Hello folks!

Hopefully life is treating you all well. As for myself, the last few months have been really good.

On the gaming front, this past summer I ran a Kids-Only (ages 10-14) 5e D&D mini-campaign at the local game store. This game was loosely based on the excellent cooperative board game Forbidden Island and was a lot of fun. Table size for that game ran from 5-10 players and those kids really kept me on my toes! Running games for kids is a lot of fun because they don't approach the game the same way as adults. Lots of outside-the-box thinking and you need to be really good at improv to keep the game moving.

I also wrapped up my 18-month 5e D&D Tomb of Annilhilation campaign, in which the players were successful in foiling the machinations of the notorious lich Acererak and ending the Death Curse that had plagued the lands. I ran that campaign under the Adventurers League format, and over the course of the campaign over 40 players ran through that adventure! We did have a fairly steady crew of 4 players, but having new players drop-in/drop-out kept things pretty dynamic.

I was able to wrap up the last of my PbP games, Realms of High Adventure, earlier this month in what hope was a satisfying conclusion to a Basic D&D game that had been running for 3 years and which had started as a "one-shot". In the end, the players prevailed against the Red Hand of Doom and prevented their warlord from summoning Tiamat into the vale and visiting certain death upon the citizenry of that far-flung realm.

On the non-gaming front, my family completed the South Carolina Ultimate Outsider challenge, in which we visited all 47 state parks! It tooks us a little over two years to visit all the state parks and was a very memorable adventure consisting of camping, hiking, kayaking, mountain biking, fishing, swimming, horseback riding, body-boarding, and just sitting back and enjoying the great outdoors.

I also got orders a couple of weeks ago, wherein we will be moving to San Antonio, Texas in January! We're really excited about this move and the new opportunities it will present. I think this will be my last assignment in the Air Force and we will be putting down roots in Texas. I have 23 years in the Air Force and this assignment should bring me to 25-26 years of military service. Air Force basic training is in San Antonio and there is something fitting about ending my military career in the same place where it began. Texas is also a really good place to retire and has good job opportunities for both me and my wife. Excellent schools for my kids too, who are both now in middle school.

Obviously most of my focus is on moving right now and as a result, I won't be doing much gaming in the next few months...but have definitely been thinking about what I want to do next! Lots of ideas to be sure, but need to sort out our move first.

At any rate, like I said up front, I hope all of you are doing well and the dice roller has been cooperating lately!

:)

Shane

Wow that all sounds incredibly cool. Very glad to hear you are having such an eventful (in a good way!) time Shane, and if you ever want to pick up the virtual dice bag again give us aholler. :)

Thanks for the update. It's great to hear that things are going so well for you.

I've managed (finally) to get a table-top D&D game off the ground with family and friends, sort of weekly barring those not uncommon occasions when someone has a scheduling conflict. I'm pretty rusty as a DM, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. It's been at least 13 years since I've had a regular group. Thank goodness for RPoL!

San Antonio is one of the few places I've been in Texas and it was a really awesome town.  Sounds like things are going well, that's great!  Like Rath, I haven't played a table game in at least 15, maybe 20 years.  I love online gaming now, not sure I'd remember how to roleplay in a face to face group.  Maybe when I retire I'll try to find a game.  My niece plays all the time so maybe by then, she could bring the old man along! Best of luck with the relocate!  If you ever get a hankering to play rather than GM, let me know, I'd love to have you play!

Hello folks!

Starting to get the PbP itch again and was wondering if any of you know of any good games looking for a player?

Hey DM Storm! :)

I'm afraid I'm not in any new games at the moment but if anything pops up I'll let you know. Just AD&D or other systems/settings?

Hello everyone!

Checking in to see how everyone is doing in these strange times...

As for myself, we moved to San Antonio, TX this past January and barely had time to get settled in before COVID-19 struck and changed everything. My family has stayed healthy throughout, but the pandemic has definitely impacted our ability to get out and explore the city. I am told there are a lot of things to do here, but I haven't really had the opportunity to do very much while here. I guess at some point when things return to some level of normalcy, I will have a better sense of the area. From what I have seen, I like it here, just the times we are living in leave something to be desired :)

On the gaming front, I migrated all my tabletop games to virtual tabletop (VTT), in my case Roll20. I have been running two VTT campaigns since last March--one for my kids and their friends/cousins (six children, ages 11-14) and one for adults--on alternating Saturdays. Same campaign/adventure, just different groups, so it has been very interesting to see how the Kids and Adults approach the same problems, differently. Interestingly, the Kids' game wants to parlay with adversaries and the adults have murder-hobo tendencies. Opposite of what you might expect, perhaps?

This past summer, after a year-long break, I got the itch to do play-by-post again. I restarted the Basic D&D Red Hand of Doom campaign I had been running, to run the finale of that adventure (dungeon delve inside crazed dragon cultists' lair who are trying to summon Tiamat from the Abyss into the world). Having a lot of fun with this game and excited to see how it plays out.

Around the same time, I also started up a trial/one-shot 5e D&D Eberron game. This game is close to completion and I am fairly certain I will shutter the game as soon as we complete the adventure.

At any rate, hopefully life is treating you well!

Shane

Hey there Storm,

Nice to hear from you.

I too have moved, though to Vegas. Not sure if that is new news or not. I took a LONG break from RPoL, but I am giving it another try. Oddly enough, the first game to tempt me was an extension of this one, with new characters. I much prefer lower levels.

Taking it slow though, don't want to burn out.

Glad to hear you are well...

I'm very glad to know that Ben is still out there!

I eased way back on my online gaming, although I'm considering re-entering the fray. Work was extremely stressful during the initial COVID shutdowns and then the re-openings, but things have settled down at the front. The family is dragging through our isolation, which has been exceptionally challenging on the fourteen year old starting high school this year (and for his aging parents).

I am running a hybrid in-person/virtual game for family (who can share my space) and friends (who cannot). I'm using hand-drawn maps and a camera to share them, along with some video-conferencing software. We've adjusted pretty well to the format, but I find DMing even a three hour session to be exhausting. I sometimes think about looking into virtual tabletops, but I'd need new hardware and more time than I have to dig into the options.

I hope all is well with everyone. I miss the old group!

Wow Aldo, that sounds pretty impressive! And fun!

I agree that does sound a lot of fun! :)

Things aren't terrific here in Ireland Covid-wise (we're heading back into heavy restrictions) but we're coping.

Glad wveryone is well.  I've had nothing of note happen.  The worst part is my wife's difficulty coping with the Covid restrictions and isolation.  Or, it may be her difficulty coping with extra doses of me.  Probably both.

Still playing RPoL.  I'm in the Stormwind extension too, as well as the Red Hand restart.  The one tabletop game I played in has moved to virtual, using Fantasy Grounds.  It works out well, but nothing truly replaces face to face gaming.

Happy to know you are doing well and have returned to RPoL.

For what it's worth, I also prefer lower levels, both as a player and especially as a DM :)

Great to know you are coping as best you can through these challenging times. My kids are now 13 and 12, and we had just moved to a new state right before COVID hit, so they really had no opportunity to make friends. Been tough.

You don't necessarily need much hardware to run VTTs, depending on the VTT platform you use. I have a fairly basic 15" laptop, but I did purchase a second monitor because I needed more real estate. I use Roll20 for the VTT and Discord for Voice. We don't use video.

If you're interested in seeing how I have things set-up, let me know, I can walk you through and show you a demo to give you an idea of what's available. There are of course other VTTs out there (Fantasy Grounds, Foundry, Tablesmith, Epic Table, etc.), but I am most familiar with Roll20.

Yeah. I do miss some aspects of playing around the table, but to be honest, it's also kind of nice playing from home...

Just happy to be gaming when all is said and done. :)

I expect we're heading back toward restrictions where I live as well. Things are starting to heat back up again, with higher infection rates, etc.

Just doing what I can to prevent unnecessary community spread so have mostly stayed home and/or within my immediate family bubble these past 8 months.

The benefits of play-by-post are so large, you can do so many wonderful things here, but yes, somehow it falls short of face-to-face.

The ability to communicate separately to an individual or a group is massive, and I use it a lot when I DM. I love the ability to open private threads, and the language function is very nice too. Being able to see everyone's dice is pretty sweet for a paranoid DM like me as well.

Also fun to meet people from all over, and be able to play in snippets whenever you have the time.

In reply to DM Storm (msg # 84):

Thanks, I might take you up on that.

In reply to Ben Scristos (msg # 87):

I do love play by post, and I've been considering running a game on RPoL for years, but there are a few barriers for me. Mostly, I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew. And I can't stand that player turnover that I see in most games. That would bother me in a game I might run.

That is tough. Tougher for me can be the fact that you never know if anyone reads your posts. Very frustrating.

No problem. Just let me know when. I am generally available during the evening hours, after 6pm CDT, Monday to Friday, with more flexibility during the weekends.

Player attrition is tough.

When I run games I try to mitigate this unfortunate factor of PbP by deliberately designing games that don't rely on specific characters. This, coupled with seeding games with known quantities, i.e., people you have played with before and know are reliable, sometimes works.

Rath, you could form a game with us as "known quantities."

I would be in, given it starts at level one. I know a lot of people prefer higher levels.

I'd be in for a Rath led adventure too :-).   I also tend to try too much epic arching story, which can just crumble when you start having attrition.  I've been trying to learn from Storm and other such excellent DM's I've been around to make each leg of the story "nearly" stand alone and with definable and achievable goals.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:00, Wed 21 Oct 2020.