Out-of-Character Chat

[Birthright]

Sounds fine to me, Joe. Might be a bit fiddly for you to track, but hey, you're the GM!

[actingkeith]

I like good characters and good play... Level is pretty irrelevant to me, but I always support the guy running the game.

[SmootRK]

Another method might be to bump up XP gained from monsters/encounters by some factor, something like 10-25% across the board. This would make each encounter a tad more productive, as I think tracking posts might be tad tedious.

my 2 cents anyhow... I can work with it either way.

[Iain_IF]

I'll be the dissenting voice here. I think rewards on a per post basis penalizes those folk who, for example, have kids, post only from home during non work hours, or are naturally less chatty. None of those things make them less as a player, and I wouldn't want to reward people because they have an iPhone and spare time.

On a related note, I think posting on character or not is a bit in the eye of the beholder in terms of value. Which is worth more, my asking for beer or calculating the amount of downtime from our wounds?

I think it is a slippery slope with bonus experience. No one plays a PBP game thinking they will level quickly. I would rather plug along as a first level character doing things like running away than suddenly be higher level because of my ability to post an in character reply to every other post made on the board. Even the gifting of bonus XP for completing a task is a bit dicey, in my opinion.

I guess what I think is we've fought less than ten wolves and are a fifth of the way to second level. To me, that's a pretty quick level advancement. I don't see the need to tinker with it. If players stop posting, replace them. What wi keep the game going, I believe, is regular posting by the DM and the willingness to bring in new players when things start to slow down.

[JoeCarr28]

Thanks for the comments. They're very interesting. It was actually some well-intentioned feedback from outside the game that led me to consider giving XP for role-playing. But it sounds like, by-and-large, you're happy with the status quo. So I'll leave things as they are for now.

[actingkeith]

There's always the debate of how hard it is for low-level characters. As we've seen, with one good attack roll, a character is mostly dead. It's risky to be 1st Level. But speeding up XP is risky too.

And like I said before, I enjoy the role play and the experiences (not the roll play and the XP). I have fun being Karl. He's not very bright. He is very simple. It's fun to play him regardless of what actually happens in the game.

No worries from me. I'm having fun.

I just wish our hobbit was more like Frodo and less like Pippin. Oh, and on that note, did we back track to the point where Karl was able to find his backpack that Paladin left sitting by the tree that Jumbles was tied to, or did we lose all that food and gear?

If it's gone, I need to remove it from my character sheet. And that would mean that there's no bacon!

[JoeCarr28]

Yes, no worries, we can assume you retrieved your precious bacon.

[Hywaywolf]

I am the well intentioned feedbacker from outside the game. My feedback wasn't so much to speed up player advancement just for the sake of advancement, but to reward active participation in a PBP game which usually takes a very long time to get XP. Like Iain_IF I would never want to see a straight per post award system. That just rewards showing up. Yes it is important that people post enough to keep the game moving forward, but showing up is simply what is required to play. Personally I like for the DM to award blocks of role-playing XP on an arbitrary and ad hoc basis as long as its based on in game PC actions that significantly advances the play or makes everyone laugh there ass off for 3d6 rounds. That way the content of a post is more important than just simply posting.

But like someone else said, the fun is in the playing not just the accumulation of XP. But it sure looks like you guys could use a cleric with a full heal light wounds spell

[Eevans]

We need a Hawkeye Pierce, Cleric of the GOD M*A*S*H, to bring healing and martinis...STAT!

[SmootRK]

Postings seem to have slowed down to just a few folks. Are we missing anyone?

I am not trying to get anyone thrown out... but there is a waiting list of people who want to join.

We could also expand the game to 6 or 7 folks (as players) with the realization that 1 or 2 folks cannot post with regular frequency, their activity coming in bursts.

If you are one of those who are infrequent posters, perhaps you could list on your character sheet a set of 'standing orders' or SOP for certain situations. For instance, Nivek tends to move into melee combat to keep enemies from having easy manoeuvring to engage other weaker characters. When a character is down, Nivek will head there with all haste (but relative safety) to attempt life-saving (from negative HP) or otherwise guard the helpless character.