
You generally want to ensure that everyone in the game has a similar posting frequency. Otherwise, the people who can post more often are just naturally going to dominate the game and those who can't post as often may lose interest and drop out. If you expect people to post multiple times / day, then you should say that when you're recruiting folks. If you want them to be online at a particular time of day so that there can be more back-and-forth interactions, then you should say that, too.
If you'd prefer a slower pace where everyone just posts 1 to 2 times / day, then that's fine. It's also easier to maintain that pace for the months or years that it normally takes to run even a medium-sized adventure via play-by-post.
For example, I'm playing a LMOP play-by-post game that's generally one post / day. After 6 months and 1300 posts, we've completed parts 1 and 2 and are just getting into part 3. That includes 6 extended combat encounters across 4 different locations with all of the social encounters to tie it together. By contrast, the KotGV game that I mentioned ran for ~6 months and 700 posts before the DM had to pull the plug. At that point, there had been 1 true combat encounter and a lot of social interaction, deception, and spying, but the party had not even pulled off their first heist yet.
As far as the difficulty of playing something as open as KotGV, would it not just be easier to follow an initiative order outside of combat? Like a per day initiative roll for non-combat turns completely separate from the combat initiative?
You probably don't need to do something like initiative order, but if it makes sense to break up the adventure that way, you could split the day into chunks and just focus on specific encounters in each chunk of time. That's what my DM did here in another play-by-post game. The advantage of that approach is that you can quickly zoom past the getting from A to B and just focus on the important "locations." The DM just adds some narration to stitch the encounters throughout the day together. I don't know whether any of the KotGV's heists are amenable to that kind of structure.
I can just tell you that as a player in a few different play-by-post games, the energy in the KotGV game felt very different. There were a lot of fun things, but coordinating among characters with different ideas for how to approach the heist or how quickly to "pull the trigger" and start the actual heist took a lot of discussion. It was also more difficult to tell whether we were making progress toward our goals compared to something like LMOP or even TWBtW. If you really want to run a campaign that's heavy on role play and social interaction and light on combat, just make sure that you set expectations. Players may want to take that into account when they build their characters. If you've got a party with only one character with a positive CHA bonus, the party may end up standing around while that character handles the frequent social interactions. On the other hand, squish high-skill characters (5 or 6 skills, expertise, etc.) can really shine in a campaign that's not so focused on combat. If someone brings a combat-optimized 16/16/16/8/8/8 barbarian with few skill proficiencies, you don't want them to be disappointed that they rarely get to use their character's abilities. (It's fine if they want to play that kind of character and just play the "fish out of water" or the bruiser who does his own thing until it's time to "bring the muscle.")
Anyway, I'm not currently a DM, and I don't have any great advice on how to run KotGV. I just saw that you mentioned that adventure, and I thought that I'd drop in and share my experience.
I love dming and would be happy to dm unfortunately I do not have discord or much free time so I would have to play a pbp were we all just post whenever the heck we can.
If this game doesn't end up being on discord and y'all don't mind such a text-and-run style of play then id be happy to dm
(I own KftGV but not ToD and I heard that ToD sucks so idk)
I would be appreciated if you were willing to create a discord. It’s just much easier to receive notifications and play whenever we have time with the discord app. Essentially makes it a quick text from our phones instead of having to get on here, check notifications and such but not knowing weather someone posted or not. It’s free and if that’s something you’re willing to do I would love to have you as a DM!
As far as the ToD books I do have them and am able to share with anyone in the campaign if that’s what we decide on playing.
I literally don't have a way to get the discord app as I don't own any device besides a school computer and an iPad so old that no matter what its doing it has 1 fps I checked and the school computers aren't aloud to be on the discord website.
if you find this too much of an inconvenience please find a dm as im not the only choice
(sorry if that sounded passive aggressive im not angry)
I’m an experienced player looking for a new game. I would really like to play through Tyranny of Dragons or Keys from the Golden Vault, but I just want to play. Currently running and playing biweekly games IRL, but only playing once every 2 weeks and throw some cancellations in the mix, it’s not enough!
I am looking to be a player, so I would need a DM and a party.
I would prefer to play on Discord.
I can be DM or a player. I'd rather be a player.
Character(s): Chak-tha, Thri-kreen Battlemaster Fighter, Théodmon Rokas, Eladrin Druid, Grayhawk the Aerial Ace, Aarakocra Bladesinger Wizard
Current Campaign(s): Dungeons, Darkness, Drow, and Demons, an Out of the Abyss Adventure, Dungeon Delvers, a Dungeon of the Mad Mage Adventure, Jungle of Evil, a Tomb of Annihilation Adventure
Check out the Chatty Tavern | Jester and Breadman's Character Bakery
My title from drummer is Wielder of Whispers
Do you know anyone else who would want to join?
Im game to join. Finally a discord bpb
I'm keen to join, I would prefer to be a player. As I am still a newbie DM and new to PBP
I´m quite interested in trying to join of course
can i join
Ok, so far we have 6 players (or 5 players and DM). If we can find a DM so that Mirik can play then we’re all set!
So what would everyone like to play? Like I said up top I would really like to play through ToD or Keys. What do you guys think?
Some unsolicited advice if you're planning to do this game as a play-by-post campaign via this forum...
I've participated in a few different play-by-post games, and I found KotGV particularly difficult to play in the forum here. Really, any campaign that's very open (i.e., the party has an objective, but there's no clear choice of how to approach it or even what the next step is) would probably be difficult unless the players are all online around the same time.
With play-by-post, it's pretty straightforward for the party to make decisions like, "follow the road or cut through the dark forest" and "continue straight along the hall, open the door on the left, or descend the stairs to your left". It's more difficult if the adventure features a lot of complex, open-ended social interactions and leaves it entirely up to the party to decide how to approach the objective. It might help if all of the players are in the same time zone and posting around the same time of day as the DM so that you resolve a lot of back-and-forth interactions quickly. Otherwise, if your players are mostly posting once or twice per day at different times of the day, a simple conversation with an NPC can take a week IRL to resolve. It's difficult to keep a play-by-post game like that from losing all momentum and then stalling out.
With KotGV, it also feels natural for the party to split while doing their initial reconnaissance of the mark. If you've got a group of players who have been playing together for a long time, that works fine. But if you're just building a party from strangers who came together in this thread, I think that an adventure like ToD works a little better. It's just easier to build party cohesion if the whole party is thrown together very quickly in a few encounters whether they're all together and the foes or puzzle or whatever is pretty clear.
If you decide to play KotGV, you might want to consider doing some more straightforward encounters for LVL 1 -> LVL 2 before you start in on the first heist. Maybe the ship or caravan that is taking the party members to their first destination is attacked, and the party has to fight off the bandits. And then the party chases after the bandits to bring back something that was stolen. That way, by the time the party hits the first heist, they have some experience working together.
Happy gaming!
If you all are still allowing players, I'd be willing to join in!
Well, I’m looking to run it on discord. It makes it easier to get notifications and actually post more often. Do you happen to have any tips or tricks on running a game through discord?
As far as the difficulty of playing something as open as KotGV, would it not just be easier to follow an initiative order outside of combat? Like a per day initiative roll for non-combat turns completely separate from the combat initiative?
I am still recruiting! Looking for a DM too if you know anybody.
Yeah, something like discord might help if the DM and the whole party is able to post and interact around the same time. That also means that you normally need to be in the same time zone or span just a few time zones. It gets much trickier if you're party is a mix of US/Pacific, Europe (CEST), and Australia (AEST), for example.
You generally want to ensure that everyone in the game has a similar posting frequency. Otherwise, the people who can post more often are just naturally going to dominate the game and those who can't post as often may lose interest and drop out. If you expect people to post multiple times / day, then you should say that when you're recruiting folks. If you want them to be online at a particular time of day so that there can be more back-and-forth interactions, then you should say that, too.
If you'd prefer a slower pace where everyone just posts 1 to 2 times / day, then that's fine. It's also easier to maintain that pace for the months or years that it normally takes to run even a medium-sized adventure via play-by-post.
For example, I'm playing a LMOP play-by-post game that's generally one post / day. After 6 months and 1300 posts, we've completed parts 1 and 2 and are just getting into part 3. That includes 6 extended combat encounters across 4 different locations with all of the social encounters to tie it together. By contrast, the KotGV game that I mentioned ran for ~6 months and 700 posts before the DM had to pull the plug. At that point, there had been 1 true combat encounter and a lot of social interaction, deception, and spying, but the party had not even pulled off their first heist yet.
You probably don't need to do something like initiative order, but if it makes sense to break up the adventure that way, you could split the day into chunks and just focus on specific encounters in each chunk of time. That's what my DM did here in another play-by-post game. The advantage of that approach is that you can quickly zoom past the getting from A to B and just focus on the important "locations." The DM just adds some narration to stitch the encounters throughout the day together. I don't know whether any of the KotGV's heists are amenable to that kind of structure.
I can just tell you that as a player in a few different play-by-post games, the energy in the KotGV game felt very different. There were a lot of fun things, but coordinating among characters with different ideas for how to approach the heist or how quickly to "pull the trigger" and start the actual heist took a lot of discussion. It was also more difficult to tell whether we were making progress toward our goals compared to something like LMOP or even TWBtW. If you really want to run a campaign that's heavy on role play and social interaction and light on combat, just make sure that you set expectations. Players may want to take that into account when they build their characters. If you've got a party with only one character with a positive CHA bonus, the party may end up standing around while that character handles the frequent social interactions. On the other hand, squish high-skill characters (5 or 6 skills, expertise, etc.) can really shine in a campaign that's not so focused on combat. If someone brings a combat-optimized 16/16/16/8/8/8 barbarian with few skill proficiencies, you don't want them to be disappointed that they rarely get to use their character's abilities. (It's fine if they want to play that kind of character and just play the "fish out of water" or the bruiser who does his own thing until it's time to "bring the muscle.")
Anyway, I'm not currently a DM, and I don't have any great advice on how to run KotGV. I just saw that you mentioned that adventure, and I thought that I'd drop in and share my experience.
Hey any further development on this game?
I love dming and would be happy to dm unfortunately I do not have discord or much free time so I would have to play a pbp were we all just post whenever the heck we can.
If this game doesn't end up being on discord and y'all don't mind such a text-and-run style of play then id be happy to dm
(I own KftGV but not ToD and I heard that ToD sucks so idk)
haver of this weird idea
dark leader of the cult of tiamat
I would be appreciated if you were willing to create a discord. It’s just much easier to receive notifications and play whenever we have time with the discord app. Essentially makes it a quick text from our phones instead of having to get on here, check notifications and such but not knowing weather someone posted or not. It’s free and if that’s something you’re willing to do I would love to have you as a DM!
As far as the ToD books I do have them and am able to share with anyone in the campaign if that’s what we decide on playing.
I literally don't have a way to get the discord app as I don't own any device besides a school computer and an iPad so old that no matter what its doing it has 1 fps I checked and the school computers aren't aloud to be on the discord website.
if you find this too much of an inconvenience please find a dm as im not the only choice
(sorry if that sounded passive aggressive im not angry)
haver of this weird idea
dark leader of the cult of tiamat